Supanova is Australia's biggest pop culture celebration. Since its inception in 2002, the expo has become a magnet for fans of sci-fi, fantasy and anime films and TV shows — but for event director Daniel Zachariou, comic books have always come first.
Like any good superhero, Zachariou has an origin story (and so, by extension, does Supanova). As the Brisbane leg of this year's tour approaches, we got in touch with Zachariou to find out who he is and how he came to be.
What was your 'in' into this whole world? Were you an anime fan, or a comics fan, or sci-fi... what was it?
Ha! I think it was a combination, but right from the beginning I was a big fan of cartoons. Then my mum — it's always mum's fault — came home with a big stack of comics, including Super Goof, who flew around in his long johns and fought the Beagle Boys. I just devoured them!
Then when I was 10, I broke both my arms at the same time at school, and ended up spending a lot of time in the library reading Asterix, Tin Tin, Lord Of The Rings, Chronicles Of Narnia... and then Star Wars came out in '77, which was around that time as well. And that was it!
How did you go from a fragile kid with two broken arms, reading all those comics, to running Supanova? What was the impetus for the show?
I came from a retailing background; my parents had always owned businesses, so buying and selling was natural for me. When I was at high school, I was buying and selling comic books; trading them with my friends. By the time I was 18, I was driving around Sydney with a mate, doing home deliveries and mail order for comic books. My friend went by the wayside, because he didn't have a license or a car, so that didn't last too long, unfortunately. From there, I eventually started retailing comic books and selling them at other conventions that were being held by people before me.
Then in '98, the Sydney comic book convention called OzCon fell over. Well, it didn't fall over, but they decided to stop doing it because they were just too busy to keep doing it. It used to be run by the guy who currently runs Kings Comics, George Vlastaras. In '99, when we were both at the Fox Studios launch because he was opening a store there at the time, we shook hands on the fact that he was no longer going to do [OzCon], and he wouldn't mind if I carried on with his events. I really felt very strongly that we needed to have a 'Grand Final' moment for the comic book industry annually in Sydney. My obsession at that time was Sydney, more than anything else. If no one else was going to do it, I had to do it! That was the impulse.
From there, it just kept growing. Back in 2000, when I held the first ComicFest, shows like The Big Bang Theory hadn't popularised the term 'Comic Con' yet, and I was just getting so much resistance to 'ComicFest' as a name for the event. By my second show in 2001, I'd already introduced anime and voice actors and our first sci-fi star in Virginia Hey from Farscape. It was already becoming more than just a comic con, so I rebranded it as Supanova in 2002. It gave me an opportunity to be ambiguous in nature, and to pitch the idea of the Supanova expo in whichever direction it needed to go in, whether it was anime, gaming, fantasy, film, TV or comic books.
It seems like now, much like the comic cons in America, comic books are one of the smaller aspects of Supanova. The TV stuff is huge, the anime stuff is huge. Is that what you've found, that those things have superseded comics as the focus of the event?
Well, it's funny, because for us, comics will always be a huge part of the festival. A large part of Artist's Alley is homegrown people who are creating their own comic books and entering the market place. I think there was a fall away [from comics], but I think there's been a bit of a correction in recent times, especially because of the rise of the graphic novel, and the way it's been able to infiltrate mainstream stores. The anime market and the manga market actually helped it along, because it got more girls reading comics.
As the sophistication of the comic books has grown, so that it's not just about beefcake guys for 16-year-old guys to read about, it's not just all-boy adventures, I think comic books have really started to see a resurgence. So they might not be as visible on the trading floor at times, but they're definitely a very important aspect of our show.
You mentioned that you got into comics when you were laid up at home as a kid, and that seems to be a very common way for people to get into comics. They spent a lot of time reading when they were kids, and they got hooked — they became lifers. Do you meet a lot of people now who have gotten into comics as adults, or do you think most of the people who come to Supanova were hooked as kids? It depends who you define as a 'kid', because I think there are a lot more kids coming to this stuff in high school as opposed to in primary school. I think that's a transition that's occurred because of technology, and the maturity of the market itself. A lot of the comic books you read these days aren't necessarily aimed at 12 or 14 year olds like they used to be. There's a level of maturity in comic book writing that has basically come along as a result of people who were reading them as children wanting to write more sophisticated storylines for audiences like themselves as they've grown older. Comic books produced by Marvel, DC, etc are aimed at high teens to 20-somethings, at least, rather than people with a pre-teen sort of mentality.
Are you still a big comic book fan? Are there particular titles that you have to read every month?
Yeah, I still get quite a few comic books. Look, I just got married in December, and my comic book reading's taken a bit of a hit, so I've got a year's worth of comic books that I'm slowly making my way through now. I finally visited my comic book shop to pick them all up for the first time in almost a year, and there were boxes and boxes full. So I'm very happy; I'm enjoying the catch up.
Can you take us through the process of how you book a guest for Supanova? Do you just think, 'hey, this person would be cool', or are you given a list of people who are available, or how does that process usually work? For me, being a comic book reader myself, I'm usually looking at the talent... with the comic book guests, it's always been about, 'hey, I think they're cool, let's go get him'. And so the people you do business with then introduce you to others, especially if you do a good job.
