By Joshua H. Stulman

New York Comic Con 2017 blasted into the city last week (October 6-9) bringing with a wide range of events well beyond the comic world including media entertainment, video games, clothing/apparel, action figures and more. NYCC is the largest convention on the east coast, and next to San Diego Comic Con, its the second largest in the world. People come from all over the world to meet at the Jacob Javits Center for 4 days celebrating everything pop culture.

The Brooklyn Comic Shop was at NYCC Friday and Saturday. While there is no way we could possibly be comprehensive about the entire con, here’s a short run down of some of the things that were going on at NYCC.

John Byrne was in attendance on Friday at the IDW Booth for a rare signing. Just how rare? Byrne swore he wouldn’t attend a convention over 14 years ago…that’s how rare! After participating in a panel discussion honoring Jack Kirby’s 100th Birthday with fellow comic legend Walt Simonson, IDW hosted John Byrne with a limited signing of only 100 participants. Byrne was there to promote his current photo montage Star Trek comics, Star Trek: New Visions by IDW but he was also happy to sign some of his past legendary work. If you are not familiar, here’s just a couple comic stories and characters that Byrne created: The Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past, Sabertooth, Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Jim Rhodes (War Machine), Bishop, Alpha Flight, Kitty Pryde, Suicide Squad, Superman: Man Of Steel, as well as legendary runs on Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, She-Hulk, Captain America, and Iron Man…did I mention X-Men?!

On Saturday, Larry Lieber was signing at Desert Wind Collectables Booth. Lieber is the younger brother of Stan Lee and has been working for Marvel for over 60 years as both scribe and artist. He helped co-create Iron Man, Thor, Ant-man, Groot and is one of the last remaining silver age Spider-Man artists. In fact at 85, you can still catch Lieber’s new artwork on the Amazing Spider-Man Comic Strip run in the Comic Book Shop News monthly paper.

Artist Alley was definitely the place to be. Here you had mega super-stars like Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, and Andy Kubert as well as veteran creators like Walt Simonson, Bob McLeod and Gerry Conway (Punisher, Ms. Marvel Co-creator). There were well over 100 comic artist from all over the world, including Fort Greene’s V Ken Marion (DC’s Trinity and Green Lantern Artist). Also in attendance was Will Torres (Venture) and Fabrice Sapolsky (Spider-Man: Noir, Intertwined) busy churning out sketches for fans.

On Saturday at the end of the day, little known to many people, was a small gem. Todd McFarlane (Spawn, Spider-Man, Venom) gave a short Wacom demonstration to a room of only 60 people. The “Todd Father” showed how he works through inking and coloring on the Wacom tablet. Above you can see his sketch of Venom (in process).

So did we buy comics? You betcha! There are always tons of exclusives at NYCC, really too much to count. I focussed on just a couple cool comics for our store. Venomverse #1 (Skyline Variant) was limited to only 3000 copies is an homage to the Amazing Spider-Man #700 cover with all of Venom’s past artists/writers names filling the New York skyline. Greg Horn’s Variant Cover for Harley Quinn’s 25th Anniversary (limited to 1000 copies) looked fantastic with Harley in her original costume. Gal Gadot appeared on DC’s Convention Exclusive Wonder Woman # 31 Metal Foil edition, which celebrates the upcoming Justice League movie. And of course, I wasn’t going to pass up on John Byrne’s Star Trek: New Visions NYCC Variant cover and the chance to have him sign it.

These NYCC Exclusives are available in our store! To check them out CLICK HERE!

Joshua H. Stulman

Owner, BrooklynComicShop.com