NYCC badges are here!

In my last post, I voiced some concern about whether my New York Comic-Con tickets (or badges, I should call them) would arrive in time. I actually e-mailed their customer service over the weekend to ask about the delay, but I only got a response this morning, telling me that they’d been mailed last week and would arrive “any day now.” And a few hours later, there they both were in the mail. So if I’d just been a little more patient… Oh, well. I got a few extra hours of reassurance out of it.

So now I know I can get into the con, and I registered the badges so they can be replaced if I should lose them, so as long as I don’t have any travel problems, I’m now confident that I’ll be there for my signings on Friday the 11th (GraphicAudio, Booth 838, 11 AM and Simon & Schuster, Booth 1828, 4 PM). I’m still waffling a bit on whether to fly or drive, but I’ll probably fly, since it’s a rather long drive. The main advantage of driving — aside from getting to avoid airport security, which is awfully tempting — is that it’s cheaper. But I got my final advance check for Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel today, and I have some other work lined up that I can’t talk about yet, so money isn’t particularly tight for me at the moment.

Speaking of tightness, apparently part of the reason NYCC was so unbearably crowded last year was rampant badge counterfeiting and lax security that let lots of people sneak in without badges. That seems to be why badges were in such short supply this year — they’ve really tightened up access. Also they’ve put RFID chips in every badge as a security feature against counterfeiting, hence the online registration. Hopefully this means the crowds will be more manageable this year, but it has put some limits on access. Apparently I’m not the only professional creator who missed their chance to get a pro badge because they ran out prematurely. They should work to refine the system so that doesn’t happen again.