Event: NY Comic Con 2012
Artist: Various Artists
Venue: Jacob Javits Center (New York, NY)
Date: 10/11/2012-10-14/2012
Label: Independent

It’s kind of hard to believe that the NY Comic Con was already here because I feel like I just went to this event only recently but of course this was not the case at all. The event seems to get bigger and bigger each year and while in previous years I’ve found that it took over very large sections of the Javits Center, this go round appeared to have every available space offering up something for the interested eye. Clearly if you were a fan of comic books, science fiction, and video games this would be the place to be. This would be PiercingMetal’s third year of covering the massive event as a member of the press so I was very excited as it’s a whole lot of fun to offer our global readership as many of our findings as is possible. This year I decided to jot down a couple of side notes about each day in addition to all of the expanded thoughts and myriad images that you will see on our Official Blog. Here we go…..

Day One: The first day of Comic Con used to be the day where there were a few hours for press representatives and professionals only would be able to wander the floor without having to deal with thousands of fans around them. When they expanded the Con to a fourth day this ended and now we professional outlets explore the treats with any of the fans who had purchased a special Four Day Pass. This year’s passes were using a “The Walking Dead” theme to them and had numerous characters from the breakout hit television show. I had to laugh when I saw how the fans had human characters while the press had zombies on them. I guess to some people the Media do seem like ravenous beasts hungry for flesh but oh well. I arrived to the Con a little more excited than usual and this was based on the fact that I had attended a special event for the band KISS at SiriusXM studios earlier in the day and it was great to hear what the band had to say. They are on the top of my list as a fan. For me the first day was about getting my bearings and seeing where the things that I wanted to see the most might have been. After getting that in gear I hit a couple of the more popular booths like the DC Comics and Marvel Comics and Dark Horse ones. For those fans with the special four day pass they could enjoy a free concert by Ben Folds Five that was being held in one of the auditoriums after the convention itself had closed for the day. I would pass on the show with the busy day of exploration hitting me the next day. Last year we had Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave doing a brief show and that made perfect sense since the musician had a new comic coming out on Dark Horse entitled “Orchid”. I do not know how BFF fits into the mix in all honesty.

Day Two: For day two I would expand upon the coolness indulged in yesterday but also give those crazy cats at the MetalSucks.net booth a little attention because they would have the one and only Dee Snider of Twisted Sister doing some signings of his book and most recent CD. I made sure to hit the Evil Ink Comics booth to see if the main brain behind Coheed and Cambria was there doing any signings. The band actually played a show at Webster Hall that we so wanted to be at but could not swing it when it all came down to it. I didn’t see him when I was near the booth but knew he would be around for the remainder of the Con doing his signings and meets with the fans. The costumes were out in legion for sure though and I was running into a lot of Lokis both male and female ones. With Day Two I also went down to the Artist’s Alley which was way down towards the 37th Street side of the Convention Center. It seems to move each and every year and I guess that one should not plan on finding the same things in the same places as each convention happens. I also wanted to see what was doing in the Autograph Alley section and while it intrigues me to some extent I am not super interested in paying a hefty sum to have someone sign a photograph for me. Well, maybe for KISS but that is always going to be the case for me. For this particular day I learned that Metallica’s Kirk Hammett was going to be showcasing and selling his new Horror Collection book. It’s a hefty tome for sure but you could get Kirk to sign it for you for a few dollars. His line was pretty long and he had not yet made an appearance for the fans to be processed. The downside to the Autograph Alley is the fact that you are prohibited from taking any photographs of your own. They wave in front of you if they see you sporting a camera and mind you this happens even to press. It’s pretty amusing and doesn’t make sense to me since you are only trying to present the happenings to the wider audience at home. Oh well. I guess I will not be coming down here anymore.

