I haven’t been to a honest-to-goodness scifi/comic con since forever, so I figured why not when a couple old friends invited me to go with them this past weekend to the NYCC. Unfortunately Friday was my only free day that weekend and one of my friends can’t make it, making the ordeal a little less worth my while. I think it worked out well because the other friend I went with was someone I just didn’t talk to much after we parted ways however so long ago. Old friends got lots to catch up and all. Even if I had to buy a weekend pass as a result.
Friday is suppose to be the less crowded day, mostly because unlike an anime con, a larger part of the demographic works. Even if they go straight to the con (which opened at 4 for non-industry folks), they probably would have waited at least an hour on line after they have gotten to the convention. If they gotten out of work at 4:30 and took their 30 minutes of NYC commute-time to get there (30 minutes being generous), I would still have them beat by 2 hours.
The con itself is inside Javits Center, which is actually HEUG (bigger than BCC, where Otakon sits). But I think the con only uses about half of it. Lines weren’t so bad Friday, and that’s only because unless you wanted to go to the panels (and there weren’t really any interesting ones Friday), there’s only one thing to do.
Actually, there are a bunch of panels that I would go, but they’re all industry only. Poop. I think the only panels I sat in on was the TAN panel for 5 minutes, and most of the Stan Lee talk. He is a jolly old dude who doesn’t deserve half of the fame and glory he gets, and I like him for saying so. Very charismatic guy. I was in the TAN panel for 5 minutes only because it was mostly full of rambling from chatting girls who appeases TAN viewers (I get TAN but it cost extra so I avoid it) and have nothing substantive to say.
Yea, I spent most of my time in the exhibit hall. It feels a lot more professional because there are a lot more “pro” vendors with nice displays compared to even big anime cons. You’re talking about basically all the comic book studios and publishers, plus people like ADV and Viz. I think Brocolli had something there? I stole some pens, heh. AAA had a display of some kits, but nothing super fancy. One vendor actually had store some cool kits (like both Fate figures). I would’ve picked up a copy of Puerto Rico (as it’s the flavor of the week with the board gamers I hang out with) except the one vendor that carried these kind of things didn’t have it.
What else was amusing? Some Korean manhwa booth gave out random samplers and made reference to gay sex? I didn’t catch that. Actually there were some other funny stuff, but most of them involve my uncanny friend, so I better not share with you all as he’s probably overly sensitive about people talking behind his back on the intarweb. Oops.
Wizard of the Coast booth was fun. They made you do their game demos (or watch at least) for a chance to win some fairly good prizes. I got away with the Eberron settings book. Their Star Wars miniature game looks fun too, so chalk one up for lure with loot. I think they even had their board games and collector edition PHB as prizes. I’d say that’s worth the $20-30 and made my trip even.
Sadly, there are not much in terms of pictures. Just from my pinhole phone cam. I didn’t even take many pictures. Hit up Google or something for actual pics, I guess. There were a handful of costumers on Friday; some pros and some casuals. I like this cute girl in imperial navy officer outfit, for instance. Some girl cosplayed V and I noticed it’s a girl right off the bat? The quality of cosplaying is higher partly because, I guess, there were more pros at it, and only people who knew what they were doing wore something… including this random kid who walked around as Optimus Prime and a boombox.
Wish I could have:
*came back on Saturday and attend the Suzumiya Haruhi panel
*were into gaming to catch the significance of the game-related booths were
*go to the industry panels
*see Colbert
*not catch a bad cold on the next day and be unable to post this blog entry until today
AAA’s booth.
ALTER :D (Also AAA’s booth)
Forgot who this was.
Also at AAA
ADV and Bandai IIRC?
That’s it! some pics didn’t come out well, and there were just not too many interesting things that I can discern from just mundane things. Not to say there weren’t a lot of interesting things to take pictures of, but the dinky camera phone just isn’t fun to keep pictures from.
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