Concore

Saturday, February 24, 2007 - The New York Comic Con a.k.a Nerdvana

Issue 0: December 15, 2006 (Sunset) For the Jewish Light Festival, the Girlfriend gets me a ticket to the Con, which is why she’s so damn cool. I hadn’t even thought about it yet and she knows me well enough to get me such an awesome gift. Alas, it’s 3 months away…but her and her family got me enough awesome gifts to tide me over…

Issue 1/2:  The day fast approaches, the very poorly maintained website (and it’s down again-Shocker!) finally puts up a schedule, and I lay out the tentative plan for the day, I figured a lap in the morning, a lap at night, with stops to see Gary Coleman and Public Enemy.

I’m not much for autographs (except for Gary Coleman and Public Enemy) and I’m a little behind in background knowledge on Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Dark Tower, Venture Bros., 52, Civil War, House of M, Infinite Crisis, The Hills Have Eyes 1, Bone, etc. (I spend the last few years in other less nerdy pursuits, such as comedy, production, and pornography.) I’m waiting for Netflix/Tradepaperbacks, so I didn’t want any special events/panels to spoil them. This, combined with my distaste for/lack of interest in anime, manga, collectable card games, fantasy novels, etc. limited my choices for events, to stuff I thought would help my writing, Kevin Smith (because the Girlfriend should enjoy SOMETHING)  and the Classic Age Panel, because they’ll all be dead soon. 

11:00AM - 12:00PM Future Shocks: What Imaginative Literature Tells Us About Who We Are and Where We’re Going

12:30PM - 1:30PM Don’t Quit Your Day Job! The Truth About Breaking Into Comics

1:30PM - 2:30PM NYCC Comics School: Worldbuilding

3:30PM - 4:30PM Kevin Smith Spotlight

5:00PM - 6:00PM NYCC’S Behind the Panels: The Classic Age of Comics  

The Main Event:  I got up at 7:30, the earliest I’ve gotten up for anything but work since Saturday morning cartoons.

We got to Javits Center at 9:30ish.  I had heard the horror stories from last year and with the freezing weather, there was a distinct bread line feel (In Russia, comic buys you!).

Luckily, the Girlfriend’s Best Friend was in from DC, and since she was busy with family shit, this was her only time to hang out. She saved us a place in line, (and seriously, how cool is that, my friends wouldn’t do that…ever) but the fattest cop I’ve seen scolded us and sent us to the back. I guess nerds couldn’t possibly have someone arrive before the rest of the crew. But yeah, the police prescence was rotund. I suppose this wasn’t the most rowdy of crowds, though the Empire did send Scout Troopers and TIE Fighter Pilots (This would be funnier with pictures).

As they talked about such foreign topics as nail care and footwear, I shivered in the cold. Really, this is a convention center, this is a convention center, there’s an exhibition every day of the year there. The NY Comic Con people should take a note from all the boat and travel shows which don’t seem to leave their attendees out in the cold for hours on end. But I doubt the attendees at the New York Spring Textile Expo get there obsessively early. Still, it was quite the mess. 

We didn’t get in until 10:30 and decided to skip the first seminar on my list and just tour the floor; I learned from Professor McWilliams in American Political Theory that utopian/dystopian literature is used to express discontent with the status quo by setting the novel safely in the future. 

 Next…Inside!

Tags: Uncategorized