I received this morning an email from a woman named Mary R with an observation and a question:

You mentioned in an article a while back that Box Brown lost the Everything Dies site and it got replaced by a linkfarm. Fleen still links to it though–is it there as a dire warning to other creators, or have you not gotten around to removing it yet?

Which I was glad to receive as I was under the impression that I had removed the link to what used to be Box Brown’s eschatological¹ comical exercise and was surprised to see that it was still there. Several attempts to kill it via WordPress resulted in processes that seemed like they should have succeeded, but did not. It did allow me to set the link to not display, but it’s still there in the database, mocking me.

As a result of Ms R’s eagle-eyed observation, we know have top men working on the WordPress issue, and I have taken the opportunity to comb through the blogroll and do some recategorizing, some pruning, and also to remedy some inexcusably-overlooked sites (welcome, Broodhollow!) so thanks to her. If you notice something odd about the site, please do let us know, as looking at it every day means that things you would find obvious have faded into the background noise of my brain.

• Speaking of followups, the cancelled-due-to-superstorm webcomics creator hullabaloo at Wild Pig Comics in Kenilworth, NJ, is back on! Saturday, 15 December from noon to 4:00pm will be when you get to meet and/or greet Danielle Corsetto, Bill Ellis & Dani O’Brien, and Jamie Noguchi right about here, around the corner from Dunkin’ Donuts and right next to a great smelling hot dog shop.

  Wild Pig itself is convenient to major transportation arteries, they offer terrific discounts, and also have a lounge area/library (I’ve never seen that before in a comics shop) where the person you drag along with you can relax in comfy seating and maybe flip through a copy of BONE.

• So everybody that went to Thought Bubble over the weekend had a fabulous time, by all accounts. The accounts also say that webcomics own John Allison took the “gong” (as our British cousins say) for Best Comic in the inaugural British Comics Awards. Fellow webcomicker Darryl Cunningham lost out in the Best Book category to Nelson, an anthology featuring the absolute best of British cartooning talent (including Allison and Cunningham, so it’s like Cunningham won anyway and Allison won one-and-a-half times). As previously noted, webcomicker Josceline Fenton was nominated for both Best Comic and Emerging Talent (which she won), and I see she was also part of Nelson, making her somebody to really keep an eye on in the future.
• Launched over the weekend (and piggybacking off of attention given by recent a Carson Daly appearance and a teaser/trailer featuring Nick Offerman), a Kickstarter campaign to get Axe Cop into the one media channel it hasn’t yet conquered: documentary film. The goal is to release by May 2013 to coincide with the launch of the Axe Cop TV show, which given the nearly four-year effort to bring Stripped to a final cut, seems ambitious.

  However, there are factors that probably make the Axe Copumentary simpler — it appears that filming has been done over the past several years of the Axe Cop phenomenon, and having a singular focus would certainly make for an easier time with respect to the number of people that you’d have to interview, trying to come up with a coherent narrative through-line, and heck, just getting copyright clearances for all the visuals. ANYway, if you want to watch Malachai Nicolle grow up on camera, now’s your chance.

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¹ Fleen: not just rumination on webcomics, but also a vocabulary-building exercise. You’re welcome.

It is nearly the weekend; a somewhat vexing obstacle at work has been resolved; next week will feature pie; my dog’s insides are not nearly so poisonous as they were yesterday. There’s a few things from webcomics, too.

• One of the ways I judge the reach of creators is by noting when they intersect with people I know from outside webcomics. Thus, the EMT student wearing the Bearmonster shirt (who got surprised with a Jeph Jacques sketch and who actually head-desked in surprise), the niece asking Zach Weinersmith for rules clarifications on an in-comic tabletop game, and the friend of 20 years casually remarking that nothing brightens his day like Anthony Clark’s twitterfeed.

