Road Trip to the Calgary Comic Expo 2011

This past weekend I travelled 800km to Calgary to take in the fifth annual Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. I have always wanted to attend a ComicCon / Sci-Fi convention, but it was only last year that I learned that this one in Calgary even existed. I was pleasantly surprised at just how good a time I had and the variety of things there was to see. A good part of the show is dedicated to comics. I do not have a real great interest in comics though. I was there more for the Sci-Fi and horror aspects. This year Calgary had invited such guests as George Romero, Felicia Day, Tia Carrerre, Summer Glau and Elvira Mistress of the Dark. The main attraction was William Shatner.

Once we got to Calgary we checked in to our hotel and downed a quick beer, then hopped on the C-Train and headed down to the BMO Roundup Centre. I had bought my ticket online a couple of months ago, so upon arrival I traded it in for a weekend pass. We spent the first evening just getting our bearings, confirming where the different venues were and the timings for autograph sessions and panels. It was also a pretty good time to try get some autographs as the crowd (as I learned the next day!) was relatively small so the lineups were short.

I had originally bought a photo-op voucher online for George Romero, but he had to cancel his visit due to an injury. The folks at the photo op table gladly refunded my money, so I decided I would take advantage of the extra cash and short lineup to go meet my favorite Mistress of the Dark: Elvira. I chatted with her for a few minutes and found her to be quite friendly. She has a great sense of humor as you probably can imagine. We spent the rest of the evening just wandering around and looking at the things people were selling and so on. I found a couple of pulp novels to add to the collection.

On Saturday we headed down again, our passes allowed us to get in a little earlier than the general admission. We attended the Battlestar Galactica panel in the Corral which featured Michael Hogan who played Col. Saul Tigh and Kate Vernon who played Tigh's wife Ellen. It was very entertaining and I was quite impressed with how much they both seemed to enjoy being there with their fans. Hogan quoted a few lines from the show which made everyone cheer and then in a rousing rendition of geekdom he was able to get the whole crowd on it's feet for a few "So say we all's". It was also a little touching to see how emotional Kate got as she recalled a few memories from her time on the show.

Next up was Summer Glau, a crowd favorite among the Firefly set, not as interesting I thought, but it's always nice to see these stars in person, and you have to admit she is pretty easy on the eyes.

They had scheduled a discussion on pulps with three comic book artists so I attended that. I had originally thought it would be more on pulp novels and Sci-Fi but I was disappointed. The sound system was not working at all. The one fellow was a very good speaker and had a great sense of humor but the fact I could hear hardly anything and that they seemed to be talking more about modern interpretations of pulps prompted me to leave early.

We took in the William Shatner event that afternoon and all I can say about that is the man likes to talk. His appearance is on You Tube so will let it speak for itself. Pretty busy guy and he has definitely took his career by the horns. He knows who he is and what people expect of him. I hope when I'm 80 I still have his energy!

The best conversation I had was with Ronn Sutton. He was an illustrator for the Elvira Mistress of the Dark comic book. He was selling off some original panels and I was flipping through his collection and chatting with him. I told him I wasn't really a big comic fan, that one of the reasons I had come was because of Romero. We got on the subject of his movies and we both agreed the Dawn of the Dead was his best film. Anyway, I ended up buying one of his panels and he even autographed it for me by his insistence. A really nice guy and turns out he is based out of Ottawa.

Sunday we just had another quick look around, took in the zombie versus superhero roller derby and celebrity watched one last time. Elvira was out of makeup and appearing as Cassandra Peterson. She still looks good!

My overall impression of the show was very good. I overheard a few people saying that this year seemed better organized than last year. There was more space to move around and the lineups were not too bad compared to previous years.

The only real let down I had was with the use of Twitter by the organizers. I have been following @calgaryexpo for several months. Their information was great leading up to the event but I found them to be surprisingly quiet during the show itself. On Saturday I think I tweeted about four times from the show. I even created a Calgary Expo list to keep track of the tweeps at the show. @calgaryexpo tweeted twice throughout the entire day. I thought they could have used this medium a lot better. Perhaps they need someone totally dedicated to the Twitter feed. Not a big complaint but I had hoped to be getting a steady stream of info from the host!

If you have never attended a con before I would highly recommend this one. They have a website and their Facebook page is loaded with pictures of the awesome costumes people dressed up in. Looking at the people dressed up and seeing the effort they had put into their costumes I think was one of the highlights of the show. Will I be back? Yes for sure!