Special Edition NYC

As readers will know from our weekly Best Cosplay Ever feature, we’re big fans of cosplay at ComicsAlliance. The comics, sci-fi, gaming, and fantasy communities have proved time and again their exceptional talents for homemade disguises and superheroic sartorial excellence, and all of their craft and skill was on display this past weekend at Special Edition NYC. Our chief cosplay correspondent Betty Felon was on hand to document as much of it as she could. Scroll down for some of the very finest cosplay from New York.

VixenVarsity.com is a fascinating site full of instructive "courses" on a wide range of topics, and site creator MizCaramelVixen has a passion for comics and a lot of thoughts about diversity in the industry, which she's spun into posts, a hashtag, and a website under the banner BlackComicsMonth (which is every month). This weekend, MizCaramelVixen can be seen at the first ever Black Comics Month panel on Saturday at 1:15pm in Theater 2 during Special Edition NYC. We sat down with her to discuss the motivations behind BlackComicsMonth, what people can expect from the panel, and the next steps in her diversity campaign.

Although cosplay has been present for decades within the comics, anime, and sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, social media has played an integral role in the thriving communities of costuming that exist, such as Cosplay.com and the Superhero Costuming Forum. Over the years, the cosplay community has evolved into a creative outlet for many fans to establish and showcase some impressive feats of homemade disguise, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics at conventions. In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent. The comics, sci-fi, gaming and fantasy communities’ talents for homemade disguises, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics are definitely on display this weekend at the first ever Special Edition: NYC, and we were there to check out the show as well as capture some of the stellar cosplay on display.

Time to top off your Tuesday with links.

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