  That day-brightening effect is a fairly widespread opinion, and it is also empirically observable (at least to me) that Clark is pretty much the Most Beloved Guy in Webcomics. Thus, the tremendous outpouring of good wishes yesterday — his 30^th birthday — culminating in multiple life retrospectives for all to enjoy. If you didn’t get a chance to wish Clark happy returns yesterday, there’s no time like the present.

• Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was also the birthday of Greg Dean’s Real Life Comics which is now an actual teenager on the internet, holy crap. Need proof? Here you go, Sparky. And not a birthday per se, more a rebirth, as Brad Guigar (who likely does not remember being 13, or even 30, on account of his advanced age²) announced the return of Courting Disaster from hiatus, and did so with a bang³.

  In CD’s run, there’ve been questions about dating, sexual etiquette, slut-shaming, embarrassment, infidelity, happy funtime toys, intrusive relatives, and more, but to celebrate the resumption Guigar went straight to the sine qua non of sex-advice columns: the three-way. HOT, and almost like he’s trying to generate attention for the strip just as it returns from break! Also, as if my calculations are correct, Brad’s getting to the point of having to have “The Talk” with his sons, which means he can just drop ’em in front of the CD archives and tell them to start clicking, then check in with him if there are any questions. CONVENIENT. True, this course is possibly not recommended by experts, but let’s let him have this one.

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¹ If we allow “now” to include “memories of last night”: My bartender invents amazing drinks.

² Which happens to be a full year and a half younger than me, sigh.

³ I’m so, so sorry.

Rich Burlew continues to heal his sliced-up thumb as fast as willpower allows¹, but both new comics and progress on the many, many projects related to his Kickstarter² remain fairly well stalled at the moment. But a simmering secret project (that didn’t require direct involvement to the same degree as other items) has come to fruition that ought to satisfy the most die-hard Order of the Stick fans: the first in-scale tabletop game miniature, eventually to become a full line. Roy Greenhilt comes unpainted, with multiple eyebrow options, and is as near a perfect projection into three dimensions of Burlew’s stick-figure style as could ever be expected. No word yet on who the second figure will be, but personally I’m hoping for a sexy, shoeless god of war.

• Missed in the superstorm: the recently-announced, Spike-led horror anthology did indeed open up for submissions as scheduled and is accepting story proposals for another sixteen days. Note that you don’t have to have a comic done by then, just get your story pitch in — the actual submission isn’t due until May. In case you’re wondering if The Sleep of Reason is a cool enough project for you to get involved in, check out the murderers row of already-confirmed participants and wonder how it could possibly get any better³.
• How about something a bit more hopeful, but still with enough darkness to keep it from being all weak tea? The New York International Children’s Film Festival announced the return of their annual Studio Ghibli retrospective for five full weeks starting 16 November and running until 20 December. Week one’s schedule is already posted, featuring screenings (in new 35mm prints, both dubbed and subbed) of Nausicaä, Laputa, Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. If you’ve never seen these films on the big screen, you’re missing out; if you’ve never seen these films, period, what the hell is wrong with you?
• If we move further away from the darkness to where there is only sunny optimism and gentle humo[u]r, I’m pleased to note that I received my copies (one to keep, one to give to the next first-time parent I know) of The Bear in yesterday’s mail, and dang if it isn’t beautiful. I’m not sure how much direction Ryan Sohmer gave to Becky Dreistadt in the choice of animals and staging each of the little vignettes he wrote but if he’s smart (and Sohmer is very smart) he got out of her way and let her imagination run wild. Because dang, have I mentioned what you get when Becky’s imagination runs wild?

  In any event, it’s a gorgeous book, and I am encouraged by rumo[u]rs I hear that there will be a The Bear 2, as that means more animal paintings from Dreistadt, and if there’s one thing that a nation (and world) badly divided by petty dislikes and prejudices needs, it’s more of her animal paintings. You literally cannot maintain a bad mood looking at these. The only downside to a second volume? Sohmer and Dreistadt had to sign nearly 4000 copies of The Bear; I’m figuring a second book could easily double that, leading one or both to possibly have an arm fall off and nobody wants that. Just in case, the magic word is Xam! Really.

