“Your standards are too low.” – Head Over Feels Takes New York Comic Con: Days 1 and 2

Posted by Kim and Sage

Happy New York Comic Con, and GOD BLESS US, EVERYONE.

It’s been an action and spandex-packed two days so far, as Kim and I are covering our very first Con as accredited members of the press. (That’s right, someone gave US a piece of plastic that INCREASES our access to celebrities. Good idea? GREAT IDEA.) From cosplay parties to rowdy panels to run-ins with seriously major Doctor Who villains, we give you the highlights so far.

– Sage

• We hit the floor after work on Thursday, and spent an hour or so just getting the lay of the land. The Javits Center is MASSIVE, and it’s easy to get lost. (“Haven’t I passed that same sexy Joker three times already?”) We scoped the Press Lounge (swag), eyed up some prints we had to get our hands on in Artists Alley, and met a really special lady over at the Marvel booth.

• From there, it was over to Hudson Terrace for the New York Comic Con Cosplay Bash, hosted by Hello Hero, a brand new mobile RPG. We were all set with our Tenth and Eleventh Doctors costumes from last year, and props to us for each wearing some form of our cosplay all day at work without looking like fools. Kim’s sister Kaysie and our friend John were down to come along, and so threw together Ninth Doctor and Captain Jack outfits in record time. (Lucky that John owns a lot of Doctor-esque jackets, surely not by coincidence.) Basically, we rolled up into this party as Modern Who. The result being that every time we posed for our own pictures, a media photographer would say, “Do that again,” and suddenly we were getting snapped by everyone in the vicinity. We have no idea where all of this is going to end up, except don’t be surprised to see us in Complex Magazine. WHAT.

• We rubbed elbows with the likes of Sharknado director Anthony Ferrante, who directed the game’s trailer. But there was something about the dress up aspect of the party (and the three hour, top shelf open bar, really) that had strangers talking like friends. Kim and I met and talked fandom with so many awesome people, including fellow bloggers who had some insightful advice for our year-old baby.  Also, we were later approached by two people who literally introduced themselves by saying “We’ve been waiting to talk to you guys because we saw that you were loud and fun and we want to be friends with you.”  And thus, we spent the rest of the party with them and they were awesome.
• Two breakfast sandwiches and large iced coffees later, we met up the next morning for our first full day at Javits. While the crowd poured into panel lines, we went back to Artists Alley to get some of the incredible fan art we’ve had our eyes on. The first stop was the Sara Richard booth to pick up some of her breathtaking Doctor Who illustrations. Can you stand this “Idiot’s Lantern” print?

• Mark Dos Santos‘s booth caught our eye with his Norman-Rockwell-meets-comics style. Kim pimped Communicon to him, while I got my new Tony Stark print signed. And before we left the relative calm of the Alley to get back onto the madness of the floor, we had to meet one of our personal favorite fan artists, Karen Hallion.  Her booth was crazy packed (We met an awesome Clara and Martha there.) with fans buying her Disney Who art notecards, stickers and prints. While Karen signed our new purchases, she gave us a few scoops: Firstly, the Tenth Doctor and Hermione fireplace design IS coming. She knows how desperate we all are for it, so she wants it to be absolutely perfect. It WILL be suitable for a four-color print t-shirt! And secondly, she’s kicking around the idea of Ten dancing with a woman in a Con-inspired TARDIS ball gown on a beach. (Well, THE beach. You know the one.) Kim suggested she name it “You Stole Me and I Stole You,” so we expect royalties if you go with that, Karen! We kid, we kid.

Loaded up with purchases, we hit the main floor. Photo essay time!

• We were sitting on the floor in the Press Lounge, charging up our phones and regrouping, when we had a terrifying encounter. I looked up as someone took a schedule from the table above us, and saw Nicholas Briggs, the VOICE OF THE DALEKS. He recognized the confusion-recognition-panic on my face, and gave me a polite smile and nod.
• We saw an incredibly detailed Gandalf take his photo manning a car-mounted machine gun in The Walking Dead survival machine booth. What could POSSIBLY stop Gandalf with a semi-automatic? The answer is nothing.
• Let’s talk about the John Barrowman photo session. We opted to get one together, obviously. But what? Between bouts of “ohmigodohmigodohmigod,” we spent the rest of the time in line trying to figure out how to pose with the man, the myth, AND the legend. We had settled on kissing his cheeks (a Barrowman sandwich), until we got to the front of the line and one of the staffers was yelling, “ANYTHING goes! Except kissing.” Well. We were talking it through with some pleasant line friends. (One girl had him hold a sign that said “She’s dating me,” because her family assumes any man she has a photo with is her boyfriend.) And we finally said to them, “I mean, WE have no boundaries…” That was it. We’d just say that to him and let him take the lead. And, well, he did. And we got the Barrowman three-way we’ve always wanted. Bless that man and any children he may bear.

• There’s WAY too much going on at Comic Con. We only made one panel on Friday! But we chose wisely. The “Your Opinion Sucks!” Rotten Tomatoes panel pitted guests against a collection of film critics to argue their favorite and least favorite movies. The whole audience got Tomato Meters, and this resulted in a controlled melee. A hot Cylon moderate the audience members who would come up, take the mic, and voice their unpopular opinion before the critics would either argue or agree. We’re not sure how VH1’s Carrie Keagan made it onto the panel, but she was out of her depth and a little too thirsty for attention. EW‘s Owen Gleiberman and Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir owned the room. We were sitting in the front row, throwing our hands up at everything Gleiberman said like we were in church. He’s a TREASURE. He was respectful and totally participatory – never talked down to anyone, and kindly recognized the bravery of a (broken inside, surely) kid who owned up to not liking Wall-E. When a Con-goer defended a dumb, popcorn horror flick (I can’t even recall which one) (Kim: It was this summer’s The Purge) by saying, “I mean, what else do you want? It’s a summer movie,” Owen replied, “Your standards are too low.” HEAR, HEAR. We’re at COMIC CON, the purest state of loving something more than is healthy. Why not hold those standards across the board? We’ll all be the better for it, AND we’ll have better movies.

Whew! And there’s two more full days still to come. Today we have our photo op with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson (goodbye, cruel world), the Barrowman Q&A, 50 Years of Doctor Who, and please, oh please, may we make it into the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. panel? Because the last time Marvel hosted a panel and announced almost no details, this happened:

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