NYCC 2013: The Heart of New York Comic Con Is In Artist Alley!
This was my first New York Comic Con so I didn’t really know what to expect. I’m a veteran a of San Diego Comic Con, the various Wizard World’s, WonderCon and now Comikaze and each convention has its own personality; a unique combination of its location, attendees and exhibitors. And upon arriving on Thursday at the Javits Center and walking the floor for a few hours, New York Comic Con’s was a bit hard to pinpoint.
All of the regular exhibitors were there, including Lion Forge, the company I’m the writing Miami Vice comic book for, who brought be out to promote the book (coming this November!). And of course there were plenty of cosplayers (like my dog Chappy, who stopped crowds in his Chewbacca costume) and fans! But the personality of NYCC remained elusive, like a tough uncle to the west coast’s Wonder Cons or a compact version of San Diego Comic Con. Early on, I really found myself wondering ‘what’s the difference?’
Then I discovered Artist Alley, an almost separate convention in a distant section of the Javits Center. It took some searching (go outside of the main hall, take a right down a long hallway past the panel rooms and into a completely separate building) but I found it… and now I knew what people meant when they called this “the real con”. Major artists like Humberto Ramos, Jim Cheung and Jerome Opeña were doing commissions and selling prints alongside more indie artists like Freddie E Williams II and Ben Templesmith. And those well known indie artists were signing alongside lesser known artists like Matthew J. Fletcher and Christopher Uminga. The spirit of both excitement and potential collaboration was in the air, something that many folks claim has been missing for years at San Diego Comic Con.
I spent a lot of time there, walking the rows, discovering new artists and just letting the energy surround me. I talked at length with my friend Dave Parkin, who was selling his modern western The Devil is Due in Dreary and introduced myself to Jim Mahfood, a friend of the Lion Forge guys who is working on a project I can’t wait to talk about here on Geekscape. Super Action Man artist Ace Continuado had a booth and was showing his work to potential employers from the big two! There was Chrissie Zullo, who made incredible Miyazaki pieces (I obviously asked for a Ni No Kuni one) and Brad Abraham, whose comic series Mix Tape is a love letter to a specific era of music, with each issue being centered around a different song from late 80s/early 90s!
The commissions were all pretty reasonable and all of the artists were unique and talented. Unlike any other con I’d attended, NYCC’s artist alley was what going to a con was all about, a convention experience that true to its roots as an art form almost completely uninterrupted by any mass media co-opting. As I sat on the plane back to Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but bring some of that contagious excitement back with me, a head filled with new and dynamic images and a notebook filled with contact information and drawings from some of the most talented artists around. Forget the people who tell you that New York Comic Con is just an east coast version of the west coast cons. NYCC’s Artist Alley makes it a true experience separate from the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and worth the trip alone!
