[See the first day of NYCC here, and the second day here! A gallery of the experience can be found here.]

The third and final day of NYCC was set to be a final day of shopping, observing, and finally, a long-awaited performance by MC Chris at the Variant Stage, located at the rear of the Javits main floor. I’ve been an MC Chris fan since my college days, and his song ‘Fett’s Vette’ was something of a Dorm Room National Anthem for my roommate and I. Who wouldn’t love a well-paced rap about the perils of being Boba Fett?

It wasn’t long before I ran into a couple of booths selling Re-Ment miniatures, which are like the filet mignon of miniature, dollhouse-sized items. Re-Ment has produced countless sets of minis, with themes ranging from entertainment to food, to domestic items and gardens, and even into things as specific as ‘meals that you can get and certain Japanese train stations’ or ‘desserts of prefectures’. The specificity gets pretty intense. What makes these sets even more awesome is that each mystery box doesn’t contain just one item, but about a dozen tiny items relating to a theme. Spread out over a set of 10 different boxes, it usually adds up to about 100 unique miniatures, all created in an unusual theme. A ‘Fun Meals’ waffle set will include an articulated waffle iron, a waffle that will fit into the iron, two kinds of berries (and their containers), syrup, a stack of decorated waffles, and a plate. All this for $5.

I was enamored with the idea of taking photographs using these detailed miniatures, so I bought way more than I should have. Would my Aquaman action figure sit down at a perfectly-sized sushi meal? We’d find out soon! Dollhouse enthusiasts, look up Re-Ment! Thanks to Hammen Home for being an awesome booth, too - they had a swell selection of goods.

I also found my way around to the DC Direct and Hasbro booths, who both had a few new figures on display. Most notably, DC Direct had a second set of New Gods figures on display - a series that I’ve been excited about since their debut at Toy Fair. As a Jack Kirby fan, I’m all about the New Gods and any sculptural items that try to capture his kinetic art style. This second series will include a Kirby-styled Superman, Kalibak, Metron, and an exceptional Big Barda (pictured at left) - a figure that just needed to be made. We’ve been seriously shorted on Bardas for years now.

DC Direct also debuted their figures from the upcoming Watchmen movie, which seem pretty okay. Of course, it’s hard to get excited when we’ve been waiting for comic-accurate Watchmen figures for a decade or so. Comic-accurate and movie-accurate are two completely separate things to toy collectors - it’s not enough to have the ‘movie’ Spider-Man, with the raised silver webbing details on the costume. No, we need a Spidey with flat, black webbing, a skinny spider logo on the front, and a fat spider logo on the back. I can only assume that Spider-Man’s back-logo is an engorged tick. Gross, Spidey.

We also got to see DC Direct’s 13” Black Canary for the first time, as well as a 13” Sinestro. Unfortunately, the Sinestro has been dressed in his ‘modern’ outfit, and not the ridiculous purple-frilled-collar outfit of yore. No costume variants have been announced, but I’d still like to see a classic version. After the recent release of DC’s 13” Green Arrow, reports of breakage have been almost universal, so while the 13” line seems steady for now, such a high-end line (at $70 per figure) runs the risk of collector disinterest if quality control isn’t improved.

Hasbro had a mess of Marvel Legends figures on display. Given their lack of comic-specific Marvel stuff at Toy Fair, the sudden inundation of Marvel Legends stuff was a bit overwhelming. On display was a Target Exclusive wave of Legends, which will include Spiral, Black Spider-Man, Red Hulk, Silver Savage, the notable Adam Warlock and more. A few new 2-packs were on display, including some much-desired army builders, consisting of classic Nick Fury & a SHIELD Agent, as well as a 2-pack of Hand Ninjas. Give the recent Elektra battle in New Avengers, in which thousands of Hand Ninjas populated every panel, I think that these will be bought up quickly and in vast amounts. Completists, note that an exclusive Sunfire figure is available only from HasbroToyShop.com.

Odd additions to the Iron Man and Hulk movie lines include an Iron Man in Captain America colors, which references some promotional art from the comics’ Civil War storyline, and a Bi-Beast Hulk figure - a creature that will not appear in the Hulk movie, but the video game.

We also stopped by the controversial Shocker Toys booth and saw their new sculpt of The Tick, which actually looks pretty great. I’m eagerly anticipating seeing their first line of Indie Spotlight figures, which should be appearing any day now. Really. Any day. (I love you guys!) Other figures from Wave 2 will include Dick Tracy and Ignacia (from the comic WildGuard).

