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Written by Sarvenaz Tash. You can follow Sarvenaz on Twitter at @SarvenazTash. Photos by Graig Kreindler.
This is my fifth year attending New York Comic Con…but my first one attending it as a parent. This was monumental for two reasons. 1) It was the longest amount of time my husband and I have spent away from our 11-week-old son. (This means my babysitter/sister got to liberally and appropriately use the poop emoji as we texted back and forth: always a win). But more importantly 2) we now had a pint-sized excuse to go shopping at the con!
Our first purchase was the thing we both knew we wanted…if I have to be honest, even before he was born. What little boy or girl doesn’t need a plush Link to cuddle up to while dreaming of their own 8-bit adventures?
Next, it was time to fulfill the Harry Potter contingent and these Pop! Vinyl figures fit the bill. Naturally if I was going to get him a starter kit, I needed the power trio in all their glory.
I was also hoping to pick up the brand new illustrated Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone but, alas, was unable to find a copy at NYCC. We were also a little disappointed at the dearth of clever/geeky onesies (take note for next year, vendors! Nerdy parents need appropriately nerdy clothing options for their little ones too.)
On a logistical note, we were actually hoping to take our little one to the con on Thursday for a couple of hours but he wasn’t feeling well. (We even had a Daenerys and Drogon costume on hand for just such a scenario, dagnabit…). Looking around the Javits with a parental eye, I think using a baby carrier would actually have been okay for him but a stroller might have been too difficult to maneuver (on the other hand, there are brave folks in super elaborate costumes that are way bigger than me + stroller and I realize it definitely is possible. I just like to be as unencumbered as possible when roaming the crowds at Javits).
My other goal at this year’s con was to visit the Simon & Schuster booth where they were giving out these exclusive Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love postcards.
What is The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love you ask? Why it’s my upcoming YA novel (coming out on 6/14/16) pitched as Pretty in Pink goes to comic con…and it, in fact, takes place at NYCC! (What can I say? I am very inspired by the creativity and passion that I’ve seen there year after year).
And as a bonus, my amazing friend Dave cosplayed as the main character of my book.
Yup, that is true friendship.
So I will now leave you with the description of the book. I already can’t wait for next year’s NYCC when the book will be out and hopefully at the show because I’ll let you in on a secret: it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written!
Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy…
Archie and Veronica…
Althena and Noth…
…Graham and Roxy?
Graham met his best friend, Roxana, when he moved into her neighborhood eight years ago, and she asked him which Hogwarts house he’d be sorted into. Graham has been in love with her ever since.
But now they’re sixteen, still neighbors, still best friends. And Graham and Roxy share more than ever–moving on from their Harry Potter obsession to a serious love of comic books.
When Graham learns that the creator of their favorite comic, The Althena Chronicles, is making a rare appearance at this year’s New York Comic Con, he knows he must score tickets. And the event inspires Graham to come up with the perfect plan to tell Roxy how he really feels about her. He’s got three days to woo his best friend at the coolest, kookiest con full of superheroes and supervillains. But no one at a comic book convention is who they appear to be…even Roxy. And Graham is starting to realize fictional love stories are way less complicated than real-life ones.
And if that interests you, I’m happy to announce that the book just became available for pre-order!
The big rumor that swirled around the never ending line of Marty McFlys at New York Comic Con this year was a big one. As the Martys patiently waited for their Pepsi Perfect bottle, people started talking about the Nike Mag, the power lacing sneakers from Back to the Future 2. The rumor, one that every Marty McFly who heard it wanted to believe, is that Nike is going to drop the Nike Mag, complete with power laces, today, October 21, 2015. Why today? Because today is the day that Marty McFly traveled to in the future in Back to the Future 2.
There are reasons to believe this rumor is true. Nike announced last year that power laces are coming, to the delight of everyone who felt underwhelmed by the 2011 Mag release. But the thing that has me most believing that Power Lace Mags are dropping today is this tweet from Nike last night.
.@realmikefox see you tomorrow.
— Nike (@Nike) October 21, 2015
I can’t be the only one hitting F5 on the Nike site all day today. But I think Nike will stick to the time that Marty and Doc landed in the future and release the sneakers at 4:29 PM
We’re descending toward Hill Valley, California, at 4:29 pm, on Wednesday, October 21st, 2015. #BTTF2015 #FutureDay pic.twitter.com/cZVi15wx93
— Back to the Future™ (@BacktotheFuture) October 21, 2015
In the meantime, I’ll still be reloading Nike’s web store every minute today.
