New York City, the original Gotham, is not the center of the universe. There are multiple universes that collide within the city, and it does happen to be the center of most of these. In terms of great shopping for great deals, 14th street is as good as it gets in the world. For dive bars, there’s the East Village. For a great hotel, Central Park is a difficult location to beat. So when it comes to pop culture, New York is going to stand pretty tall.
In terms of comic conventions, New York doesn’t have the best, which is kind of humbling. In fact, it has only the second best, and every year it’s a major event. Last year’s convention saw over 75,000 visitors in three days, and for any kind of convention that merges comic culture and pop culture, that’s a pretty good indicator that pop is still popular.
Held every fall at the Jacob Javits Center in midtown, the New York Comic Con is coming into its fifth year this year. There is a great deal of comic book culture here, as one would likely suspect, with a number of fascinating guests at every event, and usually some heavy-hitting veterans from the comic art world.
There’s also manga and anime, and last year the Anime convention even timed it out with the NY Comic Con so they could happen simultaneously. It was a happy marriage, to be sure, and all the various overlaps between the two seem to take care of each other rather elegantly. There are also screenings of new films and television programs, and a host of other exciting things.
It’s a perfect place to celebrate pop culture, and to come and buy some ephemera from your favorite animators and comic book artists. New York has always been a kind of a center for irony, and no where does that find a better home than in comic books. The dark turn so many have taken in the past years has started to shift back toward a more self-aware style, so that the world of comic books is taking itself less seriously again, so that we can take it seriously.
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