At Comic Con, New York City Is the Main Character

As commuters shuffled onto the G train Thursday morning, a woman mumbled a “sorry” — she had accidentally bumped into Deadpool’s swords. 

That can mean only one thing: Comic Con has come again to New York City. 

First held in 2006, New York Comic Con is an annual multi-day festival at the Javits Center in Manhattan that brings together pop culture lovers from all over the country — but especially New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

These days, cosplayers, gamers and generalist geeks have their pick of gathering spaces nationwide: Dragon Con in Atlanta, C2E2 in Chicago, Monster Mania in New Jersey. And there’s always San Diego Comic-Con, which originated the “comic convention” as we know it in 1970. 

But in terms of attendance, New York’s is the biggest in North America. And to the cosplayers and comic book aficionados who also say it’s the best, they’ve got one reason why: It’s in New York, duh. 

“The most iconic comics take place in New York,” said Kailey Carpenter, who came dressed as an original character called Miss MCU. “There’s so much life and fun and villains and everything!” 

It’s true, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, and even the Fantastic Four are all canonically based in New York, while Superman and Batman are set in versions of the Big Apple.

Coming From Far, Far Away

Inside the convention hall, attendees can be who they are. Many of them feel that in New York, they can do that outside of the hall, as well.

“You’re not weird,” said Autumn, who came dressed as Padme Amidala from Star Wars. “It’s just another day in New York. It’s a lot more welcoming.”

Autumn and their friend Zach, who’s dressed as Anakin Skywalker, drove 12 hours from their home in the Midwest. Zach loves the city for reasons that are a bit more tangible than Autumn’s. Even though right now he’s debuting one costume, he’s already thinking about his next one.

“When I come here I always get fabric for cosplay,” he said. After the con, his next stop will be the Garment District.

This is Autumn and Zach’s first New York Comic Con, but there are some fans who have been coming for over a decade.

Ian Gaskill and his friends came from South Jersey and upstate New York. To Gaskill, New York’s variety is what makes the con so special. 

“There’s so much diversity here in New York City, it just brings so many people together with so many passions,” he said. “It makes it easier for people who feel outcasted.”

“Or stigmatized,” his friend Christopher Evans chimed in. (No relation to Captain America.) 

Comics Are Still at the Heart

In the 1890s, the first comic strips were born out of a rivalry between New York newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. 

New York City was the nexus of comic book publishing for most of the 20th century, and the birthplace of both Marvel and DC Comics. It was the place many comic book writers and artists lived, and bore a striking resemblance to the cities their fictional heroes called home. It’s said that Metropolis (home of Superman) is New York in the daytime, and Gotham (home of Batman) is New York at night — even though the official DC map seems to have been created by the Joker.

Today, comics are still at the heart of New York Comic Con. Below the booths hawking Funko Pop figures and vintage Star Wars posters lies Artists’ Alley: a haven for comic book creators and their reverent readers. Many fans come to the con with the sole aim of getting their books signed by the artists. 

And it’s a serious business. 

Josh Flores and Keith Coker don’t draw or write, but sat at a table at the end of a maze of line blockades on Thursday. They work as authorized witnesses for CGC — the premier comic book grading organization. 

“It’s like a comic book notary.” Coker said. They’re serving as witnesses for just one artist: Jim Lee, the chief creative officer for DC Comics. For smaller creators, the witnesses run around the floor when needed to watch signings with their own eyes. But for someone like Lee who will need witnesses all day, Coker and Flores are permanently on hand, and fans see them at the end of their signing journey.

Flores maintains that there’s value to going through the process of signing, witnessing, and grading the comic — even if you don’t plan on selling the book. When fans get their graded comics back, they’ll be perfectly preserved.

“Because it was a witnessed signature, it’ll come back with a gold label on it,” he said. “It’s held in plastic, it’s being protected,” he said. 

Teaching With Comics

Recently, New York has again become home to one of the biggest comic book publishers in the country: the city Department of Education. Since 2020, it has distributed over 2 million comics in print to teachers across the city. The comics are also available to download online.

“The only thing is, we don’t sell them,” said Brian Carlin, the DOE’s director of social studies . Carlin is one of the creators of the Civics for All Comics Group, which uses comics designed in-house to teach students about civics. 

Carlin’s booth is in the basement of Javits. He’s wearing a Spider-Man tie that his mother bought him.

“I get to wear this tie once a year,” said Carlin, who grew up in Brooklyn reading comics, with Queens’ own Peter Parker being his favorite hero. 

“Something about Spider-Man, there’s a lot of empathy in his character, which I think I relate to a lot,” he said. “Even with different writers, and different story arcs, but it’s always him wanting to do the right thing.”

His team has brought a table of educational comic books for kids in elementary, middle and high school. The comics are focused on civics and history, and so cover a wide range of topics: activism, New York history, stories from the African diaspora, famous LGBTQ historical figures. 

Unlike most things at the Con, all of these books are free. 

“All these things are all created in-house and the idea is that students should be able to see themselves in stories, but also see others,” Carlin said. “So trying to increase representation, but also telling good history.” 

Their latest release is “Hidden Histories of New York City: The Draft Riots.” It’s written by Nick Bertozzi, who grew up learning in the New York public school system.

The group is also planning to release a comic telling the story of Jack Kirby, a Jewish comic book writer from the Lower East Side who helped create characters like Captain America and The Fantastic Four. 

“We’re thrilled to be able to work in the city and work with the kids in the city, and create comics to help tell their stories as well,” Carlin said.

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