You can read Part One, Lines, Security and the Press Pass here.
Part two of my review of the first NY Comic Con focuses on the people that I got to meet as well as what really happens in the Exhibition Hall! Also I want to take this time to point out this really cool airbrushed car that they had in the entrance. It had like every cartoon that I have seen and a bunch that I had never seen before in my life. I will give you a taste though of a well known section of the car.
This work is done by Robert Luczun from Clifton, N.J. and one of my friends that attended the con with us is thinking about getting Robert to do his hockey goalie helmet.
I wont even talk about my first 40 minutes in the Hall as really I just randomly made my way to the back of the hall and awaited Clare’s phone call so we could all meet up for the Naomi Novik discussion. The Hall was jam packed, but our green jackets stood out and Clare did end up finding us, and off we went. I won’t talk too much about the discussion as Clare has a great article that tells you all you want to know. I would suggest every writer looking to understand the business a little better take a look. I will say it took us forever to find the room and that is was like an oven in there. The discussion was great though and even though I do not plan on writing a novel I learned alot about the workings of publishing and the genre in general. I also got an opportunity to meet Naomi to at least introduce myself and say thank you for the contest we had with her book.
After the discussion we decided to make our way back to the exhibition hall and on our way we ran into a bunch of different costumed people including the very patriotic Captain America.
I did notice is that most of the people that dress up really do not tend to go to the discussions or the exhibition hall, but rather just hang out by the food in the middle of the Javits Center. I guess it is a good way to show off though and I can only speak from my experience of what I saw and could be way off in that assumption. There were many more people dressed up and you can look at Clare’s Blog or you can see blurry pictures at Greenjackets which is our gallery where we post up pictures of all the conventions we have been to.
With glee we take our second foray into the Hall but not until after our long line experience do we get back in. This was after the Naomi Novik Panel and it seems that more and more people had arrived at the convention. We actually meet a few nice people on line including a family from what only sounded like the Bronx, a mother and son who kept checking the length of the line for us, and Bryan Deemer from Speaker of Geek.
Lets delve into the exhibit hall and and talk about a bunch of booths that we visited. This was interesting and reminded me of some of the fantasy costumes that I see at the rare Ren Faire that I have attended. These are creations of Jim Cox over at Timeless Trends
This was an interesting picture because of what actually transpired before actually finding the Timeless Trends Model. I walk into the booth, and two women who look like that they are working for the company and have corsets on, are pretty much hanging out in the booth. I ask one women if I can get a picture thinking she works for the company and she wants to charge me money, because she never gives away her image for free(trust me there is no one that would want to take it). At that point I found the owner of the company and then he pointed me in the direction of the model that you see above.
I do want to make one note here before I continue on, I am not going to plug the few people that were either rude or pushy when I was in their booth. I am also not going to plug the people that made promises in email to us before the show and then when we showed up blew us off. What I am going to do though is give plugs to all the great people that were real nice and helped us out as well.
Let’s start with the artists that did illustration only and did not have any comic books or graphic novels that we met and their work. Michael Renzine was there and had some nice stuff. Josh Z Carter who was real cool and even gave our Logo some props. He works on Fantasy Illustration in the digital medium. We also saw Steve Scott Art who had some of his work there
Christian N. St. Pierre was also there to promote the Grafenveer Comic, which was available from Open Book Press and it also looked good.
There are a few other companies that I would like to thank for talking to me. I do not want to name the specific people per say as I sure know they do not need to get a bunch of spam. DK Publishing, DC Comics, Del Rey, Harper Collins Publishers to round out the bunch.
Here is another very cool comic that I met the writer and liked, Katharsis by Americanime Productions Michael J Westerman.
We also met Jennifer Janesko who is a Pinup artist and who is also introducing her Series win label, “Sweet Harvest”
Another really cool dude at the show was Rick Dakan from Bluekingstudios, his book looks really cool. I look forward to reading the book and also maybe sneaking an interview in at some point with Rick.
Here is where I sneak in the guys/gals that gave us free review copies of their work for review. Not to worry we are planning on reviewing everything that was given to us. Without further ado we have Silent Devil, Jerry Bonner from Proletariat Comics, Markosia as well.
The people over at Black Industries Publishing are annoucing a new imprint that will produce original science fiction and fantasy called Solaris. So I am hoping we can score some good review copies from them and give them a shot.
The people of Dominion Publishing Enterprises had some great stuff to show as well and I look forward to working with them. I meet one of the publisists for Archaia Studios Press who was a very cool dude and I look forward to seeing a copy of Artesia from them.
Two more to go folks don’t give up on reading yet! These are some real good ones as well. Let us mention Carte Postale, Silent Leaves The Last Bondman, by StudioRonin, this just looks like a winner in my book. Then what I can say was one of my favorite booths of the day, we met Sam Wells over at Devil’s Due Publishing, then do a lot of GI Joe, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms Comics and they were a big hit with me.
Another company there was Tor, not with a booth per say, but with a bunch of their people around the Con. They are just entering the graphic novel market and you will see some reviews from us on these soon, but I can say they look good. I finally got to meet the publicist that I work with over at Tor. Her name is Dot and I want to say it was a pleasure to finally met her, she has been a great resource for us. Tor was also one of the first companies that helped out Fantasybookspot when we first started so a big shout out to them.
Last person I want to mention is Stephanie a freelance columnist from Silver Bullet Comics who was one cute freelancer.
Here is another interesting item to see at a comic show which I liked Mimobots, I hope I can get away with calling them cute and not having to turn in my man card.
Now I know this is a comic convention but the next picture is actually one of my favorites of the day. I guess it must be a guy thing.
Yes folks that right, Aria Giovanni, now if you are under 21 I wouldn’t go and try to Google her. I do have to say she is stunning in person, there is just no way to describe her other then stunning. I also met Justine Joli (another under 21 don’t Google) who was bubbly and even talked about her hobbies which include watching cartoons, anime, Sci Fi, and being a huge computer geek. She is a Mac person and she had her ibook with her if I remember correctly, I was a tad focused on how pretty she was as well.
Well that is all for part two of my first NY Comic Con and it was great. I look forward to next year Comic Con and now I pretty much look forward to all of our conventions that are coming up. There is just something to be said when you mix books, comic books, actresses of all varieties, and costumed super heroes.
