Day 2 has come and gone and the intensity has stepped up. The show floor was already much more difficult to get around, but was also populated with some awesome cosplayers. Every year the various new and unique costumes never cease to amaze me.
Shiny!
Day started off pretty low key with some video game demos.
Don’t they look intense?
The pre-alpha of Dungeon Defenders II looks pretty amusing. It’s a nice mix of tower defense, action adventure, and rpg. After that we got some time in with Total War: Rome II. If my computer can support it, this game will be dangerous. I don’t even know how many hours of my life I lost to playing the original Rome but it has to be a lot and this game takes everything that was great about the original and improves upon it. (For the record, I DO know I’ve spent 230 hours playing Total War: Empire) Finally, near the Rome demo was competitive StarCraft II. For those of you who don’t know, the original StarCraft was hugely popular in South Korea and they still have intense competitions. I’ll admit that I had no idea what I was watching. These guys were playing so far above my level that I just couldn’t keep up. Not surprising, the Korean player won the match.
So very British.
After the video games, I was off to get autographs. First on the agenda was Mr. C-3PO himself, Anthony Daniels. He is a very nice, and proper Englishman. While waiting on line I had a great conversation with a man from Colombia. Events like this are a fantastic way to meet new people from all over the world. After Mr. Daniels I was off to meet Chase Masterson of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Lately Chase has been running the Anti Bullying Coalition, which she founded. Earlier in the day I wandered past their booth with a couple of friends. While my friends stopped to do something at the booth, I was just standing around, minding my own business when I was approached by a familiar looking woman who immediately introduced herself and went to talk, very excitedly and passionately about the organization’s anti-bully campaign. It took me about thirty seconds to realize that the woman who had introduced herself was Chase Masterson. She if officially tied with Adam Baldwin for nicest person I’ve met at a con. I now have a lovely signed photo of her as well, which makes me a very happy man. Lastly was a surprise autograph from a guy named John Morton. For those of you Star Wars fans out there he played Dak, Luke’s gunner at the Battle of Hoth who gets killed in the first ten seconds or so. He also happened to be in the Boba Fett costume in some of the Cloud City scenes. We had a nice little conversation about working for our mutual employer, the Navy.
Having successfully completed my Friday autograph mission, I joined back up with some friends and wandered around the floor until the Venture Bros. panel. We were hoping for something a little more than last year but were unfortunately disappointed. This panel has become a staple of our comic con experience since year one when they were in one of the small rooms and there were chairs available when we walked in fifteen minutes late. Now the guys are in the IGN Theater and it’s a packed house. What disappointed us, however, was that they had no new material to show off, which, given how inconsistently the show comes out now, is not the first time. The panel rather quickly became an audience Q&A. Although those are fun, it has been six years of the same questions, sonwe decided we could do without and left.
Our last panel of the day was the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s The Secret Origin of Comics Censorship which was a fascinating look into the history of how censorship in comics got started. Dr. Carol Tilley presented a history of the censorship of comics, including many letters written in response to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s testimony to Congress. It was very interesting to hear her read the letters, mostly written by teenagers who were comic fans and disagreed with Dr. Wertham. The two most stunning things to me were the fact that the Comic Code was still in effect (albeit to a limited purpose) until 2011 and that there was such a considerable network of people involved in trying to bring censorship into comics.
Almost forgot, we saw Whoppi Goldberg out on the con floor.
Never know who you will see at NYCC.
For Day 3, I will be joined by our Editor, Tracy, who is attending her first convention. Be brave. Please feel free to share you NYCC experiences with us and follow us on Twitter for more up to date information about the goings on at NYCC.
Therefore I Geek 