If you read my twitter, you’ll have noticed (?) we spent yesterday at the New York Comic Con.
Before I start I will get this out of the way: there were too many people there! Although the organizers had booked the entire convention center (the con spanned 3 floors) the sheer amount of attendees was just enormous. Very, very quickly the main convention was clogged with people, making the simple act of just walking the aisles looking at the exhibitors a real chore. I’m not sure how they could avoid this aside from selling fewer tickets (which they won’t). Maybe the solution is to next year buy a three day pass and try to take it in smaller doses across a few days.
Anyway, that said, it was a blast – and a major upgrade from previous years.
What is the NYCC? It is a convention dedicated to comics, gaming, movies, anime and all associated forms of fandom. At the NYCC you can…
…buy comics (which I did!) or buy comic art. You can…
…buy toys or check out toys not yet released. You can…
…play games – both available and unreleased. You can also watch previews of movies of TV shows, meet ‘celebrities’, talk to many of the people that create comics today and goggle at the spectacle that is thousands (yes, thousands) of cosplayers. (More on that topic later).
Our day started early with a 5 am train to New York. We got to Penn Station around 8 and walked the 30 minutes or so to the convention center and joined the line. Here’s a shot of said line:
The line was hot and badly ventilated. Unlike previous years they had it double back onto itself, which meant we were not treated to the spectacle of the ‘professional’ Star Wars cosplayers known as the 501st entertaining the crowd. So the wait was a bit tedious… but at least it was fun seeing all the cosplayers (that’s a Servbot in the shot above).
Doors opened around 10, and the enormous crowd flooded into the main hall. The first thing that was obvious was how much bigger the con was. Roughly triple the size of last year, the scale of the event had clearly upgraded in a big way. Immediately inside the entrance was Ubisofts display for the upcoming Michael Jackson dancing game:
They had a massive crowd all day long because they frequently pulled cosplayers up to dance on the stage in front of everyone. I was a bit skeptical some of this was staged (what are the chances that some random Master Chief cosplayer happens to be a skilled dancer?) but it was fun nonetheless. Immediately behind this stage was the Capcom booth where Marvel vs Capcom 3 may have been the draw of the entire show. The crowds on that particular booth were so gigantic (watching versus matches on a gigantic screen, compete with play-by-play commentary) that it was difficult to even walk past.
And so on, and so on with the Wizards Of The Coast, Nintendo, Marvel and DC booths. Massive crowds at all of them, and the con had barely started. In previous years we’d scuttle around grabbing freebies – this year in many cases you had to earn them (by demoing products, filling out surveys etc.) I’ve no problem with that in principle, but with the lines how they were I wasn’t going to stand around waiting to earn a Golden Sun t-shirt that would have been free last year 🙂
The first celebrity we saw was James Marsters, who played Spike on Buffy. He was just in a booth posing for photos, maybe 10 feet away from us. We both were shocked by how old (wrinkled, haggard) he looked! Obviously makeup does wonders for his TV complexion! No matter, he seemed like a good sport as he posed with paying fans for photos.
Next we saw Simone Legno, creator of Tokidoki. His fame has skyrocketed in recent years, as his brand has become world famous and very, very popular. KLS didn’t rush for a ticket to get anything signed because she’d been lucky enough to have that done 2 years ago. Nonetheless we went and watched him as he was signing other items. Here’s a shot of him drawing a monster on a skateboard:
We also saw (and spoke with) Daphne Ashbrook, who played Grace Holloway in the Doctor Who movie. I declined, however, paying $25 for an autograph! (That’s the price of a Doctor!).
Here’s another celebrity we saw in the main hall:
Yes, it was amazing.
But we were especially stoked to see – in person – Rika Ishikawa. She is now in a band called hAngry x Angry with Hitomi ‘Yossie’ Yoshizawa. As in the girl we named our cat after. Anyway Yossie wasn’t at the con, but Rika was. We staked out a spot at the Kinokuniya booth to watch her meet with fans. Here’s a video of her being led in:
And here’s a blurry shot of her:
The no-photo nazis were relentless, but it was fun watching her meet her fans and sign whatever product they had brought. The line was substantial and seemed dominated by Japanese speakers. I believe they may have even come from Japan just to meet her at this event (I have read about some of the antics of Morning Musume superfans and I’m sure this would barely inconvenience some of them). It was a surreal moment…
Time for a lunch break!
And now it’s time for some cosplay!
For those unaware, ‘cosplay’ described dressing up as a character from a movie, game, book, comic, anime, manga etc. It’s been big in Japan for many years, and now seems to be just as big here in the US. We were both amazed at how many cosplayers there were at the con. Sometimes you’d look around and it seemed cosplayers outnumbered non-cosplayers. Here’s a gallery of some random ones I saw:
Of course it’s not all fans. There are a lot of professional cosplayers as well, hired by various companies to help attract people to their booths. Often these take the form of pretty girls:
I like to think my agreeing to pose with them is helping them do their job.
This next girl… well this next girl has a costume that… well I can only say I hope she was paid well:
I can’t stress enough just how many cosplayers there were. And the variety of outfits was dazzling and ram the gamut from anything to everything. The quality ranged from just awful to just amazing, with a healthy smattering of so-bad-it’s-good as well. For instance, here’s one of the latter:
Yep, it’s Ms Pac-Man (and yep, thats a dude). Here’s one of the amazing outfits:
That’s Master Chief from Halo. And he looked like he just walked off a film set.
My favourite two costumes were the following:
Similar in a way, aren’t they? Both were fantastic and very detailed, and the people wearing them were also very true to the characters. Let’s call the left one ‘Steampunk Iron Man’ and just take a look at it and be impressed by the design and manufacturing. The ultraman costume was equally (even moreso) impressive to me, and it had a light as well (the blue thing on the chest flashed). Kudos to both of these cosplayers, for showing the world what it means to be a man!
Random shot of a pretty girl:
She was working in a booth selling used games. Amongst their (very expensive) selections (most of which I own…) was a complete US Commodore 64 in the original box. It was only $80, and I should have gone back and bought it before leaving. That’s a missed opportunity right there…
And here’s me posing with Pedobear (yes it’s a joke):
We stayed at the con for over seven hours (over nine including our wait in line). We were both quite exhausted at the end, as were many other attendees. Such as this trio:
And as all good things do, the con came to an end for us around 6 pm as we said goodbye and headed back to the station for our train home. It was bigger and better than ever, and there’s no doubt we will return next year for NYCC 2011.
