NY Comic Con 2013 Review

This weekend was the biggest yearly convention of geeks, nerds, and other awesome people in the Northeast: New York Comic Con. And for the third year running I had a chance to attend. I met new people, hung out with old friends, acquired new books and generally added tons of authors to my to-read list. It was a lot of fun and if you’ve never been I highly recommend going for at least one of the four days it’s open next year.

Day One – Thursday

Thursdays are always short, so after checking out the floor and figuring out where all the publishing booths were, I went to a panel on crowdfunding. There was a lot of good information presented and one of the speakers ended up being Tyler Mane who played Sabretooth in the movie X-Men. He was rather tall. o.0

After I pulled my brothers away from the video games, we headed home to rest up. Tomorrow would be an early day.

Day Two – Friday

The first panel on Friday was the Epic Fantasy panel. I actually headed directly to the line when the con opened as I didn’t want to miss it, which is what almost happened last year. It was nice to see that this year the lines were setup so you could actually walk around them instead of the panel hall being a giant maze, though I did notice that almost 100% of the author/fantasy track was regulated to the very, very back room.

It was great to hear such amazing authors talk about the thing they love and give insight to their worlds and how they view fantasy in general. And the icing on the cake was getting to talk to the authors and get their autographs afterwards. At the panel signing I met up with some Twitter friends and we got lunch then headed to Peter Brett’s signing.

After saying hi to everyone and meeting even more people on the floor, we headed downstairs to the Urban Fantasy panel.

This one was really interesting. They talked a lot about what made urban fantasy a unique and a very broad genre all at the same time, the differences in heroes, monsters, and villains in a modern setting, even how cities themselves can be characters in the stories. Also got to briefly say hello to Benedict Jacka, so that’s one of about a billion of you UK folks that I’ve had a chance to meet in person.

After the signing for the panel, I met up with my cousin, got some shopping done, and hung out watching the cosplayers mill about. There were some awesome costumes this year, though most of the pics that came out well were from Sunday.

Day Three – Saturday

Saturday began with Geek Geek Revolution, a trivia game where a panel of authors was pitted against the geekiest questions the mod and audience could come up with. Competition was fierce! I think that was mostly because in the end the person with the least points had to wear the mask of shame (a Jar Jar Binks head). The winner took away an awesome Millennium Falcon bottle opener.

You can see more pics from this panel (and the rest of the con) on my Flickr page. 🙂 After the panel my husband and I get a chance to have lunch with Django Wexler and M. L. Brennan. It turns out both of them went to college with my husband. Small world!

The last panel of the day had, I think, the best title: Monsters, Zombies…and Everything Else That’s Out to Eat You Alive. Hearing about all the creepy things that go bump in the night from such an awesome group of authors was fascinating. I loved how they each solved the problems of monster tropes differently and it gave me a lot to think about with my own writing.

I wanted to hit one more panel that day, but my babysitter called in an S.O.S. so we had to leave a bit earlier than expected. I did get a chance to meet Sam Sykes before I left, but was too excited to remember to get a picture with him. 😛 Next time.

Day Four – Sunday

Sunday was family day and it was great seeing all the little kids in costumes out with their parents. Watching future geeks get their first tastes of geekdom was a lot of fun. 🙂

I got to the con a bit late on Sunday, but I was able to make it in to the YA panel on young heroes.

I haven’t read a lot of YA lately, but growing up I read a ton. Listening to the authors discuss why they love writing YA and how their favorite YA heroes influenced them made me want to break out some of my old favorites. And once again I came away with a much longer reading list than I went in with.

When the panel signing was done I said goodbye to everyone and took one more trek around the show floor taking pictures, before heading out for the weekend. Overall it was a great weekend. I was pleased with the panels available and it was great to catch up with everyone. I can’t wait to go back again next year! 🙂

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