04/23/2008

“Hey, Is The Bat Eating Batman Here This Year?”: New York Comic Con 2008 Part 3

by Matthew Edward Hawkins

For those who missed part one, here you go, and for those that missed part two, you’re welcome. And for the rest of us… here we are, the home stretch!

NYCC 2008 Day Two (continued)

Since the very last pic posted was within the realm of animu, I may as well pass these…

Gotta admit, I REALLY want this statue…

And I wouldn’t mind having Samus without the armor either…

Plus, I do like the return to basics Sonic…

So you also had plenty of basic, cutsey Japanese crap as well. Guess Relax Bear is still going strong…

I ended up getting Katie the bag with the bears sipping soda…

… Plus, not pictured, a stuff slice of cake with a cat’s head sticking out at one end. Say it with me: OH JAPAN!

Back to wacky folks in costumes: I saw the guy in the banana suit last year, and this time it was Iron Man themed. Which was pretty sweet, of course…

… The next day, he was at the show dressed as banana as Indiana Jones. lulz

These two were total hits of the entire floor, without a doubt, especially Hellboy…

Oh, so the wackiest dedicated comic booth (okay, there was ONE I took pictures of) had to be for White Shaka Boy…

… That dancer guy decided to do a wacky (alright, “traditional”) dance for me, to take picture of Problem is, if you move around, you end up blurry on the other side of the lense! Maybe he knew that and was looking for some blur effects, or something.

Some MF Doom wannabes spinning records, and mixing them with Mega Man 2 beats…

This is definitely one of those things in which I’m shocked no one has thought of it before…

At 4:00 that afternoon was the Venture Brothers panel, and being I’m such a big fan of the show, as well as enjoying myself so much at last year’s panel, I decided to head on over a bit early to secure and seat. Even though I knew it was going to be a hot ticket, I figured getting there thirty minutes in advance was more than enough time to guarantee a spot. And here’s what I encountered…

… That’s a shot of the entire programming area, and more or less, every single person in that shot is waiting for the Venture Bros. There’s a few that’s waiting for some zombie survival talk, but otherwise, everyone was waiting for Team Venture.

Needless to say, it was total chaos. Yet it could have been MUCH worse. The staff did what they could to control the crowd, but it wasn’t enough. The decision was made to move the panel to a bigger room that originally scheduled… one that could accommodate 100 people instead of the original’s 60. Great. I guess no one could have foreseen such a massive crowd, but they could have also told everyone that not everyone would get in, sadly, instead of having everyone stand around clueless, and clog traffic, which led to a major fire hazard. In no time, the fire marshall was brought it, and then came fears that the show might be shut down, similar to what almost happened two years ago.

The Venture Brothers panel ended up getting delayed about half an hour, which had a domino effect; the Kevin Smith panel I was supposed to cover for CBR the hours afterwards was held up by forty minutes because it has the same moderator as the Venture Brothers one, which led to a very antsy and annoyed crowd. I would also find out that the Venture Brothers panel was a bit of a bust; everyone was drunk and no one had any good info. I’m guessing it would have been fun to see Doc Hammer and com Jackson Publick acting all goofy, yet at the same time, I can see why the people telling me such info were so annoyed. Anyhow, to appease the crowd, the folks behind the panel I was at decided to give out a ton of free shit, mostly DVDs, yet I managed to snag an Iron Man action figure. So everything worked out in the end!

Afterwards I ran into Farel and Zack once again. Unfortunately the con had run out of beer by this point…

… At least I got the chance to check out pages from Farel’s latest project, which may or may not be called Popgun War 2…

This was at the First Second booth, which was being manned by Colleen. Here she is pissed at Katie for not being at the show…

That was more or less it for day two. I had heard bits and pieces about stuff going on that night… a party over here, a show over there, but I was so exhausted from all the day’s activities, as well the day previous, and especially the night before, that all I wanted to do was go home. Though on my way out, I snapped this pic of the girl from the Fifth Element, standing in line, to buy a hot dog…

Meanwhile, June was not as impressed…

I guess I should maybe mention another out of towner that also made an appearance at the show: indie game designer and hit sensation Phil Fish, who came down from Montroal, along with a few other Canadian and Australian friends. After spending their first day in America at a comic book show, I led them to the train station they needed to get to, and passed along suggestions of stuff to check out, as I often do with out of towners. And while I would have loved the chance to hang out with a bunch of Australian girls at Katz’s Deli, all I wanted to do was dive into bed. Katie and I ended up going to bed at like 10:30 or something. Yes, on a Saturday night. Once again, getting old!

