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New York Comic Con - Author's Notes - 2007 Give my regards to Broadway, Remember me to Herald Square, Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street, That I will soon be there; Whisper of how I'm yearning To mingle with the old time throng, Give my regards to old Broadway, And say that I'll be there e'er long. George M. Cohan, Little Johnny Jones, 1904 At the beginning of this month, the author of this web site was looking down at the Arlington, Texas construction site of the Dallas Cowboys' new stadium on our way to Ikkicon. Two weeks later, we spotted the Capitol dome, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument on our way to Katsucon in Washington, D.C. Then we ended up in a Manhattan hotel one block from Madison Square Garden, a couple of blocks from Macy's and the Empire State Building. We've been to six conventions in 2007, and that pretty much shows that we're back in shape after last year's heart problems. We'd gotten lazy after a couple of months of winter, but all of that convention time, most of it spent carrying a backpack full of equipment, got us back in shape. Some extra magazine work for Newtype USA got us to leave home and head to Manhattan for the second New York Comic Con. We worked up stories on the convention and inaugural American Anime Awards, held at the convention's midpoint. The awards were seen by many as an ADV Films promotion, but that company didn't benefit from any awards voted by fans. Instead, ADV's Texas rival, Funimation, rode the appeal of Fullmetal Alchemist to get five of the night's 13 awards. No ADV series won any of the fan votes, but nearly all of the winners had been seen on Adult Swim or the Cartoon Network. The second event proved that a major comics show in New York at the Javits Center can work. A big banner promised a third convention on April 18-20, 2008. Announcing that date, more than a year in advance, could be seen as a shot across the bow of any other event organizers, and the New York date for 2008 comes close to the Anime Boston dates in 2007. The New York event is a home game for DC and Marvel, the comics industry's major players. But does the future belongs to those companies? Their old-line pamphlet comics look like a relic of the 1960's when compared to the rise of the tankobon-styled graphic novels. Go to a Borders or Barnes and Noble, and you'll find a token rack of comic monthlies, overshadowed by shelf after shelf of graphic novels, most of them translated manga. The youthful enthusiasm that comics captured in the 1960's, when Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four were new, has passed to graphic novels from Japan. That's not just this writer's opinion. ICv2 says graphic novels outsold pamphlets in 2005 and 2006. There's a difference between interest and enthusiasm. Comics fans are extremely interested in their favorites, but anime and manga fans - especially the newest, youngest fans - are enthusiastic. The comics world still needs to get those young fans back to have an unquestioned future. A example of that enthusiasm was on display when Jhonen Vasquez appeared at the convention; he was the event's major star, and his fans were overjoyed to have him in Manhattan. TokyoPop's presence at the convention, with several artists on hand, made a big statement. All of those artists are interested in the manga style of storytelling, which avoids costumed superheroes and concentrates on ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Those stories, as demonstrated by anime and manga's success, have reached a new generation of fans in a way that muscles, fistfights and grim and gritty storylines have not. Old-line American comics aren't going to disappear, but the new anime and manga wave shows no sign of abating - which has to be one reason that the comic con's organizers are going to hold an anime convention in December. This note may reveal more about the author of this site than is comfortable, but our trip to New York came one week past the 35th anniversary of the death of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan in New York, who was shot in an argument with his common-law wife. Remembering that shows our age: we remember when the X-Men (the version in the blue and yellow uniforms) were new, and it's only proper that we end up in New York at a show that celebrates the successors of the Lee and Kirby era of comics, in the city where those series were born. Once, heading to New York would have been an intimidating experience for this writer, a scary trip into the city that's too big. Now, it's a great sightseeing trip for a small-town midwesterner who still can't help but look up at the tall buildings. We got a couple of great unguided tours of Manhattan on the shuttle rides to and from LaGuardia airport. We didn't mind being the last person dropped off the van and the first person picked up because there was so much to see. Just like in Cohan's song, we rode all the way from Broadway and Times Square to Herald Square and places inbetween. One turn brought us past the Ed Sullivan theater with its marquee promoting David Letterman's late night show. A move toward the East River brought us past the Brooklyn Bridge, a sight made more special by our having driven over the John A. Roebling bridge in Cincinnati, which was the bridge Roebling built immediately before he constructed the enduring Brooklyn masterpiece. And one turn through Battery Park brought us past the new World Trade Center train station, where there was a crowd of people who had gathered to view the unfilled hole in the sky. New York Comic Con Main Page