Man, what a week. It's Halloween and I'm spending it sick with a cold. If I was the costume wearing type, I'd be Spongebob when he had The Suds.
And just a few days ago we lost Patrick Stewart!
One of the best to ever do it. Seriously. A Shakespearean-trained actor, with all the booming gravitas of someone you'd think would live a castle, would spend a majority of his career saying the most ridiculous things imaginable. Everyone's been talking about his amazing work as Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek TNG and Charles Xavier in the X-Men movies, but I'll always remember him as the best character on American Dad: Deputy CIA Director Avery Bullock.
Seriously, every line he spoke was absolute gold. It was an excuse for him to cut loose and be silly.
And this came off the heels of losing Walter Koenig, Chekov from Star Trek TOS.
And on Sunday, Eric Bauza.
Man, that was sudden, and a huge shock. He was only 46! And was just at Lightbox Expo the day before! He was supposed to be like Mel Blanc, where we're watching new Looney Tunes stuff thirty years from now and we'd say "damn, he's STILL voicing Bugs Bunny?!" Because Patrick Stewart had been sounding rough the past few years voicing Bullock, but it really makes you appreciate the privilege of watching these actors grow old.
I never got to formally meet Eric Bauza, but I had been in the same room a bunch of times whenever he'd moderate a NYCC panel. He was one of animations greatest voices, period. Advocating for people in all levels of the animation industry, and he got to finally see The Day The Earth Blew Up and Coyote vs ACME see the light of day!
There was a very short list of animated projects in the past twenty years that he wasn't involved with in some way. I thought The Simpsons would be one of them, but no! Turns out he recorded voices for the episode airing on November 15th!
Everything I heard about him was nothing but great. He was a nice guy that was easy to work with, no wonder he popped up everywhere! He didn't have a lot of leads until he took over most of the Looney Tunes voices, he'd do a voice or two in just about everything.
Some of my favorite lesser known roles of his:
He even took over for Jimmy Pesto and Big Bob on Bob's Burgers.
The guy had very big shoes to fill after the passings of Mel Blanc and Joe Alasky, and he had this amazing talent to replicate just about every member of the Looney Tunes, even Road Runner! (You can tell when he takes over in Coyote vs ACME, but it makes that scene no less impactful) I know WB liked paying one guy to voice anyone, and it's gonna be a struggle to find a new Eric Bauza.
This all ties in to the main topic of the post:New York Comic Con!
As Comic Cons go, this was one of the better ones. At least I didn't injure myself before it this time.
Going from just the guest list, this year's con went from "Oh thank god, it won't be LineCon for once" to "I am never gonna financially recover from this" ridiculously quick.
And looking at some recent paychecks (not to mention getting billed for a $1400 car repair bill the week of the convention)...that might not be an exaggeration.
Seriously, a good chunk of my con budget went to these photo ops:
Matthew Lillard! And he was cash only, so that ate into the con budget quite a bit.
Wayne Knight! Newman from Seinfeld!
And forgive me for how my hair looks in these pics, the AC was on the fritz in the Javits and I was sweating up a storm.
Stephanie Beatriz, Melissa Fumero, and Joe Lo Truglio of Brooklyn Nine-Nine
The cast of The Flash: Grant Gustin, Danielle Panabaker, Carlos Valdes, and John Wesley Shipp
The cast of Community: Joel McHale, Jim Rash. Danny Pudi, and Ken Jeong.
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And Joel McHale again. Just kidding, that's Nicolas Cage in the center. They were both giants of men.
And One of the big highlights for me: The people behind the Muppets!
Well, it was Matt Vogel (current Kermit), Eric Jacobson (current Fozzie and Miss Piggy), Bonnie Erickson (Muppet builder, responsible for Statler and Waldorf, among others), and the big one, Dave Goelz.
I HAD to meet Dave Goelz. Gonzo is my all time favorite Muppet, there was no way in hell I was passing this up!
These were BY FAR the longest lines I stood in all weekend. Unlike every other guest, they were all at one table, all one line, so you went down the line getting one after another. But that meant if you wanted to meet Dave or Bonnie, you were gonna be waiting a while. And wait I did. As the handler said to us, if he hurried them along, they would have killed him.
They say never meet your heroes...unless they're the Muppets. Then meet The Muppets.
