NYCC 2023 Cosplay Gallery Part 1 By Adam Etheridge
New York Comic Con returned to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City on October 12-15 this year, for its seventeenth annual show. NYCC is organized by ReedPop, which runs numerous other conventions across the world, including the PAX shows, Emerald City Comic Con, C2E2, Florida Supercon, and EGX. NYCC has the highest attendance of any comic convention in the country, bringing in more than 200,000 fans to the Javits for its four-day event.
New York Comic Con is perhaps best known for being a star-studded event, with dozens of high-profile celebrities in attendance every year. Stars at the show this year included Chris Evans, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Tom Hiddleston, David Tennant, Sean Gunn, Tim Curry, Karen Gillan, and the cast of Critical Role, among many others.
The last time I attended NYCC for multiple days and wrote one of these articles was in 2019. At that time, construction was ongoing at the Javits, and multiple off-site venues were utilized to host some of the many panels held during the convention. Since then, the convention center’s expansion has been completed, and all programming is now held within the confines of the Javits. Having everything under one roof now certainly makes things more convenient.
NYCC features hundreds of hours of panels and programming over the course of its four-day show. Panels covered a wide variety of topics including comics, anime, gaming, movies, music, and much more. The Main Stage on level 1 of the Javits was home to the largest panels during the convention, some of which featured celebrity guests attending the event.
Level 3 of the convention center is where attendees could find NYCC’s massive show floor, an area where many fans would spend the largest amount of their time at the convention in. Hundreds of vendors selling thousands of different items could be found on the show floor, with an enormous selection of collectibles, comics, artwork, games, and much more.
The Cosplay Central area returned to the River Pavilion on the fourth floor of the Javits again this year. This area featured cosplayer meet & greets with some of the featured cosplay guests at the show, cosplay fan groups, a stage for cosplay-related panels, and some themed sets intended for cosplay photos. This area was also where some fan meetups were held during the convention.
Speaking of which, while fan meetups have always been a part of NYCC, these events seemed to have a bigger presence at the convention than in previous years, with more on the schedule than I can recall in previous years. I’ll discuss this further in my next article, but in short, I think these meetups are a great idea, but need some tweaks when it comes to their implementation.
The Cosplay Central Crown Championships qualifier was held on Saturday night of the show, with the winner going on to compete against the winners of ReedPop’s Emerald City Comic Con, Florida Supercon, and C2E2, to determine the overall US Champion. Congratulations to sarcasm_hime who won the NYCC competition with their cosplay of Queen from Neil Gaiman’s short story “Snow, Glass, Apples”!
New York Comic Con’s massive size is always a double-edged sword, with both positive and negative aspects. I will speak about both in my next two articles on the convention. With that said, at the end of the day, when the dust has settled, as exhausted from the event as I may be, part of me is always left in awe from New York Comic Con, and it’s hard for me to imagine ever missing it.
New York Comic Con will return to the Jacob K. Javits center on October 17-20, 2024.
Cosplayers in this first of three galleries include sammyxtorres18, abigaiil.morris, patriciakashek, allowaycosplay, greenshep120, aekizumi, powertripcosplay, toxiekat, shukiez, jsanctum, chrisiscosplay, themachoverse, cosmicquarts, technomancer_witch, zoogirlq, kailcarps, Life of Cosplay, heatherboddy, red.in.her.ledger, thebreauxshow, the.writer.cosplayer, and many more.
We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.
To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.
If you like our work and want to show your appreciation, feel free to tip us at Ko-fi or become a patron on Patreon.
Also, High-res images for sale is back!
If you are pictured in any of our galleries and want the high-resolution (3200 pixels at its widest by 300dpi) download for yourself, we can make it available via a private Smugmug link, for $10 per image. Just send an email to editor AT nerdcaliber.com. Currently limited to only photos taken by FirstPerson Shooter (aka Rodney Brown).
This was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, many of the characters being cosplayed here wouldn’t exist. Please consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund here.
