By Eder Guzman
New York Comic Con was held in the Jacob Javits center, October 9 through 12. This year, the company “ReedPop”, who organizes the event, reported that it sold 151,000 tickets this year. This number has surpasses San Diego Comic Con, who had peaked at 130,000 due to issues of capacity. This means that New York Comic Con is now officially the biggest pop culture event in North America. It has been a long time coming, ever since New York Comic Con was first held in 2006. In 2006, the event was held from February 24-26, and 30,000 attended. In 2007, Comic Con ran from February 23-25 and brought in 49,000. Next year, 2008, it ran from April 18-20, when 64,000 showed. In 2010, New York Anime Fest was incorporated into New York Comic Con, bringing a whole new culture with it. It was held in October 8-10, when 96,000 were in attendance. By 2012, 116,000 were in attendance. Last year, 133,000, officially more than San Diego Comic Con that same year, showed up.
Since it was the month of October, Comic Con was a great excuse to start wearing Halloween costumes earlier than usual. Zombie inspired women in maid outfits, a girl in a Rosalina and Luma (from Super Mario Galaxy) costume, complete with a Daft punk mask, and a girl dressed as the pokemon Umbreon. It was the year of movies too, like The Avengers and Edge Of Tomorrow. One Cosplayer impressed everyone by wearing an authentic-looking heavy metal suit from The Edge of Tommorrow, while others wore Natasha Romanoff’s Black Widow costume, made famous by Scarlett Johansson from the The Avengers, and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye. Other movie characters were Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings series, and Bane and Catwoman from The Dark Knight Rises.
People are also paying homage to the popular Manga and Anime Series, Naruto, which is in its final 2 months of publication before the series ends. There were many people dressed up as various Akatsuki, Tsunade, Sasuke, Kakashi, or Rin. Other Manga and Anime representation was Maka and Death the Kid from Soul Eater, gender-swapped Chopper and Zoro from One Piece, and most of the Sailor Moon girls. Others were dressed as characters from Bleach, like a large group of Quincies, and Ichigo Hollow form. There were many confident and able-bodied guys were dressed as their favorite fighter, such as Ken, Ryu, Goku and Adon.
There was a lot to see at Jacob Javits, and one area that stood out was a whole section dedicated to the Batman. It was in the western-most part of the center, with a lineup of all the Batman costumes used for the film was shown in its individual glass case. A large life size bronze statue was also present, and patrons recognized it immediately, since it appeared at the end of The Dark Knight Rises.
There were also various personalities that showed up at New York Comic Con. Chris Hardwick was in attendance, who people may know from the Nerdist Podcast, @midnight, and Talking Dead. He was there hosting the Walking Dead panel, which was attended by the walking dead cast. Comedian T.J Miller, from the movie Yogi Bear and the HBO series Silicon Valley. He was there promoting his knew Disney movie Big Hero 6. George Clooney made a surprise unannounced appearance, and it really was surprising considering he was recently married a few days ago. Todd McFarlane, who is know for work on Spiderman, Batman and as the creator of the anti-hero Spawn, was walking around briskly and instantly surrounded by fans with questions about his work and his upcoming projects.
There were various video game booths scattered all over. Twitch live was hosting a demo playthrough of The Evil Within, with excellent commentary on the glitching that occurred at the strangest moments of the game. They also played the new Legend of Korra video game, based of the series. Twitch also had an interview with the creators of Rocket Girl by Image Comics, created by Amy Reeder and Brandon Montclare by using kickstarter. Capcom was promoting Monster Hunter 4: Ultimate, RE: Revelations 2, and a new Resident Evil 1 remake. A new Bandai Namco game was Pacman and the Ghostly Adventures 2. In this iteration of Pacman, he is 3 dimensional, and he has to navigate around the ghosts in this space. It is based off of the TV show of the same name. Another game being promoted was Brave Frontier, complete with 3 fully ornamented cosplayers, carrying swords and scythes. It is a clever RPG that was first released for the apple ios, and is now available on Android and Kindle. Square Enix had a booth set up showing its own action figures of Batman villains designed by Tetsuya Nomura, creator of Kingdom hearts. He took plenty of liberties with how violent they looked, and how little clothes some had.
Walking around, you begin to see different variations of the same costumes, like the Fiona from Fiona and Cake, different sets of Japanese schoolgirl uniforms, Harley Quinn from all her video games, various Poison Ivy’s, Deadpool, and many Link/Zelda and Joker/Harley couples. There were also large groups of excellent cosplayers, the biggest one being the New York City Comic Con League of Legends cosplayers, who had 12 people in fantastic costumes, each representing their characters in the League of Legends online game. Cirque de Soleil had their own booth, with cosplayers donning professional makeup and with quiet yet creepy personas.
There was plenty of merchandise that permeated every part of Comic Con. There were t-shirts with popular villains, or heroes, or ironic sayings. There were plenty of plastic figurines for sale, as well as more than 1 large collection of legos for sale. There were plenty of tote bags, plastic bottles, and comic con t-shirts that were given away when one signed up for future services. There were also plushies of most anime character in existence, too many to count. It was the most crowded comic con, as well as the best-planned comic con, completely matching the hype.
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