“On the one hand, though, I haven’t ranted in quite some time to this degree, and for that, I guess, I have to thank this god-forsaken convention. But, anyway, what did any of you think, if you attended this thing? Am I crazy? Exaggerating far too much? Just being a dick? Was this a barrel o’ fun? Are you unable to sleep because it’s a year away from the next one? Or are you at this very moment seeking therapy after a day or two of squeezing through the soul-deadening habitrails of a show that invites folks like David Lloyd and Bryan Talbot and leaves them high and dry on the Isle of Blight?” – Evan Dorkin
– Chris
Wow.
Even the entry tags are great:
conventions, feeling dead inside, time i’ll never get back
Yeah, I was there working. The National is always the last real show on the mainstream convention circuit for me, and it’s also the least enjoyable (aside from the fact that outside is NYC – a city I love to visit).
Dorkin’s descriptions are pretty dead on, but if you decided to target a convention for being disorganization and overall poor appearances, the National is far too easy a target. It’s like shooting a fish in a barrel. There really wasn’t anything overly different about this one than the previous ones, except that this year the average age of a guest was about 60 years. I thought last year they had told us the hotel was condemned so I was a little surprised to see it back at the Penn Hotel again.
I found it was unusually slow on Friday with not many guests there, and the same setup as always with artist alley and the guest area crammed into the same dingy lit corner. Saturday — lots of guests there, if you could find them as there’s no map, no real guide and no real signage. Heat cranked up high, lots of unique smells. Huge line-up to get into the sewerpit of a men’s room, but that was okay because there was an open window with cool air there. Sunday – hardly any guests return. Painfully slow day.
If you want to go to a comic con in New York wait until February.