They were all very chatty. They just had this uncanny ability to talk to you as if you were the first person to ever talk to them. It's a pretty rare trait, but also pretty common that weekend.
I might have cried when I finally met Dave Goelz. It's surreal when he's talking to you, his normal voice is Bunsen Honeydew's. He had a bunch of pictures of Gonzo on hand, and the question was which one do I get?
Do I get the one from my favorite episode (The Star Wars one), or one where Gonzo just pops (and one the signature would come out best for). Turns out, I picked his favorite one: when Peter Sellers guest starred on The Muppet Show.
Well, waiting for Dave gave me ample time to talk to Matt and Eric. I know what some folks would think (especially people I was on line with): why would I want to meet them? They're not The Guy! They're not Jim Henson, or Frank Oz, or Richard Hunt, or Jerry Nelson. They're the guy that replaced the other guy!
When you remember that Wrong Sounding Muppets cutaway from Family Guy, you can't really unhear it.
With them, and Eric Bauza, you come to realize it's a goddamn talent to be able to replicate those voices at all, much less operate puppets, or embody the spirits of characters created over 50 years ago. And much like Eric and the Looney Tunes, Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson are some of the biggest cheerleaders behind The Muppets, and they're trying their best to make more with them. It's Disney that don't know that the new Muppet Show special worked because it's just making more of the Muppet Show! It's that easy! And I told them as such, because I really loved it.
And I said "lines" because on Saturday I only waited for Dave Goelz, and wanted to hit the rest of them on Sunday. That proved to be a bit of a mistake and I should've gotten them all out of the way at once. Because there were about three panels I wanted to see on Saturday and Sunday, and because I was on those lines, I was able to attend...zero of them.
Eh, just as well. I got to talk to Dave again when I was there to hit everyone else.
Who else can say that they have a comic with Miss Piggy on the cover, and it's signed by Miss Piggy? That one is fairly hot off the presses, and I got it in the mail literally that Saturday, so I was able to bring it with me on Sunday.
Ditto for a comic with Kermit on it, signed by Kermit. That one I found on the show floor, since my LCSs sold out of that variant. It's Frog Thor and drawn by Skottie Young, of course it was gonna be popular.
And with Bonnie Erickson, I had to meet the mother of the Phillie Phanatic. Yes, the reason why he looks like a Muppet is because he was designed by someone who built them! Turns out it was her company that was given the job, and she toured the ballpark, looking for inspiration for what to incorporate into the costume. Her face lit up when I gave her this one to sign. She asked me if I was from Philly. I told her no, I'm just someone who likes the Phillie Phanatic.
When I was waiting on line on Sunday (everyone took a half hour break), a guy with Kermit and a banjo guy showed up to serenade the line with Rainbow Connection.
And people brought their own puppets in line, so of course Kermit had to talk to them, too.
And that wasn't the only Muppet thing I saw that weekend!
I can officially cross "Meet Frankenberry" off the bucket list. There was a booth that had Henson-themed clothing, from Doozer sneakers, to Dark Crystal jackets, to swag with the Muppet versions of the General Mills Cereal Monsters on them. The big draw were the actual puppets used in the ads, and the actual worm from Labyrinth:
You were to touch anything in that booth...except for this one. He had a no touching clause in his rider, I suppose (that, and I imagine it's pretty fragile).
And speaking of panels I was able to get to:
On Thursday: A Brooklyn Nine-Nine retrospective panel!
Stephanie Beatriz, Melissa Fumero, and Joe Lo Truglio reminisced about the show, and had plenty of stores to tell about Terry Crews and Andre Braugher.
And on Saturday, a combo Futurama and Bob's Burgers panel!
First up: Futurama! With Matt Groening, David X Cohen, Claudia Katz, Billy West, Katey Sagal(!), and Maurice LaMarche.
They showed clips of recent episodes, and clips from the upcoming Xmas special. They assured us it wasn't cancelled...but only brought up the three specials that are in the pipeline.
And once again Matt Groening was giving out sketches to anyone that asked a question at the Q&A. Here's one he drew of Scruffy. And I made it on line this time! And THEY CUT IT OFF JUST BEFORE IT WAS MY TURN! I WOULDA BEEN NEXT!
But I digress. They had to make room for Bob's Burgers.