Dave and Billy recap their favorite parts of NYCC, review The Flash of Two Worlds episode of The Flash and a whole slew of books including a comic you probably missed last week but should definitely pick up this week, play the TWENTY (where they stick to a $20 budget and pick out the best of this week’s new comics) and talk A LOT of comics news! It’s a packed episode!
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Photographs by Graig Kreindler and David Henehan and @dirkmanning. Written by Billy Henehan
My journey into cosplay has been a slow one. My first cosplay was as the 11th Doctor. Tweed sports jacket, dress shirt, bowtie, suspenders and skinny jeans? No problem. That’s practically what I wear to work on Fridays. This was my regular cosplay for a few conventions. Fans know what you’re doing, but to anyone on the subway, you look like an average 20 or 30 something Brooklynite. How normal does the 11th Doctor outfit look? I interviewed Mike Tyson at NYCC 2014 in it and nobody batted an eye on how I was dressed, except for the one publicist who said I always dress snappy for interviews.
This year though, I wanted more. I wanted to dress up every day of NYCC and I wanted my cosplay to be more than my usual office wear paired with a sonic screwdriver. So I plotted and planned and ordered maybe one too many spandex outfits.
Here’s a big tip for anyone planning to cosplay to NYCC (or any big convention) next year: order far in advance. The companies that specialize in cosplay get hit hard during convention season, and what might be a 3 week turnaround time for them during the winter becomes a 12-16 week wait when SDCC and NYCC are nearing. I found this out the hard way. I ordered a very high quality Spider-Man suit from The RPC Studio. I was psyched for it to arrive. Sadly, NYCC has come and gone and my suit is still being processed. Bummer, I know. But I don’t blame RPC. I should have ordered sooner and not at the edge of their delivery window.
Marty McFly was my Day 1 cosplay for NYCC. This had many benefits: no mask, plenty of pockets, and Pepsi was giving out the very, very limited edition bottle of Pepsi Perfect from Back to the Future 2 to fans dressed as Marty. When I heard this, I was tempted to abandon my other cosplay plans and dress as Marty every day. Okay, not really a big step from the 11th Doctor. Dressing as Marty McFly gets you zero second looks on the subway.
Dr. McNinja was my Day 2 cosplay. Dr. McNinja is very easy to put together: black pants, lab coat, ninja mask, prop sword – your whole outfit is one reasonably priced Amazon order. I really thought this outfit would get a lot of love. Clearly I have overestimated the size of Dr. McNinja fandom. The people who did recognize my outfit really loved it; one guy gave me a high-five, but I’m guessing more people though, “I don’t know, anime something.” The amazing thing is, when I stopped by Joe Prado’s table in Artist Alley, he immediately said, “What’s up, Billy?” I WAS IN A FULL NINJA MASK. How did he know? “You have very distinct eyes.” Why, thank you, Joe Prado!
It was on the weekend that I went for the deep dive. Thursday and Friday were the training wheel days. Pants with pockets. Outfits that easily helped me blend in with a few minor changes. Not so on Saturday and Sunday. I went double-Deadpool Saturday and Sunday. I really wanted a Deadpool costume, but Deadpool might be the most overplayed cosplay at conventions, so I decided to dress as Deadpool, but not the standard, Rob Liefeld designed outfit. On Saturday, I dressed as Zenpool, Deadpool’s AXIS-shifted peaceful persona. I even took a picture with Zenpool co-creator Gerry Duggan! He seemed psyched that people were dressing as Zenpool.
On Sunday, I wore what ended up being my most popular outfit of the weekend: Green Lantern Deadpool. A LOT of people stopped to take my picture, I think mainly because the Ryan Reynolds line in the trailer for the upcoming Deadpool movie where Deadpool requests that the costume just not be green, an obvious dig at the Green Lantern movie Reynolds starred in. I had that line thrown at me A LOT on Sunday.
It’s funny, this was a total last minute costume and I wasn’t even sure how good the quality would be. I ordered it from a dirt cheap seller somewhere in Asia on eBay. I just needed something to replace the Spider-Man costume that didn’t look like it was arriving on time. The Green Lantern Deadpool people were great. They rushed my order at no charge and I had my costume the Monday before NYCC. I think I ordered it 10 days earlier. The quality was great. The Green Lantern logo is actually sewn on, it’s not a dye sub. And the price couldn’t be beat. The green boots that I ordered off Amazon were the most expensive part of the costume. The major downside of this costume though was having no pockets. I was constantly worried that someone was going to take my wallet and phone from my backpack. Next year, I need to invest in green Deadpool belt.
