A few weeks back it was announced that Emerald City Comic Con would be going badgeless, like its fellow ReedPop show BookCon. I fretted that we might see the badegelss protocol roll out at NYCC, but showrunner, and ReedPop VP Comics Portfolio, Kristina Rogers calmed our fears in an interview with PW:
Fellow ReedPop show Emerald City Comic Con recently announced it’s going badgeless. Is NYCC eventually going to do that too?
I do not foresee a time when it makes more sense for us on an operational and security level to go badgeless for New York, given the sheer size of the show. It was a security-based decision for Seattle, and it’s going to be really good for them.
With about a quarter of a million attendees at NYCC, it does make sense to have a constant visual reminder that you belong there for security personnel and others, so my collection of NYCC badges will continue to grow!
Rogers was also asked about programming and revealed that they get thousands of submissions and then sit down in a big room to go over them. I heard a lot of complaining this year about rejected panels (as I do every year), but given that NYCC has only nine rooms for “traditional” panels, competition is fierce. That’s not counting the Main Stage and Empire stage, or about a dozen spaces that are given over to dedicated tracks, like D&D, cosplay, meet-ups, LGBTQIA+ programming, family programming and so on.
It’s also not counting the two “Pro Stages” in the River Pavillion, which will have ongoing programming throughout the four days of the show – including Wednesday’s Retailer Day. It’s a five day show for pros, now.
Rogers also spoke about their “aspiring professionals” track:
Our aspiring professionals program deserves extra attention. It’s running in the River Pavilion, and while priority is given to our professional badge holders, we are opening programming to fan badges this year. They can go on the mobile app, reserve a spot, and then come up. You come to these shows because you have a passion, and a lot of the fans are aspiring professionals. It runs the gamut: if you’re an artist, writer, or a professional cosplayer, we’re trying a little bit of everything in that space to see how it connects and what appeals the most.
As I noted looking at SDCC programming, “how to” panels for aspiring professionals are more and more part of both shows. In NYCC’s case it coincides with charging $180 for a pro badge, up from $75 a few years ago. That’s quite a decent chunk of change – more than a normal NYC dinner, even. And a lot of people can’t or won’t pay it.
That tracks with a trend I’ve been hearing rumblings of for a few years: as NYCC ramps up its professional programming, buying a pro badge is now like registering for a “conference,” and that’s by design. Granted there are five solid days of industry-related programming – including a talk by new Marvel EiC Steve Wacker – so developing the River Pavillion as a super duper “Pro Con” seems to be working.
PW’s NYCC package also includes a preview of this year’s show – and a look back at the first con 20 years ago. I’ve written the NYCC preview for more than a decade, but I passed the mantle to Christian Holub this year, and he did a fine job. Looking back at the first show (which I was a consultant on), everyone had grave doubts that a comic con in NYC could succeed, doubts that seems laughable now but they made sense at the time. But they were wrong.
“Both the organizers and the participating companies went in a little cautiously and thought, Okay, let’s see how this goes—because there wasn’t really a big New York show at the time,” Segura says. “The booth was set up and we were in that holding pattern where you’re waiting for the masses. But it was a huge wave of people, so many more than anyone anticipated. That first day, they had to shut down the floor because the crowding was too much, it became a fire hazard.”
PW’s own report on the first NYCC, from PW Comics World founders Calvin Reid and Heidi MacDonald, covered the logistical breakdown, explaining that “a last-minute influx of ticket buyers caught everyone flatfooted” and “some 20,000 people showed up on Saturday for a venue that could hold only 10,000 to 15,000 people.” Back then, the con only had access to a portion of the Javits’s current space, and it wasn’t enough to handle the demand. Some badge holders got turned away by police and state troopers, or waited in line for hours without getting in.
To put it into perspective, the first NYCC was held ONLY in the hall where they line up people for autographs now. And now it draws 250,000 people. Despite all the griping about panels, badges and tables, I’d call that a success story.
