Jabbas, Leias, and Venkmans: NYC Comic Con '09

First, let me get this off my chest: I should really be reading student essays. The little parasites - theoretically - put a lot of work into it, and I should respect that. But... they mostly suck, so I'm blogging instead. Is this wrong? Sure, it is, but that's me and if you don't like it, there's a little x somewhere on your screen and you should piss off, right now.

That being said, let me talk about New York Comic Con.

This would be the point where most people put in some Star Wars quote (yeah, you've already seen those blogs). Why is it that people who seek to rag on the comic scene are criminally deprived of originality? That is to say, how scathing a critique are you issuing when you quote the number one geek fanboy of all time, a guy who is not particularly known for his writing? Scum and villainy? If that's really the best you can come up with for this event, stop blogging. Ditto any "clever" word pun that ends in -gasm.

The way I'm going to start my con-commentary is with my own coined word - notice the lack of "gasm-ing" but the way I still work in the sexual connotation - here it comes, wait for it, okay tah-dah... I want to talk about swag-hags. These are the con attendees who show up with the biggest bag and proceed to fill it with anything and everything they can get their hands on, provided it's free. Now, you can tell the pros from the fanboys because the pros bring their own bags, usually emblazoned with the specs of some previous, "superior," event. I'll see your NYCC and raise you a SDCC. The fanboys take whatever receptacle they can get their hands on in a frenzy of hoarding.

The swag-hags are notable for taking any piece of garbage and putting it in their bag, regardless of the quality of said object. Or, as a not-to-be-named source from one of the big comic houses put it, "do you know how much of that free stuff was just piled up under my desk last week?" Yeah, folks, there's a reason it's free. I don't want to get all high and mighty, because that leaves you with the wrong impression. I myself had a bright yellow swag bag, but it was from Dark Horse, which is a mondo-cool group. I kept the side with the Hellboy II logo turned in ('cause mondo-cool isn't a phase I'm willing to attach to that film). But in my bag, you wouldn't find multiple copies of comics that no one would buy, I was carrying my coat. Of course, I needed to take the coat off because the ambient temp in the Javits was set for the comfort of those costumed conventioneers pictured at the top of the page.

The really hysterical part of that picture is that those people didn't arrive together, so the girls actually came to the con looking for stormtroopers. Unfortunately, with the temperature so high, and those guys completely encased in neoprene and plastic, I'm sure they were so dehydrated by the end of the day that erectile function was simply not an option. That's okay, though, because there were plenty of guys released on a day pass from a suburban basement somewhere who looked an awful lot like Jabba...

TBC...