UPDATE (December 2015): The Spider-Man costume finally arrived and it is AWESOME. The RPC Studio gets my highest possible recommendation! I can’t wait to wear it at SE: NYC 2016!
Once again, the Charity Art Auction at New York Comic Con was my favorite part of NYCC weekend. Attendance at the art auction shot up noticibly this year. In years past, it was easy to find a seat. This year, I found myself holding seats for four friends who were running late, which meant I also found myself catching some serious side-eye from the standing room only crowd.
I went into the Art Auction with a specific strategy this year. I would pick out a few pieces to seriously aim at buying during the viewing that preceded the auction. In previous years, I found myself price enforcing pieces of original art that I felt were going way too cheap, and found my cash supply too low when later in the auction when something I really wanted hit the auction block. Not this year. The problem was I had to keep reminding myself of this throughout the auction. There were many times when I was tempted to bid, and a few times when I did bid, on things I thought were too good a deal to pass up. Thankfully, I was able to restrain myself and let myself get outbid on those items.
Because that meant I was able to go home with a seriously nice piece of original art. The cover to Action Comics #43 by Aaron Kuder. I love this cover. It has such a cool design. I love the vertical panels separating Superman and his supporting cast. I was a fan of this cover before it was in the art auction. When I saw it was going to be one of the pieces auctioned off, I knew I wanted to make a serious attempt to get it.
Unfortunately, that meant letting A LOT of really nice original art pass me by. Once again, Mike Negin, the Talent Coordinator for NYCC and man in charge of the Charity Art Auction, assembled a museum-quality collection of modern comic art. There were too many VERY nice pieces. I had to choose my spots. Anyone who attended had to.
What was great too, was that this year, friends were bidding as well. In past years, friends would join me to watch the bidding action and view the art, but forego bidding and look at me with slightly exasperated looks when I’d get caught up in a bidding war. Bu this year, I had a friend in company for the bidding. Alli, our occasional fill-in co-host at the Tuesday Night Comics podcast, may have been my favorite attendee of the art auction. When I say he got into his bidding, I mean he really got into it. At one point late in the auction, Alli was pacing up and down his row shouting out new bids on a piece he wanted for his girlfriend. At one point, he yelled out a bid and then yelled out another bid, getting into a bidding war with himself! It was great and Alli walked away with that piece.
Once again, the big pieces of the night were the Walt Simonson Thor sketch and the Adam Hughes piece. Both went for many thousands of dollars and helped the Art Auction raise a sizeable amount of money for The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. By the way, Adam Hughes is an awesome individual. Personal issues prevented him from attending NYCC 2015, but he sent over a gorgeous piece just for the art auction. Hughes is really committed to helping raise money for charity at NYCC. Besides making sure the art auction received what is always the most sought after piece in the auction, when Hughes is at a convention, he regularly donates the money from the sketches he does at the convention to charity. The guy is a cass act all around.
I’ve said this before and I will continue to say this: if you are not attending the Charity Art Auction at NYCC, you are missing NYCC’s best event.
Anyone who has attended a comic book convention with me in the last decade and a half knows that my favorite thing to do at conventions is get sketches from my favorite artists. The recent blank sketch cover phenomenon is the best/worst thing to happen to me. It’s the best because I love them! How cool is it to get a one-of-a-kind cover drawn just for you on a comic? It’s the worst because I have WAY TOO MANY that are still blank. Between NYCC And SE:NYC, I can get maybe 2-4 sketch covers drawn on each convention, depending on time, price and artist availability. I have well over 30 blank sketch covers sitting in my apartment. That’s years of conventions to get them all illustrated, and that’s if I stop buying new ones cold turkey (Spoiler alert: That ain’t gonna happen).
Anyone who has attended NYCC with me knows that I cannot let a NYCC go by without getting a sketch from Tood Nauck. I’ve been a fan of Todd’s since I first encountered his work in the late 90s on Young Justice (which is an awesome series that you need to track down and read). When Secret Wars: Age of Ultron vs Marvel Zombies #1 was released with a blank sketch variant, I broke my “No More Blank Sketch Covers” rule, because I knew exactly what I wanted on that cover and who I wanted to draw it. Half Ultron/Half Zombie Ultron in full color by Todd Nauck.
