NYCC was a thing that has happened! To about 116,000 people if the numbers are correct. That is a lot of people! Like 9,000 short of SDCC a lot! But very few of them write for FPNYC. Which explains why you’re all stuck listening to my story.
Despite the construction going on….everywhere in and around the Javitis, and the insane crowds of people (which to be honest, is nothing new for NYCC Saturdays) there on the weekend, I had a blast at NYCC once again. I got to check out some awesome new games coming out over the next couple of months, look at the various action figure prototypes scattered across the exhibitor’s hall (No sign of Hasbro, but Square-Enix had a ton of dope toys on display, varying in degrees of want), hit up a few panels, did some cosplaying, and spent a ton of time in the awesome “new” Artist Alley, talking up creators. To namedrop some names (because I can dammit!), I got sketches from Jarrett Williams (Super Pro KO), Katie Cook (Gronk, AvX Vs, the upcoming My Little Ponies series), signatures from the likes of Chris Claremont (A ton of X-men books), Kieron Gillien (Phonograms, Journey into Mystery) and Rick Remender (Uncanny X-Force, Uncanny Avengers). In addition to usual swag I pick up, this year I actually dropped some cash and got myself a commission from Ryan Ottley (Invincible) of my favorite X-woman Emma Frost, and he was cool enough to throw in a sketch of Mark Grayson himself. Oh and I had a run in with Stan Lee, which lead to an interesting article on Bleeding Cool (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/10/16/getting-stan-lee-a-chair-a-confession-from-nyc/).
If you’ve never been to NYCC, I severely recommend hitting up NYCC next year, which is almost a San Diego Comic Con-sized event, only one where comics still matter (but the weather is slightly worse and there’s no hotels/food place near by). Even if Chevy and Craftsman have booths there. Any day but Saturday is a good day to go, unless you’re really into panels involving TV and movies. That seems to be the big day for those sorts of announcements.
With NYCC passed and no big shows until 2012, it’s time to shift the focus back onto toys. For now at least, I’m capitable of going off on tangents at any given time. A new release we got in recently is the 3 wave of the “new” Marvel Universe line, which seems massive, because it’s chock full of variants and repaints. USAgent is a repainted Bucky Cap from Wave 1. X-Force Deadpool is a mass re-released of a rare Toy’s R Us exclusive Deadpool figures from 2 years back. Characters like Punisher and Danii Moonstar has body variants with Mystique and Blade, who come with different weapons and head sculpts. The Doctor Doom figure is mostly new, but comes with a Future Foundation influence repaint. Iron Man (not sure which version of the Armor it is, the Googles say it’s Neo-Classic. No idea what that means) seems to be an all new figure, and the only one that doesn’t come with a variant or is a pre-existing repaint. The trade off is that he also doesn’t come with any accessories, which is beat.
Hasbro managed to turn a 6 figure set into an 8 figure one (not counting the variant Deadpool and Doom figures), with some clever repaints. It’s kind of a dick move, but at least we’re getting some love for the more obscure characters. I’m referring to Moonstar BTW, certainly not Iron Man. But yeah, they go for $22 a pop so if you want em, come get em!