Niagara Falls Comic Con 2013
June 13, 2013Two days. Over 15,000 fans, 27 celebrity guests, 9 featured artists, and 1 Batmobile. This is NIAGARA FALLS COMIC CON.
The Niagara Falls Comic Con is still an infant when compared to seasoned veteran conventions like San Diego, Dragon*Con and Wizard World, but this past weekend they showed that they are nothing to scoff about. With big names like Adam West, David Prowse, Jeremy Bulloch and convention regular Lou Ferrigno, it was clear early on that this years convention was going to be much larger than it’s first year.
For the first time since I started going to conventions, I got to see things from ‘the other side’ as it were. This year the site had a table, where we were selling our nerdy soaps, some cool buttons and doing a great giveaway for a print that artist Matthew Therrien designed just for us. We loaded in on Friday afternoon, and they already had the Batmobile and the General Lee there. It was interesting to see the convention come together from bare tables to what the crowds took in on Saturday and Sunday.
So I found our spot, booth 207, just past the General Lee and a right hand turn and you were there. We were across from the lovely ladies from Cosplay For A Cure, who this weekend had Rebel Shotz Photography at their booth taking photos. The idea behind their booth is that you can have your photos taken and even printed for a small donation. Any money that is collected goes to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. The photographer, Rob, got a lot of great photos of not only my volunteers at the booth this weekend, but one of myself dressed as Punisher–it ended up being one of my favorite photos of the entire weekend!
On Saturday morning, it was go time. At 10am, the convention floor flooded with fans eager to meet their idols, hunt for that comic they’ve been looking forever for, or buy some new clothes or toys. We had a lot of great people come by our booth and a lot of them liked to stop and chat about an article or opinion piece on the site. My favorites were people that came to chat and asked great questions, like if I had to pick one character in Mass Effect from my team to die so everyone else lived, who would it be and why? I love those kind of discussions!
In the early afternoon we had the boys from Arkham Knights pay the booth a visit for some photo opportunities, and some of the members of the X-Men of Toronto stopped by as well. The photos ended up being fantastic mash ups of both the Marvel and DC universe and we had quite the crowd join us to take photos. Later in the day, some of the GCE girls had the pleasure of meeting Corey Feldman and Tim Russ, but those weren’t the only celebrity encounters the GCE would have over the weekend.
It was after the long but incredibly fun day at the convention that we got to the afterparty that we were hosting at Seven Nightclub. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I’m not much of a club goer, but it certainly wasn’t a disappointment. The club even had their own robot that came out to dance with the small entourage of people we were with, much to everyone’s amusement. Of course, we couldn’t stay out too late because there was still another full day of the convention to go!
Sunday wasn’t at full capacity like Saturday was (and even when they were at full capacity, people said they only waited in line about forty five minutes, which is nothing compared to previous Fan Expo’s that left people outside of the convention for hours) and it gave me a little more time to wander around and see what everyone was offering. I got to talk to members of the 501st, the zombie squad, and even put in some time reclaiming my childhood with a Mortal Kombat II arcade game at the Pulp Comics table. I met Jason David Frank on a complete whim, when he was leaving the exhibit floor and I got to say a quick hello–the man is a complete gentleman and I heard all weekend from fans what a sweet and humble man he was.
I also just want to take a moment to thank Chris, James and Paul for putting this together for the second year in a row. We had a great time both as fans and exhibitors and I think everything was very well organized. Thank you so much guys for all of your hard work, and we’ll see everyone next year!