Fan Expo and Montreal Comic-con: Pros and Cons

By Angela Roberts

Sept. 22, 2010

Stormtrooper Cannon

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend both Fan Expo (Aug. 27-29) and the Montreal Comic-con (Sept. 11-12). Rather than do separate con reports, I thought I would combine them and offer some sort of commentary on both. These two genre conventions have many more differences between them than just location, but they have similarities too, and it struck me as interesting how each has their good points and bad points.

Fan Expo, held in Toronto, is a massive event held over three days that has grown to a size comparable with major commercial cons in the States. It could be as big as San Diego Comic-con someday. It certainly seemed like it last month. There was a huge show floor, and an impressive array of workshops, q-and-a’s, and presentations. There were so many stars that it was hard to keep track of them, and some, like David Blue and Ryan Robbins of hit shows Stargate Universe and Sanctuary, were announced literally at the last minute. [Fangirl side note - Both are pretty hot in real life, by the way. ;)] Some stars I never even saw, and I’m still not sure they were there. Was Peter Mayhew at the con? I don’t know. This is perhaps one symptom of the problems suffered by the con this year. While there was so much to love about the event this time around – the Tron: Legacy preview (awesome!), Adam West, Burt Ward and Julie Newmar all in the same room (so cool!), Shatner (‘nuff said), James Marsters (*fangirl sigh*), and all the rest, there were horrible problems with over-crowding and organization. The lines for tickets on Friday stretched around the block, and pre-paid ticket holders were lumped in with at-door buyers. Never in the five years that I’ve been attending this con have I had to wait in line to pick up my prepaid passes. That’s the point of paying in advance. But that’s just me bitching, you might think. It’s a big event, getting bigger and more popular every year, and waiting in line is inevitable. Judging from the number of people clutching printouts as they patiently shuffled along the sidewalk (yes, this was outside – good thing it didn’t rain), there was a huge boost in pre-sales this year. But it was just the beginning. And one tiny rant; plastic wrist-bands for a weekend pass are a terrible idea. They don’t come off and couldn’t be replaced. I had to sleep and shower in mine. That’s ridiculous.

Many of the issues experienced by the con were due to their placement in the relatively unfamiliar North Building. While this section offered them possibly a larger show floor and access to a massive auditorium, it also has a complex and inconvenient layout with cramped corridors and precious little lobby space. This meant frequent crowd control problems with bottlenecks occurring in potentially dangerous situations (like the bottoms of escalators) and a lot of confused people. On Saturday especially this was an issue. People with claustrophobia would have been very upset. The rumour was quickly spread that the fire marshal had restricted access to the building and many people who’d gone out for lunch or a smoke were denied re-entry in the middle of the day. Fortunately, I found a modest lunch at a café in the convention center so I didn’t witness this. But grumbling displeasure was evident wherever you went at the con that day, so it didn’t really make a difference if it was true or not. In any case, the cops were an obvious presence on Sunday, so clearly the con organizers needed help dealing with crowd control issues. Disorganization was by far the bigger problem. Everything was scattered; the food services were in random places on the show floor, the exclusives table was hard to find, organizations were set aside along walls, and lines mixed and melded with too few staff to direct them. Things got better on Sunday, but I suspect that had to do with a reduced attendance.

So what about Montreal Comic-con? I attended this con on September 11th at Place Bonaventure. It was a nice small con. I received a generous discount from the media desk (sadly, we don’t qualify for media accreditation yet – need more readers!) and did some shopping, met some nice people, handed out some more of our bookmarks, that sort of thing. The convention appears to still be in that sort of trade show mode that cons start out in, where the retailers are the main focus, with some artists and guests, but nowhere near the scale of something like Fan Expo. This meant that it was great for people who are looking to shop, but not necessarily for anything else. And I shopped. I spent less than I did in Toronto, but came out with about the same amount of swag, perhaps more. This was definitely an advantage on the Comic-con’s part. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that there are fewer deals at Fan Expo, even on Sundays. The best deal I found on manga in Toronto was 8 at US cover price with one free and a box set. In Montreal, I got 5 at US cover price with an additional dollar off each. There was also more of an opportunity to browse. At Fan Expo, the booths were so large and so stuck together that it wasn’t always clear what belonged to whom, and it didn’t seem worth it to shop without an aim. I was more focused in my shopping in Toronto because otherwise I would have given up and come home empty-handed (and richer, but who wants to go to a con and not buy anything?) This was not a problem in Montreal, and remains the aspect of the con I was most impressed with.

What I could see as needing improvement, and what could ultimately propel the Comic-con into the big leagues, is what I see as a need to get out of this sort of transitory mode that the con is currently in. Supposedly it is a two-day event, but I couldn’t find enough to keep me busy for more than four hours. The retailer selection was good, the people are nice, there were lots of cool costumes, but the programming was lacking. Part of the problem was with location. Place Bonaventure is an old convention centre, and it’s showing its age. The place is seriously in need of a renovation in the style of our other main conference centre, the Palais des Congres. Consequently, what you save on rent, you lose in atmosphere. There were some impressive guests for this small a convention, Brent Spiner and Billy Dee Williams, but they were stuck way in back. Artists’ and guests’ tables, while in a better layout than Fan Expo’s this year, still kind of looked like they’d been put up by the people sitting at them. The Yu-Gi-Oh tournament was a bunch of dim tables on the side. And the few seminars were held in a dark, acoustically poor room reachable through a doorway that was barely a slit in the wall. And I know this is Montreal, but every time I walked in, the seminar was in French. If the Montreal Comic-con wants to grow into an event that can compete with the majors, some things need to be done. They need to move to a nicer location, they need to expand and organize their programming to include more bilingual panel discussions and seminars, and they need to place equal weight on guests and retailers. This is how you bring in the coveted pre-paid attendees. No one is going to pay for an entire weekend when they’re going to do everything they wanted to do in four hours.

But that means it’ll be more expensive! Well, yes. The one-day ticket at the Comic-con was $15. Compare that to the $29-35 basic pass and $59 deluxe weekend pass for Fan Expo. And the higher prices for major American cons. But if you offer people their money’s worth, they’ll willingly pay it. Fan Expo has been growing steadily every year, and every year the price has gone up. And people keep paying it. And although many people were turned off by the problems that beset the con this year, I guarantee you that many of those people will return. Fan Expo is experiencing growing pains as it takes the next leap into the major leagues alongside events like San Diego Comic-con. But I think there’s room for Montreal to enter the majors along with Toronto. They just have to think outside of their wallets and work at putting together something that will make people want to spend the money.

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