Let us not forget why we’ve come here: comic books. If you attended New York Comic Con to cosplay, wait in line for celebrity panels, play video games, buy toys, or for any of the other seemingly infinite reasons a fellow nerd may find themself making the annual pilgrimage to the Javits Center, I’m sure you had a fantastic time.
But unless you made it down to Artist Alley, in the far North corner of the convention center, you missed the real reason why NYCC exists in the first place. The heart and soul of this fall gathering is comic books and the artists behind them—always has been and (hopefully) always will be.
And so, when I arrived on the 7 train, accompanied by frenzied zombies and at least six Wonder Women, the first thing I did was make a bee line for Artist Alley, where diehard fans gather to buy original art, watch illustrators and colorists create work onsite and collect the latest issues of hit titles before they head to stores.
While elsewhere at NYCC, costumed Avengers assembled for spontaneous photo ops and the latest VR software transported visitors to the set of HBO’s Westworld, real collectors were at the Alley, where the talented people that bring Batman, Spider-Man and countless others to life on the page appeared in the flesh.