New York Comic Con - October 9-10, 2010

[mirnell]

*Note that I just thought of: Some things may be completely out of order, since 1) it's been a week, and 2) I was incredibly overwhelmed the whole weekend and that tends to effect my memory of what happened when.*

For this year's New York Comic Con, I decided to go for the weekend, rather than just one day, and see how my sanity held up to the crowd. thescarletwoman was awesome enough to let me borrow couch space for the weekend, so I didn't have to worry about traveling up from Philadelphia every day. I did have to work on Friday, but I'd managed to get Saturday off (although my boss doesn't actually know why and thinks I was in another state), so I left work a few minutes after 7pm Friday evening and drove north. The drive itself was, gloriously, painless. I managed to not get lost, survived the Tappan Zee Bridge, which is possibly my least favorite bridge to drive over, and avoid the Turnpike and it's tolls entirely.

I finally arrived just about 10pm on Friday, and after playing some games (and making me realise that I desperately need to increase my collection of games), we decided to go to sleep, so that we would be awake and ready to go Saturday morning.

One of our group still had to pick up their badge, so we left early enough to have time to wait in line for that before getting in the line to actually go into the convention. The convention line was absolutely insane. Everyone was decently well behaved, no mad rushes or stampedes, but still frustrating and very crowded. And it didn't get any better once we got onto the floor. I consciously knew that Saturday would be the busiest day, but damn was it busy. You basically couldn't stop without being run over, and moving was almost out of the question.





We only went to one panel on Saturday, the MTV Geek panel at 11am. Despite Stan Lee being one of the people on the panel, there weren't all that many people in the room. The panel itself was interesting though. MTV is starting an online comic thing, and a bunch of the writers for those comics were part of the panel. There were a few that caught my attention, but the one that we were really there for was The Gloom, Tony Lee and Dan Boultwood's upcoming story. For those of you who don't know, Tony Lee is the writer of the Doctor Who Ongoing comic and the Forgotten, which is one of the first comic's that I read, only a few years ago. (Note: if you're a Doctor Who fan and haven't read it, what is wrong with you?! GO, buy it, read it, love it!)











Sorry, got a bit off track there. Anyway, MTV Geek. Sounds interesting, looking forward to seeing what comes out of it. Some things sound truly disturbing, but some sound really interesting.

Okay, here are a few pictures of some incredibly gorgeous displays.





And thescarletwoman as the cover of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.



Group of Doctor Who Cosplayers



We did a bit more wandering around before the crowd started to really get to us, and so we headed out to grab food and/or caffeine (depending on who you are talking to), and recover some of our sanity. After our break, we went back into the convention center, did a bit more exploring the dealer's room and then left to get actual dinner (or desert in some cases). I know it's New York City, but the wait to get a couple slices of cake was a bit absurd. Once we'd finally gotten our food and eaten, we went back into the frenzy and experienced a New York Comic Con party. The bar was absolutely packed, but so absolutely worth going! We didn't stay too long though, since thescarletwoman's other friends needed to leave bright and early Sunday morning. And sleep was a good thing.

Sunday dawned with us deciding it was too early and that we were going back to sleep for a bit longer. Sleep, also known as, to me, deciding to not get out from under the blanket and try to catch up on my email, twitter, and livejournal without moving at all.

Once we finally made it back to the convention, the crowd was significantly smaller. Still insanely crowded, but not so bad that you felt like you couldn't take a breath without knocking into someone. We found a couple of other people in Doctor Who costumes wandering around and paused to take a few pictures. I think there are some on my phone also, but I still have to dig those off.



At some point during the day, we made it back to Artist's Alley so I could pick up a couple of stunningly gorgeous prints, and then talked to Matthew Dow Smith (the artist for IDW's Doctor Who Ongoing comic, for those of you who don't know) for a while. After that, we went over to the IDW booth to talk to Tony Lee, Matthew Dow Smith, and Kelly Yates (another Doctor Who artist) a bit, and got to add to my collection of people in THE HAT pictures. The hat is kind of a long story, that my rambling won't do justice, but it basically breaks down to the fact that we're now trying to get as many people to wear it as possible.

Tony Lee


Matthew Dow Smith


Kelly Yates


thescarletwoman had won something from MTV Geek the day before, so found our way upstairs to their hideout to pick up the prizes. It turned out to be a cd of some sort, a signed poster (no, I don't remember of what or by whom), and an autographed Stan Lee belt buckle! Which is so damn cool! And I snagged a couple of pictures from the window overlooking the dealer's room, so you can see exactly how huge and crowded the place was.





The last panel of the day was Doctor Who Podshock's live show recording. We hadn't expected nearly as many people as ultimately turned up, so we ended up sitting towards the back of the room. Which wasn't a bad thing, since the people who were behind us had to stand. Yep, last panel of the day, and the only Doctor Who panel of the weekend, was standing room only. It was an absolute blast though! And the most recent Podshock episode is the recording, so I've been listening to it all day, and it's just as amusing the second time, especially knowing we were there!





After the Podshock panel, we headed out to get dinner, and despite some wandering in circles first, we eventually decided on a bar where we could actually hear ourselves speak. Yeah, the problem with bars in New York is sports. And not having a loud voice. But the food was good, the company was good, and the bar we headed to afterwards for another party was good too. Not nearly as insane as the night before, it felt more like a wind down, than a keep the insanity flowing type of party.

During dinner, we'd decided to watch Gareth David-Lloyd's Sherlock Holmes once we got back to thescarletwoman's place, because I still hadn't seen it. And I'd been told not to watch it either alone or sober. If you haven't seen it, watch it! If only for the absolute hilarity and utter awfulness. And do it with friends and have lots of alcohol handy. We tweeted through the entire thing, so if you got spammed by our commentary, sorry! Unless you enjoyed it, then I'm not sorry at all. Anyways, here are the rules we made up for the GDL Sherlock Holmes drinking game.

GDL Sherlock Holmes Drinking Game Rules

1 drink for bad CGI
1 drink for whenever Gareth upstages Sherlock
1 drink whenever Sherlock is the shortest person in the room
1 drink when the bastardise a character we all know and love
1 shot for however many fingers can fit between Gareth's waistcoat bottom & trouser top
1 drink for every gratuitous ass shots of Gareth
1 drink for every costume flaw (like clip on bow tie)
1 drink for whenever Sherlock's caterpillar eyebrows do the acting for him
1 drink for whenever Sherlock plays Captain Obvious
2 shots if something actually makes sense

If by chance there's booze left, finish it, you earned it.

We finally went to bed, which was a good thing, since I had to drive home the next morning, and be coherent for class. Yep, three hour drive, dropped my stuff at home, changed, grabbed my textbooks and headed for class.

But all in all it was a fantastic, brilliant weekend! I didn't get to meet up with all the people I'd intended to, but in a crowd of many, many tens of thousands of people, that isn't really a huge surprise. I don't know that I'll go back next year, it'll depend on who's going to be there. But I'm really glad I went to this one.