NYCC: Final Impressions

When talking to Kevin about NYCC, it became clear to me thatI never wanted to visit New York again… for a comic convention. NYCC had to bethe poorest ran event that I have been to all year ever! My badgewas checked twice in the three days I attended. Once on Thursday and then againon Friday morning. On Saturday I was never checked and frankly saw severalpeople walking around without badges and accessing everything and no one to stop them. I’m not saying that it needs to be locked down theway that San Diego is, but seriously the lack of staff and care for NYCC mademe not care.

As it is comic conventions are becoming popular in and ofthemselves as people want to learn about comics, see demos for video games andhear hot Hollywood news before others. Because of that I can excuse the lack ofcon experience that was very apparent at the con, but it’s shocking to see thatthe company that produced the well-oiled C2E2 also phoned in this con as well.

Friday it became clear to me that this con was going tobe a sit in one room and watch every panel type con. This was mostly due to thefact that the ten people in charge of lines for all fifteen panel rooms werenot letting people in to the rooms as they cleared out. Most panels experiencea large exodus of people when the Q&A begins and at most cons they funnelmore people into the room. Not NYCC, they would not fill the room again untilthe next panel which created massive lines that was completely pointless. Therewas never a room I didn’t get into due to the line, but I still had to wait forthe control Nazi’s to let me in the door. In a lot of cases it seemed as ifthey just wanted to create hype for the room or have people talk about waitingin line as to give the con a much bigger feel. It honestly felt like they wereintentionally creating lines.

The only thing that NYCC has going for it was the fact thatmost of the comic publishers were willing to reveal a lot of juicy detailsabout their upcoming projects. Either by accident or planned, it didn’t matter.It could be in part due to the time period in which NYCC falls as it is thelast con of the season which could play to two schools of thought. One beingthat they’re tired of cons and traveling and just forget what they can andcannot say and the other being that they need to keep the interest for thebooks until the next years cons and what better way than to spoil somethingthree issues out.

My general impressions of New York Comic Con can be boileddown to this: Unorganized, poorly set up, full of inexperienced visitors,decent panel information, lack of security, lack of volunteers and dirty. That’sright try emptying out a trash can once in a while so it doesn’t smell and looklike a dumpster please. Also if you’re going to serve popcorn don’t burn it asthat smells even worse when you’re trapped in a basement waiting in a pointlessline with sweaty nerds. Would I attend NYCC again? Probably not. It would takea lot of convincing and several friends in attendance with me in order to makethe trek again, but as it stands I think this was the worse con I’ve been toall year and it really made me want to go to C2E2 and Wonder Con instead.