My con-a-thon come to an end yesterday with the nerd convergence I had been looking forward to most of all: Flame Con, New York City’s first queer comic con. Book Con and Special Edition, although a lot of fun, leaned a little straight, so I was looking forward to cranking up the ‘mo and getting my gay geek on.
The event was in Brooklyn, at the Grand Prospect Hall (“We make your dreams come true!“). I wasn’t flying solo this time, I was joined by my friend and comrade in gay geekery Mike. We got there around noon, just as the event was starting. There was no line to speak of, probably because check-in was very well-staffed – we were in nice and quick.
I probably could have composed that picture better. We made our way to the Ballroom, which is where most of the exhibitors were located (that’s it in the background of the picture above), and immediately ran into an old grad school friend, the immensely hilarious Keisha Zollar!
That’s Mike, Keisha and me. Keisha was there to promote a web series she’s appearing in and writing for, In Game, a comedy about LARPing. Check it out, nerds! Keisha’s brilliant, so anything she’s worked on is bound to be brilliant too.
Mike and I had about an hour before the first panel we were planning on attending, so we wandered the tables, taking in the exhibitors for a while. Lots of great queer indie artists. Oh, and cosplayers, of course!
Here are Power Girl and Black Canary, boob window and fishnets and all. More cosplayers to come, but first, that aforementioned panel. It was called “No More Mister Nice Gay: Uber Violence and Queer Storytelling”, and it was in the Salon, which was a nice little room with comfy chairs and a pile of disused furniture in the back separated from us by some big sheets of plywood that were just leaning against it…uh…that was a little odd. Storage problems at the Grand Prospect Hall, maybe? (Actually, the Hall is a really interesting venue. It feels a bit tacky and past its prime, but in an oddly charming way. Although we did worry that the off-kilter chandeliers might come crashing down on the Ballroom at any minute.)
Here’s the panel. Left to right, that’s Kelsey Hercs and Lawrence Gullo, co-writers of the web comic Bash Back; Steve Orlando, writer of DC Comics’ new series Midnighter; and moderator Bobby Hankinson of Towleroad.com. It was a good discussion, although I can’t say they really got too in-depth on the topic at hand. But it was interesting to hear Orlando talk about Midnighter, the first solo ongoing series starring a gay male character from one of the big two comics publishers. (Although it’s technically true that Midnighter is the first gay male character to headline a book from DC or Marvel, this isn’t the first series to do so, because Midnighter already had his own ongoing series a couple of years ago. Everybody seems to be pretending that never existed for some reason.) (Also, Northstar had his own series at Marvel in the 90’s, but that doesn’t count because 1) it was a four-issue limited series, not an ongoing; 2) his homosexuality was never once mentioned; and 3) it was fucking terrible.)
There were no panels at two o’clock that we wanted to see, so Mike and I decided to duck out for lunch. But on the way out, more cosplayers!
This Empire Strikes Back Luke Skywalker sat directly in front of us at the panel and he wasn’t at all distracting, nope. (Doesn’t Yoda look so happy? Like he’s giving Luke a big hug for doing such a good job at his Jedi training that day.)
Sensational Wonder Woman! I don’t know this cosplayer’s name but I feel like I see her at a lot of cons, always serving perfection. I think I want to be her when I grow up. (Update! This is Jay Justice, and you should check her out because she’s super cool.)
Day drinking! There wasn’t much in the way of food at the con, but luckily there were plenty of options just around the corner.
Stomachs full and livers filtering, we returned to the con. We skipped a panel on horror in favor of finishing up exploring the floor, and stumbled across this guy.
That’s Bill Roundy, cartoonist extraordinaire. You may know him from his comic Orientation Police, about his experiences dating trans men, which went viral a short while back, or, if you’re a Brooklynite, from Bar Scrawl, a series of cartoon reviews of Brooklyn bars (which I am obsessed with, even though I’ve never gone to one of the bars and have no serious plans to). I met Bill many years ago through the Gay League, an online group of gay comics fans which used to have weekly meet-ups for New York members. I’ve lost touch with just about everybody else from that group, but I’ve stayed in loose contact with Bill, mostly thanks to occasional random run-ins at bars every other year or so.
The woman in blue, seated two people down from Bill, is Molly Ostertag, whom I bought a book from at Special Edition last week (which I talked about in my last post). I waited until she had people browsing her books and then told her somewhat loudly how much I had enjoyed Bacchanalia. Hope I spurred some sales!
More cosplay! This Raven stayed constantly in character (or possibly he just has a naturally morose resting face).
We had seen just about everything in the main Ballroom by this point. I picked up a few books, including a collection of Virgil by Steve Orlando (Midnighter guy). He introduced me to Genevieve Valentine, current writer of Catwoman, who was seated at his table with him, and I told her how much I’m enjoying her run. (Selina’s the crime boss of Gotham now, and also bisexual. It’s pretty good – mob drama with supervillains.) I also picked up a comic created specifically for the con by Scott Sosebee, an artist whose work I was unfamiliar with but looked pretty good. I always like to take a chance on a new indie creator at cons, and Scott was the lucky winner this time! I’m looking forward to reading the book.
We crossed over to the Atrium to see the exhibitors there, but the abundance of windows made for a greenhouse effect that the Hall’s AC just couldn’t overcome, so we only made one quick tour through before fleeing the heat. So back to the Ballroom we went, for more cosplay action!
Here’s another Titan, Starfire. Love it!
A triptych of X-Men: Storm, Jubilee (with bubble!) and Kitty Pryde, with an adorable little Lockheed.