Shawn Smith’s ‘Shawnimals’ art-toy booth played with the idea of customizable toys and was selling a blank plush form, appropriately called ‘Plushform’, which was stuffed and could be decorated with any number of materials. A variety of artists had contributed designs to Shawn’s display, and it inspired me to pick up one to make for myself. I’ve been back into customizing toys lately, after Mimoco generously donated a case of blank Vimobots to my art class so that I could share the joys of toys with my students.

At this point, we were all pretty shopped out and my ATM card was had decided to forbid me from spending anymore, so we retreated to the folding chairs by the aforementioned Variant Stage and waited for MC Chris to appear. We happened to sit down in the middle of a demonstration by the NY Jedi Academy, who were stage-fighting with plastic lightsabers, dressed in full pseudo-Jedi regalia. You’d think that as a Star Wars nerd, I’d be kinda excited to see such a full-on Jedi experience, but you’d be very wrong. I appreciate the desire to live within a fantasy world, because heck, even in the most desolate, scary fantasy world, gas is probably cheaper, but the NY Jedi Society didn’t do it for me. I can even appreciate stage fighting - I dated a beautiful, toned stage-fighter and learned plenty about the artistry of it. Glowy, plastic swords slapping together didn’t equate to the visceral fantasy glory of clashing metal.

Each ‘Jedi’ had assumed a persona that spanned many fantasy worlds, and the ‘main Jedi’ guy was dressed as a Predator. There were Dr. Who Jedi, a Green Lantern Jedi, and even a Star Trek Jedi. Pick a team, guys. Everyone knows that as a Green Lantern Jedi, you’d have to answer to both the Jedi Council and the Guardians of Oa, and there just isn’t enough time in the day! Jeez. When the stage was opened to Q&A, most of the questions were to the tune of ‘Why didn’t you pick REAL Jedi, you dorks?’. The Jedis weren’t to thrilled and some responded with suitable petulance. It was like being at a Renaissance Festival and seeing that the Elven Barmaid has a tattoo that said ‘Thug Life’ across her knuckles. Things just didn’t fit.

We stayed seated because the schedule of events promised an appearance by Fat Momma and Major Victory from ‘Who Wants to be a Superhero?’, but the schedule of events was a liar. Fat Momma made an awkward appearance on stage, spouted a Miss South Carolina-styled speech on self-confidence which vacillated strangely between ‘not telling adults when you’re bullied’ to ‘eat healthy but being overweight is okay too’ - all while wearing doughnuts on her belt. I couldn’t make sense of it, and before long, a line of little kids was on stage, reciting the Fat Momma Song into the mic, until the whole presentation kinda trailed off into a pit of awkwardness from which no one will ever recover. Major Victory, my personal hero, never appeared. He could have saved the day.

MC Chris finally took the stage, hilarious and charismatic, even though sound and mic troubles that never seemed to get fixed. After two songs (one of them entirely about Reese’s Pieces), he sat down with a moderator for a few minutes and continued to riff on our nerd culture, finally ending out the show with Fett’s Vette, all while two Slave Leias performed an impromptu dance with each other at the edge of the stage (which even prompted MC Chris distractedly to stop in the middle of the song and declare, “that’s ridiculous!”) Indeed, it’s hard not to notice when the entire audience is no longer looking in your direction, but toward something just offstage. The show was worth the hours-long wait, even if some socially inept nerds decided to stand up right in front of me as the final song started.

Overall, NYCC was pretty awesome, and still an improvement over previous years in scope and organization. I would have liked to attend more panels, but waiting on lines and finding out that they weren’t lines at all delayed attendance at too many events, and could have been avoided by an informed crowd control staff or some velvet ropes between things. It’s a Con that’s finding its feet, but I came away inspired by meeting and listening to the people I admire. I’ve been drawing and painting feverishly all week, I bought some neat stuff, I got the heck outta the house, and I added to my bank of neat experiences without getting too violently annoyed. Really, what more can I ask for from any weekend?

Looking forward to next year.

The rights surrounding digital property are a hotly contested, widely debated subject that’s recently infiltrated all of our lives, even if we wouldn’t even touch a computer for fear that the demons running on the little wheels inside might be released. You should be so lucky to work at the desk in a library - that’s one of the more realistic things you’ll hear during the course of a day.

