Tag: NYCC

Geekly Speaking About… “What to Expect When You’re Attending New York City Comic Con”

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Jill Pantozzi (center) aka The Nerdy Bird and her FemmeDoctor group from NYCC 2011. From l to r: 1st Doctor, 3rd Doctor, 9th Doctor, 4th Doctor, 7th Doctor, 2nd Doctor, 6th Doctor, and Idris aka The Doctors Wife (c) GeekingOutAbout

With the dog days of summer disappearing and the sound of little footsteps running away from school buses, fall is upon us—which means it’s time for another New York City Comic Con.

This year, the event will be held at the Javitz Center from October 11 to October 14 and there are less than 48 hours remaining for you to pre-register and be able to get your pass in the mail. But what if you’re unsure about whether or not you want to go? Luckily, I was able to rescue this podcast from the unknown to bring you a roundtable discussion about what myself, co-editor Jill Pullara, and writers Jonathan Cherlin and Lowell Greenblatt liked and disliked about last year’s event. Show notes, as usual, are after the jump.

  • As a tiny little note, you’re going to hear some loud knocking every now and then when people are speaking. That’s just us banging on the table for emphasis… right next to where I just happened to place my recorder.
  • Definitely not a new thing, resources for people who’d like to add more games and video games to their public and/or school libraries can check out the archives of the Games in Libraries podcast or read up on International Games Day @ Your Library, sponsored by the American Library Association, which will be on Saturday, November 3.
  • For your amusement (and with the formatting broken), here’s the last con report I ever did of San Diego Comic Con, from 10 years ago, back when I was writing for Sequential Tart.com. Also, belated apologies for attending the con with strep throat. I know better than to do that now. My favorite memory from the con was immortalized by Lea Hernandez in a “Near Life Experience” strip, of which I bought the original when she rediscovered it after her terrible house fire in 2006.
  • When I asked her to clarify her remarks about cosplayers, Jill wrote, “My annoyance at NYCC was that cosplayers take up so much space and, honestly, a lot were half assed and done by attention seekers (well the ones I saw. The ones who looked a bit sad until someone wanted to take a picture with them). They would take pictures in the middle of a crowded walkway, walk side by side slowly like tourists down 14th Street! I didn’t experience that at PAX East. I’m sure there was more cosplay than I’m remembering, and I often speak in hyperbole, but I didn’t experience anywhere near the amount of annoyance and frustration from simply trying to walk down an aisle as I did at NYCC.”
  • No, you’re not going crazy. At one point, we did have a podcast where Jonathan talked about the changes in the voice cast for the Silent Hill 2 high-definition remake which was released in March 2012; however, that podcast is still lounging around on my hard drive. One more thing to add to the list…
  • Incidentally, if you did purchase the HD Remake for your Xbox 360, experienced glitches, and still have your receipt, Konami is offering exchanges for what they’re calling “other Konami titles or versions of titles.” And this despite the fact that the glitched PS3 version was patched and they can’t do the same for the Xbox 360 version.
  • Eventually, Lowell was successful, and you can read his interview with both of the guys from Kirby Krackle here. No rock stars were harmed in the obtaining of this interview.
  • Also, Lowell’s interview with “Angel & Faith” creators Christos Gage and Rebekah Isaacs is here.
  • Karl Custer, aka Uncle Yo, has been doing the rounds of the anime con circut as a “comedian for geeks” since 2008. I personally love his stuff, but geeks who are casual about their anime love might not get some of his material. You know what I would love to see? Uncle Yo opening for the Nerdist himself, Chris Hardwick someday.
  • While the first part of my “Voices from New York Comic Con” series was posted not long after the show, I’ll be posting the first half hopefully not too long after this podcast goes up to whet your appetite for the 2012 show in October.
  • Originally debuting at the 2011 PAX Prime convention, here’s a look at the development and design of Siege of Gardmore Abbey with its author, Steve Townshend.
  • If you don’t know what Jill means by the adjective phrase “Chris Perkins-awesome,” you have to watch this collection of videos I’ve saved onto my YouTube account; thus, will you know the fullest extent of its meaning and become an adherent for life.
  • An old system, elements of The Burning Wheel are present in creator Luke Crane’s new RPG system, Mouse Guard, based on the comics by David Petersen from Archaia Entertainment.
  • You, too, can show your love for partying with a cleric on your chest, designed by Jen Brazas (Mystic Revolution). (And now, I think I have a new comic to do an archive binge on.)
  • I was glad not to miss the Womanthology panel, as I was able to record nearly all of it for you. As for the anthology itself, it’s currently available from Amazon (some reviews here) or you might want to brave your local comics shop and see if they’ll order it for you. (If they don’t, then they’re a terrible shop, and you should find one that will!)
  • And as for the Womanthology brand itself, IDW Publishing announced at WonderCon in March that it will be releasing a five-issue miniseries called “Womanthology: Space,” featuring creators such as Fiona Staples, Blair Butler, Jessica Hickman, Bonnie Burton, Ming Doyle, and Stacie Ponder.

