20 Cool Things About NYCC ‘08

April 22, 2008 on 10:01 pm | In Events

Yo.

So despite it kicking our collective asses for three days and in some ways totally demoralizing us as people, New York Comic-Con 2008 was actually a pretty grand event for the Indie Jones crew. To that end, we’ve each compiled ten things about the show we’d like to share with all three of you still reading. To whit:

DAVE LIKED:

Willie & Joe: The WWII Years — This collection of Bill Mauldin’s World War Two cartoons is absolutely gorgeous. An Army green slipcase, faux Army file design…the cartoons inside are worth the price of admission, but this fantastic package makes it that much more sweet.

Meathaus SOS — The new Meathaus anthology, SOS, was available at the Nerdcore booth. It features indie superstars like James Jean, Ross Campbell, Jim Rugg, Corey Lewis and more! James Jean was even signing copies on Sunday. Fun!

Marcos Perez’s Carl Is The Awesome! — Marcos was in Artist Alley, but I actually bought this book a week before at Jim Hanley’s. Here’s the scoop: Carl is a dinosaur cool with haunches. He has an awesome vest. Any questions? Too bad, just go read it.

The Vault of Mike Allred hardcover — I found this little gem in a half off bin. Hot dog! This collects the four issues the Allred put out through AAA Pop that republishes old forgotten art, interviews, ads, photos and all sorts of etcetera. A lot of fun for Madman, Allred fans.

Giant Size THB — It’s not easy to find Paul Pope’s THB comics anywhere (Amazon, eBay, had to be there?), but I picked this one up over the weekend and plan on reading it over a million times before the complete THB collection drops in 2009, or 2010 (I can’t even remember).

Ashley Wood, Bertie the robot toys — Leapin lizards, this thing looks awesome! Ashley Wood designed this toy based of his Bertie robot in Zombies vs. Robots and Zombies vs. Amazons vs. Robots.

A huge Phil Hale painting — It was at the booth of some guy who was selling a lot of Ashley Wood pieces, some even some Chris Ware. I guess for now I’ll have to dream.

Lockjaw sketches —photos forthcoming ya nerds…

The Al Columbia story in the new MOME — I read it right at the Fantagraphics booth, then walked over to a corner and acted all quiet for a while.

The Bottomless Belly Button — Dash Shaw’s latest comic/brick. It’s got a very pretty design and it’s a fantastic story. Check out the review in the upcoming issue of Wizard!

KIEL LIKED:

Obscure manga – NYCC may be one of the few places where you can find little manga gems. Of particular interest at this show was the peek I was able to grab at the great-looking new offerings from Fanfare/Ponent Mon (although I was unable to stop and talk to the extremely enthusiastic publisher Stephen Robson) and the radical syringe-style pens Vertical had to promote Black Jack’s English release. I know, it’s probably unfair to call a comic by Osamu Tezuka “obscure” but I’m guessing most of the Naruto kids won’t be chomping at the bit for this release. Sucks to be them.

An actual kids day – So many conventions call Sunday “Kids Day” which is code for “The porn stars are leaving the autograph area early.” But NYCC had a ton of programming and events that the younger set would actually want to go to from “Avatar” and “Ben Ten” announcements to guests like Jeff Kinney and Mo Wilems. I even saw actual children on the floor. GASP!

Jim Campbell – He was a very nice man and seemed genuinely surprised that any outside company would be willing to put up the cash to publish future installments of Meathaus.

Plenty of indie panels – Sure, I didn’t get to go to any of them because of the job, but the con sure didn’t cut corners in allowing everything from general self-publishing panels to specific spotlights of talents and companies like Scott McCloud and Oni Press.

First Second sell outs – I’ve heard other people mention this, but it bear repeating how funny it was that the publisher’s PR officer Gina Gagliano underestimated demand for their books and had to continually run back to their offices for more copies to sell. Good thing her legs are so long.

Finding awesome things for less than five bucks – Like this volume of Metal Hurlant Presents: Like A River by Pierre Wazem. I’d never heard of the book until I bought it on the cheap, but it blows my mind that the predominantly sci-fi publisher ever put out a book that looks like it belongs in the Drawn & Quarterly catalogue.

The Icv2 Conference – I’m seriously going to have some extensive thoughts up on this in the next 24 hours, but for now I’ll just say that I had a good time and learned some interesting stuff.

New Papercutter – Dave, Rickey and I are all super pissed that we didn’t even know about this until after the show (I didn’t even see the Indie Spinner Rack booth it was on sale at), but a new issue of Papercutter is always an occasion for joy. I’m pumped to buy it at MoCCA if not sooner.

Seeing all my nerdy comic journalist friends – You know who you are.

A show without headaches that I blamed on the show – This was my first year at NYCC where I didn’t feel something went horribly awry in terms of physically getting from point A to point B on the floor. Way to grow!

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So that was that…look for more of the promised stuff as well as some reviews this week. And since this is a con report: