In each year of the New York Comicon I’ve had a pretty different experience. The first year I was just covering the show for CF when the traffic went into lockdown mode. Year 2 I was the host of the official video podcast for the show and just wandered with a cameraman and a producer. Both were fun, but they didn’t compare to Year 3 this weekend. We had a great table stationed in Artist’s Alley, where we sold issues 1 and 2 of Comic Foundry Magazine, as well as subscriptions.

Highlights!

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Meeting the Readers
Selling books is great and all, but the best part about being behind the table is meeting the people who read the magazine. It was just amazing to meet everyone. I’m sorry if I forgot your names or am yet to reply to your email, but thanks so much for coming by the table. We had people coming up to the booth THANKING us for making the magazine. That’s how much they love it.

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Seeing all the bloggers in person
For the first time I got to meet Johanna Draper-Carlson in person. It’s so funny how you always imagine someone looking a certain way in your head. I always envisioned her having red hair. (She doesn’t.) I also saw Kevin Church, Brian Heater and the rest of the Daily Crosshatch crew, Douglas Wolk, Digital Femme, Auggie De Blieck, Neil Alien, Heidi MacDonald and the quite dapper Tom Spurgeon, who I’d never seen in a sports coat before. Spoiler alert: It looked good!

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Buying Books
I love having a home base to retreat to at a con, but it also means you get stuck behind the table for most of the show. Luckily we were able to take some shifts and rotate out to the floor every once and a while. I made it a priority to pick up some new stuff this weekend,

Bottomless Belly Button
This is the book I was most excited to pick up. It’s a mammoth book by Dash Shaw and I’m incredibly psyched to dive in.

Amelia Rules! Funny Stories

Amelia Rules! #18

The Baby-Sitters Club: Mary Anne Saves The Day (which I plan to read while listening to Better Than Ezra. Anybody?). Raina did a very cool sketch inside for me, so I’m twice as psyched.

Blue Beetle: Road Trip

Green Lantern Corps: To Be A Lantern

Punisher War Journal Vol. 2 HC

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Costumes!
Two superhero costumes really caught my eye. The first was a very portly but very awesome Colossus. The second was a fantastic Static Shock — who even had that metallic disc he flew on. Awesome. Photo help?

RANDOM NOTES:

1. About 10 different people asked me to autograph their copy of Comic Foundry. It’s happened before and it’s always more weird than flattering, but what’s funny about this weekend is that just about every single person thought I was Matt Fraction. Hmm. I guess it’s because Matt is on our cover and we had a poster version of it behind me…but…I don’t look like Matt Fraction. In the photo he’s got a beard. A big beard. I don’t have a beard. I can’t even grow a beard.

2. G4’s Blair Butler is super-nice and absolutely loves Madman Atomic Comics #3.

3. I think I saw Gareb Schamus walk past the table. He didn’t buy a copy though.

4. Denny O’Neil’s table was across from ours. He didn’t show up and his table was used as a trash receptacle for the weekend.

5. The Information Center at the show had very little information. I asked where I could find a close bathroom and they told me I had to leave the show floor, go down an escalator and then traverse some labyrinth of hallways. I used a bathroom about 50 feet away instead.

6. One more reason to like Tom Spurgeon: He watches Battlestar Galactica.

7. I was accused of stealing the layout of 1) Time Out New York 2) L Magazine. Neither is true. Thanks for playing though!

8. If you ordered a subscription between last Thursday and now — thanks for being patient. Issues will go out tonite. We’ve been bogged down with the con! Sawwwwyy.

9. I did a quick series of video interviews at the show for Complex.com. We talked to a few guys and girls in Artist’s Alley. I tried to keep the energy going and mispronounced Arthur Suydam’s name twice — I’ll link when they go up.

10. My favorite sales pitch of the weekend:
Customer: The design looks really slick
Me: Well, we tried to come up with a design aesthetic that matches my hair.

PS - I have a few hundred emails to get through before I’m back at full-speed, so if I owe you one I’m sorry.