{"id":5715,"date":"2015-10-30T10:42:27","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T14:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=5715"},"modified":"2015-10-30T15:33:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T19:33:46","slug":"nyc-exhibition-reviews-al-hirschfeld-and-lynda-barry-oh-yeah-and-the-ny-comic-con","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benzilla.com\/?p=5715","title":{"rendered":"NYC Exhibition Reviews: Al Hirschfeld and Lynda Barry. Oh yeah, and the NY Comic-Con"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, just by happenstance my wife’s work was putting her up in NYC for a conference a few blocks from the Javitz Center the same week that the New York Comic-Con would be there. That seemed like too good a coincidence to pass up, so I booked a flight and tagged along. It was a last-minute deal (at least by convention planning standards) so I didn’t wind up getting an artists’ alley table, instead just doing a signing each day I was there (Thursday and Friday) at the booth of Oyster War<\/em>\u00a0publisher Oni Press.<\/p>\n

NYCC<\/span><\/h2>\n

I wrote fairly extensive recent reports on CXC and SPX, but for NYCC, I’ll keep it short: The place was a zoo.<\/p>\n

I spent some time on the floor on Thursday–presumably a “slow day”–and getting around was already thoroughly unpleasant. Yes, there was some cool stuff to see at the booths, but it took some doing to get around, especially in areas like the passageway to artists’ alley, which was very prone to bottlenecks and was even closed off at one point as a result.<\/p>\n

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I attended one panel on Thursday, a Dark Horse panel that was billed as a panel on “Crafting the Original Story” and which I assumed would be about, ya know, the process of crafting a story. It was actually just the standard “guys talk about books they’re currently doing” panel. Not that there wasn’t some interesting stuff being discussed–the announced Van Jensen\/Nate Powell book in particular looked great. The real takeaway moment from this panel, though, was when one of the panelists themselves, Ethan Young, asked moderator\/Dark Horse PR person Steve Sunu whether their upcoming Moebius Library would retain the original coloring and he just straight-up declined to answer. (To be fair, it sounds like he wasn’t prepared\u00a0to say anything<\/em> about the Dark Horse Moebius Library other than that the project exists.)<\/p>\n

The real high point of of NYCC for me was just getting to talk to people in person that I would really only run into at big mainstream events like this or SDCC. In particular, it was great to finally meet face-to-face a lot of the Oni folks, who I’ve been interacting with throughout the Oyster War<\/em> publication process, but whom I’d never actually met in person before.<\/p>\n

I did also really enjoy seeing the original art that some of the dealers on the floor had for sale. I’m always completely blown away by the stuff that’s just casually available in portfolios to flip through at cons. Seeing stuff like this totally blows my mind and seems like the equivalent of \u00a0seeing a bunch of Degas paintings at some yard sale:<\/p>\n

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(That’s–top to bottom–Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Basil Wolverton, Reed Crandall, and Barry Windsor-Smith)<\/p>\n

All that said, I decided that one day at NYCC was plenty for me and since my Friday signing wasn’t until the evening I began hatching plans to do some things in the city Friday, rather than hang out at the con.<\/p>\n

Al Hirschfeld at the New York Historical Society<\/span><\/h2>\n

The weekend of NYCC was the final\u00a0weekend of a long-running exhibit of Al Hirschfeld originals at the New York Historical Society and that was stop number one for me. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited, so I’m going to have to make due with pictures I can find online, but here’re some observations about the exhibit:<\/p>\n

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