New York Comic Book Marketplace

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Mr Wallstreet
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New York Comic Book Marketplace

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New York Comic Book Marketplace was fun. It was my first time so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Registration was cheap; $20 for regular registrants & $25 for VIP who pre-registered. I pre-registered and got the VIP badge.

The event was one full day from 10:00am – 6:00pm. If you had a VIP badge, you could enter at 9:00am. It was held at the Pennsylvania Hotel across from Madison Square Garden on the 18th floor. The show planners rented out, what looked like, a conference hall. It was packed wall to wall with vendors selling all kinds of comic & comic related memorabilia. I went there with my younger brother and got there around 11.

After getting in, we did a quick tour of the entire venue and when I say it was a conference hall type space, that’s exactly what I mean. We did an entire walk around of the space in about 15 minutes. The only reason it even took that long was because the place packed with people and their carry all bags. If someone had a hand-cart with them or a book bag that they refused to take off, it immediately caused a traffic jam. I’m not trying to shit on the event or the planners but I expected it to be bigger and more ergonomical. Despite that, it was still fun. I made my way for the back issue bins and picked up a bunch of back issues.

I’m exceeding my budget for comics, so I decided that rather than pay full price them, I’ll trim my pull list and pick them up at Cons, comic events and flea markets in the dollar bins; which has been paying off in big ways.
I picked up back issues for:

Birds of Prey (New 52)
Batman: Odyssey
Batman, Inc.
Irredeemable
Incorruptible
2 Batman minis; one was by Dick Giordano
A ton of Wolverine back issues
Batman: The Killing Joke – 1st Printing

I got all these in the dollar bins and a lot of Wolverine comics in the 2 for Dollar bins.

I almost have my Bop, Batman Odyssey, and Batman inc runs completed.
I have about 1/3rd of my Irredeemable and Incorruptible runs completed. I’ll probably finish those off at a future Con. The biggest run of my collection that I’m trying to complete are my Wolverine runs. The earlier ones, I’ll probably have to shell some cash out for but a lot of the recent ones & not so recent ones, I can get at Cons for a very cheap price.

My biggest find was a Near Mind copy of The Killing Joke by Moore & Bolland – First Print. There were several vendors selling NM copies for $40-$50. I found a vendor willing to sell it to me for $35. Pretty sweet deal so I took it. I saw a vendor selling it for $25 but I passed on it. Dumb move but I made up for it now although it cost me a little. The last 2 seminal Batman stories that I’m trying to get are: A Lonely Place of Dying and all 4 issues of A Death in the Family. I have 3 issues of ALPoD. I’m missing parts 2 & 4.

Artist Alley was in a different room. AA had a mixture of Artists and celebrities. There were a lot of artists I didn’t recognize and a few who I did. The few that I recognized were: Sean Chen, Chris Claremont, George Perez and our friend Alex Maleev.

Claremont & Perez had the longest lines. The wait for Perez was 45 minutes minimum. Claremont had the typical fans dropping a shit ton of books in front of him to sign. Does anyone else think that Claremont only does these Cons out of sheer boredom? In the several Cons that I’ve seen him, he doesn’t really interact with the fans and even when he does engage them, his facial expression doesn’t show any hint of emotion. He’s not rude or anything but seems to go into autopilot.

Alex Maleev was at his table all by his lonesome. I felt so bad for him. I thought I should go over and ask him to sign something with a shitty pen just so he could throw it in my face and feel better.

As celebs go, I got a photo with WWE Wrestler Rikishi. Former WWE wrestler Ashley Massaro was also there but I couldn’t be bothered. I also saw Brian O’Halloran there of Clerks fame but again, didn’t want to meet him.

I spent about 3 hours at the Con. Within the first hour, I’d already hit up all the vendors there at least once and scored all the comics I’d wanted. I then circled back at least 2 more times to see if I’d missed anything. I spent about 45 minutes at Artist Alley and then another hour back at the main floor with the vendors. At that point I really had nothing else to do so I left.

I saw one vendor selling James Bond memorabilia. He was selling old paperback editions of, what I assumed were, first editions or very old copies of Ian Flemings James Bon novels. I wanted to pick up a few but they were priced really high.

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