Comic Expo coming to Southfields Village

By Zachary Roman

A comic expo is coming to Caledon and it's set to be a super time.

On July 16, the Caledon Public Library (CPL) is hosting its annual comic expo at its Southfields Village branch, which is located inside the Southfields Village Community Centre at 225 Dougall Ave.

The expo will be divided into events for two age groups, kids ages 12 and under, and teens aged 13 to 17. For the kids, there will be an “Infinity Stone Scavenger Hunt” around the community centre, story time with the Caledon Parent Child Centre, trivia, a costume parade, a superhero swim, and baking of Spiderman cookies. For the teens, there will be a fandom-themed maker lab, anime screening, a drawing workshop with a special guest, prize presentation for CPL's teen fan art contest, a cosplay contest, trivia, and a board game cafe with bubble tea.

For more details and the times of each event, those interested can visit caledon.library.on.ca/comic-expo.

Attendees are encouraged to dress up in costume or their favorite superhero/fan shirt for the event.

Natalie Spaan works for the CPL and was in charge of planning the comic expo. She's a huge comic, graphic novel and manga fan herself, and is actually the one responsible for ordering those materials to Caledon's library branches.

Spaan explained the special guest doing a drawing workshop for teens, Megan Huang, is from Mississauga. She attended last year's virtual comic expo for a Q&A and such good feedback was received by the CPL that Huang was invited back again.

“We're excited for Megan this year, she's great… she works a lot with Dark Horse Comics, she's doing a lot of the drawings for them. And just this past February, she published her first graphic novel that was just done completely by herself, which was very exciting,” said Spaan. “She's done tons of cover work… she just did one for a Star Wars comic book series.”

There can be misconceptions around comics, graphic novels, and manga that reading them is not “real reading.” But Spaan explained studies have shown that is completely false. She said reading a comic requires just as much reading comprehension as a novel, and provides an interesting extra layer as the reader has to interpret the image too.

The comic expo event Spaan is most excited for on the teen side is Huang's drawing workshop.

She said seeing her work in person is going to be a great and valuable experience for the teens.

On the kids side of things, Spaan is excited to see all the costumes kids will be wearing for the costume parade around the community centre. She noted the teen cosplay contest is also always amazing. The time, dedication and detail the teens put into their cosplay costumes is amazing, she said.

“It's jaw-dropping,” said Spaan. 

Comic expo events for both kids and teens begin at 10 a.m. on July 16.