It has come to my attention this year is the 20th year of NYCC. Blimey. I went to the first with my wife. We had one kid at the time (now two) and he was 1 and we left him with his grandparents while we galavanted off to New York for a few days and it was amazing.
I still had my day job, part time working in IT, while comics where a fun second income for me, and at the time the dollar was about $2 to the £1 – so you felt filthy rich the entire time.
Despite being a part time comic artists I’d also wangled a guest pass, so I could wander in and out of the show at my leisure, it was all just a little magical. I went back the following year and intermittently over the last 20 years (not that often, it got more and more expensive)
I think 2018 was the best year for me at NYCC, and 2022 was the most recent and it turned into a comical disaster. I was on the cheap so got an inexpensive air bnb but it turns out NY door locks turn differently to ours and when going back to the apartment at 3am, I managed to lock myself out and got in to a panic and spent a very uneasy few hours trying to figure out what was next. Luckily twitter still had the juice then and I was able to get into the hotel of a twitter pal who was also jetlagged, and then finally around 7am I got to Will Sliney’s hotel room and he let me crash there (at this point I’d been awake going on for about 30 hours)
Next day I would’ve happily gone to the airport and just waited on the plane home.
Early comic cons, when I was making money in IT were great, they didn’t need to justify themselves I could do them as fun excursions (or “weekend famous” if I was doing a signing) but as my career picked up and I left my day job these things really had to justify the expense. And they are expensive. They’re great though for meeting people you only know online and finding out where you stand in the industry because it’s easy sitting in Belfast to write all sorts of epic poems about how you’re station in life as a comic artist, epic poems that are full of nonsense because you just have no idea.
Hitting a con, seeing other pros who know your work, or meeting editors who know your name, or signing at shows are a great way to feel like you’re part of that big weird comic industry.
Fond memories include the year Dave Gibbons made a bee line to come and chat to me (because we are brothers in clip-studio-paint)
Going for dinner and drinks with Garth Ennis, Torunn Gronbeck, Brian K Vaugn, Rob Williams and others also great.
This year, of course, I’ve been nominated for a Harvey’s award, so yeah this would’ve been a great year to go. But nope, I’m sitting in my dining room, looking at a kitchen I’ve just tidied and thinking “maybe next year I’ll get there”. But I suspect I won’t.
We’ll see.
Anyway, happy birthday NYCC.
(I know TWO blogs in one day, especially after I said I may kill the blog, I guess when I think of something I should just sit down and blog it instead of waiting and forgetting and then not bothering)
