The Best of New York Comic Con 2013

This past weekend, the city with the highest concentrated amount of monster attacks, alien invasions and secret headquarters, but New York, got slightly more insane with the arrival of New York Comic Con. As always, I shall serve as your sexy Virgil into this descent into Hell for people who think The Batman is lame and the select few who gave the Oscar to Star Wars instead of Annie Hall. So without further ado, here’s the best of New York Comic Con:

PANDEMONIUM 

To start, New York Comic Con is a massive beast. Thought it is not the nerdy cluster bomb that converts the entire gas lamp district of San Diego into a six-color, New York Comic Con has been growing at a steady rate since its inception, and it’s starting to resemble San Diego Comic Con more and more each year.

For starters, it certainty smells like San Diego Comic Con, so much so that the city of New York had to release a statement asking Con attendees to bathe, for the love of god, bathe. Now I’m certain that jamming a few thousand people into the Jacob Javits Center certainly isn’t going to smell like rainbows or Anna Kendrick’s dreams, but when you add in obesity vacuum sealed in fiberglass MJOLNR armor or determination strong enough to wait for a 6pm panel since 10am and yet not spend the ten minutes necessary to apply soap to one’s body, things get intense.

To deal with counterfeit tickets and lines longer than a cocaine party at Professor Zoom’s place, New York Comic Con featured the inclusion of tapping your electronic badge to get in and out. Standard fare right?

Well what NYCC administration failed to mention was that if you linked your badge to your twitter or Facebook, the badge would automatically update your status for you, in really enthusiastic ways.

For instance, my badge claimed that “I am having the best four days of the year at New York Comic Con!”

Thank god that my imaginary girlfriend didn’t see that. Our extended weekend at Ibitha was something out of  *Google image search for Ibitha*.

Fortunately, to escape the abattoir of disposable income and anime costumes that I’m not even going to try to guess the source for, there is the press lounge. An empty floor that gives the fourth estate a means to breathe and an overpriced convenience stand with no lines.

Also, it provided this awesome isometric viewpoint. I was able to pinpoint the best goddamn Green Goblin cosplayer I’ve ever seen in my life, as well as take a photo of a guy asking a Red Ranger duo to take photos.

What was the best thing I saw at the con? Switch up between a pixie-haired Felicia Day or a Dragonborne Jessica Nigri, moments that I made sure to immortalize in photographs.

The worst thing I saw at the con? A man in his late twenties, early thirties, clinging a My Little Pony Monopoly Board. A game that was never supposed to be (and never is) fun wearing the much-too adolescent skin of a little-girl’s cartoon stapled to its face like Joker in Death of the Family. Though this guy had a bag on him, he carried the shrink-wrapped game board close to the heart, both as a reminder to himself that his dreams are literally within his hands, and as a badge of courage, saying I don’t care I’m in love, all the while making me appreciate that I don’t have to see exactly who or what gathers on a Friday night to compete for the prime real estate holdings of Equestria.

Or, maybe it was an icebreaker to the bleakest game of Monopoly since Monopoly: The Road edition. How do they figure out who gets to be Rainbow Dash? I don’t know specifics, but I imagine it involves removing one’s pants.

Although now that I think of it, there was a hairy, bearded man dressed in a Batgirl costume that was so ill-fitting and wrong it became a sort of grotesque beauty, like a Rose growing out of an abandoned jawbone, or the second Ghost Rider movie. I vaulted over an over-sized Cactus-person and even made skin contact to get a pic. Wanna see it? Continue on to the next circle of Hell for Boredom.

 

THE SHOW EXCLUSIVES

While not as prestigious as San Diego Comic Con, the Con that started it all, New York Comic Con is certainly privy to its own exclusive show ponies.

No, not My Little Pony– That Abbey Road cover was for San Diego Comic Con and I certainly didn’t purchase it, so stop asking.

Perhaps the first thing that catches your eye upon entering the Con is the burning block of South Park, Colorado. Inside this immolated Tom’s Rhinoplasty besieged by a flying saucer was a fifteen minute in-game preview for South Park: The Stick of Truth, whose highlights included a “skip movie” button that pops up when the Bard Jimmy stutters through a sentence, the special nut-cracking move Roshambo, and Butter exclaiming “You’re my new bottom bitch!” upon winning the day.

Essentially, it’s the reason why Mario doesn’t talk in Paper Mario. Those who preordered The Stick of Truth at the Con would be rewarded with a Grand Wizard Cartman, which our Frag Dolls presenter smartly referred to as just a “Wizard Cartman.”

 

Even though the Assassin’s Creed games are getting churned out at Madden-like rates (I finally got my Assassin duds in three when the announcement for Black Flag was made) I have to admit, seeing the multiplayer mode up and running on the Xbox One completely blew away my expectations. Maybe it has something to do with watching previews for a system’s graphics on a system that specifically can’t handle those graphics, but before I could start really thinking it through I participated in a Just Dance 4 demo, shaking a wiki-note and a pumpkin-like derrière to “Blurred Lines”, in a manner that would make Miley Cyrus twerk madly in envy. Or at least whatever she calls twerking. Squats aren’t just for guys.

