I can’t believe that this was my first time going to any sort of comics convention, because I had a total blast at this year’s New York Comic Con.  It was a freaking awesome time: great panels, cool people, fun events and a fantastic show floor.  You can count me in next year for sure.

I was amazed by the size of the event…it is an absolutely huge undertaking.  The official blog says that there were nearly 77,000 attendees and I’m not surprised because it was certainly crowded.  That’s not to say it was over-crowded…I didn’t really have any crowd-related issues and things ran, for the most part, quite smoothly.  I talked to a few people who said that there were problems due to crowding a couple of years ago but these seem to have since been smoothed out.  

It was also a fun and friendly crowd - a huge bunch of people sharing similar interests.  I’d say it was pretty diverse too.  There was a varied mix of all ages and races and professions.  I spoke with die-hard fans, casual fans and a few New Yorkers just looking for something to do on a winter weekend.  The exception to this diversity was that the male to female ratio was a lot larger than the Anime Convention I attended last year.  I’d say the Anime Con was about 40% female (this is totally and absolutely unscientific), while Comic Con was closer to 15-20%.  Also, not surprisingly, there were not nearly as many costume wearers as at Anime Con (though there definitely were some great costumes).

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