Okay, here’s the deal. The Javits Center is a nightmare, thanks to a bunch of things, not the least being ongoing construction.

Last year, the work zone pretty much bisected the show floor, consuming perhaps 20% of all potential booth space, leaving about 60% of the floor space on the south side of the divide and the remainder on the north side. This year, the work has shifted south, with perhaps a quarter of the floor space south of the work area and 75% to the north, so if you knew your way around the floor last time, you don’t now.

Secondly, the numbering has reversed: last year, the booth numbers increased as you went northwards (matching the street-numbering pattern of Manhattan), but this year the high numbers are downtown and the low numbers up.

Thirdly, NYCC has never gotten around to arranging a webcomics or indy-creators zone; to be fair, it doesn’t draw the mass of established creators the way that San Diego (home of the original Sexy Lagoon) does, so it’s would be difficult to do on that basis. On the other hand, to see people of interest to readers of this page will require traversing the entire floor, from literally a back corner on the south side to literally a back corner on the north side.

Fourthly, the Artist Alley is, for all intents and purposes, in another building. See the white bit that’s attached to the Javits Center in the picture up above? That’s the North Pavilion, and that’s where Artists Alley is, a full block north of the far-north wall of the main center. So what we are saying is, break out the comfortable shoes if you want to see webcomickers and their natural allies.

Here is the main floor:

The top of the map is WEST.

Now you’ll notice that there are four highlighted areas: the extreme southwest corner, just to the right of the construction zone (that big grey blob) a somewhat sizeable oval, and the extreme northwest corner. Here’s what you’ll find in those spots:

• Waaaay southwest at booth 3374: ShiftyLook, with a stack of licensed webcomics, a freeplay arcade, Anthony Clark, Chris Hastings, and Cardboard Ryan North.
• By the construction zone at booth 2153: Brad Guigar, who continues a tradition of being in close proximity of the pass-through tunnels skirting construction.
• In the big blob in the middle, roughly aisles 900 – 1200: Oni Press (booth 1221), :01 Books (booth 1214), The Oatmeal (booth 1061), SMBC (booth 1023), Blind Ferret (booth 950), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 944).
• Waaaay northwest at booth 166: Benign Kingdom, presumably including creators from both B9 and B9.5.

Now if you exit the main show floor to the bottom of the map shown, go down one floor, and head north, you’ll come to the tunnel to Artists Alley, where you’ll find the likes of Chris Giarrusso (table C10), Kel McDonald & KC Green (table J8), Bill ‘n’ Gene (table W1), Jim Zub (table W11¹), and Ramón Pérez (table X8).

Granted, a lot of this could have been avoided had the long-running construction wrapped up sooner, but you have to wonder if maybe there are some table-holders that possibly don’t meet the definition of “comics” even at its most inclusive, and perhaps might have been bumped to allow everybody to be in one building? I’m lookin’ at you, Baconery (booth 3237). Yes, I get it, you’re a delicious meme but you aren’t goddamned comics.

Let’s finish this on a positive note: Sin Titulo is racing to a conclusion and is so close you can taste it. Read it now.

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¹ Should Zub wish to talk business with his ShiftyLook associates, it’s literally going to be a half-mile walk to do so.