I’m going to start this with the fact that I don’t think I am Comic Con’s target audience. Full disclosure, I have never picked up a comic book in my life. I just watched all the Marvel movies for the first time in the past year. The only thing adjacent to an anime that I’ve watched is Avatar: The Last Airbender. And this is not at all to say that I don’t appreciate these little niches that Comic Con is tailored to because, wow, was that an experience to be enveloped in.
I showed up at the Javits convention center by myself and was immediately overwhelmed by the scale of intensity displayed by the patrons and the convention itself. I wandered to the first room I saw the crowd ambling into, which ended up being the incredibly vast section deemed the “Show Floor,” and what a show it was. I was on an entirely different plane of reality, surrounded by what I can only assume was thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of highly-detailed cosplay. The hundreds of booths sprawling the room contained everything from comics (obviously) rare and common and old, art prints catering to specific fandoms, props, replicas, and fashion from various shows. Less than 20 minutes in and my jaw is already on the floor as an impressively-done Doug Dimmadome stands maybe 15 feet from me.
At this point, I called my mom. If anyone could help me recollect my sanity after running into about 10 too many Joker cosplays, it’s her. As an admirer of Halloween, I have only respect for the sheer dedication and passion these people have put into their recreations.
Surely, the correct question is, “what am I doing here?” I evidently look lost, and I am clearly not in the correct demographic for most of the content here, aside from the occasional Minecraft booth or Spongebob cosplay. However, the cast and author of the adapted Netflix show Shadow & Bone attended this convention for a panel, autographs, and photo ops. As an avid BookTok enjoyer, I have Leigh Bardugo, the author of the Shadow & Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology, to thank for writing me a found family with the Crows of the duology. The show intertwines the two series set in the same fictional universe (the Grishaverse), which I think was a brilliant narrative choice and a gift for me to see my favorite characters from the Six of Crows duology personified into real people.
With that being said, as soon as their photo op tickets were announced, I dropped an obscene amount of money to meet the actors that played Kaz (Freddy Carter), Inej (Amita Suman), Jesper (Kit Young) from the Crows, and the absurdly, intimidatingly gorgeous Ben Barnes, who plays the Darkling from the original trilogy. Then I reserved a ticket to the panel with the four of them and Leigh Bardugo because clearly, the opportunity to be inches from them later in the day would not be sufficient for me.
After meandering about the Show Floor for what I deemed an acceptable amount of time, I wandered over to the Queue Hall to, obviously, join the queue for this panel. I spent an hour and a half on the floor with my copy of Crooked Kingdom, the second piece of duology, before they opened the doors to the auditorium with little to no organization of the crowd flooding in. The panelists, my self-proclaimed best friends, filed in, and we spent the next hour getting to look into the process of how the show was brought to life from paper to screen, the casting process for the Crows, how the actors channeled their characters, behind-the-scenes moments and laughs, and questions from as many fans as they could cram into the last twenty-ish minutes of the hour. We learned that the concept of the entire Grishaverse was concocted from a dream Bardugo experienced followed by paranoia in the darkness and that Ben Barnes seemingly has a penchant for playing roles from literary adaptations (i.e. Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia or the title character of Dorian Gray). The panel really did feel like sitting with a group of friends just recollecting honest memories with each other.
Unfortunately, the next couple of hours I endured post-panel could only be described as a disastrous dumpster fire of inefficient organizational skills and hilariously poor communication. When you purchase a ticket for a photo op, you are assigned a time and a group number, where you are to “only arrive a few minutes before your group start time… rather than wait an hour or more” to avoid unnecessary crowding, according to my email confirmation. Based on a staff member directing me to “that big crowd over there,” I can only assume that their group number system evidently was not working as smoothly as anticipated. I stood for over an hour past my assigned time in nothing less than a horde of impatient fans waiting for their respective photo ops with other guests such as Oscar Isaac, Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, Tyler Hoechlin, Tom Kenny, and the various Shadow & Bone cast members. When my group was finally called, we trickled through the masses of people towards the front of the crowd where real lines were being formed in front of curtained-off sections for each photo op guest.
After maybe 10 minutes of more waiting and slowly making our way through the line, I peeked a smiling Ben Barnes through the curtain, and my feet didn’t hurt from all the standing anymore. They were, unfortunately, rushing through each photo with barely a second to spare to talk to the cast. In hindsight, though, that was probably for the best because the sight of them cleared out every single word in my brain. When I finally got to step up, I hastily explained to them how exciting it was to meet what I felt like was my family in real life for the first time, to which Freddy Carter (Kaz) responded by waving me into the group and saying, “Well come on, join the family then!” It couldn’t have been a more perfect moment. And I definitely couldn’t look Ben Barnes in the eyes when he said, “It was so lovely to meet you.”
To process the albeit fleeting experience I just had, I did one last lap around the Show Floor, settled on purchasing Leigh Bardugo’s new book and a Minecraft bee lamp to commemorate my time at my first Comic Con, and called it a day. My final thoughts are this: is this an event I will be going out of my way to consistently attend after this year? Probably not, unless they have another guest that I’m really invested in. Like I said before, I really don’t check a lot of the boxes for this particular criteria, and it felt like a lot of waiting time for little reward, especially since I really only came for one really niche reason. However, I think it is a really fun event, and I can appreciate the idea of wanting to immerse yourself with people who share a passion for the same media and interests you do. It is also always a surreal moment when you get to tell the characters who mean a lot to you that you’re thankful for their art and the joy they bring to your life. It’s magical getting to meet your fictional friends, so thank you NYCC for giving me that opportunity. If you ever manage to get Paul Rudd for your photo op lineup, I will see you then.