Austin English NY comicon

Austin on the left wearing a paperrad shirt

One of the best parts of Comicon is the fact that Austin English, one of the GRNY sign makers said to a press person. Who knows if Austin realized that the article this person would write would go to a few news outlets, including the NY Times (not sure if it was online only or what – can anyone confirm if it was in print on saturday the 25th?), but it did go to some other locations including ZDNet. Read their article.

Here’s Austin’s quote:

“I would define comics as just words and pictures together,” said Austin English, an employee and artist at the pop-culture outlet Giant Robot, one of many exhibitors that strayed quite a bit from the comics-convention archetype.

Words and pictures, however, didn’t really come close to describing it. Giant Robot, which was founded in 1994 as an Asian pop-culture zine, has since expanded to a full-out magazine, an online store, and art galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Its NYC ComicCon booth was stocked with colorful toys, stuffed Uglydolls (a big hit), and back issues of Giant Robot magazine.

But English insisted that Giant Robot was by no means out of place at the convention.

“A lot of the artists that are in Giant Robot’s galleries do underground comics, but they’re also fine artists,” he explained. The irreverent online comic strips featuring the Uglydolls might not bear much resemblance to the action serials of the Justice League, but the influence is certainly there.