There is nothing like the thrill of heading off to a convention for rabid fanboys, geeks, cosplayers, and those who simply enjoy letting their inner freak flag fly across 10th Avenue in Midtown, Manhattan.
Princess Leia by Chris DiBari courtesty of Lucasfilm. Click for full size.
Day One: Excitement
There is nothing like the thrill of heading off to a convention for rabid fanboys, geeks, cosplayers, and those who simply enjoy letting their inner freak flag fly across 10th Avenue in Midtown, Manhattan. The fourth annual New York Comic Con isn’t as massive as the iconic San Diego Comic Con, but has always garnered a respectably-sized crowd and attention from the web-comic and mainstream communities.
And yet despite being the central location of the big two publishers–Marvel and DC–New York has not yet managed a decent convention. This year hopes were high, however: Takashi Miike showing up for a press conference and premiering his latest flashy fetish spectacle, Yatterman. That’s like Nerd Christmas, trust me.
By noon on Friday, the Javits Center was packed with hordes of backpacked, be-spectacled and cosplaying folks eager to cruise a floor stuffed with booths hawking comics, models, old toys, models, and lots and lots of swords. As a friend of mine said, “For once, I’m happy to know where all the nerds in the tri-state area will be.”
It’s at this point that the four types of NY Comic Con Attendee should be defined:
1) The Normal: they bought a day pass to come, maybe browse some booths, get an autograph and hear a panel. Or just to check out some stuff.
2) The Weeaboo: the white guy or girl who is fairly certain they’re Japanese, aren’t, but speak in butchered catch phrases they have heard. Also love Final Fantasy games. And the female of the species love Yaoi.
3) The Entitled: they work for popular websites, or websites you have never heard of, and must be the first in line or front row for every event.
4) The Idiot: the guy who doesn’t think he falls into any of the first three categories, yet hovers above all of them. His name is John.
My friend was right, the gang was all there—from the patrons of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Tables strewn throughout the main floor to legions of Slave Leias waltzing around, awkwardly smiling as they have their photos taken by lecherous nerds to the roving crowd of photographers hypnotized by a leggy woman in black spandex doing squats and thrusts to promote her series of Comic Book Aerobics. The rules of the Con are basic: run around in circles, snap photos awkwardly, pile up around video game kiosks, and have long-standing nerd debates about who would win a fight or which super power is the best. The first rule of NY Comic Con, however, is to gird yourself for both waves of self-loathing and what, for the unanointed, feels like an exclusive bummer.
The Yatterman events are the best example of the Con Paradox, or Con Con, if you will: the press conference was followed by a fan panel where the actual attendees get to see more than most of the journalists assembled. There followed a screening at the Director’s Guild Theater of the entire film. The theater holds 400 people, but over a thousand showed up, lined up, and demanded to be let in.
While it is understandably awesome to your everyday Miike fanboy that the director would choose the New York Con for the film’s debut, the screening shutout felt more like a slap in the face than an actual tease. Yatterman has no current U.S. release date—aside from a very likely chance at being in this year’s New York Asian Film Festival—and was not shown again outside of that limited press screening. Not to mention that aside from hardcore anime fans, the plot and premise are relatively unknown as the series was never released in America in any format. The film certainly is weird and quirky–our protagonists race to assemble all the pieces of the Skull Stone, a deus ex device that in the first cartoon reveals the world’s largest quantity of gold upon assembly. In the film, the stone causes rifts in space and time. Main villain Doronjo is a sultry, leather-clad type with bleached blonde hair; she’s also the main source of comic relief, despite beating our heroes far too often. Many Miike fans will be under the impression this is just another notch in his “eccentric film” belt rather than recognizing Yatterman as a superior live-action adaptation, especially when compared to American takes on Dragonball or even the equally flashy-yet-lame Speed Racer.
But the teaser footage of the film’s opening provides that Miike has taken the source material and then transformed it into something different–a true live-action “anime” that, much like the Yatterman series, relaunches itself as not just an original but a kiss-off to previous iterations.
