By: Pop Culture guest columnist

     After many years of running their comic cons all over the U.S., Wizard has finally brought their show to Toronto.  Really the title comic con is misleading, as these shows are turning more and more into a pop culture showcase than just a comic book convention.  Like usual they’ve brought not only top comic book artists and writers like Gail Simone, Phil Jimenez, and Dale Keown, but also television and movie stars.  At any time you could run into stars like Jewel Staite (Firefly, Serenity), Gil Gerard and Erin Gray (both of Buck Rogers fame), Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters, The Crow), or Christopher Knight (Peter from the Brady Bunch) and his wife Adrianne Curry (America’s Next Top Model).  This show also showcased a wide variety of wrestlers from years past (Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Demolition, Jimmy Superfly Snuka) , and even a few still currently active ones (Kevin Nash, Taylor Wilde).  Unfortunately during my trip to Friday’s show most of the reality tv stars Wizard brought up to visit us were absent.  Tara-Jean Popowich and Vincent Desjarins of So You Think You Can Dance Canada were the only two present on this day, and the rest such as Jonny Fairplay of Survivor, and Megan and Cheyne of the Amazing Race were scheduled for the rest of the weekend when I won’t be there.  One of the major events this weekend was the display of Props from the Saw franchise of movies, as well as a panel Q&A session with Costas Mandylor and Betsy Russell (two of the stars) as well as several members of the crew.  This was one of the most entertaining aspects of the day, and even if you don’t like this series of movies it’s always interesting to hear movie people talk about movies.  I’m even more curious now what Saw 7 will be like in 3-D when it’s released this fall.

Overall I was kind of disappointed at the showing of this convention.  I’ve been to this show in Chicago before, and it’s always crowded.  This show however was fairly dead, and I hope it picks up over the weekend for them so they will bring it back next year.  I was also disappointed by the low number of panels they ran.  In Chicago there were always many different panels to choose from, on a wide variety of topics, and here there were only a couple that held a very slight interest for me.  It’s always disappointing as well when the major comic book labels don’t bother to bring a booth up to Canada so aspiring artists and writers can try to sell themselves.  Like usual however the people attending dressed up in costumes didn’t fail to disappoint, and the costume contest that will be held on Saturday will be just as entertaining.  The live wrestling that was on display constantly by young up and coming wrestlers was also unique, and could grow in future years.  Maybe Wizard was just gauging how well they could do up here, and if this weekend is a success maybe next year they’ll try making this show bigger and better.

     The next big show is the Fan Expo in August at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.  Not only is this show usually larger than this one was, but it’s more centrally located, and they’ve all ready announced that they’ve got comic book legend Stan Lee coming.  Competition is a great thing, and I think the show in August may just blow everyone away this year.