The New York Comic Con started on the Friday before Columbus Day weekend, but I had to work that day, so my comics were being set up by the crew from SJS Comic Promotions while I spent the day working and then traveling.
I got a ride from my job to the bus stop and got the Plymouth & Brockton Bus Lines bus from Barnstable on Cape Cod to South Station in Boston. That all went smoothly.
South Station was a mess. I'm a pretty experienced bus traveler. I sent several years living in New Jersey without a car and taking the bus back and forth to Boston to visit family.
I'd never seen South Station as crowded as it was that day. To make matters worse, Fung Wah Bus Lines was making the people with printed e-tickets stand in the same line as the people who were buying tickets, which somewhat defeated the purpose of printing your ticket out in advance. I had some fast food, got in line, and waited. And waited. And waited.
Oh yeah, and there was a suspicious package incident. Some people decided to give up on waiting in line and left a box behind. After it had been sitting there for a while, someone pointed it out to a maintenance guy.
His reaction was to loudly declare "I ain't touching that! Could be a bomb or something!" Way to reassure the traveling public, buddy.
Eventually the actual security professionals showed up, and were quite efficient about bringing in the bomb-sniffing dog and then whisking the package away when the dog gave the all-clear.
Back to waiting. Finally someone at Fung Wah wised up and let the people with e-tickets proceed to the gate. I arrived at South Station at 6 PM with a ticket for 6 PM. I got on a bus at 9 PM, which proceeded to hit traffic thanks to construction on I-95. My tax dollars at work, apparently.
So, of course, by the time I got to NYC the subway was running on late-night schedules. I actually arrived at my friends' place in Brooklyn at 3 AM. Fortunately I'd gotten some sleep on the bus.
It got better from there. I headed Manhattan and got through the professional line at the Javitts Center with no problems and located the SJS booth in the small press area.
Here are some shots of the Javitts Center decorated for the convention.
And my Professional badge!
We were located next to a massive video gaming setup by Intel.
I settled into the booth for my first shift selling my comics. Here are some shots of the booth and my books:
Those are my comics, Zephyr & Reginald: Minions for Hire and Stone.
I also write Perils of Picorna, on the right, below.
This is Joe McGlone of Fallenmage Productions with his comics, Beyond the Dark and Leaves of Yggdrasil.
And a shot of me holding the debut issue of Stone.
Here are myself and Joe with Carl Herring Jr. of Three J Productions.
And Joe and Carl with Jay Rosario of Unstoppable Comics.
After my shift, I met some friends for lunch and then walked back to the con by way of the Hells Kitchen Flea Market:
Saturday afternoon was spent wandering the convention floor. I saw some interesting costumes. Here's a group of Batman villains:
And the Joker having a shootout with Boba Fett!
I headed back to my friends' apartment and got a nice view of the Empire State Building on my way Penn Station.
Sunday, I did a bit more wandering in the exhibit hall. This Michael Jackson dancing game was a huge hit at the con.
Sunday afternoon, I attended the Comic Book Artist Guild's Haller awards.
I was honored to be nominated in the non-comics category for my Luminations serial at The Edge of Propinquity. Free Lunch Comics won that category for their Rusty Haller benefit project.
Joe won in the category of best cartoonist for his Heroic Space Adventures webcomic.
As things were winding down on Sunday, Joe and I packed up and headed up to Penn Station to catch a train to New Haven, our first stop heading home.
NYCC is a huge event and we had a great time among the thousands of geeks, nerds, comic fans, and creators who crowded into the Javitts Center for the weekend.