Geekly Speaking About… “Voices from New York Comic Con” Part 1

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Comics, gaming, anime... everything one could possibly "geek out about" was at the New York Comic Con

Once again, Geeking Out About was at the New York Comic Con, which was held at the Javits Center in New York City. Our review of the show will be uploaded later, but for now I’d like to present to you some highlights from how I spent my Saturday and Sunday. Complete information and links can be found below:

  • Kevin Bolk is the head guy behind Interrobang Studios, whom we’ve profiled before. If you’re interested in checking out the pages of Daddy Daughter Ninja Day: My First Ninja Training Manual, Bolk has generously uploaded some of the illustrations here.
  • Anime USA 2011 will be held this year from November 18 to 20; other guests at the con include voice actor Wendee Lee, the visual kei band BLOOD, and comedian Uncle Yo.
  • The two artists that Jane mentions in the “Art for Hope” book are Jacques Pena and Dave Guertin, and their pieces are pretty sweet. After the show, Jane said by email, “The anthology will be available December 2011 (pending Apple approvals). It will be available for a limited time only through the VIZ Manga apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, as well as through VIZManga.com” and “People can donate directly at Architecture for Humanity.”
  • Anne Cain’s work is more awesome in person than on the screen; you can find her DeviantArt gallery here where she has some digital photography as well. You can also see her sister Deb’s work here under the name Studio Mia, where she has sequential pages up. Hey, DC Comics, why haven’t you scouted these talented ladies yet?
  • The Starfire controversy has been widely covered by the comics press, but I think it was this blog post by author Michele Lee wherein she asked her 7-year old daughter’s opinion of the art and depiction which went the most viral. The official DC response (via Twitter) was: “We’ve heard what’s being said about Starfire today and we appreciate the dialogue on this topic. We encourage people to pay attention to the ratings when picking out any books to read themselves or for their children.”
  • Laura Lee’s website is here, and her galleries are a joy to browse through. And while we’re at it, the trailer for Page by Paige is below:

  • I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize profusely to the always-awesome Dean Haspiel, whom I interviewed last year at NYCC, but I fell into a hole after a relationship ended and I never uploaded the interview. In addition to his numerous graphic novels, you can also see Dean’s work in the “Super Ray” comic (PDF) from HBO’s “Bored to Death”; elements of the Ray character are loosely based on him.
  • I started reading comic books back in the mid to late 1990s, and the first stories I loved were the stories of the Chris Claremont-written Uncanny X-Men. When I saw him in Artist Alley, I had wanted to do a quick interview with Claremont, but I decided instead to get audio of him explaining his “Mekanix” miniseries featuring Kitty Pryde to some of her 9th grade female fans who wanted him to sign their comic books. Hearing this old comics vet sharing his work with female fans was just wonderful to me. The woman who laughs at the end came all the way from the Czech Republic to meet him!
  • The questions I had wanted to ask were about the preview piece Claremont had on his table, Wild Blood and how it felt going back into the prose world 20 years after having published First Flight and its sequels. I’ll also add that when I first read them, I totally loved the books and his Nicole Shea is the template upon which I’ve based my female Shepard.
  • Writer Jared Axelrod wasn’t at the table, but artist Steve Walker was, and I was glad to hear him talk about their graphic novel The Battle of Blood and Ink: A Fable of the Flying City which will be coming out in May 2012 from Tor.
  • As always, that snazzy intro to the podcast was “Roma Pt. 2” by greyguy, which I found on ccMixter.org.
  • By the by, if you’re interested in either recording a bumper for the show or advertising with us, please email us at geekingoutabout@gmail.com, and we’d love to work something out.

Stay tuned for “Voices from New York Comic Con” Part 2, which will go up as soon as I finish editing it, which features a very special interview which I got at the very last possible second while NYCC was ending on Sunday.

Trisha’s Take: How to get the most out of one day at a convention, part 2

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What does dance have to do with comic books? Plenty, says LXD creator Jon Chu

Picking up where I left off, I didn’t stay very long in the southern end of the Javitz Center because the one panel I’d RSVP’d for was in the northern end of the hall with the majority of the large publishers, game companies, and stores.

