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Welcome back to part 3 of my New York Comic Con 2010 experience! If this is your fist time then check out parts one and two to see how the first few hours of my day went. A lot can happen pretty fast at NYCC, which was made very clear to me as I went from meeting Jim Shooter to wanting to kick “Iceman” in the face in a matter of minutes.

When I left you guys last, I was getting something to eat figuring that would help ease my mood after the “Iceman” incident. So after paying way too much for food that wasn’t that great, I was ready to hit the con floor again. Re-energized, at this point in the day I had two goals: Getting Black Panther 1 & 2 (the Jack Kirby run) signed by Stan Lee, and getting Chris Claremont’s signature on a few Uncanny X-Men books. Now as I stood in the very long and winding line waiting for Stan, I met quite a few people who were more than happy to show off their prized books. It’s not often I get to check out books from the 40s, 50s, and 60s up close, so that was kind of cool. However, I got a big kick in the nuts when we heard the announcement that if you did not get a yellow ticket at 10 am then you could not get Stan’s autograph. Well that knocked out most of the line right there (including me), but let me tell you that comic fans are persistent, which led to some very funny exchanges between the event staff and the crowd. The only thing that pissed me off was that at 10 am I was being bounced around by event staff who didn’t know where the hell the press room was! So I could have been where I needed to be and got a ticket, but due to a select few I ended up screwed. The humanity!!

So on to the next mission at hand. If you’re a longtime fan of the X-Men, you definitely know who Chris Claremont is. If you were introduced to him through the X-Men cartoon in the 90s, then know most of that series’ best moments were taken from stories he wrote for the comics. This guy helped establish the X-Men as THE book to get, and is responsible for some of the hottest stories and character creations in the past couple of decades. Being that I have quite a few books from Claremont’s heyday, it was a hard choice, but I finally decided on Uncanny X-Men #150, Uncanny X-Men #268, Uncanny X-Men #242, and Uncanny X-Men & Teen Titans which I had signed by Terry Austin earlier this year at the Albany Con. Now if only I could get Walt Simonson to sign that book it would be complete!

Now if I remember correctly from Andy’s experience in San Diego, there was a ridiculous ritual to get in the official line for Claremont, and there was a three book limit. Well at NYCC we just had one line with no silly tickets AND he had a five book signing limit instead of three! HA! Things were startin’ to turn around for ol’ Speech here, and I was actually believing that the day would just get better and better. The line was long as hell, but moving at a decent pace, and during the wait I met some great people. The guy in front of me had about eight books, so I offered to take one since I only had four and the guy in front of him took the rest. Finally, we waited…and waited…and…what the hell man! It seemed like the line’s progress was being held up by a cute cute little kids getting chatty with Claremont.

As soon as the munchkin brigade (yes, we nicknamed them) was gone, the line progressed a bit faster, and then it was finally my turn. Things are a bit of a blur, but I remember that when he saw the X-Men & Teen Titans book with Terry Austin’s signature he made the remark that he hadn’t seen that book in quite a long time, and asked when did I get Terry to sign it? After I answered, he signed the rest of the books without saying too much, and then the moment I had been anticipating for years was finally over. Me and the guys who had bonded in that line bid each other farewell and went our separate ways.

Here’s a look at the fruits of my labor!

Feeling like I got something accomplished, it was time to just walk around and take in the scenery. Because I couldn’t bring myself to stand in one more line, I passed on a few more signings. I decided to hang around the Marvel area for a bit, and my jaw dropped when I passed the display case with the action figures. The only thing going through my mind was “Damn! It must be great to be a kid nowadays!” All I had growing up was maybe five points of articulation, and if I was lucky my action figure had the infamous kung fu grip. Now you can pose your figure to do the stuff we only dreamed about back in the day, and I would have KILLED for a Galactus or Sentinel to play with back then. My curiosity now piqued, I made my way over to the DC side to see what they had to show. Not to be outdone, DC had some pretty impressive figures of their own to show off, and it’s pretty evident that a lot of collectors are going to have a hard time deciding on what particular one to get from either company.

Well that’s it for now, folks! Just be sure to check back in to see what we have for tomorrow’s NYCC recap and for more NYCC info click here!

Infinite Speech
infinitespeech@comicattack.net