Never have I been angrier at my stupid camera for taking blurry shots. Here’s Captain America and Woody. Essentially. Or a guy in Captain America Underoos and someone from the Toy Story porn parody. Captain America seemed confused as to why I wanted to take his picture. I was confused by his confusion.
Aquaman! Also a bummer how blurry this came out. My camera is slow to focus, and I hate to ask people to keep waiting until I get a good shot, so if the first one doesn’t come out well, I’m out of luck.
We were starting to get a little tired of walking and there was still a good amount of time until the next panel, so we retired to the balcony, where some seating was available. It provided a great opportunity to get a shot of the entirety of the Ballroom. Man, I wish somebody had cosplayed as Waldo.
Our feet stopped complaining so we went back downstairs to the Fancy Suite. (I’ll give you a topic – the Fancy Suite is neither fancy nor a suite. Discuss.) The topic this time was “Diversity in New Media,” and the panel featured (left to right) Kevin Gilligan, co-writer and actor on the webseries Gigahoes; Krutika Mallikarjuna, from BuzzFeed; Lisa Bunker, actor in the web series S-her-lock; Kate Tracy, creator and director of S-her-lock; Dylan Marron, the voice of Carlos on the podcast Welcome to Night Vale; and moderator Dana Piccoli, an editor for AfterEllen.com.
I enjoyed this panel – they did a good job of staying on-topic and keeping the focus on new media, particularly web series. There was a lot of encouragement for people to go out and create their own work. Dylan Marron was particularly well-spoken on the topic – it made me regretful that I haven’t jumped on the Welcome to Night Vale bandwagon yet.
We were just about conned out at this point, but we decided to do one more swing through the Ballroom before heading out, as I had one last mission unaccomplished. I’ve never bought a table at one of these cons, as they’re generally pretty pricey and I’m not sure I’m at the point yet where I’d be able to capitalize on it and make the most of the expense. Illustrators tend to do better at these, from what I’ve seen. But I had seriously considered going for it with Flame Con, since gay geeks seem like a pretty good demographic for me to target. Obviously I didn’t, I just didn’t feel like I could pull it together in time, but there were several self-published authors at the con and I wanted to see what their experiences had been like.
I had swung by author Simon Graves‘ table earlier in the day, and he seemed like a friendly enough soul for perpetually shy and socially awkward me to strike up a conversation with. He was incredibly helpful, and spoke very positively of his experiences at Flame Con. He definitely got me thinking about getting a table next year, although I’ll likely take his advice and try to find another author to split a table with. So a big thanks to Simon! I just bought his collection of horror short stories, FIND’M, on Amazon (and you should, too!).
The con ended at six, but by five or so Mike and I were all tuckered out, so we headed back to his apartment for our dinner break. Yes, dinner break – Flame Con was done, but the evening was just getting started! At eight o’clock the tables were cleared and the venue transformed for the after-party, the Fire Ball! Since we were still full from our late lunch, Mike and I had a bottle of vodka for dinner, so we were ready and raring to go!
Here’s the ballroom again, with the tables gone and the runway stage in place. The stage was lined with paper, and markers were provided for everybody to write or draw whatever they liked. Of course, the place was full of amazing artists so the blank paper looked pretty great by the end of the night. Here’s what I contributed:
A mangled quote from Animaniacs and a wonky drawing of Charlie Brown. Did I mention the bottle of vodka?
There wasn’t as much cosplay at the party – at least, not off the stage – but I did spot these fellow Whovians and had to take a pic. Dalek Oswin and regular Oswin! (And their friend in the middle, I’m afraid I don’t remember if she was in costume.)
I also got this kick-ass Domino, although the picture is horrible. In fact, from here on out, just assume the pictures are going to be terrible – manage your expectations. I’ve already explained about my camera, plus the lighting was very dim, everybody was moving very fast, and I was drunk off my ass.
I also have no clue as to who most of these performers are – I just wasn’t able to catch their names. I’ve gone to the internet for help but only identified a few, so my apologies to those who remain uncredited. You can see the full list of performers here, if you’re curious. They were pretty much uniformly fantastic. (And if anybody can match my pics with the performers, leave a comment and I’ll update the post!) Most of my pics are unusable even by our now lower standards, but here’s what I got…
DJ Superman!
Terrible shot of the performer. The crowd came out perfect, though.
I spotted this fierce She-Hulk in the crowd on my way to the restroom.
Storm was everything. I got a few pics of her because she just killed it.
Ripley, with Newt puppet, was the best thing ever.
Nightcrawler! Let’s just pretend he’s mid-bamf and that’s why he’s blurry.
Misty Meaner as Agent Carter.
Mike thought this was Elven King Thranduil, Lee Pace’s character from The Hobbit, and I have no reason to think otherwise.
Hey, that She-Hulk I spotted was one of the performers! I do love this picture.
Man, I wish the pictures of this guy had come out. (I think this is Levi Karter from porn site Cocky Boys.)
It’s Flamey, the Flame Con mascot! This was the end of the show – after, the runway was turned over to dancing!
At least until they made everyone get down. But I got a picture first!
And one last pic – Jason Romas is an actor as well as one of the organizers behind Flame Con. I’ve known him for a few years, since I directed him in a show. He was running around like mad all day but I made him interrupt whatever important thing he was doing to pose for this horrible picture with me.
And that was it! No pic of my loot this time – I left my bag at Mike’s for later recovery, so as not to lose or damage anything at the party. Overall I would say Flame Con was a great success – I was really impressed with how smoothly it ran considering this was the first year. Looking forward to the next!