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¹ Which is roughly the same speed if willpower is taken out of the equation. Honestly, thinking at a sliced tendon doesn’t do much at all.

² Of which, to be fair, several were clearly labeled at the time of the Kickstart as This will get done some considerable time in the future after the easier things to fulfill to the most people are done.

³ Answer: if Terry Moore decided to get involved somehow; seriously, Rachel Rising disturbs me on a deep, existential level every damn month.

No new big surprises or aftereffects from the superstorm, gas rationing got lifted this morning, trains are almost back to their usual, semi-fictional schedule, and last night’s Adventure Time season premiere was amazing. Feelin’ good!

• I have been neglectful of pointing out that Thought Bubble is running this week in Leeds, with the emphasis on this coming weekend, 17-18 November. Guests of webcomicky note include Kate Beaton, John Allison¹, Becky Dreistadt & Frank Gibson, Scott C, Darryl Cunningham, Paul Duffield, Cameron Stewart, and Huw Davis will be there also, but he may be a bit tired on Sunday as he’s running a 10K race that morning. Maybe bring him a smoothie or something?

  There will be book debuts (including from Marc Ellerby, and the European debut of Tiny Kitten Teeth), panels (including a discussion on digital comics: Bury Theatre, Royal Armouries, 1:40pm – 2:30pm, with Dreistadt, Gibson, Beaton, C, Duffield, and Simon Fraser), and the annual British Comics Awards (Bury Theatre, Royal Armouries, 6:00pm – 7:00pm). Any/all [web]comics fans in the middle part of England are encouraged to drop by and say “hi”.

• New Wigu! Times two! Jeff Rowland has apparently found a moment’s free time in between the wedding and the immense holiday rush of new things to drop comics on us! Add in a new Overcompensating on the same day and it’s like Christmas came early for me.
• Hey, know what I haven’t mentioned for a while? Recipe Comix, courtesy of Saveur magazine, which had been a bit spare on the ground, but have of late resumed an approximately biweekly schedule. I bring this up as a twitter exchange yesterday allowed me to point Mike Russell towards Helen Rosner, who handles submissions for Recipe Comix in between getting to enjoy fabulous meals that she then tweets about for the sole purpose of making me hungry.

  Ahem. That is to say, if you have a connection to food (and don’t we all, particularly in this harvest/holiday timeframe) and make comics, you might want to drop a line to Ms Rosner and see if your idea would work for Recipe Comix. Guys, let’s come up with so many pitches that RC has to run weekly — that is the definition of a win for creators (you get paid), a win for Saveur (content to share) and a win for me (new food experiences to check out). Get cracking.

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¹ Speaking of John Allison, a Tumblrpost of his from this morning caught my eye and made me snort out loud. A certain percentage of my readership may well have attended the same college I did, and if they did so in a nearly 30 year span from about 1972 to about 2000, then the name “Thad Smith” evokes not muscle-bound beach hunks, but rather a lanky professor of political science who just may be the greatest teacher to ever push chalk.

From teaching students how to read Pentagon black budgets to breaking Kris Kristofferson’s collarbone in a rugby match during his own undergrad days, Thad (as he insisted on being called) was never less than a font of fascinating information who was careful to never let on what his opinions were as he forced his classes to defend their own. Hell, in four years the only political opinion I ever got him to ‘fess up to was an almost visceral dislike of Ed Meese, who is somehow still alive and as soon as I’m done writing this sentence will go back to being forgotten as he so richly deserves.

So yeah, that was pretty funny.

I guess given how long I’ve been doing this¹ and how much I’ve written², I suppose it was inevitable that one day would events would conspire to suggest the theme “Randy”.

