Comic Con 2011 (NY)

Nazz Junior and I attended the New York Comic Con and had a blast. It was packed to the gills with freaks and geeks and cosplayers. I'd say about 20% of the attendees were dressed up as anything from CM Punk (wresting icon worship at Comic Con?) to lots of Asian teens in various anime to the tried and true super heroes (heavy on Cap America and various X-Men). One guy was decked out as Professor Xavier - complete with wheelchair. I wasn't going to be the douche that asked Prof X if the wheelchair was for sizzle or part of his daily steak.

 

A blue chick and a frozen in carbonite space cowboy

The only goal for me was to get some contacts that would buy my old comic collection. Times are tough, and if I can get some dough for my old 1960's-70's Marvels, all the better.

The big downer was that many of the sessions were closed due to overcrowding at least an hour before the scheduled start.  We missed all the cool zombie stuff. The Walking Dead preview, a premier of some movie called Zombie Apocalypse (with Ving Rhames) and The Avengers preview were all out of reach for us.

Mr. T and Hulk Hogan. Not.

 However, we got totally stoked with The Marvel TV and Marvel Games previews. And Nazz Junior grokked on the Halo panel. They had the developers of the game talking about the new version (which basically is a higher tech reboot of the original game. And there was a woman on the panel!!!! Which got most of the fanboys very excited. The q & a for the Halo panel consisted mainly of guys asking the woman on the panel if she would be their prom date! OK- that didn't really happen.

Missus Nomad's favorite picture. A Yip from Sesame Street

Another amazing event was the Dragonball Z panel- which capped the evening. The panel consisted of three guys that did the voices of the cartoon, and they were greeted by several hundred devotees as if they had cured cancer. Even the panelists were shocked by the adulation. Then one of the old Dragon Ball Z cartoons (they've all been restored for hi-def) was shown and it was like watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show, witht he audience participating. My son looked at me and said "You have know idea what's going on, do you?". And I didn't.

And then of course, there was this. Archie meets Kiss. WTF? Is nothing sacred?



For me, the best part was spending the day with my kid. I hope he looks back on it in a couple of decades and smiles.

NY Comic Con - Hungry Freaks, Daddy!

Captain America needs the abdominizer

So, Nazz jr and I spent Saturday wandering the great and never-ending jungle of the NY Comic Con. Located in the cavernous Javits Center, 70,000 freaks and geeks attended.

Rorshach and Poison Ivy

Let's start off with the awesome... The first 18 minutes of Watchmen was previewed (plus an add'l scene form the middle of the movie). Holy shnikes! It is perfect. The intro credits go a long way to explain the origins of the group up until when the graphic novel opens. The scenes, shot for shot are dead on. The illustrator of Watchmen, David Gibbons gave a talk and answered questions (one query was whether Alan Moore is insane).

My son and I, after viewing the footage, looked at each other and both agreed that this was a "day-ay-nu" moment; and that we could leave now and be happy.
But of course we stayed on!

We saw a couple of other previews as well... one for the new Friday The 13th movie (I think it's called Jason kills a nursing home) as well as an (unfinished) preview for Terminator Salvation (no footage of Christian Bale's freakout of course, but the host did call Mrs. Bale on the phone!). Terminator looked to us to be an explosion/noise fest, I hope there is a decent story line as well. It was hard to tell with all the special fx.

This guy was dressed up as a Plaid Spiderman. Is Spidey Scottish now?

And on to the floor... where everything from Golden and Silver age comics were for sale to previews of what's coming in video games to new comics to graphic novels.

As we were on a depression-like budget, we kept the purchases to a minimum, although Nazz jr. as usual won some raffles (a whole lot of Chaotic cards and t-shirts; as well as a kick ass Transformers 2 Movie Poster). He also got a nice set of Hellboy miniatures and some Halo Hero-Clix for decent prices. And of course, lots of free comics and graphic novels.

The most entertaining aspect of these things of course is the cos-play. We got such a kick out of all the folks dressed up as super heroes, anime and movie characters.

Red Sonja- I don't think her parents let her out of the house like that!

This was a big hairy guy dressed up as a fairy. That's one brave guy.

There was a costume contest. Additionally , on display was a demonstration by the NY Jedi... who actually dressed up as Jedi and act out light saber battles. Sorta disappointing, as no one was actually killed. After all, we're NY'ers- we see real violence every day!

There was also an area where geeks were pummeling the crap out of each other with foam wrapped wooden sticks. Highly stimulating! People were placing bets on who would win!

We missed the Zombie prevention presentation, but I feel that we are well read on those situations.

And I was able to pick up Mrs.Nomad's b-day gift... she's been looking for the entire collection of the 1960's Batman TV shows and I found a 10 DVD set (from the original reels... unedited).

All in all a very enjoyable, long and fun day. The best part of course being Nazz Jr telling me what a great time he had.

Toonage:
The Fugs - Supergirl
Down By Law - Superman
Ani DiFranco - Superhero
Shorty Long - Devil With The Blue Dress