Day Three: The third day of NY Comic Con is the Saturday and by far this is the most crushing of all the days since EVERYONE is here on Saturday. I mean it; it’s unbelievable how insane it can be on the Saturday and I think the capacity is far more than ever reported. Some say how there are over fifty thousand people walking around and after being in the middle of it, I kind of think that the speculated number is rather low. Yesterday I had a lot of fun and as I said got to see Dee Snider but today I had to return to the Sucks booth because both Alex Skolnick and Paul Booth (the legendary tattoo artist) were making an appearance. I would miss Booth because I was otherwise occupied. It was also cool from the Metal perspective to learn that Iced Earth’s Jon Schafer would be in attendance but at a different booth that focused on a movie about Political Intrigue and the like while Corey Taylor from Slipknot and Stone Sour would be over at the Dark Horse Comics booth doing a signing. Corey will have a comic coming out in the next few months and its title will reflect an upcoming album. Clearly this was a Metal day and one thing I felt would be interesting to do would be to snag photos of any of the Metalheads in their respective band t-shirts. I was thinking that this would be an amusing blog post and give them something to discuss with their other Metal friends but I didn’t see enough that caught my interest in order to pursue to this angle. Maybe next year we shall find a little more success in this regard. I tended to spend most of my Day Three time down in the Artists Alley because there was a little more breathing room over there and I wanted to absorb all the things that the creators were showcasing.

Day Four: The last day of the NY Comic Con is what is referred to as the “Family Day” and that lets a certain amount of full convention pass holders request up to two passes for children for a nominal sum. I think this is a great thing for those who have kids up to a certain age but not if the child is under five years old since I don’t think there is any way to appreciate what is going on around you. The overwhelming influx of the smaller fans have found me making the Sunday session my cleanup day. It’s on this day that I do my final sweep of the booths where I might have made some solid connections and take it a little easier than I had over the previous three days. One of the things that I initially had planned to do with my Sunday adventure at the Con was to peruse in some larger detail the Anime area but there was no such defined section so to speak this time around. I neglected to mention it earlier in my summation but apparently the NY Anime Festival has been absorbed by the larger NY Comic Con and now presents the Anime vendors and other booths of its kind all around the convention floor. I am not sure how that will go over but I am sure we shall hear something about it sooner or later. Now back to Sunday and one of the other solid options you have as a fan. This is also the best day to do some of the shopping if you have been waiting on this because numerous books and other trinkets are being sold off for a lot cheaper than they had been over the previous days. I also found myself being joined for a short time by my buddy from the Sea Of Tranquility website so we enjoyed some lunch outside at the Landmark Tavern (a place that I will need to go to again with our often show companion Skeleton Pete) and upon our return we each did some comic shopping with me making a few key recommendations on trade editions of note that I felt he would like. I snagged a handful of them myself and I think I got four hardcover editions for $25 in full. Money well spent and of course time well spent for that matter. Now it was safe to say that I was feeling “Convention Burn” as the closing time drew near for everyone to be cleared out of the event space.

So there are some side notes about the wanderings that I took at the NY Comic Con for 2012; As always you can read much more about the whole event via the link that is provided below and it will take you to all of the multitudes of images that were shot over the course of the four days and a larger day by day analysis. This year I decided to expand upon my little traffic sign posting to give more opinion before sending you over to the blog narratives. There are fourteen postings in all and over 600 photographs to enjoy so please do take your time absorbing it all. While it’s as daunting as always in terms of an experience I had a good time with the fans and the new connections we made for the PiercingMetal site and I look forward to seeing the new fans we made at this year’s event at some other shows going forward. Before I close out on this part of the presentation, I will leave you with a word to the wise……if you do plan on going to the NY Comic Con for 2013 be sure to purchase your tickets early. This year found the four day passes and the three days passes almost completely gone when the event was still a few months away. Since it only grows in scope each year I don’t expect this to change.

Hope you enjoyed the adventures, now it’s time to get back to some long overdue music reviews. PiercingMetal Goes To NY Comic Con 2012: http://www.piercingmetal.com/?tag=ny-comic-con-2012

Official Website: www.nycomiccon.com
Official Website: www.dccomics.com
Official Website: www.marvel.com
Official Website: www.darkhorse.com

Some trade paperbacks that you should consider adding to your collection are listed below: