The first weekend of October in New York always means New York Comic Con time and for 2018, I attended on Saturday and Sunday. Some scheduling conflicts precluded a Thursday appearance and the panels on Friday didn’t draw my attention as much as those on Saturday.
Strike that…because of how erratically the NYCC web site is organized I wasn’t aware of the things I would have liked to do on Friday until I was at work on Friday and saw some interesting things on twitter. Every year, the NYCC web site gets a bit more cumbersome to navigate and seems to be updated with creator appearances more erratically every year. Luckily, the two creators I would have liked to have seen on Friday were also doing signings and a panel on Saturday. The picture below should give a hint. Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez: the superstar creative team behind one of my all-time favorite stories (regardless of medium): Locke & Key. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
The first thing I attended on Saturday was the I’ll Take Dementors for $500, a fun Jeopardy-style geek trivia panel. The board was set up exactly like Jeopardy, with categories about Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Superheroes, Fantastic Females, and general geeky trivia titled Nerdtastic. The host of this panel was Marc Thompson, a world class audiobook narrator who performs many Star Wars books. The panelists included Delilah Dawson, a wonderful writer whose books I’ve reviewed and author of Phasma; Sylvan Neuvel, author of The Themis Files which begins with Sleeping Giants; Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler; and Chuck Wendig, author of the Star Wars: Aftermath trilogy and the Miriam Black series of books, among many, many other fine works. This was a fun panel. Each writer had a fan from the audience join them after they each answered a random question about the author or their work.
For each clue, a clip of an audiobook was played, followed by Marc reading the question. The only reason I didn’t try to get on the panel was because I wanted to leave a little early to make sure I got to the next thing on my schedule: Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez signing at the IDW Comics booth. I said last year what a fan of their collaborative storytelling powers I was and hinted above. I got to the line fairly early and was chatting with some other folks on line with me. We all agreed that Joe and Gabe have a storytelling symbiosis that ranks with the best writer-artist duos in comics history. Yes, I’m comparing what these two put to page with the storytelling genius of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. Anyway, I’ll probably do a Locke & Key write up here at SFFWorld for our annual Hallowe’en reads. I had the first issue of Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, Locke & Key Master Edition Volume 1, and NOS4A2 signed by both gentlemen and the limited first print run of PS Publishing’s edition of Joe’s short story collection 20th Century Ghosts signed by Joe.
It took me a little bit to come down from that because few writers have connected with my reading sensibilities as much as Joe Hill has in recent years. I strolled around the floor a bit stopping by the Del Rey booth where I bumped into Myke Cole, who I see every year at NYCC. Myke’s a fantastic writer and an all around good human. I also stopped by the HarperCollins booth a couple of times and briefly chatted with two of their awesome editors – Caro Perny and David Pomerico. I had to gush a bit about Rachel Dunne’s In the Shadow of the Gods, among many of the fine books they publish.
I wanted to make sure I arrived at the next panel, which Myke happened to be moderating: Geek Geek Revolution. This is generally a highlight of the con for me every year, another geeky trivia panel, but more free form than the Dementors panel. As moderator, Myke reads off the questions, many pre-writtern while audience members are asked to provide questions throughout the panel. Unfortunately, my question didn’t get asked. “Contestants” on this panel included: Set Fried, The Municipalists; Ryan North; Patrick Rothfuss, The Kingkiller Chronicle; Astrid Scholte, Four Dead Queens; Peter Tieryas, Mecha Samurai Empire and Danielle Vega, The Merciless. Again, I left a bit early to ensure I arrived at the next panel and was able to get a seat.
Generally, that’s one of the more frustrating elements of any convention, I think. The events/signings/panels I like tend to be lumped together or even take place at the same time. This doesn’t provide one with much time to stroll the convention floor or even stay for the duration of some panels.
That next panel was IDW Publishing: The Big Scoop. I’ll admit I largely attended this panel because of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, but as it turned out, there were quite a few things revealed. IDW is making a few big pushes over the next six months or so. One of those pushes is a major, company-wide initiative called 20/20. IDW is celebrating 20 years so a handful of their flagship titles will be looking 20 years into the future: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Jem; Star Trek, Ghostbusters; and My Little Pony.
Another big initiative is their partnership with Marvel Comics; IDW will be publishing some All Ages Marvel books including a Spider Man title by Delilah Dawson as well as an Avengers and Black Panther book. The host of the panel was John Barber, Editor-in-Chief of IDW Books. John is also a long-time writer and driving force for Transformers and apparently the Transformers line at IDW is drawing to a conclusion. They showed off a really cool image of Unicorn, the Galactus analogue for the Transformers. IDW is also bringing back a Magic: The Gathering Series. I’ll be honest, I just missed the boat on Magic, but what I’ve gleaned about it makes me think I would have enjoyed it. The series they are launching is Magic: The Gathering – Chandra. The way the writer, Vita Ayala, was talking about the series has me looking forward to giving this book a try, as well as anything else by her.
Another big celebration at the panel was the 1-year anniversary of Shelly Bond’s imprint at IDW: Black Crown comics. Some really cool things are coming out of that imprint, a nice hybrid and confluence of several arts. There’s a Punk Rock series titled Punks Not Dead where a young fatherless girl is haunted by the ghost of Sid Vicious, a noir title from David Lapham called Lodger, and they’re reprinting the Kickstarter Anthology Femme Magnifique.
While I was sitting in on the IDW panel, Ed Lazellari plunked himself down next to me. He and I met up a couple of times for beers with our mutual friends John Anealio over the past couple of years and have tried to connect at NYCC, but weren’t successful until this year. Ed is a comics veteran who also wrote two ripping Portal Fantasies: Awakenings and The Lost Prince. I was a bit late to the game with those two books, but they were fun, engaging, and thrilling reads. Well…the finale to that trilogy is publishing in December of this year and is titled Blood of Ten Kings.
So, a busy Saturday at NYCC 2018, as most of the events were barely spaced out.
Sunday was a relaxing day…if one could call a day relaxing whilst walking an enormous convention center filled with 100,000 people relaxing. Be that as it may, as has been typical the last few years, my wife and walked the entire convention floor on Sunday. Sunday is “family” day, a chance for kids to come to the convention dressed as their favorite super hero or pop culture characters. Like previous years, Harley Quinn was one of the more popular characters. We were able to time our journey through the high numbered rows (rows numbered in the 2000s) just well enough to arrive at the Del Rey Star Wars booth where I asked Delilah Dawson sign my ARC of Kill the Farm Boy (review), which Kevin Hearne signed when I attended one of his signings in Pennsylvania earlier in the year.
One booth we often tend to find at least one book is the Quirk Books booth. That proved to be the case again this year because I picked up Grady Hendrix’s new novel, We Sold our Soul (reviewed here by Hobbit). Granted, it was my intention to pick up that specific book this year for a creepy Halloween read so that may be cheating.
From there, we continued our journey through the crowds and were pleasantly surprised to see the Horror Writers Association booth had moved closer to the unofficial publisher’s row.
Attending only two days was interesting. Saturday felt a little rushed as I tried to fit in multiple panels and signings, but on the whole, the crowds weren’t as intrusive. I think Reed Pop may have widened the walkways just a bit.
A good couple of days, with the highlight meeting Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez.
