Saturday of Fan Expo Canada 2024 was a day of missions — to get to the Simu Liu, Rosario Dawson, Gotham, and X-Men panels. Would we succeed? Here’s volume three of our con diary.
Mon: Our first stop on Saturday was the Simu Liu panel. I was in two minds about this panel. Apparently, Liu is problematic, and people vocally dislike him. I don’t know the details, but he’s controversial, and I was concerned about what we were getting into. But, at the end of the day, our job is to cover the con to the best of our abilities, and given that he’s Shang-Chi and the MCU is part of our purview, it seemed wrong to skip the session.
Of course, Liu didn’t exactly endear himself to me when he showed up nearly 10 minutes late for his own session. I was panicking because we had another session to get to right after and the line for that was already snaking.
But, despite my reservations, Liu was actually quite sweet, thoughtful, and funny. The room was almost completely packed and, turns out, the people of Toronto love him! He also gives that love right back.
Liu didn’t share any details about the future of Shang-Chi, because he wasn’t asked about it. He did talk about doing his own stunts, especially doing the bus action scene himself in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and how that scene was done practically, not with CGI.
His session didn’t have a Q&A. I don’t know why that change has happened, but hopefully people knew about it in advance. He did play a version of Heads Up and had the audience laughing uproariously during it. That was a lot of fun.
We ran out a few minutes before the session ended, but not before Liu shared a lovely anecdote about meeting Henry Cavill. Liu met Cavill at the Super Bowl this year. Cavill was keeping to himself and no one had noticed him. Liu decided to say hi, expecting that Cavill wouldn’t know him. Liu told Cavill that he was a fan of Cavill’s work, and Cavill gave him a bear hug and said really nice things to him. He also came to Liu’s table to greet his friends. After Cavill left, Liu found out that he’d paid for Liu’s entire table.
Louis: That was a good story for us to race out on. The line for Rosario Dawson was unbelievably long. And it just kept going. But we got in and found decent enough seats. The session itself felt short considering how long people had been standing.
Dawson spoke about being inducted into a love for comics by her uncle Gus, who was a comic artist. She wasn’t allowed to touch the comics and even when she was reading them, she’d have to sit back to back with her uncle while reading and he would turn the pages. So, she grew up believing comic books were sacred texts.
Most of the conversation was around Ahsoka, and Dawson shared how she became excited about the role when Bosslogic fancast her in his art. But mostly her interest grew from the hope that Ahsoka’s story would be continuing. She’s been a Star Wars fan for a long time and felt closer to it when Hayden Christensen was cast as Anakin Skywalker — the two have known each other since they were teenagers. She did mention that one of the challenges of being Ahsoka was using both lightsabers. She isn’t naturally ambidextrous. Now that she’s been training for about five years, she’s become a lot better with her left hand. She can even write well and use chopsticks with her left hand.
Dawson was full of praise for Pedro Pascal for selling his moment with Grogu in season two of The Mandalorian because off-screen, there was a man in a grey suit moving Grogu’s hand to Din Djarin’s face. Takes some skill to make that scene emotional.
I found it interesting how Ahsoka has left such a mark on the people who play her. We heard Ashley Eckstein talking about Ahsoka having changed her as a person, and Dawson said much the same.
Louis: After a spot of lunch, we split up. I joined the queue for the Morena Baccarin and Ben McKenzie session. Not the longest, but we stood for ages. At the session itself, I don’t know what was happening with the technology because I could barely hear McKenzie. Baccarin’s microphone was working fine, at least, but McKenzie did get quite a few questions. I was straining to hear his answers thanks to the soft mic, and he was also being drowned out by the two loud talkers sitting behind me making dinner plans, and the screaming child across the aisle who was clearly not a fan of Gotham.
Unlike the morning sessions, this panel opened up for a Q&A in minutes. I was surprised at the amount of love for The OC. The audience were screaming for a revival of some kind, and the pitches were flying in from all sides. I haven’t seen the show myself, but it’s certainly left a mark on Toronto and got people’s creative juices flowing!
Baccarin spoke rather honestly about her curtailed role of Vanessa in Deadpool & Wolverine. She had been regularly texting Ryan Reynolds about playing Vanessa again, and Reynolds was always very open with her about where the character stood. Baccarin was disappointed to learn that Vanessa and Wade had broken up in the third film, because she wanted to have a larger role in the movie. But she doesn’t think we’ve seen the end of the character. In fact, Baccarin said she’d like to see Vanessa become Copycat in the films. In the comics, Vanessa Carlyle is a shape-shifting mutant called Copycat, but so far, in the films, Vanessa has been human.
Most of the questions from the audience were about Gotham, of course. So many moons ago, I wrote an essay for WWAC about Gotham, but I haven’t had much reason to dwell on the show since. Imagine my surprise to be in a room full of Gotham fans, all itching to ask their questions. There were some funny questions, such as what McKenzie thought of donning Jim Gordon’s iconic moustache, which only happened in the finale of the show. McKenzie wasn’t particularly happy with it, turns out, primarily because he would have preferred to grow his own. But TV shows are made quickly, and McKenzie simply didn’t have the time to grow a moustache. Instead, the makeup department slapped on the moustache that apparently nobody liked. I’m not a connoisseur on moustaches, so I have no opinion. McKenzie did reveal, apparently for the very first time, that he would like to revisit Gordon, albeit in later chapters of his life, which would give him the opportunity to don an actual moustache.
Interestingly, when McKenzie was offered the role of Gordon, he was told the role was written for him, which he said was flattering because nobody had written a character for him before then or ever since. He grew up loving Batman, so he still considers Jim Gordon the coolest role he’s ever played.
Baccarin didn’t have much time to prepare for her appearance as Lee Tompkins on Gotham– barely a week. And since she hadn’t seen the show before, she was catching up on episodes before arriving in New York. The story arc for Lee Tompkins wasn’t set when she joined the cast, so she never knew how long she would have to play the character. Eventually, Lee became a central figure on the show, propelled by Baccarin and McKenzie’s burgeoning off-screen relationship. Because the role of Lee was so fluid, it changed quite a bit during the show, giving Baccarin the opportunity to explore different aspects of the character. She particularly enjoyed playing Lee when she was evil and running Gotham.
I liked that McKenzie talked about the importance of shooting in New York because Gotham itself is a character in the show. He described Gotham as a city “full of the dreams of children and the nightmares of an old man.” Poetic! But also true about the city the Dark Knight calls home.
While I felt nostalgic revisiting Gotham with McKenzie and Baccarin, I was uncomfortable with the audience taking liberties with their personal questions. McKenzie and Baccarin did mention that meeting each other was a highlight of the show but that hardly meant they had declared open season on questions about their relationship. Yikes! I was also a bit surprised that nobody asked McKenzie about his work criticizing cryptocurrency scams, a subject he’s recently co-authored a book about.
Mon: Elsewhere in the South building, I made my way through the crush to the X-Men Universe panel. We have several new X-Men series recently launched, and some of the creators behind those series were at the panel, including Jed Mackay and Ryan Stegman (X-Men), Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing (NYX), Marcus To (X-Force), and Jason Loo (Dazzler).
I went in expecting to learn more about their approach to the post-Krakoa life of the mutants, as well as what specifically they were bringing to their respective series. However, the moderator approached the panel more like a ‘get to know the creators’ kind of session. Maybe I’m old and jaded, but I’m here to learn about the work, not necessarily the hyper-specific backstories. If those personal histories impact the creation of the stories, yes, give me all, but if not, I don’t think a dedicated session should be wasted on such information.
What was evident was that there’s a lot of passion from these creators, and they definitely see this series as a jumping-on point for new X-Men readers.
Jackson Lanzing did most of the talking on the panel, and during the Q&A section, said that they don’t intend to move away from the Krakoa era; they intend to include it in their stories. Lanzing also mentioned that, like the Krakoa-era writers, this new lot of X-Men writers were keeping in touch with each other.
One other thing that Lanzing mentioned was that while there is a connective tissue among all the new series, the teams are not necessarily writing them like they all need to be read together. This was definitely an issue with the Krakoa books—the story ran across series. So, here’s hoping the new lot stick to this plan.
In response to the last fan question, which was about how X-Men comics often include historical and current issues in them, Toronto writer Jason Loo discussed how he looked at Taylor Swift’s career and her role in the last US elections. It appears that Loo is transposing the way Swift uses her fame and influence for positive change on to Dazzler. This intrigues and scares me. But we’ll find out more in Dazzler #1, which comes out in September 2024.
Lanzing’s response was to hint at what’s coming up in NYX #3– a story that centres around a funeral for a mutant who’s killed in a hate crime. The inspiration for this story came specifically from the death of O’Shae Sibley, a drag queen who was killed in New York. Lanzing found out about this story from the Black community, and it infuriated him to the point that he felt that they had to write about it. In fact, he felt it would be ‘dishonest’ not to write about it.
He couldn’t not “try to speak directly to the experience of living in a world that hates and fears you. Because when you talk about that esoterically in the X-Men, it’s fantasy. But, for people who do not look like me and identify like me, it’s an actual reality. So, I think it’s my responsibility to use the voice that I have in this space to say something about that.”
I feel like, after listening to Kelly and especially Lanzing, the intention is there to tell an inclusive and representative story that reflects real life in NYX, but none of that came across in the first issue. Will it be better by issue #3?
While I’m glad I went for the X-Men Universe panel, I think it’s time for Fan Expo Canada to reconsider how they moderate their comic panels at both Toronto Comiccon and this event, because this panel wasn’t a retrospective, it’s about something current, and I feel like the audience isn’t getting as much substance from these discussions to enhance their reading and viewing experiences.
There’s only one day left of Fan Expo Canada 2024. What does Sunday have in store for us?