NYCC 2008 Day Three

Day three was, as expected, a bit more low key. Yet it was still pretty packed, surprisingly. Which was a very good thing, and a clear form of validation as well; now more than ever its clear that New York needs something like the San Diego Comic Con. The interest is most certainly there. Though the New York Comic Con is not quite the perfect solution, with many rough edges around every corner, and after three years, you’d think some lesson would have been learned. I could bitch about how they dropped the ball when it came to handling the press, but that’s nothing in comparison to how poorly they handled the small press people, but that’s something perhaps best in the hands of those more qualified to touch upon the specifics.

… Though I know everyone says this, year after year, including myself, but it has to be said: the location flat out sucks. Not only is the Jacob Javitz hard to get to, but there’s nothing to eat all around it. Considering that every convention center in every major city does not have this problem, and its New York we’re talking about…

Another very curious thing was the complete lack of video game programming, at least up until the last day. So with nothing really on my plate, the plan was to check out how they went, to figure out how to offer my services for next year. Since once again, I’m looking to expand my horizon, and ICON is no longer cutting it.

Anyway, here we have the women of the Comics Bakery, Raina and Supergirl, I mean Marion…

And here’s a totally rockin’ Mantis get-up…

… Note Aguaman’s belt on his trident!

Since it was the last day of the show, a lot of folks were running on fumes, as were various aspects of the show. Yet some fresh attendees were there, eager for entertainment. I guess that’s why so many say and watched the ridiculously shitty improvised (or at least its improvised… because if not… holy shit) Jedi action theater. It was just random folks with light sabers, one after another, getting on-stage to duel with shitty techno music as accompaniment…

… Both Joe and I lamented the absence of the bat eating Batman, that’s for sure.

Something that I had completely missed the two days prior, but which finally caught my eye, was the Drawn By Pain booth, Basically, its a web film that’s more or less Cool World mixed with animu…

… Eh, its cute at the very least. Anyhow, those interested can check everything out online here.

OH SHI-! Seeing someone dressed as Spider-Man at a comic convention is pretty dime a dozen. But not one dressed as the Ben Reilley Spidey. Man, that whole Spider Clone saga sure sucked the big one, but I totally LOVED the redesigned costume. Its a shame that it never stuck (but at least Spider Girl still uses it)…

Back to the main reason why I was there: there was a panel on video game journalism at three, and I figured it might be best to check it out how they operate, so I know what they might want and have had before formally dropping them a line as a potential speaker next year. The room was actually pretty packed, as it was for the how to get into video games panel earlier in the day, which only helped to reinforce the strong level of interest among attendees. As were the questions for the previous panel; everything was extremely basic, just folks eager to know what first step they needed to take to get their foot in the door of the industry.

Though it was funny hearing from a student from the New York Film Academy ask how one can be the creative head of a game company, since it really reinforced the current problem with game education today; many schools offering video game degrees are not offering a true, accurate portrayal of how the industry works. Aside from the fact that just because you get a degree from a video game school doesn’t really guarantee anything… same thing with any art school degree really (unlike some lawyer or doctor degree, I’m certain)… a lot of places, let’s take the New York Film Academy for example, paint the picture that the video game work operates like the film world. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, including myself, but the bottom-line is that to get involved in video games, one needs to know how to program. Sucks but true. But I could go on and on about this, and since this report is already pretty late, and supposedly to be mostly on the Comic Con…

Another thing that was kinda annoying about the show was how when it came to the game programming, none of the speakers were listed. So I had no idea who would be talking about game journalism. Though that also helped to pique my curiosity. Truth be told, I figured it would be just Steve Totilo and N’Gai Croal talking about God of War 2 or Resident Evil 5. When I walked into the room, I was certainly shocked to see Quinn Wageman of the PR firm Triple Point standing at the podium, as it was for him to see me; from on-stage he said hello, then immediately came down and asked me if I could go up on stage and participate in the panel. Which I was more than happy to do!

So I talked about game journalism for the following hour, alongside Andrew Yoon from Joystiq, Julianne Greer from The Escapist, and Hal Halpin from the ECA. Again, it was all pretty basic: what we all do, how we got involved, some of the plusses and minuses about the job, as well as how to get involved. And the crowd response was pretty awesome! I got a chance to talk with and answer questions from lots of cool folks both during and after the talk. Even got a certain degree of press for talking about the press, like this, which by far features the worst picture of me, ever (hopefully the ones taken by the MTV Mutliplayer crew are a bit more flattering, or at least has more of my good side). And afterwards, I spoke with a few other New York writers and we all realized that we should all get together to hang and get drunk and stuff like that.