• First up, the Toonseum continues to have some of the most aggressively eclectic programming of any museum I’ve ever heard of (remember their collaboration with the Musuem of Uncut Funk?), and are continuing that tradition on Saturday, 1 December with the Kids Christmas Cartoonfest. Holiday special episodes³ run from noon, there’s a singalong at 4:30, crafts all day, storytelling, and Santa. Five bucks per person.

  So how does this fit into the “Randy” theme? Because the special guest for the afternoon will be actor Ian Petrella who appeared in A Christmas Story as … Randy! Oh, stop acting all disappointed that it isn’t Ralphie, you’ll still buy a ticket for the Red Ryder BB Rifle raffle.

• Secondly,and more Randy-oriented, Uncle Randy has a present for you. I believe that I’m on record as greatly admiring all the comics by Randy Milholland, but I’m especially taken by the (approximately annual) Super Stupor comics, as they take up stray strands from the (very occasional) Super Stupor online comics and spin them out to wonderful stories that really make cape comics appealing.

  Seriously, I’ve enjoyed Super Stupor #1-4 more than any superhero comic from the big publishers in maybe ten years because Milholland does more to make me care about characters in a one-shot issue than the past seven decades of neverending same-old interspersed with continuous EVENTS! THAT! CHANGE! EVERYTHING!

  It’s been long enough since Super Stupor #4 that I was wondering if #5 was ever coming along when lo and behold: yesterday Milholland dropped the first page of what would have been issue #5, but instead he’s decided to post online for free.

  

  Which means two things:

  1. Come back to the Super Stupor site for the next, I’ma say twenty days or so, and enjoy the story. Based on this first page, it doesn’t appear that Milholland’s using his established characters to the same degree as previous issues, so if you don’t know who Toy Boy, Punchline, Arch-Angela, Rumble Bee, Eye-Sore, or Big Killhuna are, you’ll do just fine.
  2. I need to get in touch with Randy and find out how much he wants for the art of this first page (and here I thought I’d never want a drawing of Mitt Romney in my home). If you enjoy the story, you might want to buy a little something from him, too.

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¹ Going on seven years.

² Goodness, if I skip Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, I’ll round out this year with 2000 posts; I wonder how many words that comes to.

³ Oh man maybe they’ll have A Christmas Special featuring He-Man and She-Ra! Or — dare I hope? — The Star Wars Holiday Special featuring an especially coked-out Carrie Fisher and Bea Arthur!

Until, you know, the nor’easter shows up later today; ordinarily it wouldn’t be a concern, but I’m looking at this one tree that I’m certain thinks it got left out when all the cool trees got knocked down by Superstorm Sandy last week. There’s also a boil water order for my town, the furnace is acting up now that it’s really getting cold out, I see snow coming down, and — most horrifyingly — I have to go the the MVC and renew my driver’s license. But at least Donald Trump is in a deep existential funk over the election, so I guess it all balances out.

• In the meantime, I’ll note that while I was without power last week, the ninth iteration of Child’s Play launched, and has accumulated US$300,000 in the first week. Good start, nerds, let’s see if you can better the US$3.5 million (give or take) that was the 2011 tally.
• More numbers I missed last week: Chris Hallbeck hit Maximumble #500 last Thursday, which when considered with its companion piece Minimumble (approaching #250) and original-flavor The Book of Biff, means that Hallbeck is drawing five panels of comics per day (one in color), five days a week, and I can’t recall the last time he missed an update of any of the three. Taking them all together, he’s put up 2403 updates and that number goes up by fifteen every week. Oh, and he managed to get his kid on national TV this morning; not bad for a man who is nearly 37% eyebrows by mass.
• Readers of this page who like comics and booze¹ may recall² that at the end of the summer I pointed you towards a New York City event aimed at teaching wine newbies how to tell good stuff from bad hosted by Kristen Siebecker. The next session of Popping Your Cork (with an emphasis on drinking good stuff at Thanksgiving) will take place next Wednedsay, 14 November at 6:15pm, spots are filling fast, and if you use the discount code THANKS20 will get 20% off the session price. Spots are going fast, so sign up now if you want to look all fancy come the 22nd.