Once again, they showed off clips from upcoming episodes, and they were all a hoot. Like the Christmas short that's a musical about Tina being sick on the holiday, and a clip where Teddy had to bring Tina's gym clothes to school, and another clip where Teddy has a dream about a timeline where he became a good-looking successful actor and time traveled back to meet Prime Teddy.
In attendance was Loren Bouchard and the whole main cast: H. John Benjamin, John Roberts, Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, Dan Mintz, and Larry Murphy. Their chemistry is still great, but I bailed the moment Q&A started because the first guy was immediately death: very rambly and trying to bait the cast into stupid responses. I had other places to be. Seriously, the photo ops for Nic Cage AND Community were at the same time, and started right after that panel would've ended. It was a pretty stressful twenty minutes and I was still reeling over getting cut off at the Q&A.
But the rest of the con went over pretty well.
The DC booth had a virtual queue this year and I hit the jackpot: the first slot of the first day, so I had my pick of the stock! But even then, the shirt I wanted (one with Bat-Mite on it) didn't have my size, nor the size above it, so I went with a Lanterns shirt instead. I also picked up an exclusive Lanterns comic, and the Lanterns keychain, which was what I was really gunning for. It's on the DC site, but it's five bucks more and you gotta pay for shipping. By saving roughly ten bucks, I ended up spending...a lot more here.
I met Stan Sakai! He's the creator of Usagi Yojimbo, indie darling and frequent guest character of the Ninja Turtles because Eastman and Laird would just collaborate with other indie comic creators to support each other. They pop up a few times in Flaming Carrot comics, for one.
And since I had the rare opportunity to meet Stan Sakai, if I was gonna get an Usagi Yojimbo book to sign, I should make it a good one. Or at the very least an anniversary issue that cost a bit more than I thought it would.
And speaking of rare opportunities, I finally got to meet Todd Macfarlane!
Normally he required a reservation, but the Wal-Mart booth hosted a free signing only open to the first 100 people first thing Friday, and by pure chance I made it on that line. You see, VIPs and ADA people are allowed onto the con floor like ten minutes before anyone else, but there's a badge with an even higher tier than that: Exhibitor. The people that work the booths are able to get on the floor as soon as they get there, so that means them (or people that work with them) get to stand on lines long before anyone else can. And because of that, I was number 60 on line, and most of the people in front of me had that badge.
But any case, I was able to tell him "so glad to FINALLY meet you." I've been going to these things since 2012, I finally managed to do it fourteen years later.
But since I didn't expect to get on this line, we were told that we couldn't get out of line to say, grab a comic he worked on for some other booth. But I remembered to bring the free copy of the reissue of MAD #1 the DC booth gave out that had a blank page for signings for just such a scenario.
That's how I ended up with this beauty:
The other people I got on that book were Tom King, Mitch Gerards, and Morgan Hampton (currently on the Green Lantern Corps books). Tom King and Mitch Gerards were in Artists Alley, and saw that they had a super short line after I was done waiting for Stan Sakai and jumped at the chance to meet them. I talked to Tom about Lanterns and how much I loved it. Morgan Hampton I got on Thursday at the DC booth, which just so happened to have no line and the people there just said "hey, wanna meet him?" And I said "sure." We also talked about Lanterns.
And here are other people I met:
David Kaye! We talked about how great his Megatron was. He gave me the whole experience, lots of "yessss..." and talks about the rubber duckie.
Michael Rosenbaum! Just about everyone was there to meet him as Lex Luthor on Smallville, but I had to meet Justice League's version of The Flash. We had a good chat about it.
And I told him my three favorite Flashes were there: him, Grant Gustin, and John Wesley Shipp.
I was hoping there'd be a pic with Barry and Jay together. They were all so nice. I talked to Grant about how much DJ would've loved all of this. He was more an Arrow guy than a Flash guy, but he loved all the Arrowverse stuff all the same.
And I was finally able to complete my Time Force picture with Dan Southworth, who played Eric the Quantum Ranger. Now that's two complete Power Rangers teams I have: this one and the OG Mighty Morphin' team. I have Karan Ashley for the yellow ranger, but it's a complete team.
I told Joel McHale that we needed The Soup now more than ever. I brought up that "Oprah's vajayjay" was one of the lines that pop into my head every once in a while, that's why he wrote that down.
