Robot Claw

That’s She-Hulk assaulting one of New Yorks finest. Not a cosplayer, an actual cop! His partner was snapping a photo on his iPhone. Only at day four of NYCC!

Same old schedule: we got up early, got to Javits center when it opens, and had fun at the con!

Today was the first day KLS finally allowed me to actually buy some comics! Despite the size, NYCC still has a large comics presence with many vendors, and I can (and have!) spent hours browsing. This bores KLS to death, so we split up this morning and I spent an hour or so – and a grand total of $5.50 – buying a pile of 25-year-old comics 🙂

Today was also the one and only day Patrick Stewart was at the con. I received a late request for an autograph (from SFL) and to be honest was looking forward to ‘meeting’ him (and wouldn’t have lined up just for myself) but when I went downstairs I was told the line was by ticket only (and the tickets had been presold). Even then the line was enormous and it was hard to believe he could sign for so many in only two hours. Sorry Florry, I tried!

Here’s a random crowd shot from today:

Mid morning we ducked into the end of a Q&A by the guy who played Ianto in Torchwood, since the same room would be used for a William Shatner Q&A afterwards. When it was about to start, the lights dimmed, Star Wars music played (?) and this guy walked in:

OMG it’s Anthony Daniels or C-3PO himself. He then proceeded to tell jokes and stories about himself and Star Wars and 3PO for an hour, absolutely charming the audience in the process. A very funny man, and I look forward to seeing him in Episode 7 🙂

And what about Shatner you ask? No idea. Clearly they moved or canceled his Q&A, but why we don’t know.

Afterwards we rushed over to another panel, this time in the biggest room they have. It was a Big Finish panel celebrating Doctor Who and it drew a massive audience:

Nick Briggs and Colin Baker did a fine job entertaining a mostly young female audience with their anecdotes and opinions on all things Who. Great stuff!

And then, since we had a train to catch, this…

And so the con ends for another year.

After four days we feel like we’ve been running a marathon over and over, but there’s really nothing like the mix of celebrity, fandom and shopping that we see at NYCC and that’s what keeps us coming back year after year.

Hopefully in some small way I conveyed why we enjoy the experience as much as we do. If you’re ever in NY when it’s on, I think you’d probably enjoy it as well 🙂

Ok I’ll get this out of the way first: the crowds were horrible! In a sense everyone was cosplaying today, as a sardine in a can. Even the lines for the men’s toilets were dozens long, and we all know that’s crazy talk!

The day started with a line to get an autograph from Colin Baker. Ever the charming gentleman, this is now the second time I’ve seen him at this con:

He was guarded by the same Dalek that is here every year. I inspected it quite closely and discovered many of its parts actually move! I wonder if it could be manipulated from inside?

We had a tentative list of six panels to attend, but only made it to one. This was because of the queues mostly, which tend to eat up as much time as the panel. Getting to two consecutive panels not in the same room would be optimistic (to say the least), and there are ~20 different rooms.

Anyway we got to the room for our panel early and sat through the preceding panel on the TV show Once Upon A Time. Since we don’t watch it, we mostly enjoyed the respite from the crowds, but I just sat there and harvested 3DS street passes. I’ve got >100 these past two days alone, from six countries. If you sat in a central location I suspect you could just collect them nonstop for as long as you like.

The panel we were interested in was for Rebels, the new Star Wars animated show due next year. Not much has been revealed but we were treated to a great overview of the Imperial forces as seen in the show and the first-time-ever reveal of a new villian:

That guy is working for Vader and his job is to hunt the Jedi that survived Order 66. Thrilling stuff! But in all sincerity, Rebels looks great so far.

Speaking of Star Wars, here I am with a life-sized Yak Face:

And eating lunch in the VIP room:

More purchases were made. I think our bounty is about eclectic and otaku as any, and I haven’t even bought a comic yet! Maybe I’ll list some of the stuff here…

Being the biggest day, Saturday is when the cosplay goes to the next level and today absolutely did not disappoint. For instance… here’s a wonderful Ursula the Sea Witch from Little Mermaid:

An amazing (mostly cardboard!) Ultron:

A great pair of Star Wars fans:

A genuinely creepy Gollum:

And this dude:

The quality of this Daft Punk cosplay beggared belief. He had a stereo strapped to his back, and dozens of LEDs under the surface of his visor animated in time to the music. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just purchased this helmet, but if it was home made then he took cosplay to a new level.

Oh, and here’s the same girl from the Kotobukiya booth in her day 3 outfit:

She’s doing girls from the Bishoujo figure line. For tomorrow’s last day, she said she’ll be batgirl 🙂

Bernard: want me to buy this for you? I’ll only charge a modest finders fee:

All told we spent 7+ hours there today, and I was ruined when we left. Tomorrow is the last day but promises to be another full one. I wonder what new things we may see…?

Today is KLS’s birthday! Did you wish her a happy birthday? As with hundreds (thousands?) of other people, she’d spend her birthday in the Javits center 🙂

Very early this morning, before we left for the con, we had a visitor. This guy was on our windowsill:

He seemed a bit dazed, and we think he may have flown into a window. But he was gone when we returned later in the day.

