My convention experience started on Tuesday night with a threatening text message, “At LAX. COMING FOR YOU….-SAM.” It would be another 4 days before he would get to me. Unable to attend NYCC on Thursday and Friday, I supplement it by attending the Geekscape meetup Friday night. Food, drinks, and funny stories were shared, but it was obvious that the con had taken its toll. Everyone was dead tired. Tomorrow was going to be a new day, as well as my first.
I get a head start and show up about 30 minutess early, somehow managing to walk past security and walk the floor alone with the exception of exhibitors setting up. At first glance, I was kind of disappointed, as there seemed to be far fewer exhibitors than previous years, and an influx of Towers of T-Shirts and Chevy Tahoes. The only impressive space may have been the WETA booth, with the head of Smaug perched high above snorting out smoke and blinking its weary eyes as almost to say “Yeah, I’m bored in the main hall also”. It was obvious that this year had to be focused on artist alley and attending some panels.
Disappointed with the main hall, I head to where the real fun is at, Artist Alley. I immediately head over to my favorite artists for sketches from James Silvani and Amy Memberson, who are Disney centric with a twist. This is where a true comic fan can go and get up close with their favorite comic artists and support them or just chat them up. If there is one thing I had no complaints about NYCC, it was this area.
The real fun began when I walked by the Lion Forge booth and saw SAM in his outfit (or there lack of) interviewing the staff. After following him around the convention floor, I noticed that an incognito partner of his named Cabana Pete was working security and doing random body searches. I’m glad to report that they kept the kept the convention floor safe and consent free. With the exception of watching SAM get to work, Saturday was pretty uneventful for me. I wasn’t able to make any panels and needed to depart early.
Sunday is known as Kid’s Day, and here is my complaint about that day: it really doesn’t feel that geared towards kids (at least on the main floor). There are a bunch of kid-centric activities and panels that day, but I just wished that the companies on the show floor did more for them. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just the things that my daughter was interested in that weren’t around on Sunday for her to get excited for. One example was her wanting to meet Jeremy Shada, the voice of Finn on Adventure Time. He was available for pictures and autographs every day but Kid’s Day! He was headed to the Cartoon Network panel, and that was a chance for her to at least say hello, but once it was over the whole audience mobbed the table. No luck.
All in all it was another year of more AND less of the same stuff. I am pretty sure with all these different conventions in different places around the country (and now France) some companies are hesitant to show up in full force. I’m not saying they need to turn NYCC into SDCC (which is not possible due to lack of Jacob Javits Center’s size) , but hey, it’s NEW YORK! One would expect bigger presence from media companies and not Towers of T-Shirts and Chevy automobiles. There was even a Black sails booth outside that always seemed to have a good size crowd and was delegated to being outside in the rain? Why, when there were booths from companies that made no sense being there just shilling products that have no connection to geek culture.
But, I still had a lot of fun, and got met great interesting people , I’ll see you guys next year!