And… that was the show I guess! It was a pretty good one, especially at the end, at least for me! Saw lots of cool stuff, hung with a few buds, and met some awesome new folks. And I even got some cool stuff (once again, IRON MAN). Can’t wait for next year… hopefully I’ll be speaking at it!

As for after the show, I went downtown and met Katie in the West Village, then we went to Brooklyn for dinner at our fave fish and chips joint, Chipshop in Park Slope. Then Joe Salina swung on by (who was sorta in town at Dave Mauro’s to play Brawl) and took us to his new pad, which I finally got the check out. Drank some beer, played some Virtua Fighter 5, as well as check out Joe’s customized Eileen (the cute Chinese girl… who looks kinda Japanese… who does the monkey kung fu) as a Williamsburg hipster, glasses and all, plus the first few minutes of Lost Odyessy.

So Two Game Designers Walk Into The Woods With A Bunch Of Drugs, And…

Then on Monday, I finally got a chance to hang with Phil Fish. He swung on by my place, where I showed him a bit of my somewhat impressive game collection. Mostly, I had him play some of vast collection of wacky import titles, including LSD for the PSone, Cool Cool Toon for the Dreamcast (would have also shown him Lack of Love, but I believe Dave Mauro still has my copy), and a bunch of PS2 softs, like Super Galdelic Girls, TVDJ, wordimagesoundplay (btw, I forgot to mention that I finally got the chance to meet Brandon Boyer at the con, whom I’ve been corresponding with on and off for years now, and who was also the driving force behind me acquiring wordimagesoundplay… once again, thanks!), Vib Ripple (yes, that shitty Vib Ribbon “sequel”), Dream TV (yes, that horrible Smash Bros clone featuring Simon Belmont and Optimus Prime), and a few others.

But the real shocker, for not just Phil but for myself, was the discovery that Phil… who is about as big a Rez fan as I am… had no idea about the Trance Mission mode. Which I guess is somewhat excusable since he apparently never saves his game, since its more about the experience than ranking up and saving high scores. But still! Man, talk about indie cred all of a sudden plummeting way down (I kid, I kid!). But yeah, for Phil it was “Man, this is like Rez 2!” On a related note, aside from being a Tetsuya Mizuguchi devotee, Phil is also a major Kenji Eno fan like myself (Enemy Zero fo life, yo), and was told of some wacky story about the time the two game designers had a “Fear and Loathing weekend” in which both went to some isolated cabin in the woods somewhere in Japan with a shitload of drugs. But then all of a sudden, a massive storm hit the region and they had to get a helicopter (as in pay for it themselves) to bail their asses out, all while having a really bad trip.

Anyway, because Phil was hungry, and hadn’t had a chance to check out the real cool parts of the city, I took him down to Chinatown and had him eat at my fave local eatery, the Coluck. It is kinda funny that at a hardcore Chinese restaurant of all places is where Phil got to experience curly fries for the first time since he was five or something. And they make them good too! Then we went to the various import game shops and the underground mall. Next was a stop at the famous Chinatown arcade… which had a FOR RENT sign?! Not sure what the story is, but its something I’m definitely gonna investigate. Oh, and it was in Chinatown where we came across this…

Gotta say, have the fun was asking Phil a bunch of questions about Canada, and fielding a bunch of questions about America. When asked about Ground Zero and what was going on there, I explained that they’re in the process of building the Freedom Tower, to which Phil responded with, “So, they’re really calling it that?” Yes. Yes they are.

Then we went up to St. Marks to show him Toy Tokyo primarily, since the dude is into designer toys, and they apparently have none of that in Montreal. I myself picked up a little bear that’s supposed to be Japanese wrestling superstar Keiji Mutoh. After a quick stop at both Giant Robot stores, we headed back to my place and spent the rest of his first time in New York City on my rooftop to drink beers and shoot the shit…

… Though I guess I should mention that Phil almost feel off my roof, which at the time was scary as shit, and I almost had a heart attack, but looking back, it was kinda funny.

Alright, it’s already Wednesday. Back to the look for work grindstone, do some laundry, plus I gotta get my new cell phone fixed. Later!

  • http://www.johngreenart.com John

    I saw that “Transformed” poster in Chinatown maybe three weeks ago and meant to send you a pic of it but totally forgot. Glad you found it on your own. I so wanted to go into that church and ask if they had posters to give out.

  • Slonie

    Nice series of posts. Would do business with again. A+++

  • phooky

    Yeah, that Chinatown Fair for rent sign has been up for a while. I keep hoping against hope, but I suspect those things with the numbers on them are its days.

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