After only a few weeks after AnimeNEXT, another event has come and gone, and here I am to give another summary. I promise that this overview will not be as long and overly written as AnimeNEXT’s, but I still want to give EternalCon the overview that I think it deserves before I end up forgetting about it. Once again, the event would take place at the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex for its second year in a row, celebrating general pop culture with a very strong focus towards American comics, cartoons, TV series, and films. I enjoyed the event, but didn’t really go all out on the convention activities as I did with CPAC and AnimeNEXT, finishing the event and leaving hours before closure. I would have gone back the day after to explore a bit more of the event and converse more with friends and vendors, but with the weather turning to absolute garbage (pouring rain) on Day 2 and me having already walked several thousand steps and standing for much longer on hard concrete floors, I took my losses and only stuck to attending the first day of the event. In addition, several complications forced me to attend the convention alone, leaving me without one of the crucial tools I had used to endure these conventions longer (a camping chair… more on that in a bit).
Historically, I was never really a comics person. As a kid, I did not grow up with mainstream comics and superheroes, mostly from having never owned any comics in my youth and my lack of understanding for the genre beyond a casual, surface-level analogy. Many other popular media franchises that hit it big in the Americas, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the various early incarnations of Power Rangers also escaped me, as they were all at their peaks before my late childhood (with the former, and the Turtlemania craze it spawned, on its way out by the time I was born) and I wasn’t really able to understand them as I was too young. While I was certainly aware of the plentiful number of mainstream comics, blockbuster films, and the biggest shows of the eras thanks to various YouTubers and them spreading awareness of these franchises through word of mouth (one of the biggest examples for me being the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic), I never labeled myself as a close and avid follower of these in spite of any kind of admiration I would develop, whenever it be brief or longstanding, in adulthood. Regardless, I did become more interested in the art styles of American comics as I started to meet and interact more with both indie and professional comic artists at EternalCon’s prior events, New York Comic Con, and a few other, smaller-scale local events in the area. Interacting with webcomic artists in the late 2010’s and the bonds I would develop with various artists in the local convention scene here on Long Island helped with that interest, but at the end of the day, American media was still not my biggest interest or my central focus.
With that explanation out of the way, it’s time for EternalCon. In terms of layout, the event was laid out identically to last year. The Artist’s Alley felt much less empty this time around with the addition of some extra booths and people selling hand-crafted goods similar to craft fair. Below that was the vendors’ area, which was nice and carpeted and had a wide selection of things to buy— unfortunately I would only pay one visit down to the vendors and never got the motivation to return, and the one person down there that I was looking to converse with, one of the guys behind the professional wrestling deck-builder Supershow the Game, who’s I had met at EternalCon 2022, was occupied. They did have various famous cars from pop culture for photo ops, but seeing as I am neither into Batman nor Ghostbusters, I paid no mind to those and simply returned upstairs back into the artist alley, only to be too sore towards the end of my visit to the convention to give the vendors one more look before ultimately departing. This was, in essence, a reverse of my experience with NYCC 2022: At that convention, the vendors stole the show from the artists, but at EternalCon, the artists did. And while vendors typically don’t grab my attention as I’m not at conventions to go shopping (even at anime conventions), paying very little attention to EternalCon’s and not bothering to snap any photos down there was probably my biggest regret of the entire event, and I do not like leaving conventions feeling like my visit there was either rushed, half-assed, or otherwise incomplete.
Perhaps my biggest issue with the event was the lack of available free seating. I’ve brought up multiple times in the past and across the years that convention centers and other venues that host big pop culture events like these should strive to fill their event spaces with readily available seating in just enough of a quantity that people aren’t fighting or otherwise continuously waiting for available seats. With the exception of panels and game rooms (of which this event didn’t have any, to my understanding), most events or the venues hosting them have done very little to address this problem, especially if an attendee has weak legs that are not able to last hours standing upright on hard floors with no breaks. The lack of seating is bad enough to where I would bring a camping chair to each event in order to sit down and take occasional breaks, but various circumstances have led to me forgetting to bring the chair to EternalCon, and for that I ended up strained in pain for most of the event towards the late afternoon, running a marathon through the artist’s alley with no breaks. The only event that I attend regularly that manages to circumvent this issue unless you deliberately seek out lots of panels is Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, since it needs so many seats for all the gaming options available (but with so many games and activities you’re not really encouraged to stay put in one seat for too long).
Other than that, the convention was good, on par with the local pop culture cons I attend across Long Island each year. The event had a really strong artist’s alley, and as someone that doesn’t really surround himself in many of the biggest American media franchises, that was probably the biggest incentive I had to attending EternalCon. Maybe next year if I’m able to come to EternalCon with better preparations (and stronger legs), I will immerse myself deep in the convention’s activities, vendors, and showcases the same way I do at New York Comic Con. Until then, I have a whole year to go through and several more events to attend, so there’s a good chance you’ll see me give those events’ vendors more attention to make up for the lack of attention I gave to EternalCon’s. Unfortunately I do not have any cosplay photos to show from this event, as the cosplay showing was not enough to my liking and I typically skip cosplay showcases at EternalCon and the other local comic and pop culture events anyways. I do have some commissioned arts to share, so I’ll go and plug those.
Anyways that’s all I have for today. I will return next month for a synopsis of Long Island Retro Gaming Expo 2023, and it’s shaping up to be a big event from what I’ve seen of it online.
