Comic Con 2024: The Pop-Cult Smorgasbord Goes On – The Village Voice

The Voice has been covering New York’s Comic Con since its debut, in 2006. The event occupied a small slice of the Javits Center and was so oversold the fire marshals had to come running to corral the crowds. In later years, the organizers did a better job of matching sales to capacity. It used to be that the first day, especially in the morning, was a good time to see everything in relative quiet.

Not anymore. In 2024, the crowds came early to wend their way among booths featuring anime characters — manifested as towering sculptural figures or pixels on large screens — which have largely replaced the old-school superhero comics that still give this event its name.

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Booths for the originators of comic books used to sprawl across the show floor, but now only Marvel Studios occupies any significant real estate, and at least when we were there, on Day One, the throngs were elsewhere. If DC Comics had a booth, we couldn’t find it in the show guide or on the floor. Ditto Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, IDW, Kitchen Sink, and other stalwarts of yesteryear’s ink and paper trade.

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Even so, decades’ worth of yesteryear’s saddle-stitched wares can be found, bagged and boarded, with the vintage dealers, though their ranks have also thinned.

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Today’s masses want animation, and its derivatives. Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants enticed conventiongoers with a Help Wanted sign, perhaps an indication of the upbeat Biden economy. And for almost two decades now, Comic Con has offered the best in impulse buys.

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For those who have ridden the Biden stock market through the roof, there are always Lion King figurines from Swarovski. And what better metaphor for Donald Trump’s America than crystal trolls?

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At the other end of the scale, who ever heard of a bodega that doesn’t take cash?

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That said, they don’t take cash at Yankee Stadium these days either. Comic Con has generally been held in the fall, and 2024 was not the first year a Yankee fan was listening to a game while strolling the pop-cult aisles. But this was the first time in quite a while that it felt like the Bombers (and yes, maybe the Mets) would still be playing after the last exhibitor had packed up their merch and gone home.

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And if it’s time for the Fall Classic, it’s time, too, for Election Day.

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Speaking of our weird election season, who knew that actor Anthony Hopkins, who in his role as the cannibal psychopath Hannibal Lecter has so entranced former president Trump, is also a game painter?

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And having done our fair share of “fine art” reviews over the years, we sometimes wonder whether George Lucas was a Dan Flavin fan?

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Indeed, Comic Con always has something for everyone. And the comic books that were the original impetus for the whole shebang have also been through some changes since 2006. In fact, the art form has been evolving ever since it began, way back in 1938, when Action Comics #1 hit the newsstands featuring a character with a strong social conscience and the motto “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Well actually, it was on a 1950s television show that Superman first said those words, and in 2021 that sentiment was updated to a more universal goal: “Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.”

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For sure, Supes has always tried to look on the sunny side of life. But the medium, as it has matured, has long dealt with adult themes and the problems of the real world beyond the borders of comic panels. It was in a box of vintage comics, where the ink and paper behemoths of yore are now mostly represented, that we found a classic from 1968: a stalwart DC character, the nigh-indestructible topkick Sgt. Rock, fighting the Good War and metaphorically struggling with the mendacity of America’s savage aggression in Vietnam. A more seasoned view of the human condition has always made for the greatest stories, and one need only head to Comic Con’s Artist Alley to find indie creators filling the void left by the big guys. This year we were happy to find Matt Emmons’s delightfully existential tale, Those That Inherit the Earth, which assures us that though we humans may well end our own species’ existence through greed, stupidity, and war, Mother Nature — unconcerned and majestic — will soldier on.  ❖

Comic Con continues through Sunday, October 20.

Waiting for the man — well, actually, just the 7 train — to take us to the Javits Center: