Zayco, from the Spawn forums is sharing his Australian Pop Culture Expo experience with us.  Highlights from the report include meeting Spawn creator, Todd McFarlane and encountering Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere.  Let’s just say she wasn’t happy to be there.

Here’s Zayco’s full report.

Friday 4/3/05 – Preview Night:
I went to the preview night where they had a charity auction, which was… an experience.  So many greasy sweaty obese nerds dressed as everyone from The Crow, to the Merchant from Resident Evil 4, to Anime Characters.

Saturday 4/4/05
First and most importantly, I approached Todd McFarlane… and I asked him about the fate of the Spawn action figures.… he essentially said what I thought he would:

“There are no plans to bring back the Spawn line at this time.”

… bit upsetting really.

as for the TWILIGHT stuff… the guy who acts as Edward in the movie was supposed to come but he didn’t.  The host of the show, in one of his various moments on stage was absolutely RIPPING into him, and the Twilight franchise in general.  He was talking about a cosplay competition and he was saying how anything can happen. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer could come backflipping several times onto the stage, before driving a wooden steak into the heard of Edward from Twilight. MAN I hate that guy.”

ALSO… Hayden whats-her-name.. “Claire” from Heroes (Hayden Panettiere), the actress is an absolute bitch. She wouldn’t do any autographs unless you paid $50, and even then she had a “servant” who was fanning her the entire time (I’m not joking).  She wouldn’t let you anywhere near her, if you wanted a photo with her, you had to stand away from her, not touching at all, and you weren’t really allowed to talk. People were even taking photos of her, and the organizers of the show were saying “No! No! No photos”.  They told us how she wrote in her convention contract that no photos were to be taken of her with flash.

AKA long story short, she had a massive list of rules of what to do and what not to do, and some of it was just ridiculous.

OVERALL.. the show today was awesome, the first convention I’ve ever been to, and I can’t wait for tomorrow. Todd is doing a talk tomorrow called ‘Toys to Tycoon’, which I think is really ironic, as he’s stopped making the toy lines that the fans want, and started making generic toy lines that sell. Blah, I’ll go to it anyway.

Sunday 4/5/09
Got Todd McFarlane to sign a few things, a few comics and a spawn toy.  I also asked him if he liked toast, and he told me yes, and how vegemite is disgusting, and how nutella is big here. I went to his speech, ‘Toys to Tycoon’… VERY funny for two reasons:

#1. He was talking about how the toys have reached their peak, and now they’re shrinking and diminishing and dwindling in releases “due to the economy”. *rolls eyes*.  He went on, but I won’t bore you, and I also can’t remember what he completely said.

#2. In the Q+A segment, the VERY FIRST question he got, the guy stood up, and held up an envelope and said ‘two years ago I paid good money for a collectors club membership, and its gone to no use because of little shipping to Australia, and now with the lack of toys, I ask you, is this membership even worth ANYTHING’…. Todd just stumbled and said ‘I’ll uh… I’ll look into it’

Hilarious.

I also met Jhonen Vasquez, who was absolutely amazing, such a nice guy… his speech was great… someone dressed as Luigi from Mario asked him why Zim was cancelled, and Jhonen replied “It was cancelled because of you Luigi… no one likes you… they all like Mario. I’m not joking.” Anyway, I also got him to sign several things, 4 toys and an exclusive SQUEE poster I bought (I asked him to not only sign it but draw a flying pig, AND HE DID *score*).

End Of Report

So what did we learn from this convention?

– McFarlane isn’t going to make any more Spawn figures.  This sucks because I’ve been buying the Spawn line since the late 90’s.  I hope he’ll make them again in the future and not sell the new sculpts as statues and charge $70.

– Hayden Panettiere is a diva.  She loves to save dolphins but she hates fans.

– Twilight hate is still strong and I understand where it’s coming from.

– Jhonen Vazquez is a cool cat and appreciates his fans.

We want to thank Zayco for the awesome report from the Australian Pop Culture Expo.

If you have any con reports, please send it to info@nerdsociety.com and we’ll share it with the readers.

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