The Grinch, the Avatar, and Daredevil, all in one place! Those are just some examples of costumes and merchandise that I saw at Comicon 2026. This year, Comicon took place from March 20-22 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The celebrity lineup included Mara Wilson, Cary Elwes, and Jason Spisak.
One of my favourite parts of the festivities is Artist Ally. I was excited to hear that some of the vendors had celebrities buy their merchandise.
Julie Ewing is part of the company called Popsquatch Designs, based out of Ottawa. They started out as a jewelry company and now sell bleach-dyed t-shirts of different fandoms, including Ghostbusters and Supernatural. A memorable celebrity encounter for Ewing was meeting Emily Swallow, known for her roles in Supernatural and The Mandalorian. Swallow got a custom-made shirt with a scene of her Mandalorian character, The Armorer, in the bathtub.
Another cool artist I met was Selina of Clever Clippings. Selina creates pop culture collages with life lessons on the back. The inspiration behind Selina’s work is “ taking pop culture to share life lessons so that you can have something that’s beautiful but also meaningful,” Selina says. Her designs were also worn by Toronto Raptors Guard, Gradey Dick and featured on TV.
My final destination at Comicon was the Toronto steampunk booth, where my friend and I participated in a tea duel. This fun multiplayer game is harder than it looks! Each player is given a cup of tea and a pack of tea biscuits. On the count of three, each player dunked a cookie into the tea, and the winner is the last person to eat their cookie without it breaking. Although I lost the game, I had a lot of fun! I will never say no to a cup of hot tea!
Comicon 2026 was a blast. The celebrity lineup was nostalgic, yet I would have loved to see even more fandoms represented. There is so much creativity, community, and effort that goes into these conventions.