By this point in the Con experience, you find yourself attending random panels and talking seriously about badasses. It’s late at night, the subtle smell of crowds and sweat begins to make its way through the halls. This marks the end of the joy, as everyone begins to get ornery, especially those of us within the Press Room, a cramped and tiny box off to the side of the IGN Theater—i.e. one of the main spaces within Javits.
Here there is no wi-fi for personal use. Merely two computers on ancient PCs that each have tiny dongles and are ganked constantly by nasally “Comic Book Professionals” who are more concerned with describing their YouTube pages than letting other people (i.e. me) try and email stuff out.
Desperate for fluid, you drink the first thing you can find. It happens to be a so-called “health potion.” It tastes like rancid apples and cough syrup distilled through a fine mesh of depression. You race from the press room, into an open women’s restroom, and spew red viscous liquid onto the mirror and into the sink. That is how you end your first day.
Day Two: Depression
Filled with panels and screenings, the second day at Comic Con gives the impression
of being uplifting. Sure, Pixar will screen the first 50 minutes of Up, their wonderful new film about a cartoon version of Ed Asner partnered up with an inhuman ball of squishable fat that happens to be a boy scout. And you know what? It’ll be really good.
But then you’ll wander the halls again, making the mistake of wearing the hoodie you wore the previous night, while getting blasted on gin and Brooklyn Lager in a desperate attempt to get the taste of a “health potion” out of your mouth. Children dressed as the Hulk and Spider-Man will stare at you in fear. There is no way out of the throngs of girls layered up in spandex and wigs as lecherous men with cameras gather around to demand photos. Slave Leias wander the floor in carefully guarded packs, guarding their slips of fabric from wandering hands and prodding lightsabers.
It’s the second day and it feels like hell. It also happens to be the day when Marvel and DC have their panels to hype upcoming special events and series information, stuff they had done months before at San Diego. The only engaging part of these panels is the brazen display of the fanboys, each one bolder than any reporter in their daring to ask “Why did you do that?” and use the term “retarded” liberally. In a way, it’s kind of spectacular.
A friend of mine covering a panel for the Friday the 13th remake watched as a nasally Neckbeard stood up and queried the need for a 13th 13th film. The given answer: “Because people demand it.”
Cue the entire room’s applause, whoops, hollers, etc.
Back on the main floor, it’s shocking to see someone like Bill Plympton hanging around his booth unrecognized. Having interviewed him at the second Con, I wanted to follow up on an observation he made about there being fewer independent artists and animators at the New York Con than in San Diego, where the artist alleys are filled with those clamoring to get their work seen.
“There still aren’t that many here,” he said. “But man—look at all these video games. The San Diego one is about films and comics. This one seems to be nothing but video games. That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?”
Back at the panels, people lined up to see the creators of The Venture Brothers. The lines were so long they took up the entire meeting hall, causing pushing, shoving and a kid with arm braces almost being thrown to the floor, all so we could hear the art fuck who made a Johnny Quest parody mock the crowd. Classy as hell.
Day Three: (Nerd) Hangover
My eyes are bleary and the trek to the Javits Center takes an hour or more, depending on public transportation; I begin to wonder why I keep coming back here. Nothing changes on the main floor except for it being “Kids’ Day,” where kids under the age of 12 get in free with a parent.
Hundreds of tiny hands wave $7 glowing knock-off lightsabers in the air. The prospect of a glowing plastic tube rammed up my ass sends me back down to the panels, but I found not much of interest: an obscure comic art magazine announced it would go out of business with the next issue and Bryan Lee O’Malley, of Scott Pilgrim fame, held legions of lanky kids in striped long-sleeve shirts and black glasses spellbound with the story of how he created their geeky bible.
And then, that was it. There was nothing left to be seen at Comic Con. Lines poured out into 10th Avenue; waiting cab drivers hawked rides to video game characters and Lolicon girls. Another New York Comic Con was at an end and I had no idea what happened. Was it fun? Was it lame? Why was I so sore carrying out my laptop, camera, and promotional material? Why didn’t I buy anything? I was only sure that I could not be sure until next year, when I would surely be back again.
