Fans of comics, film, television and books (and all of the places where they overlap) gathered at the Javits Center in New York City this past weekend at ReedPOP's New York Comic Con. NYCC, the East Coast's largest pop-culture convention, likely exceeded last year's record-breaking attendance of more than 200,000: this year's four-day event was so large that attendees waded through crowds and waited in long lines not only in the Javits Center but also at any of the number of satellite NYCC locations, such as the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden, the Hammerstein Ballroom and the Hudson Mercantile. Here are a few highlights:
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| Author/illustrator teams Mariko Tamaki and Brooklyn Allen (Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up) and Eugene Yelchin and M.T. Anderson (The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge) | |
In a panel on Thursday afternoon, three creative teams discussed both friendships in middle-grade fiction and their own middle-grade collaborations. Brendan Reichs, who worked with Ally Condie on the upcoming novel, The Darkdeep (Bloomsbury), said that one joy of working creatively with Condie was that they were both "willing to fight to the death" over things as large as plot and as small as comma placement; as Condie explained this same idea, she found it rewarding to work with someone who cared about the book as much as she did. M.T. Anderson found the process of discovery to be particularly exciting: "We nudged each other in directions we would not have gone alone," he said of working with illustrator Eugene Yelchin on their NBA-longlisted title, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge (Candlewick). Yelchin appeared to perfectly sum up the collaborative process for all of the creators on stage: "We had to find a common language to tell one story."
On Saturday afternoon, V.E. Schwab sat on a panel with moderator Catherine Kosturski and illustrator Claudia Ianniciello to discuss making comics based on her Shades of Magic series. "The version you're reading and seeing in the comics," she said, "is the closest version [I've seen] to what is in my head." The all-female panel discussed women in fiction, fantasy and comics, and Schwab noted that she has a very specific method for writing female characters: "I love creating women who are so strong, we have to seek to find the weakness."
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| Dhonielle Clayton, V.E. Schwab, Ibi Zoboi, N.K. Jemisin and Daniel José Older. | |
Author Dhonielle Clayton, COO of We Need Diverse Books, moderated a WNDB-presented panel of fantasy and sci-fi authors on Saturday, asking "does your fantasy or SFF world have to be woke?" N.K. Jemisin defined wokeness as "being aware of the current state of affairs"; Ibi Zoboi added that it's important to note that the word "came from African American vernacular." Clayton asked the four panelists (including V.E. Schwab and their "resident man," Daniel José Older) a series of probing questions about fantasy and science-fiction worlds and whether the authors work to keep the "woke" language of our contemporary world. It's a balancing act, the authors all said in different ways, that requires deep investment in both their imagined worlds and their shared real one. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness