New York Comic Con 2010 Day 2

This is my third year living in New York and I still managed to ride the subway in the wrong direction for three stops before I noticed my mistake. Thank goodness for the unlimited ride Metro card.

But I righted myself and was outside Penn Station at 10am, just in time to meet Superdog. Superdog's human and I were both late to meet people outside the Javits Center and the crosstown bus was no where in sight. "You want to share a cab?" she asked me (the human, not the dog). I said, "You know, I've lived in New York for two years and I've never shared a cab before? Let's do it!" So I cabbed to Comic Con with Superdog.

Saturday is a terrible day to be at the con. There were 80,000 people attending and the exhibition floor was so crowded that I nearly panicked like on the day of the Mermaid Parade, except here there was no parade barrier I could jump to get out of the seething mob. I just had to keep my cool long enough to get back to Artists Alley, where I got a hand-drawn and signed Batman Kitty from indie comic artist Katie Cook. I popped into the MTV Geek panel long enough to see Stan Lee speak, cuz dude is ancient and each con could be his last. Then I saw some stand-up at the Geek Comedy Tour stage and got one of my Authority paperbacks signed by its writer, Andy Lanning while my friend Reg attended the Voiceover in Animation panel.
While waiting for the Vertigo panel to start, we got sucked into conversation with a cultural stereotype: fat pasty guy who wouldn't shut up about a comic book character he'd created. People like him drag the rest of us down.

And people like Catwoman here lift us up. I hung out with this woman the day that I was an extra on the set of "Bored to Death," and recognized her instantly because of the quality of her costume. She made it herself from the same material and design as Julie Newmar's Catwoman costume in the 1960s Batman show.

The Vertigo panel was kind of boring. Shame--that's the imprint I read most often. I've noticed that the panels with the longest lines aren't necessarily the most entertaining, especially if they're the big name companies putting all of their big-gun artists and writers on stage together. These people rarely see each other, so watching them is like being at a very awkward cocktail party.

No, for me, the best panels are the small niche ones, like Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep? because the panelists all know each other and they aren't trying to sell you anything. The Comics Alliance panel was awesome, too, good rapport amongst the panelists, AND they gave out DC-themed Hostess snack cakes to audience members who asked questions. The Flash cakes were okay, basically just a cupcake with red icing, but the Green Lantern Glo-Balls were VILE. First of all, I don't want to eat Green Lantern's balls; and second, the layer of green coconut marshmallow icing smothering the whole thing tastes and feels like chewing on a condom.

I had two.

Spending all day at the con is exhausting. I wanted to leave after the Vertigo panel--Reg and I were both nodding off in our chairs--but there was a panel I desperately wanted to see at 8:30, so I just attended four panels back to back. At least then I could be sitting down. After Vertigo, Comics Alliance, the zombie panel, and the LGBT in Comics panel (which was a lot less interesting than it should have been), it was finally time for my most anticipated event of the day: ItsJustSomeRandomPanel with ItsJustSomeRandomGuy. IJSRG has a YouTube channel where he uses his superhero action figures and some Barbies to act out these Marvel/DC crossover stories he writes with his wife. They are flipping awesome. It was the second-longest line I stood in at the whole con, and it was totally worth it.

To summarize then: Superdog, enormous mob, Stan Lee, zombies, Glo-Balls, guy with dolls. Day 2 of NYCC. View all the photos on my Flickr stream.