On to the first full day of NYCC! Here’s what the floor looks like when you get VIP early entry:

Today we planned to visit every booth. We had no panels to attend so we had the time, and we didn’t want to miss anything. One of the first things I did was get this guys autograph:

That’s Nicholas Briggs, who has done all Dalek voices since Doctor Who returned and is also one of the guys that runs Big Finish who make Who audio dramas. He’s signing one I had just bought. He was a very pleasant guy, and when I asked him to ask Steve Moffat to do more ‘abandoned base invasion’ stories he (whispered that) agreed with me 🙂

A little later at the same booth, this guy was there:

His line was massive. Such a difference from back in ’09 when he was sitting, mostly ignored, in a much smaller booth. I’ll line up for him tomorrow perhaps.

Attendance today was colossal. Here is a shot of the same artists room from yesterday:

And here is the autograph hall:

It might be a little hard to see, but there was a line that ran the full length of the hall. Many hundreds of people were lining up for hours, not for Gillian Anderson, or Felicia Day, or even John Barrowman. No this monstrous line was for Jason David Frank, aka the green Power Ranger. The mind boggles!

As we were wandering in here, KLS pointed to a distinguished looking man walking by himself mostly ignored by the throngs. He had handlers, but they did nothing when I approached and asked him “Are you who I think you are?” He smiled and gave a noncommittal response before heading to his seat at the autographing table. It was Anthony Daniels, aka C-3PO 🙂

Oh, and a bit later Guinan Whoopi was just walking around the show floor:

There are hundreds of exhibitors at the con, selling a massive array of geek stuff. I’m partial to books, toys and games. Had a great time looking at lots of all today, including some very unusual and rare examples, such as this Turkish Star Wars figure…

Or this lunatic rare item:

Yes, it’s just the empty packaging for $500. We had a great chat to the guy selling this, who happens to be the world expert on this toy line from 1968 and had the full set (valued at 25k) of 8 figures on display.

Oh and here’s something my brother may want for Xmas. Bernard, leave a comment if you love this like I know you will!

Cosplay time! Let’s start with a slightly different take on a commonly seen SW character:

And here’s the same gilt I posed with yesterday, now as catwoman:

Some great (and I mean that!) Kingdom Hearts:

And a fleeting shot of a certain yellow hero chasing a ghost…

We took a brief siesta at a hotel in the late afternoon, and then returned for an entertaining cosplay contest. When it had finished the sun was long gone and the con had finished for the day. Here’s what it looked like:

We were there over nine hours today. We’ll do the same tomorrow, although we have plans to attend up to 6 hours of panels. It should also be the most attended day by far, and the biggest celebrities will be in attendance as well.

It should be a great and tiring day 🙂

Let’s see… a very early but extremely pleasant train was followed by a bit of shopping in NYC. Notably, I think I purchased the last ever volume (#30) of Guyver at Kino. End of an era, etc.

It was chilly although the forecast rain did not appear. I was being ‘that guy’ in shorts and when it came time for lunch I positively inhaled my chicken soup:

The con started at 3, but our VIP tickets meant we could skip lines, so we didn’t head down until just prior. A bit later someone would tell me the lines to get in for the normal tickets were 4+ hours… and it’s still only Thursday!

We were already a bit tired by now (4 hours of NYC shopping…) and the first day of this con is always overwhelming because of how big it is. So we wandered, and probably didn’t come close to really seeing most of it.

I played the new Zelda game on a 2DS (which is very comfortable to hold):

I posed with a crazy (and heavy!) Monster Hunter sword:

And a pretty girl (she made her own costume!):

I bought a bunch of stuff; some for me, some for you. Including one of the new blind box vinyl doctor figures:

Of course I wanted Pertwee. I got Tenant.

Here’s Artists Alley, which still had quite a few empty tables (again, Thursday):

And here’s the autographing area, which is unused until tomorrow. I’ll upload another shot of this place in a day or two:

As I mentioned on twitter, we went to the Kotobukiya panel which was great, and then they handed out via a raffle well over $1k in prizes, and then also gave every person that attended a $14 set of Star Wars chopsticks! Lots of smiles in that room 🙂

It was dark when we walked back. Here’s our hotel with the Empire State Building in the distance:

Tomorrow we’ll spend the entire day at the Con. It promises to be a spectacle 🙂

This post is a bit delayed… but a couple of weeks ago we upgraded our TV, and mode of sitting to watch it!

Here’s the old recliner, that most of you have at some point sat in:

This guy kept us comfortable for over ten years, but had gotten a bit long in the tooth and the mechanism had broken in at least one place. We probably should have replaced it long ago but… it was still comfortable.

At any rate we finally got around to replacing it with…

…an updated newer model! The biggest change is no leather. Word of advice: if you live where it gets cold in winter, avoid leather couches!

The new guy is stupid comfy and reclines even better and we love it to death. Which is good since we have a good reason to sit on it, a new TV!

Here’s the old guy:

It’s almost 8 years old now and still very good but lacking certain features (such as 1080p) that are standard today. At 39″ it was also a bit small, even though it was massive when we bought it.

So we replaced it with this:

It’s a 55″ smart TV with 3D as well. It’s gorgeous, and we’re already spoiled with the picture. Now this we definitely should have done sooner!

Incidentally that dude on the screen is Jensen Ackles playing Dean in Supernatural. We’ve been marathoning all the seasons recently since KLS acquired the Blu-Ray box set. We watch 2-4 episodes a night, and are about 120 down, 40 or 50 to go 🙂