Radiant Comics

Well I tried. I worked up my sense of childish wonder and planned on going to my first comic con in about six or seven years. I had been getting e-mails from WizardWorld (though their name isn’t actually on the con) for about a month to buy advance tickets but I knew better than that. I don’t know how it is with comic cons around the country but my experience with the ones in NYC is that they will take your money and run. No advance tickets for me because too many things can go wrong (and have) and they will already have your money. Plus I still would have to pick up my tickets at the box office and have to wait in line to get them.

My buddy John came down from the northlands to pick me up and we drove into the big city. An uneventful drive and a price jacked parking lot latter we were hitting the Javitz Center. The show started at 11:00 AM and it was 1:00 PM when we arrived. There was a long line of people on the outside of the Center but about 6 out of 10 of them were female so we knew that couldn’t be the comic con line. John asked a woman with a comic con badge where the line was. That is when we found out that the fire marshal threatened to close them down and there were no more tickets being sold for that day. Wonderful.

This wasn’t even my first fire marshal comic con closing. Back in the early 90’s when they held conventions at one of those big NYC hotels I was at two in a row that the marshals shut down. But I was already inside those ones. I’m not sure if the fire marshal closings were what directly lead to the end of the big NYC comic cons but that is what I heard back in the day. It couldn’t have helped anyway.

We walked aimlessly away from the Javitz Center and got on the blower and tell our friend Ed what had happened. He was supposed to meet us at the con. Ed had purchased his ticket earlier that week at Midtown comics and was anxious to see if they would let him in.

For consolation John and I headed off to a nearby comic shop; Jim Hanley’s Universe. So did a lot of people who couldn’t get into the con because they were crowded and we stayed only briefly.

Next we wandered midtown until we hit the NY public library (the famous one with the lions out front) and saw they had a show of maps. The map show was good. It was free too.

Then we waited for Ed. As disappointed as John and I were with the day Ed was even more so. He had already paid for his $25 ticket. He met us on the library steps and told us how they wouldn’t let him in nor would they give him his money back. He was told it was a five hour wait to get in. This was at 1:30 PM for a show that ended at 7:00 PM. Do the math. They were willing to take his ticket and mail him a refund but this is NYC the rip off capital of the country so he wasn’t falling for that one. Midtown Comics, the place he purchased the ticket from, was Ed’s next destination. They just didn’t care there either. 25 bucks down the crapper.

The pain didn’t end there. We decided to go see a movie. There was nothing out that any of us really wanted to see so we just picked one starting soon. I don’t go to the movies very often so this might not be that bold a statement but it was the worst movie I have ever sat through in a theatre. It was “The New World” and it was long, boring, pointless and ugly. Stay away. I came out of there with a headache.

To end on a positive note I had some good pizza afterwards. Of course that was after I got home so there was no reason to actually hit NYC that day. Uh-oh, I think I lost my positive note. Maybe I’ll try again in 6 or 7 more years.