Going back right to the first Comic Fest in 2000, when we had Jeph Loeb and Arthur Adams as our headliners... if I saw Jeph or Arthur now, they'd walk across the room to shake my hand, because we've got a really good relationship and they enjoyed their time here. We treated them with respect and were great ambassadors for Australia, let alone our event. That's continued for all these years with all the people that we've had since then.
In 2001, we had Brian Michael Bendis and Walter and Louise Simonson. We had Roy Thomas. It's just carried on from there, it's just kept rolling. We've had Frank Quitely, Mark Millar, Mark Bagley, David Mack, all these people. And they're our goodwill ambassadors, because they enjoyed their time here in Australia and they're more than happy to recommend us to their fellow professionals. I scooted across to New York Comic Con two weekends ago and caught up with a lot of them, and gave out a whole lot of invitations.
As far as actors go... they tend to be your biggest draw, but that must be a scheduling nightmare. You need to find windows where these guys are all available, and then hope they don't get work back home...
The good thing about Supanova is that we book our events, and those are our dates. We're not booking ourselves around the availability of the guests. Either they are available for our tour or they're not, and we book them or we don't. Now if anything changes and they need to pull out, as unfortunately we've had a number of people do with this tour, whereas the last few tours were relatively glitch-free... all of a sudden we've had it happen in a rush this time, which has been stressful. But at the same time, that can happen.
The last four tours prior to this, going back to Sydney in 2012, have been really good. We haven't had major cancellations. This tour, this time, has been a bit of a nightmare, but we're getting through it anyway.
Of all the guests you've had at Supanova, who have been the most exciting ones for you?
The first time we got a really 'hot' actor across to Supanova was Sean Astin, when he had just finished filming Return Of The King. He was filming a Hercules mini-series or something in New Zealand, and he flew across for us. He literally landed Saturday morning and flew back Sunday evening. Having him come across and do the event was really cool. I went out to dinner with him and my family and closest friends, and John Rhys-Davies from Lord Of The Rings as well.
I just remember [Astin] sitting across from me, and me asking him, 'I'm really glad you're here, but... why are you here?' Even as I was booking him, you know, I still struggled to understand why he would say yes. He was very gracious in his response. He said, 'Look, I've got my aims and aspirations. I love the fans and they are a huge encouragement to me, but I see these events as another valid form of income. I want to produce, I want to direct, and this all helps towards that goal. And I'm happy to do it!' So that was it.
And then he said, 'Have faith in what you do; you're doing a good thing here'.
That must have been a huge moment for you.
Yeah, it was. It really was. As far as dinner parties are concerned, it was one of the coolest ones I've ever been to. There you are with Sean Astin quoting The Princess Bride and going off about left wing politics, and there was the old lion in John Rhys-Davies talking about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and quoting Robert Frost. It was just epic.
With the Brisbane leg just a few weeks away, which guests are you most excited about?
For the Brisbane leg, I'd have to say it's a returning guest. I'm a huge Summer Glau fan. She first came down in 2006 for our Brisbane convention, and she's been back a couple of times since then, but not to Brisbane. She's so wonderful. I remember that first tour, she ended up traveling down by herself, and I was very much told by her management in no uncertain terms that I'd better look after her.
She was just a Southern belle in her composure, and I felt compelled to be a gentleman. I personally looked after her, as far as making sure she was alright at all times. But she was so refreshingly normal at the same time. Ever since then, she's been wonderful to have around, and we're just really excited to have her back. She's pretty awesome.
My art director Tim is a huge Lost fan and a huge Lord Of The Rings fan, so Dominic Moghahan, for him, is like the bee's knees. That's another big one. We're really excited that we've been able to secure Lena Headey as well, because her credits across fandom are just massive. The fact that she's swinging in to save the day [after Game Of Thrones co-star Peter Dinklage's cancellation], and that she was the lead in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the same show where Summer was the Terminator... it's really fantastic to have them together for Brisbane.
Do you have a white whale? Is there a particular talent that you'd love to book on a Supanova bill, but the stars haven't aligned yet?
Well, we had Carrie Fisher out just recently to Sydney and Perth, so I'd love to get Mark Hammil. That would be fantastic. Of course for me, from a comic book perspective, a Stan Lee or a Frank Miller would be unbelievably cool. And Joss Whedon, probably. Even before Avengers, we had a massive Whedonverse following among our fans.
He knows who we are. He said as much when I met him at San Diego Comic Con, because the girls back in 2010 – when we had Eliza Dushku, Summer Glau and Charisma Carpenter – were all texting him and emailing him. They were saying, 'Hey, why aren't you here as well? Join the party!' Now I'm afraid he might be a little bit untouchable because of the whole Avengers thing. But that's great for our industry anyway, and our fans.
The Supanova Pop Culture Expo will be held at RNA Showgrounds from November 8-10 with Game Of Thrones legends Lena Headey, George RR Martin, Mark Addy and Jerome Flynn, fan favourite actors Joe Flanigan (Stargate Atlantis), Dominic Monaghan (Lost, Lord Of The Rings), Summer Glau (Firefly, Serenity, Dollhouse, Arrow, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Sean Maher (Firefly, Serenity) and more.