Spider-Man is my all-time favorite superhero. I have a Spider-Man sketchbook that is, surprise, surprise, filled with sketches of Spider-Man. I have slowly been filling in the Spider-Man sketchbook since _______. It currently has ____ drawing of Spidey in it, including the four I added this year.
At Special Edition: NYC this past year, I managed to get a sweet Spider-Gwen sketch on a Spider-Gwen #1 blank variant cover from Invincible artist, Ryan Otley. But what I really wanted was an Otley Spidey in my sketchbook. One problem – I left the sketchbook home that day. Thankfully, Ryan came back to NYC for NYCC and was doing sketches. Spider-Man sketchbook in hand, I walked away with this beauty this weekend.
Do you follow Des Taylor on Instagram? Do yourself a favor and go follow him right now. My biggest regret about NYCC 2014 was being unable to find his table and get a sketch from him. His table was somewhere out on the show floor. I still have no clue where he was located. Thankfully, this year he was in Artist Alley and very easy to find. Check out this Spider-Man and MJ I commissioned from him.
I love Phil Noto. I have wanted a Phil Noto Spider-Man in my sketchbook for years. I kept missing out on getting a sketch from him, but on Saturday, I rushed right to his table in Artist Alley as soon as the doors opened, and was first in line for a sketch. Yesssss!
I saw a friend in Artist Alley and said hi. He pointed down to the table in front of us and said David Lloyd was doing sketches for only $5. David Lloyd!!! David Lloyd is a legend! He’s the artist on V for Vendetta. Five bucks?!? I couldn’t pass this up. And now I have a David Lloyd Spider-Man in my book.
If you ever get the chance to get a sketch from Yanick Paquette, I highly recommend it. He doesn’t use pen and ink for his convention sketches, but rather paints gorgeous illustrations in watercolor. Here’s the Batgirl of Burnside I purchased from him on a blank Batgirl cover.
When I first met Breno Tamura, he helped me stop an art theft from Ivan Reis and Joe Prado at NYCC 2012. I’ve been following his career since 2013, and man, like Des Taylor, he is another artist to follow in Instagram. His style has been evolving over the past few years, and it’s been a pleasure to watch his talent progress. DC and Marvel, HIRE THIS GUY! Here’s the 70s era original five X-Men sketch I bought from Breno this year.
On top of these sketches, I scored a VERY sweet piece of original artwork at Saturday’s Charity Art Auction. I can’t wait for SE:NYC and NYCC in 2016 to see what sketches I’ll come home with then!
Billy is all alone this week, and he’s talking NYCC! Plus, he reviews Invincible Iron Man #1, Dr. Strange #1, Amazing Spider-Man #1 and more. Plus, The Twenty!
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Photographs by David Henehan and Graig Kreindler
The most exciting news from this year’s New York Comic Con may have come from one of the smallest panel rooms at the convention. Before NYCC, Attack on Titan’s publisher, Kodansha, said they had big news, but were very tight lipped pertaining to any details of the announcement. It should be no surprise that Attack on Titan fans filled room 1A18 to capacity for a panel titled The Biggest Attack on Titan Manga Announcement Ever to hear what the news would be.
Before NYCC, The Beat speculated that the big announcement would involve American creators working on Attack on Titan. This was based on the fact that Jeanine Schaefer, known for her DC and Marvel, work would be one of the panelists.
The Beat speculated correctly.
Before a tightly packed, standing room only crowd, Kodansha announced that for the first time ever, western creators would be doing work on Attack on Titan. Coming in late 2016 is the Attack on Titan Anthology, a full color 250 page book of Attack on Titan short stories. Kodansha has booked some of the biggest names in comics to work on this book. The creators include Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, Michael Avon Oeming, Cameron Stewart, Paolo Rivera, Gail Simone and Scott Snyder.
Yes, that Scott Snyder.
Snyder himself made an appearance at the panel, literally running into the room from another panel and up to a microphone on stage. The crowd gave Scott a heavy amount of applause after he expressed his love for the Attack on Titan manga and anime, and that he hoped people dug the story he was working on for the anthology. 
The art for the Attack on Titan Anthology that Kodansha had on display was gorgeous! With the talent they’ve lined up for this project, I see the Attack on Titan Anthology being one of the must-read comics of next year.
Late 2016 can’t get her fast enough.
UPDATE: Kodansha will have a free preview available of Attack on Titan Anthology on Free Comic Book Day 2016.