New York Comic Con Feb 6, 2009

This is day one of the convention and the time is way before public hours. I was there at 9:00am and spotted people on the professional line. It was a lengthy line that went as far back as the bridge in the lobby, but everyone was calm and waiting patiently. Others, who just came into the lobby, went on the line and, like everyone else, waited to get their badges and entrance ability into the convention hall.

After getting my press badge, which was quick and simple, I waited at the entrance near the professional badge counter was. I believe we were let into the convention hall at 10:00am and the entrance was near the FUNimation booth and the two nurses. There was a lot to see! So, many booths, merchandise and freebies!!! All I did was browse around and network with people or at least get to know them.

One booth that brought back memories was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) booth. There were lots of old toys! So many of them, but I wasn’t old enough to know all the details about the toys, just old enough to go “Ninja Turtles! That’s Michelangelo, Daddy!” Some of the toys were sealed in their packaging. Whoa! Mint condition collector style! Seriously, they did look like they were in their original packaging.

After browsing around and spotting a couple of Lolitas near the back, where Eric Maruscak was setting up to work on his chalk art, I went to the artist alley. I remember that I was just looking around and something caught my attention. It was a TMNT banner and I was drawn to it. I had no idea who these people were, but after talking to them, I found out who they were. I was talking to one of the artist of TMNT, Steve Lavigne, and one of the creators of the turtles, Peter Laird. I was able to get my question answered: what happened to the turtle costumes from the first movie? It seems that they are scattered: Laird has one turtle and other individuals and possibly one of the Planet Hollywood stores has one. There is a possibility that someone has the turtle costumes from the second movie, so they are around, just all over the place. However, I have no one to ask to confirm the whereabouts of all the costumes. Along with a friendly conversation, I brought two turtle artworks, one had Michelangelo with Donatello and the other had Raphael hitting a bad guy over the head from Lavigne, who was very sweet and nice. The character style is the big eye version and I was told that those were the artwork used for the TMNT Valentine’s Day cards from a long time ago.

After that nice conversation, I scroll around some more and spotted couple of surprises. I saw the Mattel booth and the first thing that popped into my head was "Barbie’s here?" Then I realized "Oh! Toys like comic book superheroes!" and thought it was cool to see it!

Then adjacent to the booth were dolls and my first thought was "Why are there dolls here?" I took a closer look and said "Oh! Superhero dolls!" It was the Robert Tonner booth. The dolls look gorgeous and on display were Lara Croft, Twilight, Harry Potter, DC Comic dolls and many others. Even though I was surprised, I thought it was cool to see something that I did not expect to see, nor did it ever cross my mind. It opened a new world of knowledge and understanding for me.

So, scrolling along to the next-door neighbor, I see rows of tables with place mats. No, not dinner time place mats, but trading card game placemats from Yu-Gi-Oh and Blue Dragon. Yes! It is the Konami booth!!! People were playing at the game tables and at the game machines, and the Konami area was well organized and provided a friendly game area.

Ok enough browsing, for now. I went back to the artist alley, cause I was looking for someone, who was not there before. Guess who I was looking for? Someone, who I spoke on the phone and through email, but never seen in person…until now. Kensuke Okabayashi, who is the man with multiple artistic-style talent, both western and Japanese style. I finally found him and I was so happy that I called out his name. He looked up and responded with a big friendly smile. I told him who I was and the conversation just went along with ease.

Along with a getting to know each other conversation, I got to know his badge. Can you tell me what’s wrong with it? ☺
© 2009 Linda Thai

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Photography by Linda Thai