NYCC 2019 Thursday Gallery By Adam Etheridge

New York Comic Con returned to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City on October 3-6 this year, for its fourteenth annual show. NYCC was brought to us once again by ReedPOP, a group that runs dozens of events across the world, including Emerald City Comic Con, C2E2, and the PAX shows. Over 200,000 fans flocked to the Javits Center for the four-day event this year.

New York Comic Con is well-known for the lineup of celebrities brought in for the event each year, and this year was no exception. Stars in attendance this year included Tom Hiddleston, Paul Rudd, Billy Dee Williams, Seth Green, Louis Gossett Jr., Paul Reubens, Steven Ogg, Adam Savage, Jennifer Connelly, Caitriona Balfe, Sean Astin, Molly Ringwald, and many more.

Panels and programming were a big part of the NYCC experience, with over 200 panels held over the course of the four-day event, covering a wide variety of genres and topics including comics, television, movies, anime, gaming, and much more. The number of events has grown so large that NYCC has outgrown the confines of the Javits Center in recent years, and once again a number of panels were held at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden and the Hammerstein Ballroom, in addition to the many panel rooms at the Javits itself.

Fans looking to browse and buy merchandise could find wide variety of wares to choose from on the massive show floor located on level 3 of the Javits Center. Hundreds of vendors were in attendance offering an enormous selection comics, toys, artwork, games, and much more, with some offering NYCC-exclusive merchandise that could only be purchased at the show (or at a high price from a reseller later).

The “Cosplay Central” area returned to the River Pavilion on the fourth floor of the Javits, which was presented by VERO this year. This area featured a stage for cosplay-related panels, a changing room for cosplayers, a photo booth, and a couple of themed sets intended for cosplay photos. The themed sets (which included a subway and classroom setting) were something that I had been wanting to see at a convention on the east coast for a long time, so I was pretty excited to see them. I was less excited, however, to see non-cosplayers using them as a rest stop throughout most of the convention. I’d love to see more of these at next year’s show, perhaps with some signage indicating their intended usage to keep the “normies” at bay.

As is the case every year, New York Comic Con’s massive size is a double-edged sword. Navigating the show floor is often a slow, tedious ordeal due to the volume of people in the area. Even the area outside the building, including the once vaunted tunnel, was generally packed with attendees during the convention.

Construction on the expansion of the Javits is still ongoing, and is not scheduled for completion until 2021, which means we will have at least one more NYCC before it is finished. Even when the construction has been completed, I would not bet on there being any more breathing room, as the organizers will likely sell even more tickets to the event.

That said, New York Comic Con is a grand, one of a kind experience that offers many things you may not find at other conventions. Every year it leaves many of us elated, exhausted, blissful, battered, and bruised, which leaves us saying we’re never going to do it again… until next year.

Speaking of next year, New York Comic Con will return to the Jacob K. Javits Center on October 8-11, 2020.

Cosplayers in this gallery include Scotty B Cosplay, Chocobobutt, Alanaknightcosplay, Hikaru Cosplay, Harley Frances, Starlight Goddess Cosplay, Collin Summers Cosplay, Cosplay by Mikette, allowaycosplay, pink.mason, zoevolf, blackiechuu, blvck.wolf, dramatiq_beauty, 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.