When I registered as a member of the Press, I had to supply my email address, presumably so that I could receive a confirmation that they received my information. What also happened is that as the convention grew new, my Inbox became flooded with press releases from those same publishers, game companies, stores, and individuals who wished to promote their panels and get members of the Press to write about their work.

I’m not sure if that’s how they operate over at Comic Con in San Diego, but I will say that it was a very smart thing for Reed to do because if it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have known about the panel featuring Jon Chu from the LXD.

Yes, I’m talking about the dance group which blew everyone away with their exhibition dance during last year’s run of “So You Think You Can Dance,” were invited to do a TED talk/performance (after which Madd Chadd allegedly did the robot with Bill Gates), and brought interpretive dance back to the Academy Awards ceremony. I’d heard about their web series before but didn’t watch any of the episodes for one reason or another, so I thought that it would be great to see what it was all about. The panel didn’t disappoint, and I was even able to speak to creator Jon Chu about the comic book story elements in the web series and how they’d like to tell their story in other mediums.

Listen to the interview with Jon M. Chu (and I apologize for getting the seasons numbers wrong!)

Now, I’d had an expensive hot dog and a medium-sized lemonade before the panel started, which meant by the time the panel was over, I had to use the bathroom. One of the things I remember from my days as a Sequential Tart was often joking about the way one could tell that women had successfully infiltrated the “boys-only” club of comics conventions is that the line for the women’s room was longer than the men’s. Over the years, this “joke” has become a reality, and while I feel great about that in terms of achieving parity, my bladder was not feeling the same way when I encountered the line outside of Hall A.

Despite an amendment to the building code requiring more women’s stalls than men’s in New York City public buildings (PDF), I still feel that if I have to go, I have to go, especially since I’ve had kidney problems ever since I was born. Thus, it was with a little bit of bravado and a whole lot of chutzpah that I turned right around and walked over to the other side of the hall to get in line for the men’s room. Another female attendee had the same idea I did, and as we waited for the one stall, we talked about what we were there at the convention to see, while encouraging the poor confused men who entered and saw us in line to go ahead and use the urinals.

The funniest part of all was catching a glimpse of Brooklyn-based comics artist Dean Haspiel out of the corner of my eye, and saying hello to him… after he washed his hands, of course. He was naturally very surprised to see me, and when I found out that he was on his way to the Vertigo panel, I decided to make that my next stop as well. I got there in time to hear Haspiel speak about his most recent work called Cuba: My Revolution, a collaboration with writer/painter Inverna Lockpez. I attempted to catch Haspiel after the panel for a brief interview, but he said that he had to do a signing at a booth with writer/collaborator Jonathan Ames (The Alcoholic, HBO’s “Bored to Death”) and to try to catch him there.

That was just perfect for me, because by that time, I had started receiving text messages and Speed McNeil and let me know that she was in row F of the Artist’s Alley, which I had completely skipped over during my initial pass. Armed with this information and knowing that I had about an hour or so to kill before Haspiel was free, I wandered back through the Hall A throng and was surprised to find Evil Inc. creator Brad Guigar sitting with Scott Kurtz at the Webcomics.com booth.

I have a special place in my heart for Guigar because he was the first creator whom I’d interviewed the weekend after I left Anime Insider and I’ve followed almost all of his projects with great interest since then. I figured that now was as good a time as any to talk to him about Webcomics.com, and exactly why any and all webcomics creators should join up.

Listen to Brad Guigar’s Webcomics.com pitch, which was successful enough to convince me that our own Kara Dennison needed a 1-year membership

…to be concluded next week

Trisha’s Take: How to get the most out of one day at a convention, part 1

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Approximately 10 years ago, I used to go to a lot of conventions, like the San Diego Comic Con (aka “Nerd Prom”) and Anime Expo. In fact, in 2001, I think I went to six different conventions on two different U.S. coasts.

My most traveled year was 2003 when I was working for the now-defunct Anime Insider as an associate editor and went to the Wizard World conventions in Chicago, Arlington (Texas), and Philadelphia; my busiest year was when I was an assistant editor for Sequential Tart and covered Anime Expo all by myself.

Being such an old hat at attending conventions, I knew what my preparations would be when I made the decision to attend only one day out of three for the New York Comic Con/New York Anime Fest mega-con which was held on October 8 through October 10 at the Javitz Center:

Make sure you have your badge and that your new digital voice recorder and your cell phone has a full battery.

Eat at least once in the middle of the day.

Stay hydrated.

Sit down if and when you need to do so.

