Attending
I did my usual volunteering thing to get into New York Comic Con for Friday and Saturday. I was offered Sunday as well, but my body gave up on me around 4:30 Saturday, demanding I take a day of major rest.
I have to say that there seemed to be a lot more people this year, so many that I had to slowly shuffle my way around through dense crowds. There were so many people in costume and so many good costumes that I became rather blasé about it. Also contributing to me not taking many cosplay photos was the dense crowding. A lot of times people walked right in front of me; other times people nearby also saw the prime photo opportunity I saw and stepped right in front of me, blocking my camera, to take the shot themselves. Uncool. The majority of my shots turned out blurry from me shooting fast to try to catch a clear field of vision before someone walked in front of me. I'm upset that my two shots of Joel Hodgson and the Crow and Tom Servo puppets were each somewhat blurry. A few days from now I'll put up the best of what I have.
Loki, Avengers, Homestuck, Doctor Who, and Adventure Time were popular cosplay choices. I also noticed a lot of genderswapped characters, especially women adapting male characters. Though in Loki's case, it's canon for him to also be female sometimes. I'm still somewhat mentally scarred by the sexy Ewok costume I saw (that I didn't try to photograph).
The Venture Bros. seems to get a bigger audience every year I go for it. This year I took a place in line for it 40 minutes before the advertised start time and there already was well over a hundred people in line in front of me. By the time it started, the line was massive. Ironically, I thought Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer put on a more entertaining presentation last year when they didn't have any new Venture footage to show or other show-related voice actors with them on stage. Their "sizzle reel" of new season bits looked great though, as did the teaser for the October 28 Halloween special. Anyway, this year they did their stage presentation as a kind of late-night talk show they called "Let's All Smoking," with Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, and later Dean's voice actor and then Jonas Venture Sr.'s voice actor sat on couches, drank Fresca, and smoked electronic cigarettes. Doc Hammer wasn't too impressed with the cigarettes, saying that they catch spittle, then send it back into one's mouth. Their opening commercial for Let's All Smoking promised appearances by Madame and Air Supply that never materialized. *g* Aside from doing their usual snark, they took questions from the audience, some of which weren't actually questions. Among other things, the four of them speculated on what sex act a "Rusty Venture" is, giving four different answers, and Doc Hammer did a "seductive" come-on with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch's voice at the request of an audience member.
Fortunately, the Robot Chicken panel started in the same theater right after it, so I just switched seats to a closer one and stayed. Matthew Seinreich couldn't be there, but the panel had Seth Green, Clare Grant, Kevin Shinick, another guy whose name eludes me, and Macaulay Culkin, who thankfully looked better here than in those photos a few months ago where he looked like a very badly emaciated junkie. The panel broke their running joke of wearing silly hats during every NYCC appearance--with last year's being a pair of cute plush kitty ears for each of them--because they were too busy and Seinreich was supposed to bring them. One of them said that maybe the audience could think that they were wearing invisible hats. Some memorable moments:
Saturday I did the majority of my floor wandering and went to the Tiger & Bunny panel.
I have to say that there seemed to be a lot more people this year, so many that I had to slowly shuffle my way around through dense crowds. There were so many people in costume and so many good costumes that I became rather blasé about it. Also contributing to me not taking many cosplay photos was the dense crowding. A lot of times people walked right in front of me; other times people nearby also saw the prime photo opportunity I saw and stepped right in front of me, blocking my camera, to take the shot themselves. Uncool. The majority of my shots turned out blurry from me shooting fast to try to catch a clear field of vision before someone walked in front of me. I'm upset that my two shots of Joel Hodgson and the Crow and Tom Servo puppets were each somewhat blurry. A few days from now I'll put up the best of what I have.
Loki, Avengers, Homestuck, Doctor Who, and Adventure Time were popular cosplay choices. I also noticed a lot of genderswapped characters, especially women adapting male characters. Though in Loki's case, it's canon for him to also be female sometimes. I'm still somewhat mentally scarred by the sexy Ewok costume I saw (that I didn't try to photograph).
The Venture Bros. seems to get a bigger audience every year I go for it. This year I took a place in line for it 40 minutes before the advertised start time and there already was well over a hundred people in line in front of me. By the time it started, the line was massive. Ironically, I thought Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer put on a more entertaining presentation last year when they didn't have any new Venture footage to show or other show-related voice actors with them on stage. Their "sizzle reel" of new season bits looked great though, as did the teaser for the October 28 Halloween special. Anyway, this year they did their stage presentation as a kind of late-night talk show they called "Let's All Smoking," with Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, and later Dean's voice actor and then Jonas Venture Sr.'s voice actor sat on couches, drank Fresca, and smoked electronic cigarettes. Doc Hammer wasn't too impressed with the cigarettes, saying that they catch spittle, then send it back into one's mouth. Their opening commercial for Let's All Smoking promised appearances by Madame and Air Supply that never materialized. *g* Aside from doing their usual snark, they took questions from the audience, some of which weren't actually questions. Among other things, the four of them speculated on what sex act a "Rusty Venture" is, giving four different answers, and Doc Hammer did a "seductive" come-on with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch's voice at the request of an audience member.
Fortunately, the Robot Chicken panel started in the same theater right after it, so I just switched seats to a closer one and stayed. Matthew Seinreich couldn't be there, but the panel had Seth Green, Clare Grant, Kevin Shinick, another guy whose name eludes me, and Macaulay Culkin, who thankfully looked better here than in those photos a few months ago where he looked like a very badly emaciated junkie. The panel broke their running joke of wearing silly hats during every NYCC appearance--with last year's being a pair of cute plush kitty ears for each of them--because they were too busy and Seinreich was supposed to bring them. One of them said that maybe the audience could think that they were wearing invisible hats. Some memorable moments:
- Two members of the panel said their favorite sketch was the tooth fairy one. After the second person mentioned his love of it, part of the audience chanted, "Darkest sketch ever!" three times. Seth Green said his favorite was the breakdancing Voltron sketch.
- When asked what threesome with celebrities they'd most like to be part of, one said Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy because he really wanted to know how that worked, which led to another panel member using Miss Piggy and Kermit voices to do sex talk. Seth said his threesome would be with the Black Cat and Jean Grey; when he saw two women dressed as them later in the show he asked them to do a photo with him as he lounged sexily on stage and they stood in front of it.
- One audience member gave Seth an original 70s Millennium Falcon as a gift. When Seth accepted it, he "flew" it back to the table with him and played with it a bit.
- Some upcoming celebrity voice cameos are Brent Spiner as Noonian Soong explaining why he gave Data a working dick and 50 Cent rapping with PaRappa. One audience member asked how 50 Cent could do that when a prior sketch killed PaRappa off, to which Seth answered that it's not like he keeps to an RC continuity when it doesn't work for him.
Saturday I did the majority of my floor wandering and went to the Tiger & Bunny panel.