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¹ I know, what are the odds?

² If all the comics and booze haven’t destroyed your memory.

It seems to me that our system would work a lot better if voting were based on Zach Weinersmith’s “votey” button, which brings up a reward when you point at it. Vote, get a ranting, naked Weinersmith in return. Democracy!

Things coming up:

• UK alert! Scott C and Olly Moss will be doing a joint signing at Forbidden Planet in London the day after tomorrow. Also, sharp-eyed viewers may have noticed Mr C on television last night, in accordance with prophesy.
• Of webcomics-specific happenings, one of the more well-received (by both attendees and exhibitors) of late has been the annual Webcomics Rampage at the Austin, Texas output of Dragon’s Lair Comics. This year’s info is newly released, with David! Willis! sharing both the invite list and programming on his Tumblr. The fun runs the second weekend of December, with both a fullTexas contingent of creators, and also those from less Texasy climes.
• Via Scott McCloud’s twitterfeed: a touching reminder for all of us that have dogs in our lives that nothing lasts forever. I’m putting the world on notice: when my greyhound¹ dies, I am gonna be a mess. Think of this moving remembrance by Claus Daniel Hermann as the less poop-oriented counterpart to this equally aware-of-canine-mortality offering from Matthew Inman, which has a few naughty words and had my wife laughing so hard that she possibly met the clinical definition of respiratory compromise.

  In conclusion, dogs rule. Vote dog!

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¹ Healthy, happy, but twelve and a half years old; also, my first dog.

1500 strips at Girls With Slingshots. Woo!

• Dave Kellett dropped a comment on yesterday’s post disclaiming the words about having to be fired by thousands of readers, thinking perhaps that it was Rich Stevens. I decided to go through my listings for particular words o’ wisdom and match them up with known sources:
  “People die of exposure” — Stevens
  Anything to do with a “liminal state” — Kellett
  On how to make a good webcomic, “Don’t suck; if you do suck, stop sucking as quickly as possible” — either Matt Boyd or Greg Dean, I forget which (but I totally used the quote when moderating a panel at the first NEWW, so if you think that was me, it wasn’t)

  Any others that you would add to the list of Webcomics Wisdom?

• Per the twitterfeed of the fighteningly-talented Kazu Kibuishi, a recommendation for a Kickstarter campaign for you:
  

  @gagnemichel is one of my favorite people on the planet. And this project will be amazing like everything he does. http://kck.st/RiLUEN

  For those of you unused to following the advice of talented people like Kibuishi¹, that project is for a short film based on Michel Gagné’s Rex, which was pretty much guaranteed to be the most charming and adorable part of any of the Flight anthologies. The goal is extremely modest (only US$15,000), and Gagné has been a professional animator for longer than many of you have been alive, so if there’s anybody that knows what a film meeting his vision should cost in terms of time/effort/money, it’s him.

• Holy crap, somebody let Chris Yates have access to an acrylic-cutting laser and he’s produced a transparent Baffler!. Most encouraging thing? That little inscription that notes the photo is “00/100”, presumably a prototype of something I’m going to have to get this holiday season.

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¹ Speaking of Kibuishi, I realize that I have yet to review Amulet 5 and it’s no longer really a timely thing — suffice it to say it is as impressive and engaging as the first four, delving into some serious darkness, and making me wonder if the Big Bad’s Assistant has fallen so far (despite the best intentions at the start) that he cannot be redeemed. We’re only at the halfway point, folks.

Probably no post tomorrow, due to work and travel demands. I know, somehow you’ll muddle through to the weekend.

