The Ghost of New York Comic Con 2023

What was New York Comic Con like during the SAG-AFTRA strike? Plenty of cosplay. Lotsa autograph booths. A group of the sweetest-looking nerds ever carrying katanas at Penn Station last Thursday night, getting prodigious side-eye on the eve of the Day of Terror. There were some short, short versions of panels (we’re talking 30 minutes, shorter than a dental cleaning) where nobody could say nothing. I did get a nice trailer for Invincible (Amazon Prime), which returns for four more episodes on November 3.

Cheryl Strayed has a quote that I kept thinking about: “I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” Well, a ride on the ghost ship of the NYCC was not the ticket anyone wanted.

Remember the year I sat next to a vat of oily popcorn for two hours so I could see the Outlander cast? How about the masked Outlander when the majority of the cast appeared on Brobdingnagian iPads? I would have gladly repeated those experiences, plus eaten the vat of oily popcorn ten times over if I could have seen one regular panel or asked a single question.

So here is my ghost ship edition of the 2023 NYCC, the one I saluted from the shores of 11^th Avenue.

Here were the panels I was dying to see:

Amazon Prime, The Boys. The show should be returning in 2024. Why does Antony Starr think people like the amoral Homelander so much? Is my beloved Black Noir really dead? Who came up with how they filmed the gorgeous scene at Buster Beaver’s Pizza Restaurant? Can Soldier Boy really take away a supe’s powers? Could Homelander be beaten by his father? What about by his son? Does the horrible self-hating Jew and friend-abandoning Seth Rogen really have to have an idiotic cameo every season?

And Amazon Prime again, with Gen V I am brimming with curiosity about potential links between the shows. Who is the mysterious backer behind Marie Moreau? Is it Homelander? What other powers does Marie have? Why does Sam think everyone is a puppet? Can Cate survive her own powers? And OMG what the hell is Soldier Boy doing at God U??

And for my Revolutionary friends at Outlander, what will happen in Scotland? Will we meet Laoghaire again? How about Jenny? What happens with the kidnapped Jem? Will Young Ian marry thee Quakeress? The second part of season 7 should premiere in early 2024.

At NYCC past, I watched full episodes of the Walking Dead, Family Guy, and Doctor Who. I saw incredible panels with full cast and directors and crew talking about the choices they made and why. There was even the time Patrick Stewart confessed that he did not approve of space travel. I had no idea how lucky we were, and how much we are missing now when the studios would rather cut down trees and use ludicrous AI actors instead of making a deal with their own living talent.