Pay writers!!!
Pay writers!!!
And other thoughts from New York Comic Con 2023
Hello mixers,
Wow, another October post?? How did we all get so lucky? I told you, October is my month. I even have an idea for next month’s post. She’s on a roll!!
I do have to thank Derek for this idea. Last Friday, we went to New York Comic Con —our third year in a row. As we walked through the colorfully clad masses among the colorful anime, manga, sci-fi and fantasy merch, he suggested I write about the experience. So here we are!
We began our con (capital C Con?) at an early screening of the first episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the new Godzilla show coming in November from Apple TV+. Derek had signed up for the free event, neither of us really knowing what Monarch was or what the event would include. We arrived a little late and had to stumble in the pitch dark to find some seats since phone use wasn’t allowed; they even had guys roaming the aisles with weird little cameras to make sure no one was secretly filming which screamed intense officiality!
I walked into the screening with the detached, wide-eyed interest I approach every Comic Con with. That way, I have no expectations to dash or be anxious about! So I sat there in the huge, dark convention room pleasantly ready to watch whatever was on the massive screen. Without giving away too much (I didn’t sign an NDA, but who knows what kinds of terms and conditions came with signing up!), this first episode follows 1) a Japanese American woman, Cate, as she grapples with revelations about her semi-absentee father, including his involvement with Godzilla-related defense programs, and 2) a trio of scientists following radiation signals to prove one of their apparently far-fetched theories.
Having skipped the first few minutes of the episode, and presumably some introduction from the event’s host, I assumed that I had missed some context, but that it would all clear up soon. I soon realized, however, that it wasn’t me that was lacking, it was the show. The writing was bad. Like, really bad.
The entire show was filled with tired clichés (sidebar: did you know cliché is onomatopoeic??):
Cate is such a cool, unaffected girl who couldn’t care less that her father had a secret second family or that she saw a school busload of kids fall victim to Godzilla in San Francisco. She maintains her ice queen demeanor throughout and her dialogue is 96% snark.
Cate meets another cool girl, May, but May is ~alternative~ so she isn’t sure about business-casual Cate at first. But once Cate makes a snarky comment about the guy they’re with (Cate’s surprise brother and alt girl’s ex), May stops walking, smirks, and says, “I like her.”
We don’t know what the three scientists are looking for, but don’t worry, the plucky Asian, female scientist tells her scientist husband that what they’re about to find will make everything they’ve sacrificed worth it!
Derek and I speculate that the show was written by scabs during the WGA strike, but we have no evidence for such a claim. More probable is that Apple blew their budget on the admittedly impressive special effects and Kurt Russell’s salary. Too bad we won’t get past the terrible writing to see how it all plays out.
The rest of Comic Con was a lot of fun, as usual. My favorite part is always the many costumes we see. (Is it insulting to say costume? Is cosplay more legit?) This year’s highlights:
Other faves that I didn’t get a picture of were the X-Men (the comic book outfits), Link from The Legend of Zelda’s Gerudo outfit and the Beast from Over the Garden Wall (the black figure in the back).
I also kept a tally of the most popular costumes, with the overwhelming winner at 55 sightings being Spider-Man and variants in a full suit or similar. Comic Con congregates so many Spiderthems, some of them even meet up and do a group picture on these stairs each year (I’ve seen it twice).
The other most commonly seen (by me) costumes were:
One Piece: 44 (mostly the main straw hat kid, Monkey D. Luffy)
Harley Quinn: 10 (there were about 50 Harley Quinns last year)
Freddy Krueger: 9 (it was Friday the 13th, after all)
Ash Ketchum: 7
Velma: 6
And not really a costume, but as a semi-Mets fan by marriage, I also counted Mets hat sightings, of which there were eight. I suppose those could count as clown costumes after this past Mets season. See y’all at the next Con!