Heroes of the North at Ottawa Comiccon

Ottawa is sometimes referred to as "the town that fun forgot".  I'll say this about the city though; when it decides to support something, it does it to the hilt.

Ottawa Comiccon VIP tickets sold out a couple of weeks before the event and Saturday passes around mid-week. The place was crawling with folks of all ages in costumes of all kinds on Sunday as well.  The Ottawa Citizen estimated 25,000 visitors for the two-day event.  That's fantastic.

Among my goals for this event (relevant to this blog) was to attend the Heroes of the North panel and booth.  Easy enough mission, and therefore accomplished.

The room was nearly full for the three-person panel in which we were told of how the Heroes of the North concept came about, the basics as to how the movies are produced and the backgrounds of its originators.  Teasers were shown for the various character origin stories, most (all?) of which can be viewed on their website now.  The spectators were enthusiastic and participative, which was good to see.

Speaking of good to see...

I joked on Twitter that 8-Ball above (Anderson Bradshaw) could have been a telling us all that the room is about to be filled with poisonous gas at that moment and I (and several others no doubt) would have had no idea.

Hornet (Marie-Claude Bourbonnais) was one popular lady at that place.  I wandered around a bit after the panel and noticed that things were significantly quieter at the HotN table.  Hornet gets back and in no time the aisle is clogged with guys wanting a picture with her.  Oh, and one lady telling her husband to watch where he's going.  Lol...

As one of the "founding fathers" of HotN, Bradshaw is a natural to discuss the project and is an entertaining speaker.  But the other gentleman on the panel, whom I believe was producer Christian Viel, gets the game ball for persevering despite being in the process of losing his voice.  Man's been busy these past couple of days!  I struggled to hear his name when he introduced the panel so if he is misidentified, I apologize.

They had a wide variety of items for sale at their booth such as prints, shirts, figurines, hats, photo books, etc.  It's probably accurate to say that HotN offer a greater selection of merchandise for their characters than Marvel does for Alpha Flight.  Go figure.

The dense crowd made getting a good picture of the HotN booth difficult, but I did get to sneak in shot of the zombot armour and the Canadian Shield's...shield.  No doubt the HotN will offer a far better view on their site soon, as they did for the Calgary convention.

It was a great time and everyone involved, whether organizer, exhibitor or visitor, should take a bow.  There's every reason to believe that this event became an instant tradition.  See you next year.