New York Comic Con, currently being considered The East Coast’s answer to San Diego Comic-Con opened its doors late Thursday afternoon to the general public. For the first time ever, the con has expanded by a whole day, allowing people with 4-day , VIP, Press, or Professional badges, a special 3 hour look into the massive Exibit Hall (very much like how SDCC does their yearly Wedensday “Preview Nights”), with a wide range of exibitors… All the big heavy hitters were here in full force: DC, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, FUNimation, Activision, Marvel, and many, many others, although something felt different about the hall.

As many decended on the Jacob Javits Center in New York City for yet another NYCC experience, the isles in the hall felt much more open and spacious – It seems that ReedPop has taken hints from some of their other conventions (such as PAX and PAX East), and spaced everything out a bit more this year than in previous years. This could only be taken as a good change, seeing as how aisles tend to get crowded very quickly during con days, restricting movement throughout the hallway. But it also gave the impression that the entire Exibit Hall felt smaller than usual, despite it being the same size as always.

Marvel once again (like they did for San Diego) brought the giant Avengers SHIELD set for their booth and allowed people to take pictures on stage holding Thor’s hammer (in a menacing way), which yours truly couldn’t miss out on, along with several other of the ComicsOnline.com NYCC crew!

Overall, for the first night, the entire atmosphere had a very relaxed feel to it due to the smaller amount of people let inside for the exclusive sneek peek at the convention. It was very enjoyable, and hopefully a sign of things to come for the following three days!