NYCC Trip Day 1: Up, Up And A Little Insight

Stewart R’s transatlantic journey begins…

Stewart R: Always a relief to arrive at your foreign destination without the need for a superhero to take the place of an engine or catch the wingless fuselage of your stricken transport... Oh comic fiction, what have you done to me?

Funnily enough the convention weekend got off to a pretty good start for me yesterday when I spied two familiar faces in the queue for my flight at Heathrow.  I'd wondered/hoped that perhaps I've be lucky enough for some of the top British talent to be on my flight and no sooner were we queuing up to board than I clocked Kieron Gillen and David Hine having a good old joke and chinwag.  Surely these top professional comic writers - one of whom has been writing one of Marvel's bestselling titles for nearly two years - would be flying out in style, Upper Class service, bathing in a Virgin pod filled with asses milk, palm frond-waving servants catering to their whims over the seven hour trip? Ah well, it was nice to have spotted them...

20 minutes later I'm sat at the back of a Virgin marked giant tube of aluminium, in a middle block of Economy seating I can only describe optimistically as 'cosy', chatting away to David Hine about our respective weekends with Mr Gillen just a couple of rows behind us!  I speak briefly to Mr Hine about the convention experience, the differences between New York and San Diego in terms of size - he seemed surprised to hear that 105,000 visitors are expected to attend this year’s NYCC stating that it's obviously growing much like SDCC but is still a different monster to that hallowed West Coast behemoth - and we also briefly talked about his current works (Crossed Badlands and the upcoming Stormdogs - while looking at his current feelings towards the big two publishers.

I didn't like to pester the man over the entirety of the journey so left him to his work - they say a writer writes and he certainly got to it at 35000ft above the ground - but it was an interesting insight into the comic book industry and how some of the writers that we all hold in high esteem see and deal with the convention experience from their side.

With the doors of the Javits Centre due to open in a few hours time and a trip across Brooklyn and Manhattan ahead of me, I'd best get ready to learn a bit more about it all!