New York Comic Con 2011 - Preview

Next Sunday (Oct 16th) I’ll be going to New York Comic Con for Kids Day with my sons, just as we did last year. I’ll give a report the Friday afterwards on what we got to see and do there, but I thought I’d do a little preview before-hand to talk about the things I hope to do, as well as the panels I’ll be looking forward to hearing about from other days that I won’t be able to attend.

The usual assortment of publishers will be present at NYCC, and I plan to visit as many of their booths as I can. The DK Publishing booth will likely be my first stop – they make the Star Wars kids books my sons love to read, and the first 100 kids to show up at the book get a free DK Reader. DK often have great deals on their latest books at these conventions, last year they had their Avengers: Ultimate Character Guide for $10, almost 50% off cover price. I imagine they might also have a first look at some of their upcoming tie-ins to the 3D re-release of The Phantom Menace. We may wind up stopping by in the afternoon again, since Jason Fry is signing (1-2pm) his recent release, The Clone Wars: Incredible Vehicles. We haven’t gotten that book yet, and Jason was very gracious in signing our Clone Wars: New Battlefronts at last year’s convention, personalizing the message to my sons.

Over at Tor Books, I’m hoping to get an early look at Sisterhood of Dune. They’ve got an interesting sounding panel on Sunday featuring Jim Shooter called Screen Future: Gaming, Comics & TV Around the World, which I’m very unlikely to convince my kids to go and see.

A Long Time Ago… no wait, that’s the wrong tag line. Anyway, I used to be really into Pocket’s Star Trek line, though after the Destiny Trilogy my interest waned and all I’ve really wanted to read about is the Romulan War from the Enterprise line of books (an aside, I never cared for the TV show and only watched a handful of episodes, but the book series post-TV show has been excellent). So anyway, I’ll likely check out’s Simon & Shuster/Pocket’s booth just to see what they’ve got going on with this series.

Titan Books is another stop that my kids will appreciate, as they are the makers of The Clone Wars Magazine. My older son’s dog-eared copy of issue #1 (which we picked up at the convention last year) is a constant reminder that I should really get him a subscription. But at the very least, I should be able to get him the latest issue.

I wish I could attend the Accelerate to Attack Speed: Military Science Fiction panel on Saturday, featuring author Jack Campbell among others. Alas, I’ll just have to seek out any information I can on the panel elsewhere. But I will be stopping by Penguin/ACE’s booth on Sunday to see if they’ve revealed the cover to his upcoming book The Lost Fleet: Invincible, plus it looks like the author himself may still be around according to his posted schedule.

Hachette Book Group, who have the Orbit imprint, will be there as well and I can continue to harass them about when they’ll be bringing out Michael Cobley’s Humanity’s Fire scifi series to the U.S., plus get a look at their upcoming releases. Harper Collins Publishers will be there as well, and though they tend a little more urban fantasy and fantasy (as opposed to my preference of scifi) I’ll still stop by and give a look to what they’re featuring at the show.

The big panel for the day for us this year is going to be Del Rey Star Wars Books Panel with speakers Drew Karpyshyn, Erich Schoeneweiss, Frank Parisi, & Jason Fry. It’s great that my kids are into Star Wars, because when I mentioned this panel they were gung-ho to attend. Afterwards I’d like to get over to the Del Rey booth, as they’ll have a first look for convention goers at the Millennium Falcon Owner’s Workshop Manual as well as Drew Karpyshyn signing some of his books (and since I’ve got an early review copy of Revan, I’d like to get that signed).

Speaking of panels, there are a couple of others that we might actually make it to this year, since they’re both of interest to my kids. The first is Drawing Star Wars with Bonnie Burton and Katie Cook, which is very appealing to my two artists. The second is the Disney/Marvel Kids Panel, all about the Marvel/Disney publishing plans – which along with Star Wars pretty much covers everything my kids are currently “into”. Maybe at that panel I can ask about the status on the final Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court book, Day of Shadows by Rob Kidd aka T.T. Sutherland.

We’ll definitely be stopping by the Marvel booth on the show floor as well. I am already a big Marvel fan, but it’s nice that now my kids are really into Thor having recently watched the movie, so they want to see about picking up some comics featuring him. So I’m hoping Marvel is ready to fulfill that demand created by the movie at NYCC. I’m always on the lookout for news about the cosmic side of the Marvel universe, and I’d be really happy to hear more about Nova’s return in Point One in November.

Likewise, we’ll wind up stopping by the DC Comics area for anything Green Lantern or Superman related, plus Dark Horse for everything Star Wars (and they’ve got a NYCC exclusive Mass Effect comic from John Jackson Miller, which I might try to get my hands on, if there are any left by Sunday). We’ll also wind up taking a look at the Hasbro booth, because my kids love toys, as well as the New Universe booth, since there’s always a chance we’ll run into Ashley Eckstein (voice of Ashoka Tano in The Clone Wars) like we did last year. The final booth on my current list belongs to New-Gen, a scifi graphic novel developed with Mark Hamill.

We’ll be lucky if we get all that in, and it’ll be interesting to write up my experience afterwards to see how closely it matches my plan. I think last year things wound up very different from what I thought we would wind up doing at NYCC. But just to give you an idea of what other panels I’m looking forward to hearing about from the show, there’s also going to be:

Friday, Oct 14 (seems to be Steampunk day)
- The Del Rey Spectra Steampunk Zombie Invasion (featuring Peter Brett, Naomi Novik, & Scott Westerfeld, among others).
- Steampunk in Comics and Literature
- Steampunk 101


On Saturday, Oct 15
- Girls Kick Butt: Strong Female Heroines in Young Adult Fantasy
- Winter Is Here: Epic Fantasy Takes The Throne
- Creepy & Eerie: All Hallow's Eve (Creepy & Eerie magazines return at Dark Horse)
- Dark Horse and Bioware Present: Mapping the Mass Effect Universe
- RIDLEY SCOTT, STAR TREK, ODDITIES, and MORE! Presented by SCIENCE
- Hermes Press/Dark Shadows The Classic Series and the New Johnny Depp/Tim Burton Film (though I’m not familiar with Dark Shadows beyond the name, I’m not sure I’ve seen a Johnny Depp film that WASN’T good)
- The New Independents: How to Self-publish and Succeed in the Digital Bookstore (including author Peter David)
- Robotech (information about a live-action movie and/or new animated feature)- Paranormal TV - Talk and Q&A with Ryan Buell, star of A&E’s Paranormal State (my wife and I love this show, I’d love to catch this panel)
- Marvel’s The Avengers (preview of the film, though this panel is going to be packed)

On Sunday, Oct 16
- Sneak Peak of The Fabric of the Cosmos hosted by Brian Greene (a new NOVA series)
- Pulp Fiction - Now with Even More Pulp
- WE'RE NO ANGELS: Leading Ladies of SF/F (featuring Jeaniene Frost, Kim Harrison, Marjorie M. Liu, & Patricia Briggs among others)
- Star Wars Crafts with Bonnie Burton

And of course, if any of this gets you interested in going to New York Comic Con, you can still get tickets at their website.