A Quiet Place

Finding a place to sit is usually so hard that Madeline wrote a whole story about how her ideal New York Comic Con situation would be having a hotel room nearby on top of purchasing a booth where people could hang out on a couch in exchange for contributing to the recap issue. This year there were so many places to sit, attendees kind of couldn’t stop talking about it. They added tables Friday but people sat on the staircases anyway without being told to move. Usually it’s impossible to find a nice place to catch a break from all the time on your feet. Without a million big busy installations, the space felt very quiet. While a full bar on display caught Madeline’s attention, it’s sad that space wasn’t devoted to Wonder Woman’s 80th.

There were virtually no lines for the indoor bathrooms compared to previous years, but portable toilets lined the courtyard this year. The automatic doors were roped off, but later in the day the manual door was propped open so we didn’t all have to touch the one door handle.

For a few years there has been a Quiet Room and Family Head Quarters, but this year Reed Pop seemed to open more dividers to make the rooms bigger. The 501st had been located on and off site at different times in the past, but seemed to only be in the building this year. Seeing that daily costume contests were happening only inside the Javits Center was a change I appreciated even more after I had to get in a “I was here early today” re-entry line on Friday. In the past, we saw those contests at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

I decided not photograph inside the safe spaces because I didn’t have a subject I was following and wanted to maintain their status as safe spaces. Cosplay Central (with the robotic greeter) and Pride Lounge (with the rainbow draping) seemed to have multiple events, but I didn’t make it to any to warrant inside pictures. —MV

DC, Marvel, Image, IDW, and Dark Horse all skipped the convention, but DC had a major anniversary to celebrate: Wonder Woman turned 80. A “super spectacular” 100-page issue was released Oct. 5—two days before the con. Why wasn’t there at least a banner? Did Reed Pop object to them posting giant QR codes asking people to come to FanDome to celebrate her (and the new Batman movie)?