by Jayden Leggett, Editor

11:00am, Saturday, April 13, 2013. Three inconspicuous ComicsOnline reporters (Jayden Leggett, David “Aussie Dave” Lobato and Gavin Milne) arrive at the Melbourne Showgrounds, Victoria, Australia. Their mission: to run amok as only they can, taking obscene amounts of photographs, spend all of their hard earned cash, and converse with as many participants, artists and exhibitors as possible. Their target: Supanova Pop Culture Expo.

Now, instead of telling you what we did do during our two days at Supanova, instead we would like to begin by telling you what we didn’t do. We didn’t see David Hasselhoff (of Baywatch fame). We didn’t see Barbara Eden (I Dream Of Jeannie). In fact, we didn’t pay any visits to any one of the large roster of film and television superstars such as Eliza Dushku (Dollhouse), Rose McGowan (Charmed), Greg Cipes (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville) or even Flash Gordon himself, Sam J. Jones. Don’t get us wrong: we easily could have attended panels or photograph sessions with any of these fine folks. But that wasn’t why we were here. We were here to soak in as much of the on-the-floor atmosphere as was physically possible for three twenty-six year old geek males.

After receiving our media badges (‘coz that’s how we roll), our first task was to familiarise ourselves with our environment. Not an easy task considering the daunting combination of over eighty stalls and exhibits and the thousands of people in attendance. As we slowly and carefully forged our path through the geek masses, it was impossible not to be impressed by some of the stellar cosplay efforts achieved by a lot of the fans. Sticking very much to tradition, the numbers of costumed attendees of Supanova Melbourne 2013 seemed to largely outweigh the amount of non-costumed folk, thanks to the gaze-stealing powers of their beloved attire. Just about every character, genre or media format you could think of was on display: videogame icons, television and movie characters, DC and Marvel superheroes, cartoon characters and of course the anime aficionados. So very many anime costumes… Needless to say, events such as these are an absolute goldmine of creative opportunities for photographers (Jayden and David simply could not keep pace with Gavin’s snap-happy enthusiasm).

Sharing equal spotlight with the scores of attendees, patrons were spoilt for choice when it came to browsing and purchasing wares. Videogames, movies, TV series, books, comics, props, merchandise, action figures, models, statues, weaponry, replicas, clothing, jewellery, accessories, customized cakes, posters and so many more goodies were available to fans, providing they still had enough cash left to afford such possessions. In fact, the most difficult and arguably frustrating thing about the weekend was making the ultimate decisions of what you were going to part with your cash for. And may we just add, curse you All Star Comics! Your Adventure Time themed prints were just too rad for us to resist!

The “what to buy” dilemma was especially true for the three of us when we trekked down the various avenues of the artist alleys, as the range of creative talent present (not to mention the wealth of sweet, sweet comic books to be purchased) was quite staggering. This was where we all spent the majority of our time when we weren’t harassing passers-by for photographs. So many artists, writers and publishing companies were present, and we all had a blast talking shop with the friendly and approachable stall-jockeys.

Each of the independent publishers that we met were great fun to chat with. The people promoting the Son Of Man comic book (story by Eli Abidin and art by Benjamin Davies) gave us some insight in to what we can expect to see in future issues of this intriguing comic, the first issue of which is based in Melbourne. The very humble Cristian Roux had no troubles convincing Jayden to grab a copy of his black & white three-story comic book Sauce! #0, with Michael Wszelaki having similar results with his sale of Frogman Issue 1. We were stoked to finally meet Frank Candiloro in person (the creative mind behind Franken Comics, two books of which we had previously reviewed), and were simply spoiled for choice when deciding which books to purchase out of his impressive range of self-published titles. And then there was the Winter City booth, which was an amazing looking series of comics (currently spanning five issues) which practically sold themselves.

Differing from traditional printed comic books, The Legend Of Spacelord Mo Fo (by Pat McNamara and David G. Williams) is a full HD digital comic that was being sold from the Ironclad Imagineers booth in the physical form of a data disc, complete with case artwork and soundtrack. Fantasy artist Emerson Ward also didn’t need to talk himself up at all, with the intricate details of his works resulting in David and Gavin parting with even more of their hard-earned dollars.

Australian comic book publishers were also out in full force, with the likes of Square Peg, Milk Shadow Books, Squishface Studios, Black House and more all being present and accounted for. Jayden and Dave talked all things The Soldier Legacy with its enthusiastic and talented creator Paul Mason (and walked away with further additions to their ever-growing comic book collection), while other notable names in comic books such as Tristan Jones, Gail Simone, Tom Taylor, W. Chew Chan, Dean Rankine and more were notably hard at work signing prints and comics for their fans.

Our time spent scouring the many wondrous sights and features at Supanova was very rewarding. We got to meet some awesome people (both creators and fans alike), handed out several free Madman Entertainment DVD’s and Blu-Rays (you’re welcome folks), and walked away with significantly less money than we entered with but a whole stack of sweet swag to show for our troubles. If we were wearing pedometers we probably would have broken them through overuse.

At the end of the event on Sunday evening we returned home feeling tired, weary, exhausted but immensely satisfied with our weekend’s worth of pop culture indulgence. And while it will be a whole year before we will next see Supanova back in Melbourne, for us Victorian residents the convention season has only just begun. Mission status: to be continued…

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