We’re enduring writers’-strike-compelled reruns on the television because of digital property rights, the RIAA monopoly is pretty much punching people in the groin across the world should they suspect them of even the most remote form of music piracy. What does a rabid, excited music collector like me DO about all of this?

I can’t say that fear has gotten the better of me, but I actually abstain from almost all questionable music downloads. As a completist, I find it much more advantageous to legally download an entire album at consistent quality from a single source. That way, you don’t have to deal with possible viruses, fluctuating bitrates, frustratingly cut-off songs and odd blips. When I listen to an album, I want the full aural experience as intended by the artist, even if I don’t have the cover art at hand to read along with. I have, however, developed a three-pronged approach to legally enhance my digital music collection to its fullest potential.- not counting ripping my own CDs and music borrowed from friends. Many recording artists actually advocate this approach - Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and geekcore rapper MC Chris among them - to combat corruptions within the stagnant recording industry and negligible financial returns to the artists themselves.

First, I’ve joined LaLa.com. LaLa is an internet database of sorts in which users catalogue the entirety of their physical music collections on CD, as well as which albums they’d like to have in their collection. The database then anonymously pairs up these people, orchestrates a trade, provides the envelopes and outgoing shipping for the CD in question, and then arranges for a return trade to be made, though not usually from the same user. Within their trading system, everyone gets a fair return, and you receive just as many CDs as you send out - and all you pay is a dollar or so per trade for incoming shipping costs.

Their rules explicitly sending anything but a genuinely produced CD, and also forbid ‘rip and ship’ - making a copy of a CD and then immediately sending it out again in order to obtain a new CD… but it’s certainly a legal venue to test out new music, and the ‘digital property’ laws are not explicit enough to define what you can do with your own property, even if you end up deciding not to keep it. I know that I have boxes of CDs that I bought on a whim and have only found displeasure with, and this is a perfect way to get rid of ‘em and replace them with stuff I actually want, with minimal effort. Also, not being embarrassed while you’re trading in your Celine Dion CDs to the cute chick behind the counter at your local Rhino Records in a bonus.

Of course, there’s also straightforward downloading, which is an amazing, beautiful thing if you’re on a cable modem. If you’re on ol’ 56k dial-up, it’s more like a personal hell. I subscribe to eMusic.com, which is a great service, and has a Mac compatible downloading program that organizes your music into folders for you. They specialize in lots of smaller label, indie stuff, but lack in a lot of major label releases and older albums. That’s okay, ‘cause I’m more of an indie guy - but every so often, I get a hankering to catch up on some musical relic I’d missed up until now and am left sorely disappointed.

Of course, getting 100 songs a month for 20 bucks is a pretty solid deal - twenty cents a for a legally-downloaded song that you can re-download at any point in the future is a great deal. The entire Magic Marker Records catalogue is on there, as well as some live performances by Tom Maxwell, Travis Morrison and Elysian Fields that can’t be found anywhere else (even if they lack these artists’ full length albums). Their download speeds are also super-fast and consistent.

This past weekend, I was searching for a copy of ‘Old and In the Way’ for my mother, but every search I made came up with that dreaded ‘out of print’ status. Even used copies of the CD were roughly 60 bucks, so unwilling to pay the steep price, I perused LaLa and eMusic, and even the dreaded, restrictive iTunes, all to no avail. Finally, I found the complete album, legally downloadable, from MP3Fiesta.com.

Songs from MP3Fiesta cost roughly ten cents each, with a minimum purchase of 20 bucks’ worth. While these songs are not downloadable forever, they’re made available to your account for a period of 48 hours, during which you must download them one by one to your computer. It lacks the smooth interface of eMusic, but the price is half that of eMusic, and the catalogue is more extensive and familiar. I’ve found a majority of positive reviews of the site, though my experience with it is limited - it delivered exactly what I needed when I needed it, when no one else could. I think that qualifies as a success, and it fills in the last possible aspects of my musical desires.

I’m not, however, a fan of iTunes. While their revenue sharing and promotion are potentially more beneficial to the artists in question, I’m not fond of the idea of paying a dollar for a song that I don’t have unlimited access to. Yes, if you have a song that you bought from iTunes, you can only use it on a few of your personal devices - and you need to enter a password any time you choose to transfer it. It just seems overly complicated to need to organize my music collection by how many RIGHTS I have to listen to the music itself. I love you, Apple, but that’s just bad technology.

All this music and it doesn’t take up any physical space. And who has space when you can’t even find room for a dozen Iron Man busts amid your clutter?

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