Fans line up in the cold to enter the land of coolness inside New York Comic-Con. All photos courtesy of Joe Strike.

“Hello Comic-Con New York!”

The speaker is Keanu Reeves, or at least a video projected image of him. Not quite a real-life image either — more like a surreal, dreamlike Waking Life image. Keanu is greeting a roomful of fans who have gathered to learn more about his starring role in Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly.

Keanu and the filmmakers whipped up their surprise for New York City’s first Comic-Con literally days before the event, working 35 hours non-stop to create the star’s 27-second greeting in the same style as the upcoming film itself.

However, the biggest surprise of the convention weekend may have been the unexpected, overwhelming turnout for the mega-sized gathering. On Saturday alone, upwards of 20,000 New York area fans and professionals crowded into the Javits Convention Center on Manhattan’s west side. Fire marshals were forced to close the building and turn away hundreds who had purchased tickets ahead of time — not to mention about 1,000 more who arrived planning to pay their way in.

The organizers should have seen it coming. New York City had never hosted a major comics or sci-fi convention beyond one-day affairs (or the occasional weekend) that filled a hotel ballroom or two. Genre entertainment has gone mainstream in a big way in recent years, with graphic novels, anime and cartoons breaking out of the fan/geek ghettos that originally nurtured them. The Comic-Con conducted an extensive advertising campaign, and was showered with an unexpected degree of coverage from the local media. Reed Exhibitions, the convention’s organizer knew they were filling a vacuum, but no one guessed how huge that vacuum was.

While the weekend’s many panels and sessions attracted respectable attendance, the exhibit hall was literally filled beyond capacity. Once in the building, many con-goers had to wait an additional hour for their opportunity to purchase comics, manga and the latest anime DVDs.

Exhibitors included anime distributors, mainstream comics heavyweights DC, Marvel and Dark Horse, smaller independent publishers as well as movie art and collectibles dealers. Near the hall’s entrance stood an impressive array of comics and cartoon memorabilia that weren’t for sale, including a framed, three-foot tall black-and-white portrait of a 1930s superhero drawn by his co-creator, and original maquettes from Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Inside a tightly locked glass showcase, a near-mint copy of Action Comics’ first issue was on display, featuring the debut of the above referenced hero on its cover, a fellow by the name of Superman.

The invaluable items were the property of Steve Geppi, owner of Diamond Book Distributors, the country’s reigning distributor of comics. This summer they will be traveling to their soon-to-open new home in Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Geppi’s Entertainment Museum. “It’s a journey through American pop culture, from the end of the 1700s through the present day,” enthused Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg, the museum’s curator. “Steve has dreamed of this museum for 30 years. It will mostly be from Steve’s own collection, but there’ll be items on loan as well. We’re trying to make it a destination for people, and an opportunity for academic and educational studies.”

Disney maquettes are only one of the higher end products that were on display at the event.

Halfway down the hall sat Sean Wang, whose tongue-in-cheek sci-fi adventure comic Runners was translated into a six-and-a-half-minute CGI featurette by Orlando’s DAVE School of computer animation. “I met some people from the school at the San Diego Comic-Con this summer,” Wang explained. “They saw the book and wanted to adapt it as a class project. It was a tradeoff — no money changed hands and we both got something out of it.” For the school and its students, it was an opportunity to polish their chops and add to their reels; for Wang it was a slick-looking CGI short that may give him a leg up selling Runners to film or TV. “There is some interest,” Wang allowed. “We’ll see how it pans out.” (Runners and other DAVE School productions can be viewed on the school’s site.)

Back in the animation big time, DreamWorks screened trailers for the upcoming CGI features Over the Hedge and Flushed Away, Nickelodeon presented a handful of new shorts and Lions Gate Films held a screening of Ultimate Avengers, Marvel Comics’ first direct-to-video release.

Anime distributors Viz, ADV, Central Park Media and FUNimation were all on hand to promote their wares. ADV co-founder Matt Greenfeld hosted a session about his company’s upcoming releases, including a subtitled-only Perpetual Earth (about “a phone company trying to take over Earth one prefecture at a time”) and a first-time, English language release of the original Macross TV series (previously only seen in the U.S. as heavily re-edited Robotech episodes). Greenfeld said ADV’s release schedule of between 17 and 18 titles a month makes the company the fourth or fifth largest video distributor in North America. In order keep ADV ahead of the game and cultivate its audience, the company operates an “Anime Advocates” program that recommends TV-14 and below titles to schools and libraries.