• Karl Kerschl switches between story threads without warning, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that although it’s been eleven months since we’ve seen Vivol, he is not forgotten. His long flashback to the circus days is done, but even lo these many years later, his dreams are troubling. Conflating his mother and his surrogate cub, the tragic Moon Bear, both lost to him? The melancholy in that final panel of yesterday’s strip is so thick you can touch it. Bravo¹.

  What’s that? You don’t know about Vivol, and Moon Bear, and all the other inhabitants of the forest and surrounding lands? Good thing for you there’s a softcover collection of the first two years of The Abominable Charles Christopher (and others), and a just-announced pre-order for the second volume in hardcover. My advice: spring for the sketch edition, on account of what Kerschl calls a “sketch” would in any other context be called “an amazingly subtle and detailed animal portrait”

• Speaking of Kerschl, how about a reminder of his erstwhile studiomate, now Berlin-resident? It’s been more than five years, what with interruptions for paying work and such, but Cameron Stewart’s Sin Titulo is down to the last few pages of its very moody, atmospheric story of art made (literally, dangerously) alive. The last page should be up any day now, and look for a collection in the near future and trust me, if you’ve never read it, read it from the beginning now that it’s (almost) complete. So much meaning that wasn’t apparent at the beginning is fairly screaming at me now. Highest possible recommendation.
• Quick note on a comment from Morgan Wick regarding NYCC and the Javits Center: there really is no mega-convention center in the New York area, what with the crowded nature of the metroplex and the necessity of building up rather than out. There were plans for a bit there to scrap the Javits and build a new megaplex featuring a convention center, hotels, and casino in Queens, but that presumes that people coming to New York would want to go to what is the bedroom community of the city instead of the business/entertainment district. Also, the South Asian casino magnate that was maybe going to pony up about a billion dollars to kickstart (no relation) the project decided not to, and it would be a decade before something like that could be done.

  The Javits could be made usable, but it will have to expand — that’s not so feasible north or south (due to road infrastructure), or to the east (due to a million buildings and a major north-south artery), so west over the water is the only possibility. There needs to be a lot more support services in the area of the Javits (steps outside the San Diego Convention Center is the Gaslamp District; an equivalent distance from the Javits is the odd deli, a service garage for taxis, and a stable for Central Park carriage horses; in terms of tourist services, it’s a desert until you get to Midtown, most of a mile away), and there needs to be mass transit, which I’m sure they’ll get to sometime after the Second Avenue subway is done. The only approach that can practically improve the insufficiency of the Javits (apart from capping attendance and changing their exhibitor preferences) is, as Wick points out, to have a second show to take some of the demand off. Somebody go do that.

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¹ Now, when can we expect to see Luga again?

Alert readers of this page may note that I haven’t mentioned any of the webcomickers who were in Artists Alley at NYCC, and that’s for the very good reason that I never made it over there.

Let me sum up; no, wait, there’s too much. Let me ‘splain.

On Saturday, the entire inbound stream of attendees was directed (by bullhorn-wielding staffers on the streets surrounding the Javits Center) to enter only at the 38th Street (northern) side of the hall. Got that? A few thousand people a minute are streaming into the hall, on the second floor, in a southerly direction. Artists Alley, as previously noted, was in an annex that is reached by navigating to the second floor, at the 38th street side, and then proceeding north towards an access tunnel. The people trying to get to AA had to fight against the much larger in-flow of people into the hall. I took one look at that mess from the exhibit floor and decided that this was indeed the day that bonds of fellowship died and I was not braving those rapids to see people that I very much wanted to see.

Which is a shame, as I’m told that Artists Alley was very nice, with plentiful ATMs, lots of space, and natural light.

Now, we have explored in the past how the Javits Center is, on its face, a nightmare to deal with. There are still lessons to be learned and improvements to be made, and presumably some of that will come as NYCC gets older and acquires institutional memory; the showrunners at SDCC have four decades of collective experience, with a slow ramp-up in the intensity and size of the crowds to hone their skills at booth placement, aisle design, and line wrangling. Therefore, I want to respectfully suggest that the NYCC showrunners find the people from SDCC with those skills and drive a dump truck full of money up to their front doors so that they will share their secrets, because there were some bad situations on the show floor this year.