And I got to talk to Wayne Knight about how much I loved Newman on Seinfeld. In retrospect, I should've gotten a pic of him in the Merv Griffin Show episode, since that probably had a much more flattering pose. But he loved seeing this pic when I gave it to him to sign.
I didn't think about it until I got home...I realized he never actually signed his name on the pic! I hope he shows up around here again soon. It was a busy time at the table, we were trying to get the little machine that processes payments to go through, and I guess he forgot?
I got Danny Pudi to sign a Troy & Abed in The Morning (nights!) pic, but maaaaan...all the Community people's pictures were touched up by AI and were ugly as hell. It makes me miss all the grossly pixelated ones.
Jim Rash's Dean picture looked moderately okay. I told him I wished he had a pic of the outfit with the half and half "Good News/Bad News" theme. He had a few Dean outfit pics, but not that.
Fortunately, I saw a cosplayer of it on Sunday.
And I had to stick around to see Jim's reaction to it.
He loved it, naturally.
And the AI bullshit is why I got this picture of Dr. Yap instead of that screencap where Senor Chang is squinting at the tiny index card. Fortunately, he loved talking Bob's Burgers.
And while Matthew Lillard didn't have any pic of animated Shaggy to sign, I still needed an opportunity to tell him how much I like him in the role.
And at that booth I was able to get the new Owl House graphic novel!
I'll crack into it soon.
The other books I got signed:
I won a spot for the John Scalzi signing. I follow him on bluesky!
And the other two were Golden Girls mystery books that the author was on hand to sign at the Hyperion booth on Sunday. I started watching the show when MeTV started running it earlier this year, and...I've now seen it through like three times. It's my new comfort show. I've been looking for a new one after MeTV took off Green Acres.
Rachel Ekstrom Courage is living the dream: being able to publish glorified fanfiction. I started reading Death on The Lanai while on line and I was loving it already.
Here's my haul of pins, stickers, and other assorted things because I don't have a problem.
Some art I picked up. Walking around Artists Alley on Sunday was dangerous...for my wallet.
And a signed Matt Dinniman bookplate (the author of Dungeon Crawler Carl). It was free with the purchase of any DCC item at the Kingdom of Threads booth.
So call me a bandwagoner. I don't really understand the memes from this (yet), but I'm always a sucker for crossover art.
And at the end of Sunday was the official NYCC Discord meetup. I thought it was some kind of joke that the Discord meetup was the last slot on the last day (seriously, not everyone goes on Sunday!), it was a real nice way to end the con. I was able to sit down and rest, and finally put some names to faces. The other people in the Community picture were members of that Discord: Pamela (as Rogue), and Cyril (Lord Yu from Stargate).
And now since it's Halloween: cosplay highlights!
There was no big dominating cosplay this year like K-Pop Demon Hunters was last year. This year there was a push for Dungeon Crawler Carl. They had a booth and everything.
And Project Hail Mary became that niche sci-fi movie that got popular with the tumblr crowd.
And probably my favorite sighting of the whole con: Trogdor!
DevisingDelight's inflatable cosplays had been all over Instagram during SDCC and DragonCon, and I was praying that they'd come to New York and they did!
And a Dragon Quest Slime on Sunday.
And caught Trogdor again on Sunday roaming around the show floor just before the con ended. They brought out their Katamari one too, but I didn't see it.
And a few other highlights:
The Bomberman on Friday was this Bionicle on Saturday
The winner for "deepest cut" has to be this Scaredy Squirrel
Because the Muppet people were there, there were plenty of Muppet cosplayers. But the highlight was this Lew Zealand! You NEVER see Lew Zealand!
And there were a few of what I'd call "two nickels" cosplayers. Like, "if I had a nickel every time I saw that cosplay, I'd have two nickels. It's weird that I saw it twice."
Two Johnny Bravos
Two of the jacket version of Guy Gardner (one was a Shy Guy Gardner!)
Two really cool Doc Ocks.
And two Smitty Webbermanjensons from Spongebob ("He was number one!") And One of them was as Brook from the One Piece Crossover!
If you wanna see the rest of my cosplay highlights, click here. It's amazing I was able to catch so many considering how many lines I was in that weekend.
And to close us out, here's an adorable Sith dog I saw walking around all weekend:
No idea how that lightsaber never poked into anyone the whole time, that dog had some good training.
For the rest of my pictures, here are the links to them:
I'll see you all in November.
