New York Comic Con 2017: all the news from the pop culture party for fans

When The Force Awakens hit theaters in 2015, many moviegoers came away from the film disappointed by one character: Captain Phasma. The imposing stormtrooper captain was hyped as a formidable force on the battlefield, but ultimately ended up aiding the Resistance when threatened by one of her former soldiers, Finn.

In Delilah S. Dawson’s new novel Phasma, readers are given new insight into where the character came from, and just what motivates her. As it turns out, Phasma isn’t a die-hard First Order loyalist: she escaped from a hellish life on a post-apocalyptic planet when the First Order presented an opportunity for a better life.

2017’s entertainment has suggested some marginal progress in diversity, with an increasing trend toward film, TV shows, and anime telling the stories of marginalized groups. There’s growing awareness of how representation affects entertainment, which has lead to, for instance, the whitewashing discussions about Ghost in the Shell and Death Note, or Ed Skrein’s decision to turn down a role in Hellboy, once he learned the character was meant to be of Asian descent. As a celebration of fandom, 2017’s New York Comic Con reflected the year’s trends. It showed the same minute steps being made toward racial and gender equity in entertainment. It also addressed the significant barriers that are left to overcome.

This year’s NYCC had a greater focus on inclusive panels. With titles like “Geeks of Color” and “Cosplay and Disabilities,” they provided spaces for traditionally neglected groups to feel included in a venue packed with Naruto billboards and costumed Game of Thrones characters. And they helped move the conversation forward by bringing social activists into the spotlight. Some of the featured panelists have been involved in the dialog around representation issues for decades, enacting change at the local level. At Comic Con, they delivered their messages to impressionable young kids dressed as Sailor Moon characters and Harry Potter.

One of the most beautiful things about New York Comic Con this past weekend was the diverse array of attendees at the four-day celebration. New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center and its surrounding streets were filled with children, senior citizens, couples, families, seasoned cosplayers, self-proclaimed “blerds” (a portmanteau for “black nerds”), and everyone in between. It was hard to not be moved by the inclusive nature of the event, where thousands of people came to express their fandom for whatever character or property they identify with, whether that meant simply watching the crowd, or arriving in elaborate costumes they crafted themselves.

Some of the most creative cosplayers, however, were those with disabilities. At this year’s NYCC, it was hard to miss the significant number of people eagerly taking to the show floor in wheelchairs or walkers. On the final day of the convention, a panel called “Cosplay and Disabilities” highlighted those fans, who noted an apparent uptick in disabled attendees this year. "I think I’ve seen more wheelchairs this year than I’ve ever seen,” said Dylan “DozenFingers” Cohen, a cosplayer with Tourette syndrome who was dressed as Son Goku from the Dragon Ball manga. “And they’re troopers, they really are.”

The first trailer for the 11th season of The X-Files is here, having debuted at New York Comic Con over the weekend.

It looks like the stakes are pretty high, as we get chilling voiceover threatening the extinction of the entire human race throughout the trailer, and Gillian Anderson as Agent Scully croaking vague commands to David Duchovny’s Agent Mulder from a hospital bed. There are guns, cigarettes, jump scares, and threats of “hell on Earth.” But don’t worry: “The truth still lies in the X-Files.”

Warner Bros. unveiled a first look at its upcoming Stephen King-inspired show Castle Rock with a teaser trailer at New York Comic Con today, which included details about a new cast and story planned for season 2. 

In February, J.J. Abrams announced a new show for Hulu that would be heavily inspired by King’s enormous, interconnected world, set in the familiar location of Castle Rock, but with few other details. The show is expected to begin streaming at some point in 2018. 

The CW’s Riverdale has become a hit by adapting one of the most unlikely pieces of source material: the all-American line of Archie Comics. With a darker, more glamorous take, the show has been able to bring an entirely new audience to the traditionally wholesome high school adventures of Archie and his friends Betty, Veronica, and Jughead. A panel dedicated to the character at New York Comic Con this past Saturday highlighted the schism between the old and the new, revealing an unlikely key to the success of both Archie and Riverdale.

The members of the Comic Con audience were largely young girls and boys, with a smattering of teenagers, and talking to them afterwards it was clear they had largely fallen into the world of Archie through The CW series. Some mentioned that they purchased Archie comics at a nearby bodega and joined the fandom that way, but for the majority of them Riverdale came first, and only afterwards did they begin picking up the comics. “My dad grew up with Archie,” a teenager named Alyssa said, “and now I’m growing up with Riverdale.”

After a demonstration of the Oculus Dev Kit 1 in 2013, game developer and comic publisher Square Enix started work on a research project dubbed “Project Hikari.” The project was an attempt to adapt comics into virtual reality, by not just making something that look like it was a comic come to life, but also to explore what a VR comic means.

The company is demoing the project, Tales of the Wedding Rings VR —  based on a Japanese comic of the same name minus “VR” — on the Oculus Rift at New York Comic Con this weekend.

At New York City Comic Con yesterday, Hulu unveiled the first trailer for its upcoming Marvel Universe show, Runaways, as well as a release date: November 21st, 2017.

The show is based off of the 2003 Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona comic book series The Runaways, and this trailer introduces us to six teenagers who discover that their parent are members of The Pride, group of supervillains. After witnessing some sort of ritual, they’re shocked at what they see, and begin to work out what their next steps are, while they contend with superpowers of their own.

When Andy Weir published his first novel The Martian a couple of years ago, it went on to become a major best-seller and blockbuster film. His next novel is Artemis, a crime thriller set on the Moon, and New York Comic Con fans have the opportunity to step right into that story. It’s all part of an extensive exhibit put together by Audible to promote the book, entitled The Museum of Artemis: Life on the Moon.

The novel follows Jazz, a young woman who runs a smuggling operation out of the titular lunar city. When she’s invited to take part in a scheme that promises a major payday, she suddenly finds herself in the midst of a vast conspiracy, with control of her home city hanging in the balance.

At New York Comic Con, Amazon Studios unveiled a trailer for its upcoming anthology show, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. The series will be all about questioning what is real. The show shared the stage with the company’s other Philip K. Dick show, The Man in the High Castle, showing off their common ground.

The snippets from the upcoming season give fans a preview of what will arrive to US Amazon Prime subscribers at some point in 2018. The show is presently airing on the UK’s Channel 4.

Earlier this summer at San Diego Comic-Con, we got our first, brief glimpse of Pacific Rim Uprising, in the form of a viral recruitment video for the Jager Corps. At a panel during New York Comic Con today, the movie’s first trailer got its debut, showing off John Boyega’s new character and plenty of giant robot action.

The trailer features a slew of new Jaeger mechs, as well as returning cast members like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day (reprising his role as the uniquely enthusiastic Dr. Newton Geiszler). But the trailer also sets this up as a film that will hand things off from the last generation of heroes to the next one, with Boyega’s Jake Pentecost taking up the mantle of his father, played by Idris Elba in the previous film.