Understand that when I say that at times on Saturday the crowds at NYCC were the second most hazardous crowds I’ve ever experienced in my life¹, and the worst I’ve ever experienced in New York City, I am comparing against some very bad crowds. If you look very closely in the famous Vincent Laforet photo of the 38th Street ferry docks during the blackout of 2003, you can just make me out in the crowd² and that crowd was not as bad as some of what I encountered in the 1100 aisle this past Saturday. On the docks, we were at least all moving in one direction and managed to let people off the boats so some of us could get on; on the showfloor, it was complete immobility to the extent that the thought crossed my mind If there is a panic at this time, I am going to be seriously injured or killed.

So what can be done? SDCC sees similarly-sized crowds without this degree of problem, but they have a few advantages: more floor space, many entrances to the show floor (the JVCC floor is accessed in relatively few places, in some cases by escalator), a wide concourse off the floor for moving from one end to the other, wide “travel aisles” for people trying to get places instead of browse, and no construction³. The last issue will take care of itself eventually (and partially alleviate the floor space issue), the others will take some work. If the number of “you have to be kidding me” booths were reduced, the travel aisles become possible. If an endcap booth were sacrificed every couple aisles, the space could be used for people wanting to get photos of cosplayers, instead of doing it in the middle of the goddamn walkway⁴.

One more thing that SDCC has to a greater degree than NYCC is massive panels that take a few ten-thousand people off the floor at a time; unfortunately, this ain’t gonna happen, because the Javits again is working against us. In San Diego, the panel rooms are laid out such that this aisle can be designated as one-way going to the panels, and that aisle as one-way coming from the panels, and the circulation of attendees flows continuously. In New York, the largest panel area is essentially a blind alley, with no way to manage flow other than “everybody goes in and also comes out in this same area”. You may append whatever intensifier to the word “cluster” that you wish to describe this situation. Honestly, I was surprised at times that the fire marshals didn’t shut down the entrances until the crowds had thinned (it’s happened in the past).

In a way, all of this (barring the construction issues, which I believe we’ve hammered into the ground by now) is the result of NYCC being a victim of its own success. Too many people want in for the amount and shape of the space that’s available. While there are certainly improvements that can be made by laying the floor out smarter (there was a massively popular dancing videogame demo stage just inside one of the show floor entrances that backed up crowds to the point that no ingress was possible) and exploiting techniques for crowd management (which largely comes down to figuring out which booths will have massive lines and separating them), there’s ultimately going to be no getting around a fundamental truth: the show is over capacity, and it’s probably necessary to both limit tickets more aggressively and reduce the number of exhibitors.

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¹ The worst, most hazardous crowding I ever experienced was on a lovely spring day in Osaka, as my wife and I attempted to make our way out of the main rail station while a measurable percentage of the population of Japan tried to make its way in. It was seriously a case of “lift up both feet from the floor and you will not fall” and I developed some seriously sharp elbows as a self-preservation technique.

² I am standing next to an absolutely lovely young lady named Chrissy, who was wearing an absolutely stunning cocktail dress and stiletto heels, who was trying to make her way back to Jersey City. We became Disaster Buddies that day on account of no way was I letting her try to navigate her way home dressed like that by herself.

³ Somewhere, there is a graduate student in traffic engineering writing a thesis on how the Javits Center construction affects human flow patterns.

⁴ For this one, the organizers and even the venue are blameless; for a city that despises tourists that stop in the middle of the sidewalk so very, very much, New York is astonishingly willing to allow people to block aisles for photos. I suggest that an elite force of staffers be given cattle prods to put an end to this and also to enforce line discipline.