While New York Comic Con (NYCC) was held in person last year, this is the first year officially out of the pandemic, and it is obvious that the community was ready to experience NYCC the way it should be — in person. Like past cons, the tickets for Friday through Saturday sold out before it started and fans of all types gathered in New York’s Javits Center to see new exclusives, get your geek on, do some people watching, or just take the opportunity to be with others who understand your passion. With five levels, there was quite a lot to see. For those primarily attending for the comics, the first and second level was their home base. For the cosplayers however, all five levels were their domain; with the third level and the second level inner roadway serving as a gathering point — rain or shine. The area outside the show floor reign supreme as the collection point for some of the best.
Each year the cosplayers elect a theme simply through the quantity of a character’s presence. The year the first Deadpool movie came out, the cons were awash with mostly young men in unflattering red spandex supplanting the past Spider-Men leotards. In recent years, one of the most elaborate cosplayers was a really scary Venom.
Interestingly, the Scholastic booth employed skirt clad actors to promote the new Hunger Games movie, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. As with most cons you could find a few Doctors, a Tardis, and a Dalek or two. And the ever-reigning Starfleet continues to endure, while the Jedi are front and center to protect all from Vader’s Fist, the 501st Legion. This year the armor was prominently made of beskar as the Mandalorian Mercs patrolled the show floor.
There were ten or so Ahsoka Tano, but the main Black girl nerd costume seemed to be the perennial favorite X-Man, goddess of Mars, Ororo Munroe, also known as Storm. Which was a little disappointing given the supreme work over the last three years on Black superheroines. For example, N. K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell have brought a Black Green Lantern to the DC Universe named Sojourner “Jo” Mullein. Writer Stephanie Williams and artist Alitha Martinez, on the other hand, worked to reintroduce Nubia, the newly crowned Queen of the Amazons, after the “death” Diana’s mother, Hippolyta. And don’t forget another great cosplay option straight out her own limited series with a new spin on her origin from the Wandavision television show, recently in the last Dr. Strange movie, and coming soon in The Marvels, there is Monica Rambeau. She was initially Captain Marvel, but of late going by the name of Photon. While Monica made an appearance, the most popular single character seemed to be Loki, with a lot of anime characters coming in close second, and the Antler Queen from the YellowJackets haunting the halls to take whatever place she chose. But in the end, there can be only one and this year goes to Sarcasm Hime as Queen from ‘Snow Glass Apples‘.
In the area of comics, NYCC embraces a big tent feel which gives the major publishers their due, but provides an artist alley for the writers, inkers, and artists that keep it all afloat. The show floor had several stalls focusing on back issues and several of the major online comic vendors sold recent variants including convention exclusives and had booths set up to allow autographs from their in-house cover artists. The exclusives for DC comics included foil variants in support of their generally first issue titles in support of the Dawn of DC initiative. Similarly, other convention exclusives were foil variants of earlier titles. Marvel had a large stage to allow autographs from some of their featured artists such as Dan Slott, Gerry Duggan, and Jonathan Hickman. Marvel Convention exclusives were available for purchase, and giveaways occurred every day during their various panels.
With hundreds of artists present in Artist Alley, the lines were everywhere as comic stars such as Peach Momoko and Jenny Frison signed autographs, alongside legendary artists like Chris Claremont and Mark Bagley, complimented by Modern Age stars like Tom King, Scott Snyder, and Oliver Coipel. It was great to see one of our favorite Black girl nerds, Afua Richardson, present in all her cosplay fabulosity. If you were not familiar, Afua continued her successful work with Marvel, on art for the 2023 movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and covers for The Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent #3 and Marvel’s Voices: Wakanda Forever #1. The folks at Massive Publishing were promoting titles, like Wesley Snipes; new series The Exiled and the commercial issuance of a title that definitely makes you take a step back Harriet Tubman: Demon Slayer. If you first thought is why, BGN asked the author, David Crownson, who was promoting the title at his own booth on the show floor. When BGN asked him that very question, he replied something to the effect that he wanted to scare racists and make Black people feel good.
With the exception of a few surgical masks, this year’s con had everything that a con should, but it still felt like something was missing. With the writer’s strike just over and the actors still on strike, the promotion of new projects were more in the Kickstarter echelon than the full studio production effort that has dominated cons in the past. Also, with some video game publishers doing their own thing, the long queues to beta test the fall release video game titles were supplanted by a huge 4-D anime stage surrounded by humongous Dragonball-Z characters. The ability to do all that in one place is what makes the con special. Hopefully next year circumstances will support an even broader experience.
