I went to New York Comic Con (NYCC) because, why not? It was fun. New York Comic Con is one of the biggest cons in the country. The other huge one is San Diego.
New York Comic Con, it’s in the Javits Center in Midtown Manhattan. It used to fit in the convention center, years ago, but now, half of the stuff isn’t even in there. It’s bigger than, at least, five football fields, easily. It fills the Javits Center, Madison Square Garden, and other places, too. It’s confusing because it’s all over the city.
Part of the reason I went is because I have family in New York and I can hit both at the same time, and I hadn’t been to one of these huge cons before. I go to local ones, like Santa Fe that is relatively small. But New York? They have celebrities and people who are still creating comic books. TV stars are all over the place. They had Michael Rooker [most recently Yondu in “Gardens of the Galaxy”] on a panel and that was pretty awesome. I also went to an “X-Files” thing that Mulder and Scully, or rather David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, were at, and Chris Carter, the guy who made it.
To me, more than those panels, I love the artist alley where you get to wander around and talk to the artists … At one point, I was standing to the side of the crowd trying to catch my breath and I noticed Chris Claremont who wrote “X-Men” comic books in the ’70s, who reinvented or introduced all the characters people now care about, and I was trying to take a covert selfie with him and at the same time Louise Simonson, who wrote “X-Men”-related comics in the ’80s, tripped over someone else and barreled into me. I thought it was a quintessential experience.
The people you notice are the ones in costume, super elaborate stuff. One of my favorite ones I saw standing in line. It took me a second to figure out what this woman was, but there is this scene in “Terminator 2” where the liquid metal terminator bad guy is impersonating John Connor’s foster mother and stabs a guy through a milk carton and into his mouth. This cosplay lady was dressed as Connor’s mom and had a metal spear hand with a bloody milk carton on the end of it. It was excellent.
Nick GonzalesGot a travel story worth telling? Write it in about 400 words and send it to [email protected]. If you’d rather tell your story, send a brief synopsis along with your full name and phone number to the same address. Either way, your story should be true.
