To say that the New York Comic Con 2006 was an unmitigated disaster would be an understatement. It would be like comparing a papercut to the fine, incisive mark of the guillotine. The memory made coming to NYCC 2007 a much dreaded, though still impossibly alluring, experience. I’m pleased to report an enormous increase in Con quality over last year.

The lines around Javits

While Friday’s opening ceremonies saw a handful of industry-only events, award ceremonies and a short speech by the amazing Stephen Colbert (who is also an alarmingly intense Lord of the Rings fan), I eschewed these things for participation in the heart of the Convention, occurring on Saturday and Sunday. And by ‘heart’, I mean ‘seventeen miles of entrails, wrapping obscenely around the entirety of the Javits building’. Yes, Saturday morning’s line was absurdly long, traversing the front of the building, around the side in February’s harsh winds off of the Hudson, and snaking back around into a lower level. Unbelievably, the line moved with relative ease and we were inside before too long, making nerdy friends along the way.

NYCC was divided up into a few distinct areas. We had the indie presses and artists around the backs and right-hand side of the main hall, enormous company kiosks and displays (including people playing Guitar Hero in the back of a tricked out car) dominating the front and central areas, and vendors spotted throughout the center and left-hand side. Upstairs was the narrow ‘Artists Alley’, where more mainstream artists were relegated to signing, and beyond them, a large room opened up into a tabletop gaming area. Around the edges of this were seated the cream of B-list celebrities, including the omnipresent Peter Mayhew (aka Chewbacca, who will be at every convention until the end of time itself), Gary Coleman (who became irate when someone took TWO photos of him instead of one), Hayden Panettiere, and the cast of Buffy.

My main objective for attending NYCC was to get Jeff Smith to sign my Bizarro Comics hardcover, so let me get this little negativity out of the way before I get into how fun the convention was as a whole. See, Jeff Smith’s booth was only a short segment of the aisle, and in the singular hour that he was signing, the line would constantly extend past the end of said booth. An angry man in a green shirt, clearly paid well to be angry and green, would yell at anyone who stood beyond the invisible point that marked the end of Jeff Smith’s signing space. In addition to that, the fine folks who owned the next booth over, Markosia Comics, we doing a great job at hurling epithets and insults about how we were ruining their business by forming a line in front of their booth. NYCC organizers, I urge you to perhaps allocate a smarter arrangement of space when you have a name as big as Jeff Smith signing comics. I gave up after the frustrating demoralization from both booths, but not before I was guilted into buying a comic from the people whose lives I was apparently ruining by standing there. I missed Jeff Smith’s autograph because of this instance of poor planning and my personal unwillingness to have someone yelling in my ear for an hour, and I may never get a chance to meet him again. I reiterate that the rest of the convention proved to be unexpectedly rewarding, but this was a dark spot on the rest of the day.

As a collector of original comic art and signatures, I much prefer interacting with the artist in question over later purchasing something that they had anonymously put their name on. The monetary value of the signature is the same, but the richness of the experience is incomparable.

Tim Biskup

The highlights, and unreproducible experiences, are always these people. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Evan Dorkin, Bill Sienkiewicz, Michael Whelan and a handful of other creators that have inspired me greatly over the years. This year, I happened to meet Sket One, the completely amazing Tim Biskup, Bill Plympton (who is a down-to-Earth guy and easy to talk to, and did a sketch for me), and the highlight of the Convention, and perhaps my life, Major Victory.

L to R : Feedback, Major Victory & Fat Momma

See, I’m a colossal Major Victory fan, even more so than being a fan of ‘Who Wants To Be A Superhero?’ He’s a real person who had presented this positive life-model that I found inspiring. While I was hanging out with some friends on Sunday morning before the con officially opened, Fat Momma brushed past me to get to the end of a line. Lo and behold, Feedback and Major Victory were right behind her. I was quickly reduced to a squealing girl, said something like ‘Oh sweet Jesus I’m your biggest fan!’, and Major Victory gave me a noncommittal ‘thanks’ and moved on. But it was enough. I’d met my personal hero through some amazing twist of fate… and I acted like a schoolgirl before I knew what hit me. I’d immortalized this guy in wooden robot form - what greater honor is there? I also took photos of him while he wasn’t looking.

And can there ever be such indignity as that which someone suffers upon meeting one’s idols and kinda wets oneself a little? I submit that there cannot be. But I don’t think I would have changed anything.

As far as ‘the people’ at the convention were concerned, the morning-until-noon stretch saw relative calm and mobility on the main floor. As the afternoons crept in, we were kinda forced into body-to-body shuffle-mode. I remarked to one booth-bound woman that I’d been inadvertently touched at the Con by more people in more places than during the entirety of my sexual maturity. I think that might have creeped her out a little, but it’s not like I was saying ‘How about one more, baby? I found a place that no one got to yet!’

Collectors’ Quest is offering a free DVD of NYCC highlights right here for the next few days, so get in on that! Stay tuned for more con reactions, a ton of new toy photos, and a five thousand word essay on how awesome it is that next year’s NYCC will be in April and I won’t have to carry my damned coat around.