Press Sense
OSM: Believe and Let Believe!
(and grab a shirt while you’re at it)
by Leani M. Auxilio
October 12, 2012– The second day of this year’s New York Comic Con, held at the Javits Center. After much prodding (read: whining, pleading, promises to do the dishes for a whole month, and some slight and subtle parental blackmail), I finally got Marivir Montebon (aka The Mother/Boss) to buy me a pass to get into what is every anime otaku‘s private Mecca: The New York Comic Convention.
Okay, I exaggerate. There are other Cons out there, and most anime addicted/manga readers/comic fans are as fanatical about them as they are of the NYCC. But this was my first comic con; cut me some slack. I was… bedazzled. And silently cursing myself for bringing less than a hundred bucks. Roaming around the stands, I found myself staring (Was that a Kuroshitsuji figure?! OMG SEBASTIAN MICHAELIS! CIEL! I WANT!), ogling (Whoa, that is one realistic Hoshigake Kisame cosplay!), and ultimately depressed because I missed every single one of Tom Felton’s autograph sessions (I’m still depressed, actually).
Still. I made the best of everything. Walking around the stands with a couple of friends from City College, I got called over to a curious stall selling shirts with cute chibified deities (and Satan, too!). As if the guy wearing the Air Monk garb from Avatar wasn’t enough to get me fangasming (fan + orgasm; I’m a BIG fan of the Last Airbender series), I saw that the woman who called me and my friends was cosplaying as Mama Mary. Oh yeah, definitely fellow Flips. Introductions were made, I won a cute pen I was really coveting during my Dice of Destiny roll, bought a Nino shirt that says “Take the world by the balls,” (because I’m Cebuano and Santo Nino is the cutest chibified deity, just saying), and promised to stay in contact with Ate Shanna and Kuya Abe, the osm Gurus at YourFaithLooksFamiliar.com.
SECRET VORTEX: Beautiful Girls With Swords
http://secretvortex.com/comiccon12.html
by John V. Brennan
November 2012
If you read the previous article "Beautiful Girls With Guns", published last November (and if you haven't, you should, because this one is kind of a sequel to that one), then you know that 2011 was a horrible year for me, my family, and some of my friends. I'm happy to report that 2012 was much better for all of us. I celebrated once again by going to ComicCon at the Jacob Javitz Center in NYC, only this time, I spent part of three days there instead of just a couple of rushed hours.
First, a shout out to one individual in particular:
As I wandered around ComicCon on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I was constantly impressed by many of the hard-working artists and craftspeople tirelessly promoting their own work. People selling their videos, their books, their artwork, showing up every day, sitting or standing in their booths or at their tables for hours, trying to get passers-by interested in their goods.
People like Shanna, aka "Super Madonna", who is with Your Faith Looks Familiar, a non-profit organization that promotes freedom of religion and the free expression thereof. I really had no intention of buying a t-shirt (it was Day Three and I had about ten bucks left in my wallet) but I asked her if I could take her photo because, well, honestly, she looked pretty in her costume and half of my time at ComicCon consists of snapping photos of strangers in interesting costumes. After I took the picture, she talked me into playing a dice-throwing game in order to win a prize, a "magic pill" that turns into a pen - like a James Bond device only colorful and non-lethal. She also blessed me several times. Everybody I met and talked to at ComicCon was friendly, but Shanna - she qualifies for the "superfriendly" category. Thank you, Shanna, for helping make the final day of Comic Con a great one! You made my day, so I mention you first!
Now, onto the rest of ComicCon.