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Only Dress Rehearsals: Fear and Loathing at New York Comic-Con

By | October 14th, 2021
Posted in Longform | % Comments

[Note: Featured image is not from NYCC 2021 – Ed.]

New York Comic-Con did not start out smoothly. An unmistakable success, absolutely, but a success that has faced its share of logistical bumps. Organizers in 2006 did not foresee how many East Coasters were looking forward to their own version of San Diego Comic-Con and that error caused a fire hazard. Marshals swept in, locked out fans and comic professionals including Kevin Smith, Dan DiDio, and Frank Miller, casting them all into the purgatorial stretch of Manhattan now known as Hudson Yards. Not exactly what the organizers had in mind, but it was a weekend they learned from. A dress rehearsal. The capacity for that first NYCC was 10,000. Last week saw 190,000 fans make their grand return to New York’s biggest fan event, almost a hundred thousand less than 2019’s 260,000.

This isn’t an article where I’m going to try and stoke an alarmist uproar about the throngs of unwashed masses causing a super spreader event in the city that was hit hardest in the early days of the pandemic. Not just because that feels like old hat, but because ReedPOP did a great job organizing entry into the event. Ticket holders were directed to a lot about a block away from the Javits Center, where staff checked proof of vaccination from guests before surprising them with one of the bomb-collars they give you when you join the Suicide Squad.

Okay, it doesn’t look like a bomb-collar but the same principle more or less applies. I got the strap, got my pass, entered the Javits Center then proceeded with my day. But when it was time to go home, back to a life where Guts from Berserk isn’t standing around for photo ops and there’s maybe 30% less women dressed like Harley Quinn, I could not get rid of the strap. Do not say it’s because I have fat wrists, I do wrist exercises every other day. Maybe there was a big red button in a dark smoke-filled room pressed at 5PM on Sunday when the show floor closed for the last time that set everyone free. I had stuff to do so I just got some scissors.

As far as large post-COVID events in NYC go, this was one of the better handled ones. Everyone in the convention hall wore masks with no problem, the wristbands were a little over the top but efficient nevertheless, and a lot of thought was put into the safety and logistics of this year’s convention. I could do another thousand words of stale complaining about the wrist strap, but it made entry smooth and easy for both fans and staff. This isn’t terribly surprising. Anyone who’s been to more than a couple NYCCs can tell you that ReedPOP learned their lesson from the first messy con and have slowly but surely become a well-oiled machine.

Before COVID, NYCC’s trajectory would’ve had full control of Manhattan by 2035. After the first event, ReedPOP quickly spread out to have full occupation of the Javits Center. That still would not be enough. By 2019, Comic-Con was no longer confined to one location, but across Manhattan. The Walking Dead – a show that does not stream on Hulu – had a panel at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theatre. M. Night Shyamalan hosted a talk at the Hammerstein Ballroom. My apartment was commandeered by Joss Whedon for his annual fuck-a-fan contest. Just as nerd culture mutated and glommed onto the monoculture across the 2010s, so too was ReedPOP absorbing Manhattan.

By contrast, last week’s Comic-Con felt like a step back. Another dress rehearsal. That’s not to say there wasn’t fun to be had. For all the cynicism I have about fan culture in my cold shriveled heart, it grew three sizes to see everyone who made it through the past whatever we’re at doing what they loved again. While the lack of big-name companies like Marvel or DC may have tempered some fans’ excitement, it was nice to exist in a “nerd” space where the MCU wasn’t breathing down my neck. The panel I clocked as most notable was Hulu’s Animaniacs season two premiere which did not take place at the Hulu Theatre. If anything, this absence of big names gave those fans hungry for a Walking Dead panel or something similar more time to check out the smaller panels or vendors on the show floor. Or, to take photos with Dragon Ball characters.

Continued below

Speaking of taking pictures with celebrities, ReedPOP had a notable lineup of celebrities for private meet and greets. I didn’t sign up for any of these because I don’t like waiting in line for body doubles of celebrities who were executed at Guantanamo Bay last year. My understanding from looking up photos of John Cena’s NYCC appearance is fans would be loaded into a private room where the celebrity of your choice was housed behind one of those plastic prisons they give you if you were a supervillain in the previous movie.

I’ve gone to New York Comic-Con more or less every year since 2012 and the song doesn’t change that much. There’s still the plaza where cosplayers compete for attention, the artist’s alley, the overpriced food, and whatever the newest cosplay craze from Tumblr is. I remember it being Homestuck, then Attack on Titan, and then I lost track around the Adventure Zone. But this year’s convention echoed the first event fifteen years prior. As previously mentioned, ReedPOP had been oiling the machine well.

The palpable difference for this year’s NYCC is it felt hesitant, the way everything (at least in New York) has felt as we navigated the euphoria of a vaccine rollout before falling off its midsummer crash when vaccine rates began to plateau and Delta induced March 2020 flashbacks for some. “Life is not a dress rehearsal” was a phrase that gets thrown around by motivational speakers, but until there’s some consensus on safety or normalcy reached then yes, life is just a dress rehearsal. We put all this effort into costumes, and security protocols, and photo ops, and wristbands, in the hope that we’ll get through this rough period before all the wrinkles are ironed out by some far off opening night. And they might be! But until then, the hesitance that inhabits all feeling remains.

Anyway, here’s a picture of a guy in the Berserker suit about to execute me.

“You sure you, uh, don’t want to hold the sword, man?” He said, like the real Guts, in a heavy New Yawk accent.

“Just chop my head off, brother.”

I think my request threw him off because I’ve never seen someone get executed with the sword going up towards their neck. It’s okay. I’ll get it right next year.


James Johnston

James Johnston is a grizzled post-millenial. Follow him on Twitter to challenge him to a fight.

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