Only way it could’ve been better was if there was a gender-bending Beetlejuice on stage with me at the time, but I’ll take what I can get.

Of course there are also comics at Comic Con, and though there were hardly any convention variant covers, there was the absolutely gorgeous reveal of the color edition of Scott Pilgrim, which I guess should have been called “colour edition.”

Regardless, this re-release of the book abandons the tiny-page black and white manga format of the book in favor of a larger, more lively and colorful format. Even the jokes that can only work in black and white, like Ramona’s hair color constantly changing in a grey-scale production, is handled accordingly in this new edition.

In addition to this premiere color edition there’s also the evil edition, which is only sold at conventions and is identical to the color edition in every which way except for the Evil Ex on the cover and a larger price tag, ‘cause it’s evil.

Naturally I brought all of these evil editions except for Volume 3, ‘cause Envy Adams is the best.

In addition to this ONI Press re-release, New York Comic Con also featured some fantastic and inventive Indy titles that cannot be overlooked. High Fructose Zombies combines the fat kid epidemic and the best epidemic ever in a deliciously fun, four-issue hors d’oeuvre. The Circle is an ambitious take on the visual Pulp Mag from Brian Roll. FUBAR: American History Z, is somewhat self explanatory, examining the origins of the greatest country ever but with shambling undead mixed in.

For an extra five bucks I got a personalized and inked sketch of a zombified Hunter S. Thompson that I don’t think is in bad taste.

Expect reviews and interviews for this titles in due time, I assure you that in spite of their meager start there are titans within these pages.

Unfortunately, a large part of any Con is always compromise. Though there are handy show planners available and four days worth of convention to absorb, there’s always going to be some event that you stumble upon or a line that’s comprised solely of hindrophobics that will throw a spanner into the works, or a PCP riddled Grizzly into a kindergarten.

My Sophie’s Choice but with exosuits was between checking out Saturday’s Walking Dead panel, extrapolating and teasing the season that starts in exactly fifteen minutes at the time I originally wrote the sentence, or meet Felicia Day, the best thing to happen to redheads since Mary Jane Watson eclipsed Gwen Stacey. Guess which choice I made.

Now some of you may guffaw and chortle at the idea of paying a celebrity money for their signature, and additional for a pic in certain cases, but here’s my rationale. If I were a celebrity, and someone told me to sit in a chair for like three hours so that I could meet and shake the hands of my fans, which include web admins who make sites devoted to jerking it to my work, people who dress up as me, and not even asking the to wash their hands, paying twenty bucks is but a pittance.

Also, you’re technically paying for a high glossy photo, so just chill and appreciate the fact that within an eight hour window you were able to meet the girl who embodies cosplay, Ink Masters’ blood-red answer to Kat Von D — Megan Massacre, and the best goddamn sell-sword this side of Westeros.

Also, Hulkamania is as prevalent as ever. The line to meet Hulk Hogan was the longest line I saw at the Con, and mind you the line for the original Green Power Ranger, White Ranger, and white guy as the Black Ranger, Jason David Frank had a surprise visit from the guy who played Skull. Or Bird. It was impossible to tell.

THE COSPLAY

Naturally, for all of the Hulkamania epidemics and disturbing game boards that aren’t Jumanji, the true bread and butter of Comic Con are its cosplayers.

Now typically, I’m the first to jump at dressing up for the Con, been doing it for like at least ten years by my count, and I’m proud to say that my devotion to Metal Gear Solid has resulted in meeting Hideo Kojima twice, but unfortunately I couldn’t get my Borderlands Psycho together in time. It’s probably for the best, as walking around shirtless in NYC is an invitation to MRSA-coated titty twisters.

I remarked at San Diego Comic Con that the most popular costumes were Adventure Time related, and New York Comic Con was no different, as you could throw a shoe down the aisle and hit at least two Marcellines and at least one Deadpool-Marcelline, but keep in mind this is the only time I’ve seen three Dr. Octopuses (Dr. Octopi? Dr. Octopodes?) each with his own customized Ock-arms, and two Mysterios– and I’ve never even seen a Mysterio before!

 

Don’t get me started on group costumes. For every Hawkeye there was a Hawkeye (girl Hawkeye?), and this cast from Archer got every character down to a tee, minus one tracksuit-wearing Bionic Barry.

Other firsts included a bloodied-bathrobe wearing Comedian, a spitting image of Elsa Bloodstone from NEXTWAVE, and a Wasp complete with delicate, glass-like wings.

Hell, why tell you when I can show you! Enjoy this photo-dump of some of my favorite cosplayers. If you see a pic of yourself, do feel free to comment, as you can win fancy prizes.

So what did you think of New York Comic Con 2013? Did the new electronic badges do it for you? Were you too disturbingly hypnotized by the Man-Bat-Girl? Then let us know in the comments or on Twitter!