Returning to the Con – NYCC

I hadn’t been to a comic book convention literally since I was a kid.  As a comic enthused kid, I remember pleading with my dad to drive me into the city from Long Island so I could go to the New York Comic Book Convention at the Penta Hotel.  Back then, I recall thinking how ten bucks was a HUUGE amount to charge just to let me and dad into the convention.  But it was TOTALLY worth it!!!  Of course, to my adolescent eyes the floor was gigantic and there were tons and tons of vendors with boxes filled to the tippy top with comics.  All kinds of collector’s editions and high-valued books were out on display hanging on the wall.  It was a beautiful tapestry of gorgeous cover art resting majestically in their plastic protectors.  Fast forward about twenty years and I get an opportunity to experience up close and personal how the Comic Con has changed over the years.  I gotta say, overall it was an excellent experience!  There were a couple blunders which soured things at times but you gotta take the good with the bad.

One of the coolest things about the New York Comic Con is that it definitely was able to attract more than just you’re run of the mill geek.  Don’t get me wrong, the place was filled with geeks doing all kinds of geeky things and talking geek and  acting geek.  But the truth is, nowadays, the Comic Con isn’t just comics.  It caters to a large swathe of interests including gaming, anime, cult artists, mixed martial artists, goth / subversion cultures as well as cosplayers.  At the Jacob Javits Center from October 13 – 16, you had the intersection of all these interests in one place and it was fabulous to see.  You may not believe it but there were some mainstream people too.  With the recent trend of movies put out by both Marvel and DC comics bringing the stories of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wolverine, X-Men, Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk to the general populace, there’s a greater awareness and curiosity in the mainstream about what this stuff is all about.  Part of the magic of my recent experience with the Comic Con was being able to witness this confluence of many different people from many different walks of life and tastes.  It was a fun crowd to be around and the mood of the people there exuded that feeling.
As a guy, and a geeky one at that, one of the new features of the comic con I most enjoyed was the numerous beautiful women wearing very artistic, and very skimpy, costumes.  Of course, the flip side of that is there were also not so beautiful women wearing costumes and, unfortunately, they were no less skimpy.  Obviously, cosplay is nothing new.  It’s all par for the course nowadays.  But still, it was a cool thing to see.  The best part is that all of the people I approached for pictures were more than happy to pose.  Again, it was the atmosphere, it was the mood of the experience which made it all ok.  I took full advantage.  Is that bad?

Hormones aside, now that I’m a grownup, in theory at least, I felt that the most engaging part about the Comic Con was going to the panels and listening to the artists.  There’s something about seeing the interaction with the fans in the audience and hearing the cheer of the audience at the conclusion of surprise announcements which get you excited inside.  The fans, whether they follow comics or games or movies or artists, are so quick to show their love and appreciation for what they feel are their idols.  The most delightful to see are the young fans, the seven, eight, nine and ten year old kids who, like me, came with their mothers or fathers and are there to show their love and enthusiasm for their respective hobby.

I particularly enjoyed the panels which were focused on comics and their characters and the directions for the future.  I was fortunate enough to attend panels on The Amazing Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk and my personal favorite, a panel on Horror comics and the genre of Horror.  Both the Marvel panels had some interesting reveals and foreshadowings for the respective characters.  For those in the know, a story arc called ‘Spider Island’ has recently come to an end.  In this story, the entire island of Manhattan gets SpiderMan abilities and Spidey has to keep them all in check.  Things go back to normal *BUT* the editors at Marvel gave a sneak peek to the audience of an Amazing Spiderman cover with the words “NEW YORK DESTROYED”.  There were ooh’s and ahh’s from the audience and some fans were a bit peeved and with good reason.  A native New Yorker fan asked why it was always New York city that gets destroyed in the comics and not other cities like, ohhhh I don’t know, Los Angeles?  The editors and writers understood the sentiment but the truth is, Spiderman is a New Yorker and New York is very near and dear to his heart.  Whatever happens to New York city, Spiderman takes it personally and feels the pain of his fellow New Yorkers in an intense way.  One other interesting reveal for Spiderman is that Doctor Octopus finds out that he has a terminal illness and basically, decides to go for broke.  Before he breathes his last, the editors made it clear that he will take one last shot at mayhem with an event called “Ends of the Earth”.  There were many more interesting reveals but you’ll find out about all of them once they come out.

Although, overall, the NYCC was incredible and awesome and all kinds of bad ass, there were some not very cool moments too.  Saturday is typically considered to be the big day as far as crowds and costumes are concerned.  And so, the NYCC scheduled a Masquerade Competition in the evening from 8 – 10 pm where fans would get an opportunity to put together skits and show off their extraordinary costumes.  I thought, this should be cool, it looks to me like it would be the marquee event and the perfect way to cap off the Saturday showing.  In the words of the immortal GOB Bluth, “I made a huge mistake”.  The line for this event was gargantuan, I mean, the thing curved and curled more times than the Loch Ness Monster.  I decided to suck it up and just be patient.  I got there 30 minutes early so the wait shouldn’t be too long.  WRONG.  God knows what happened to the sound stage of the IGN Theater.  For whatever reason, they were perpetually doing sound checks and kept us waiting on the line for over an hour.  Geeks by the number were getting anxious.  A few of the SteamPunk cosplayers got out of line and started jousting each other out of boredom.  Things were downwardly spiralling….FAST.  The only thing keeping me there on the line, besides my stubborness, was this cute Cosplay girl wearing leather shorts that started doing standing stretches.  Hey, I said I was a guy remember.  So, we finally get to a seat in the theater and we’re all under the impression the Masquerade Competition is gonna start.  WRONG.  We were forced to watch an episode of some new anime by a 21 year old girl called “The Boy Who Fights Aliens”.  I’m all for anime but this was just overly sappy and trite and unusually loaded with teenage homosexual innuendo.  I was close to leaving but finally, the show started.  The skits, as part of the rules of the competition, were mashups of two different genres set to music and voice overs.  There was Austin Powers meets Harry Potter, Legend of Zelda meets Angry Birds, Transformers meets Inuyasha and a host of others.  Overall, the skits were fun and weird and eccentric and we, the audience of geeks, loved it.  Although I left too early to find out who won the competition, my favorite was definitely a Transformers skit where one of the people in the skit dressed up as Bumble Bee AND did a full transform from car to robot!!!  AND, the costume was equipped with lights that were turned on in the dark.  Pure Geek!!!!  I was lucky enough to get some video footage of it.

As a lover of comics and many other things geek, I gotta say that the New York Comic Con was just what the doctor ordered.  It was enchanting to be immersed in an environment of other like minded individuals who were there to have fun and to share their joy and passion for comics and anime and games and stories.  Of course, the experience was not without some bumps in the road but it all balanced out.  It’s cool to see how something I relished as a kid is till going strong and is still relevant today.  It’s easy to dismiss a lot of these kinds of hobbies but the truth is they hold a great depth of meaning.  For me, when I think about comics, I am reminded of a great scene in the movie “Unbreakable” where Sam Jackson explains how, for thousands of years, stories were taught in pictoral forms.  Whether it be on obelisks in Egypt or temples in India or pyramids in South America, pictures and writing have always been a way to express the complex periods of human life and comics are simply the modern day representation of this.  So, until the next Comic Con comes around, I’ll definitely be keeping my geek antenna on and looking for other enthusiasts who understand how cool this stuff really is!