One of the nifty things that Reed Expositions did for everyone who doesn’t have an iPhone or an Android phone to download their apps was to not only post their schedule online, but for the “cost” of signing in with your email address, you could create your own schedule of panel events and save them to your Microsoft Outlook calendar. Because my work Outlook calendar is synched up with my Windows Moblie phone, I did just that, and was able to cherry-pick the panels I wanted to attend. It was difficult to make choices, but in the end, I ended up choosing a few things that were different enough in scope to be interesting to me but familiar enough to where I’d be able to hang out with old friends.

Because I’m a wuss, after exiting the subway at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, I hailed a cab and paid $5 plus tip to get to the Javitz on Eleventh Avenue, which was closed to cabs dropping people off. My cabbie had to make an illegal U-turn and dropped me off outside the concrete barricades. All during the trip, he kept asking me about why so many people were going there, so I helpfully explained.

Unlike our esteemed gaming expert Adrienne Ryan, I had been to the Javitz for a previous NYCC and NYAF and so finding the press room wasn’t that difficult for me. I would find out later that they were charging something like $5.95 an hour for wifi access in the press room, where several people were already camped out with laptops and a few more were conducting interviews.

Had I more time, I probably would have investigated the press options more, but I was running late to the first panel on my schedule. As I walked towards the room, I saw voice actor/director Mike Sinterniklaas (Dean Venture of “The Venture Bros.”, Leonard from “TMNT”) chatting with a cosplayer. I gave him a hug and helped him by holding his smoothie and Danish while he got her contact information, for she wanted some more information about voice acting for his studio. Just as we were chatting, Rachel Lillis, another voice actor appeared and I walked with them to the panel room.

The title of the panel was “East Meets West” but as more American voice actors appeared (including Stephanie Sheh and Tom Wayland), they started to wonder if they were supposed to be on the panel or if it was a panel for Japanese voice actor Minori Chihara and maybe only one or two other people, for there were only three microphones on stage. Sinterniklaas volunteered to be the group’s spokesperson and after a quick conversation with the staff, another table and three more microphones came out. I was only able to stay for the first half of the panel, but one of the things I was glad to learn was that when Chihara-san records her audition tapes at home, she uses an Sony IC Digital Voice Recorder, just like the one I just bought in preparation for this weekend.

As I made my way through NYAF’s Artist Alley/panels area/Maid Cafe-and-stage, I remarked that the average age of the attendees seemed to be college-aged. For the most part, they were very rambunctious and giddy, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to linger to find out how the artists were faring in the basement. I also ran into Japanator editor Brad Rice, who took great pains to explain to everyone who asked that no, he wasn’t cosplaying as Harry Potter, thankyouverymuch.

Upstairs, I wandered through the Autograph area section, waving hello to some friends staffing the Otakon booth as well as Eisner-award winning editor Adam P. Knave (Popgun) and Attila Adorjany, two friends who joined forces to form Voltron purchase some booth space in the small press area. They were located next to Chris Hastings (The Adventures of Dr. McNinja). I would find out later on that the ended up co-opting booth space from Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden, who himself traded up to a corner booth in the Alley and then later on Sunday would move into the larger Exhibit Hall on the north side, proving that even in the comic book trade it’s all about “location, location, location!”

Just beyond that was the comics Artist Alley section, and I was on a mission to find Finder creator Carla Speed McNeil, because in addition to being one of my favorite artists ever, she’s also a real good friend whom I hadn’t seen in about five years. My plan was to hang out with her at her booth for a while to tease her about “selling out” to Dark Horse… except, I had no idea how to find her.

This was a problem earlier on the NYCC website, where when you clicked on an Artist Alley name and a large graphic of their came up, but no biographical information or location information. However, I thought by the time the show came around, there’s be some information in the program book, but no dice. I would find out later on that there was one sign in the Artist Alley area that had a list of creators and their booth numbers. Not good, Reed. Not good.

Instead, I decided to wander the AA to see who else had shown up that I knew and remembered from my comics-peddling days and ran into Kevin Bolk from Interrobang Studios, who had no idea that Kara Dennison had written about him for this very website. As I wandered about, trying to find Speed McNeil, I found children’s book author and illustrator Nick Bell who was giving out free mini-buttons which read “i am great” to promote his new book Brian the Great and his existing book Mary the Tooth Fairy.

Listen to the interview with Nick Bell

Ever since I became the aunt to two very adorable nieces, I’ve become fascinated with the idea of finding children’s books which are smart and encourage young girls to grow up to become strong women. Since I had it on me at the time, I decided to do a quickie interview with Bell on my new recorder, and the results will go up in a few days.

A person could spend hours wandering the AA, but I couldn’t linger, for I had to get over to the north end of the convention hall to attend the only panel to whose press release I responded favorably.

To be continued…