ReedPop

This week marks the arrival of thousands of cosplayers, fans, and gamma ray-fueled heroes in New York City for New York Super Week --- starting today --- and the 10th annual New York Comic Con. The city will undoubtedly be sprawling with enthusiasts of every fandom, but NYCC and Super Week festivities aside, New York is already a treasure trove of geeky gems. To help guide you through Gotham’s geek-friendly hangouts, the folks at Foursquare and ReedPOP have joined forces to create the Ultimate Geek Guide to New York --- an infographic map that highlights some nerd-tastic, comic-centric hidden gems, stores, bars, restaurants, and museums to visit during the week’s festivities.

Emerald City Comicon is now part of ReedPOP. ComicsAlliance has confirmed that as part of the acquisition of ECCC, director Jim Demonakos and his staff will remain not just with ECCC, but actually join ReedPOP in expanded roles that will see them involved with organizing and executing other conventions as well, both in the United States and internationally. Indeed, in this exclusive interview with Demonakos and ReedPOP vice present Lance Fensterman, the new union's stated goal is to find ways for " what makes Emerald City so much fun for creators to be infused into New York and C2E2."

Last week, ReedPOP (the company behind New York Comic Con) announced that it would present an event called "New York Super Week" in October -- a ten-day festival of pop media events at venues all over Manhattan and Brooklyn. And while the initial press release was full of hype and excitement, and contained a few intriguing tastes of planned events (Neil DeGrasse Tyson! Podcasts! Concerts!), the announcement came with very little information. There was no language about pricing, ticketing, or other logistics. The just-launched Super Week website contains links to forms so retailers and restaurants/bars can sign up to offer special promotions in association with the festival, as well as a submission form for organizations and individuals to propose events -- but again, concrete details were light on the ground. As might be expected, this has led to a variety of reactions from the comic and entertainment community. Many welcomed the idea of an expanded event, unbound by the confines of a convention center, while other conversations on websites and social media expressed skepticism about the motivation for crowd-sourcing venues and events, and commented that it seemed like an attempt for ReedPOP to monetize satellite events not actually organized by the company. ComicsAlliance reached out to Matthew Wasowski, the Festival Director of Super Week, to ask for clarification on some of these issues, and get answers to a few of the questions that have arisen.

If you've attended a few New York Comic-Con's, you've seen the show experience significant growth, in both attendance and attention, in a small period of time. With that growth has come the seeming inevitability of the show floor going from mostly comics based to featuring a wide variety of booths and panels, some barely related to comics and others not at all. ReedPOP has noticed the trend to, a

Some New York Comic Con attendees were quick to head to Twitter to share their excitement about the start of the show. And even if you didn't, New York Comic Con may have done it for you. Many fans, professionals and press attending on Thursday discovered, much to their surprise, that promotional tweets were sent from their accounts about the show.

Things are definitely changing for New York Comic Con this year. Not only will the event officially merge with the concurrent New York Anime Festival for the first time, but the combined convention may find itself out of a home, if proposed plans for a new NY convention center get the go-ahead...