I arrived at Jacobs Javits with time to spare on Thursday evening’s preview ensuring my press badge and getting on line to hit the show floor for a bit before heading down to the panel rooms for my one and only panel I had definitely scheduled for myself to be on.
I must state that the show did open with lots of confusion and clusterf**k of a mess up as a volunteer accidentally told regular 4 day passes to get on the same line as Press & Pros. In the long run this didn’t end up affecting me as I was in and on the floor show perfectly and happily by 3:01, but for the fans this was just a wreck and a mess for a short while. The staff did their best to correct it, but man was it insanity and not well connected at first. These messes and confusion happened all weekend, and staff tried their darnedest to stay on top of it, but security measures, crowd control and obvious fire hazards became completely out of control. I am sure many people walked away from NYCC saying “What a gyp” as those who walked away with the greatest experience of their lives. I’ll admit for me personally it was just that, an amazing great experience, but as a member of the press and a person who believes in New York Comic Con, I am saddened by the lack of control this year’s show had especially since last year things felt much more organized and people from staff, to volunteers to security were much better prepared and in power of keeping the con sane and safe.
That all said we shall get into my own adventures and I’ll leave complaints, feelings and suggestions to a letter to Reedpop which will also be filled with praise, but lots of vitriol on behalf of fans everywhere.
I had a rule to myself about photos this year, especially considering cosplay and that was “rare or unusual” or just so damn gorgeous I must have a photo. Early on I actually got one of those nice rarities in a full on Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka costume. The photo will appear in an a special edition of PCS called NYCC Rare Cosplay.
The area I rushed for quickly was where all the book publishers are. I grabbed whatever galleys were of interest to me (like I need more books) and got schedules for when other handouts were happenings, as well as signings so I could try to add them to my schedule. My walkthroughs here ended up garnering lots of great swag. Best thing I got at this time which I’ll talk about more soon was a MADEFIRE bag of goodies and printed material. I also ended up making my first of only four purchases when I got issue #5 of The Misadventures of ELECTROLYTE and The Justice Purveyors, an excellent comic by Patrick Reilly and art by Renato Grampa Jr. which I first discovered at New York Comic Con and have been happy to see a new issue when there has been one over the last few years.
I continued walking the show floor a bit looking at so much exciting things before heading down to the panel room a little late, but not too late to catch a TON of the Leaping Tall Buildings panel. A separate article is coming on that and I have ideas for titles, but the main one is “Christopher Irving would marry Larry Hama’s G.I. Joe”. It was an entertaining and informative panel with great quotes and a great moderator. I hope you folks enjoy reading that when the article is up.
I went back to the show floor and got to have some fun with a little of this and that. I tried to get a HALO dude made out of Megablocks to blow my brains out, but no go there. I got to play some of Ni no Kuni – Wrath of the White Witch as well as a bit of stealth awesomeness Hitman: Absolution. I didn’t do very good with either of them, but I blame that on the fact of being on the game floor trying to game. Although that doesn’t then explain that I zoomed through the absolutely enthralling beta demo of TOMB RAIDER. That thing just blew my mind away. I seriously want to play that game right now!
Other booths were checked out including Lego which almost stole the show with their Hobbit lego display and Playstation had a multiplayer demo of the new God of War game. I stopped by Marvel where there were some cool exclusives and Craftsman to get a print copy of that silly, but cool DC comic they did with them.
I had a per-arranged appointment with upcoming awesome comics and books app company NARR8. This indeed will be another separate article detailing some of the particulars of this awesome concept that will be free to use at first and has great comics and magazines all for the iPad and eventually Android and iPhone. Go look at the website for now, but promise better further details here on Pop-Culture Spectrum soon.
Eventually I felt it was time to get off the show floor after a bit more exploring, acquiring more swag and enjoying myself, cause I had to get over to Ben Folds Five in the IGN theater.
I was able to find myself a fairly comfortable spot to enjoy the concert despite the giant in the front row who probably had a VIP or Ultimate access badge. I recorded almost the entire ONE HOUR AND FORTY MINUTE concert (to make a best of montage of 20-30 min) which featured only about 3-4 songs off of the new album and the rest was songs from their three albums prior including “Brick”, “Rock This Bitch”, “Uncle Walter”, “Underground”, “Song for the Dumped” and much more. It was seriously like getting a full on Ben Folds Five concert for free on top of Comic Con. Absolutely mind-blowing and completely and totally awesome. The concert let out at around 10 PM, and yet there was still the convention starting the next day at 10 AM or earlier. I stopped in a diner, got a quality dinner which I couldn’t finish so it became my breakfast and headed home and crashed hard after making sure all was ready for the next day.
