Ottawa Comiccon 2025 Haul and Discussion

 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Geek Cave. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I had a great day yesterday. That's actually what I'm here to talk about today. This weekend was the 2025 edition of Ottawa Comiccon and I went for the day yesterday. Of course, I went with my best friend, Brad, and another friend of ours, Emily, joined us. There weren't any celebrity guests this year that I was interested in. They were either from Horror franchises that I've never seen, or from the Marvel Netflix shows, or other things that I'm not interested in. That's okay though because the shopping was excellent, and so was the company. 

On top of hanging out with Brad and Emily all day, I saw two friends from high school, DJ and Stephanie, who I've known since middle school and elementary school. I met DJ when I was in grade 5 and I met Stephanie when I was in grade 8. I also saw some of my favourite vendors that I see every year. I always have fun seeing them, especially because they're at pretty much every geek event in Ottawa. The weather was pretty decent the whole day so we were able to eat outside. Apparently it rained a couple of times while we were in the convention, but it wasn't raining when we had our lunch, and it wasn't raining when Brad and I were leaving for the day. So it was pretty fun. Now, you may be wondering what I got at the convention. Let's get into it.

I got eight VHS tapes and a DVD. Five of the tapes were bought for me on Saturday as Brad was at the convention all weekend, and I got the other three, along with the DVD, when I was there yesterday. Looking at the top row from left to right, the first two Star Trek: The Next Generation tapes were ones I had when I was a kid. I've talked about the "Encounter at Farpoint" tape a few times here on the blog, but "When the Bough Breaks" was another first season episode that I had when I was a kid. The rest of the TNG tapes aren't any that I've owned before, but they're some of my favourite episodes of Star Trek. The Star Trek: Voyager tape was quite the find as Paramount didn't release the show on VHS until 2000 and only the first three seasons getting released. Even then only about half of season 3 was released.

So the vendor that I got the Star Trek tapes from is a huge Trekkie, like myself, so Brad had been able to grab "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Q and the Grey" for $5 in a 2 for $5 deal. Then I bought "All Good Things..." from him yesterday morning for $2. Brad and I went back to Bill's booth yesterday afternoon to say goodbye on our way out the door and Bill told me to pick two more Star Trek tapes and he'd give them to me for free. So that's when I grabbed "When the Bough Breaks" and "The Emissary". So that was really cool.

I grabbed Mallrats on Blu-ray about a month ago during Brad's and my last hangout, and I enjoyed it when I watched it. So, when Brad showed me that a vendor had it on VHS on Saturday, I asked him to grab it for me. He also grabbed the Ewoks and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers tapes. The Ewoks tape is one we had when I was a kid. However, my siblings and I only got to watch it once or twice because the top-loading VCR we had in our space at the time, decided to be a dick and eat the tape on us, rendering it unwatchable. So I was really excited when Brad showed me the picture of it I asked him to grab it for me. The Power Rangers tape is one that Grandma rented for me along with the other four episodes in the "Green with Evil" saga in around 1995, after she'd taken my siblings and I to something. It was either a children's entertainment concert or a movie. I don't remember which, but she rented all five tapes for us. So I saw it from the top of the case and I instantly knew what it was, even if I didn't know which part of "Green with Evil" the tape was.

The 101 Dalmatians DVD was a great find too. Bill had it with the small selection of DVDs he was selling along with the VHS tapes he was selling. I grabbed it because it was the last DVD I needed to complete the Walt Disney Platinum Editions DVD line that I'd been trying to find for a few years now. So now that I have all thirteen releases, I can watch all of them, including the bonus features, and then do an entire blog post on the line as an update to my History of Walt Disney Home Video series that I did a few years ago. So that'll be fun. 

 I also picked up five comic books while I was at the convention. Four Star Trek comics and one Star Wars comic. Aside from Star Trek: Voyager #1, I had all of these comics when I was a kid. My dad had the Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Series Finale comic, but he let me read it once and I always remembered it. So, when I found it for $5, I grabbed it. Star Trek #31 is the first comic I ever got when I was a kid. That, and Star Trek: The Next Generation #31, which I'd already bought a new copy of a while back, so having both issues in my collection again is amazing. The Queen Amidala one-shot that Dark Horse published in 1999 as a tie-in to Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was another comic I had when I was a teenager. So to find it again, with the picture cover that my original copy had, was spectacular.

I think my favourite finds, besides the VHS tapes, are the soundtrack for The Phantom Menace on CD, and the original paperback edition of Path of Destruction, the first book in the Darth Bane Trilogy. I've never owned any of the Star Wars soundtracks on physical media, and with The Phantom Menace being the first brand new Star Wars movie to be released in my lifetime, I had to grab it. Especially because it was $5. I listened to the CD this morning and loved every minute of it. Path of Destruction, along with the rest of the Darth Bane Trilogy, is a Star Wars novel that I've been wanting to read for a while since it came out at a time where I wasn't keeping up with the then current Star Wars novels, between trying to catch up on The New Jedi Order and some of the early 2000s Clone Wars novels, as well as graduating from high school and then going into college, I didn't have time to really keep up with the number of Star Wars novels that were coming out at the time. I read the first chapter before I went to bed last night. It was pretty good.

All in all I had so much fun at Ottawa Comiccon this year for only the second time I've been to the convention since 2019. Going on the Friday last year was great, but I really didn't have a whole lot of time since the con doesn't open until 3 pm on the Friday. So I'm glad I was able to go on the Sunday this year. It was a lot of fun. And, like I said, I got to hang out with friends and see people I haven't seen in a while. So it was worth the price of admission for sure. 

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more posts, including this week's Geekdom in 1996 post. So until then, have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.