In Pictures: Fan Expo Canada 2025 Day Three

Today, I concentrated more on panels than spending time on the convention floor. The first one I went to was a talk by William Shatner. I’ve been a fan of classic Star Trek since I was a kid, but I don’t know if I’ve even seen Shatner signing autographs across a hall before (I must have since he’s been a fixture at most if not all of the cons I’ve attended); he’s 94 years old now and I felt this was a now-or-never kind of situation.

For 94 years old, Shatner was in very good form. He did struggle to remember names and other details but he spoke energetically. I think people were expecting him to talk about Star Trek but instead he talked about his early years as an actor, moving to Toronto from Montreal to work for the CBC, then being an understudy for Christopher Plummer during a production of Henry V at the Stratford festival in Ontario (and having to perform when Plummer was sick), and much later, doing a one man show in different parts of the world. Shatner has a somewhat self-deprecating way of spinning tales that’s on brand with the way he’s made fun of his own image, but he’s not truly self-deprecating. He speaks in a hearty, imperious, and dramatic manner, some might even say a Kirk-like voice, and he looks around, pauses for effect, and occasionally raises his voice in a very stentorian register. The audience loved him.

I laughed a fair amount at his jokes during the talk. Shatner made a point of trying to come across as open when he talked about a sex worker he’d befriended when he was living in Toronto. He says that, lonely and poor, he hung out at a bar in the neighbourhood of his decrepit apartment, one which sex workers just happened to frequent before taking customers upstairs to rooms. It did occur to me that Shatner might have transacted a little business himself if he was lonely but according to his story, he simply befriended one particular sex worker who’d join him at the bar and chat with in between her assignations. Then, when Shatner acted in Stratford, he met the woman he’d court and later marry. I think she was from Toronto and once they were married and back in Toronto, walking down the street with her parents, they ran across the sex worker that Shatner once befriended. Shatner was embarrassed and tried to ignore her so the sex worker gave him a very complex look of disappointment that conveyed she understood the situation. He talked about wishing he could do things differently if he could do that moment over again. He also mentioned a time when he was recovering from the flu and pooped (or ‘Shat’) his pants when beginning the performance of his one man show on Broadway, and then had to excuse himself due to ‘technical difficulties’ so he could change his clothes.

My second panel was a sketch duel between Art Adams and Brian Stelfreeze. I’ve never been to such an event before, so this was new to me. The rules were that people from the audience would shout out prompts. Then the two artists would draw sketches based on these prompts however they liked. While they were sketching, we could ask questions and the two artists would banter, joke around, reminisce, what have you. Some of the prompts that were thrown out included: Sandman, Dr. Doom, Weird Al Yankovic … and I forget the others. Someone suggested a bunch of characters playing a sport which was rejected as too much work as was my own suggestion: Jaime Hernandez‘s Maggie and Hopey.

I did get to ask a question though. I asked the pair to talk about artists that had influenced their styles the most. Adams answered: “Charles Knight, the movie King Kong, and then, gosh, pretty much everyone who drew comics in the sixties and seventies.” Stelfreeze cited “Norman Rockwell, J. C. Leyendecker, who did Saturday Evening Post covers. As far as comic influences, probably the biggest influences on me are Gil Kane and Jim Steranko.”

At the end of the session, the sketches were raffled off. I couldn’t believe it but I actually won the Weird Al Yankovic sketch that Stelfreeze drew and I was overjoyed because a) I never win anything in raffles and b) I’m not so big on superheroes anymore so this last sketch by Stelfreeze (as a bit of a fun one) was right down my alley. I will however post the other sketches that were drawn and raffled away as well. Adams seemed to be more playful with his, as you can see in the Gumby as Reed Richards sketch or the Sandman one. When the moderator mentioned Abu Dhabi at one point, Adams quipped that people in Saudi Arabia hate The Flintstones but people in Abu Dhabi love them (a pun on ‘yabba dabba doo’ I think?). It was a lot of fun. I was trying to avoid taking pics of people in cosplay this year, but I did have to take a pic of the person in the giant Turning Red costume (at the top of this write up — if you don’t know, Pixar’s Turning Red takes place in Toronto and is excellent), and the person who won Stelfreeze’s sketch of Storm was dressed in an excellent Elf costume a la Will Ferrell (as you can see below).

The last panel I attended featured DC Comics Chief Creative Officer and artist Jim Lee. He talked and answered questions from the audience while drawing a sketch of Zatanna which was later given away. Fan enthusiasm for Stelfreeze and Adams was strong, and immense for Shatner, but the mania for Jim Lee was palpable in a whole different way. You could feel that these were rabid fans who in some cases had spent quite a lot in order to see their idol and get something signed by him. They shouted out comments in the large meeting room and bristled with excitement at being so close to him. Lee himself is a diminutive but refined looking man who kids around without going to the self deprecating theatricality that Shatner employs or the silly puns that Adams throws around. Lee is more glib, like a shiny apple that sits on top of an apple cart, knowing it will be picked before long.

Lee talked about immigrating to the US as a kid, how his parents wanted him to become a doctor like his father, and how he was ready to go into med school but his heart was in comics. He took a gap year and after three months of knocking on doors, got work. Though he was frustrated by how long it took at the time, he now feels he was very lucky and that many of his colleagues endured up to three years of frustrated attempts before getting professional work. People asked him whether he had any input into the so-called DC Extended Universe movies (the answer was, “No, I’m just there to help directors understand a character, but someone like James Gunn doesn’t need help — the DCEU films are run by auteurs unlike the MCU films which are very mapped out.”) and how he shifted into a managerial position after being an artist. He replied to the latter by saying he observed and mirrored, learned the lingo, relied on mentors’ advice, as opposed to having any executive training, much like acculturation in a new country, which I thought was a very astute answer. I didn’t even bother trying to formulate a question as the adulation in the room was so strong that others were just dying to ask Lee queries.

Lee would pause drawing to answer questions and jibber-jabber — in fits and starts, the sketch of Zatanna was more or less completed. He decided to give away the sketch by posing the question: ‘who in this room has pliers on them?’ and a few people raised their hands. The first, who had a multi-purpose tool on them, won the sketch. This was a unique experience for me, somewhat like the Shatner panel, as I usually steer away from the mainstream events in my coverage but it was a fun — if exhausting — day by the time I was ready to leave the con. If you read my report of Day 1, you might remember that I had to haggle to make a trade with Lee’s rep, a pretty prominent art dealer called Albert Moy. Well … I was at an industry party the next night when Moy and his wife showed up, and Moy was wearing the exact same Love and Rockets t-shirt (with art by Jaime Hernandez) that I was wearing! So I had to take a photograph. In general, the party was quite nice and I met some great people. It was hosted by RAID, an art and creative studio in Toronto whose members illustrate comics and do other cool things.