Convention Report: Toronto Comicon 2025 In Pictures

by Koom Kankesan

Another March Break for Toronto schools brings another Toronto Comicon to town! Taking place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this past weekend (March 14th – 16th), the show mixes together fandoms of various stripes. Apparently, some of the stars from The Boys are here at the con, which means we’ll need a lot of soap to wash the curse words out of their mouths:

I don’t think this person giving me the stink eye is the Karl Urban?

Hard not to gawk at the Golden Age comics:

and pre-code horror comics:

Join me as we stroll around the North Building. In the artist’s alley, I ran into some familiar figures — local artist Sam Agro and New Yorker Jim Salicrup (who used to work at Marvel as an editor):

I also met people for the first time, like artist Alex Maleev, pictured here with some of his lovely Daredevil art:

I also chatted with Dave Dorman, famed painter of Aliens, Predator, and Star Wars covers (among others). Here he is chatting about his career in a panel session, and also with one of his Predator drawings below:

Here’s local artist Craig Yeung, who’s worked for Marvel. I’m not 100% sure, but I think my high school friend and I were at a local con in the mid 1990s, standing idly beside a table when Craig presented his samples to a featured guest (an artist at Marvel) at the con ,who told Craig he had the goods:

Speaking of Daredevil, the Disney+ series, Daredevil: Born Again, set up a booth where people could line up for a free promotional t-shirt that they could spray a design onto … well, they sprayed digitally and their efforts were printed on the front of the shirt:

Walking around, it’s hard not to run into cosplayers that turn your head. Apparently, this is a character from a videogame called Poppy Playtime and not from my nightmares as I originally thought:

Talking of my nightmares: as I saw this gentleman from the back, I thought he might be dressed up as the QAnon Shaman, but he informed me he is cosplaying a character from Demon Slayer:

This older gentleman (discreetly hiding his cane) admitted to me that he’s cosplaying for the first time ever. It’s a truly unnerving representation of the Joker and the picture doesn’t do justice to how horrified I felt in his presence:

After taking his picture, I ran away in terror, but was stopped short by this imposing figure from the Call of Duty games. Although, his toy assault rifle with the orange and grey components on it (and the hiking shoes) chips away from the verisimilitude:

The folks at this Star Wars cosplay table invited me to fire Nerf-style projectiles at this masochistic fighter pilot behind the table, but I abhor violence (although not voyeurism) so I just opted to take a photo instead:

There seem to be a lot of weapons at these shows, no matter how you cut it (pun not intended). Here is a replica of He-Man’s sword which the vendor informed me, contrary to what I believed, was forged in China, not Eternia. The cost was $350 which was 349 dollars more than I could afford:

A more informative presentation of artillery was to be found at this gentleman’s booth. He told me that he used to teach police officers to shoot firearms. He builds some of these items himself, including the musket balls which can actually be fired:

Let’s end on a less combative note. Perhaps the most touching thing I saw was a book which used Antoine de Saint-Exupery‘s The Little Prince to teach emotional intelligence to children: