NYCC proper opens today, so hold on to your hats. Those who attended Retailer Day are already a full day in, and I for one, am already beat.
We have several reports from Retailer Day going up today, but I can say it was a looong day. From 11 to 6 nonstop presentations, a brief break (I went outside to feel the wind in my hair) and then the Lunar cocktail party with ANOTHER round of presentations, including some of the same people from the morning.
Although I had to tap out before DC’s finale, I chatted with a few retailers who definitely enjoyed the informative day devoted to giving them previews and other needed facts. So on that basis a solid success. As I’ve written many times when reporting on such events, the mood was upbeat! Yes, despite the Diamond mess, economic uncertainty, tariffs and everything else, people are optimistic about comics. They always are! And the outpouring of future projects from more than a dozen publishers shows that there is no sign of the pipeline slowing down.
The evening’s presentations were perhaps a bit more star-studded, with Rob Liefeld, Garth Ennis and Scott Snyder on hand. Dynamite’s Nick Barrucci showed up to praise Lunar and give more reassurances about the future and importance of comics shops. Liefeld had his own moment in the sun with a long anecdote. Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane livened up the daytime proceedings. I’ve said it before but all those Image founders are very charismatic.
Todd McFarlane spoke about believing in yourself and staying the course – I’ve heard him talk on similar subjects in the past but it’s always delivered with conviction. Going into the crowd with a live mic, he answered questions from various folks, and it was definitely an entertaining hour. And yes, a Spawn movie is still in the works. There will always be Spawn II in the works.
But it was Lee who was the showstopper, with a heartfelt speech about the importance of retailers, storytelling and human creativity. Everyone was talking about it for the rest of the day. Again, these are subjects that have been heard before, but in troubling times such as these, it’s worth hearing them again. And speaking out against AI – “AI doesn’t dream, it doesn’t feel or it doesn’t make art, it aggregates it.” – was a message that we needed to hear from a high level executive at a major entertainment company at a public event. It’s honestly just commons sense, but there’s so little of that these days.
All that said, it was a very long day, and the pacing of Retailer Day probably needs to be adjusted. Folks definitely wanted more breaks to schmooze or feel the wind in their hair.
We’re a long way from our annual Winners and Losers Column, but I already have an entry:
WINNER: TEAMSTERS. Confession, I snuck onto the show floor around midday, but I didn’t get far because it was a shambles. I often sneak onto the SDCC show floor on the day before Preview Night, and most of the infrastructure is up. Not so NYCC – it looked like a truck had backed up a few minutes before and dumped out a few tons of crates.
And yet when I left around 8 PM, I looked down and order had been made from the chaos!
As previously mentioned, Preview Night is a thing that is probably coming to NYCC. It will take a lot of work to be ready for it, and Local 533 will need to be up for the task.
Stay tuned to The Beat for more coverage from NYCC ’25.
Anti-AI !
Comments are closed.