Weird Science at New York Comic Con 2015: A Jerk's-Eye View

Greetings from the floor of New York Comic Con 2015!

I'm not too sure about Ant-Man 3: Rise of the Centipedes

Whoa! Wrong New York Comic Con! I'm talking about the one held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City every year, the one that gets even hermetic old cranks like myself to step out of our hoarders' hovels and into the piercing sunlight to see Japenese girls dressed in Pokemon pajamas. Look, I like comic books, I dislike crowds, and boy do I hate to see people being happy and enjoying themselves. So here's my shitty, half-assed take of what it was like to spend a few hours on Saturday at New York Comic Con as a complete and utter asshole.

Half of these people mistakenly thought this was an Amway orientation

The first place I made a bee-line for once I pushed my way into the convention center was Artist's Alley, an airplane hangar-sized room filled with rows and rows of artists trying to sell you shit. This is actually the best place for a curmudgeon to go since it's less crowded and noisy than the main floor, and it's your best bet to casually see creators you admire, as well as work from creators you've never heard of. I got to chit-chat with Peter Tomasi and Matthew Clark, look through some funny art from Ryan Dunnleavy, and walk around relatively unobstructed by other people's cardboard scabbards and rubber demon's tails. I took some crummy pictures.

Peter J. Tomasi, grading someone's homework

There were also these cool fire helmets on display that had been decorated to be reminiscent of superheroes and stuff. I would have taken more pictures but there was this gang of Dr. Whos standing around one end of the display and I didn't feel like waiting around for them to take off on their witch brooms or whatever the hell it is.

I think helmet laws have gone too far now

The black widow spider: nature's fire fighter

Eventually I made my way to the floor, and I must say it wasn't as brutal as I expected. It was still a swirling, hellish morass of sweaty Dragonball Z characters and powdered cleavage, but the intolerable hellscape didn't seem unending. I was pleased to see the comics retailers still take center stage...if you take the right set of escalators...and nudge the center a few hundred feet northward to accommodate a massive Midtown Comics booth...okay so it looked like a flea market happening at a tech convention. But it was still nice to see though there didn't seem to be a ton of commerce happening.

Contains less than 10% pornographic content by volume

I shuffled around for a while until my back started hurting, which was about ten minutes. I decided before I got out of there I'd see if I could find the DC Comics booth, sit Dan Didio down, and break it to him gently that no one cared about the events in Convergence. Trouble is, I couldn't find the DC booth! I found the Marvel booth, which was more an open space with a Marvel logo above it and some cartoons playing on a big billboard of the new Iron Man comic.

And there, but for the grace of a hundred Deadpools, go I

I saw the Dark Horse booth...

This picture was taken around noon, making this the EARLY CROWD

Maybe these guys know where the DC booth is?

I'm certainly not going to ask them for any spelling tips

Hello? Anyone see a DC Comics booth around here anywhere?

Comic Con booth or retail outlet? You be the judge!

I walked around for a while, and found myself near the Dark Horse booth again--wait, what's that in the lower-left corner of the picture? That's Batman! Have I found the DC booth after all?

Or have I found myself nose-to-armpit with another guy in a Groot costume?

...Nope, it's just a display for Diamond Select Distributors, the fine folks who bring our weekly print comics to our local comic shops, except when they don't.

Legs sold separately

I guess DC didn't have a booth at New York Comic Con this year, which I sort of figured since they didn't have one last year. To be honest, the way the convention is laid out and so packed with people looking to buy crap, a DC booth doesn't make a ton of sense anyway. There are plenty of retailers selling new and old DC product, and the Marvel booth was essentially a winding line of people waiting to get their stuff signed by Dan Slott. By this time, I'd had my fill of low-budget Hawkeye costumes and a pervasive smell of movie theater popcorn, so I made my leave of New York Comic Con 2015. So long, weirdos! Maybe I'll see you next year, if I forget what a miserable retch I am!

The new subway station nearby is very Silver Age