Visiting New York Comic Con can be a fairly overwhelming experience, especially if it’s your first time. The place is huge, and if you don’t watch your step, chances are you’ll walk straight into a scantily clad faerie chick posing for a picture with a Blackhole Stormtrooper. You never what you’ll see next–case in point: On my way in, I ran into HETFET, Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Fairies, Elves, and Trolls, “picketing” (until they went in, too) outside the Javits. “Hi ho, hi ho! Troll persecution has got to go!” they yelled.

“What am I getting myself into?” I quietly mused.

Once safely inside, after someone in a giant Uglydoll suit (accidentally) touched my ass, I made my way over to the Small Press and Artist Alley areas. Taken aback by all of the energy, noise, commercialism, and excitement of the place, I figured those smaller sections off in the back right corner of the center were where I belonged.

As it turns out, the back right corner was something of a microcosm of the larger Con. The people ranged from famous to unknown, and the work from superheroes to inanimate objects come to life, artsy to completely commercial, and hard to resist buying to ‘I think I can safely leave that for someone else to purchase.’ Though I was slightly taken aback by the number of drawings or comics of female superheroes busting out of skimpy outfits, I found solace in a number of genuinely interesting artist or small press tables with exciting work on display.

Erring on the artsy side is Mammal, a magazine conceived by Brooklyn-based illustrators Benjamin Marra, Dan Meth, Devin Clark, Jim Cooke, Matt Dorfman, and Tom Forget. Described on the Website as a conglomeration of “illustration, comics, picture editorials, successes, misfires, & odd choices,” Mammal is more of an art or illustration compilation than a comics magazine, but the line between the two worlds is often blurred, and the weirder, somewhat surrealist work inside served as a dose of high-quality counterpoint to the legions of superheroes around the Con. The first issue, fitting based around the theme of newness, appeared last November, and next time around, the Mammal men are focusing on machismo, also expanding their artist base to include contributors from beyond their borough. You can preview some of the work on their site.

Gus Finklestein is also mixing up art and comics, while throwing a little commercialism into the mix. Finklestein, who comes from Pennsylvania and currently resides in Illinois, is an artist, comics creator, and the co-founder of Gus Fink Studios, a company that producing toys of Finklestein’s own creation called Boogily Heads. The toys, reproductions of sculptures made by the artist, look something like stranger, more elaborate versions of Uglydolls and come replete with bobbling heads and original mini comics. Finklestein’s Artist Alley table (the Boogily Heads were over in the Dealer Den section) boasted original artwork, t-shirts, and patches for sale, with more of his grotesque, mesmerizing creatures looking alternatively like they had stepped out of a teenager’s sketchbook and outer space.

Leaving the realm of artsy behind for the genuinely quirky, two other small press-ers merited a quick mention. At Bombshell Comics’ table I found a highly amusing Mike Jasorka promoting his newest comic, Style & Grace. The four-issue mini-series follows, in bright pastel colors and a clean, static style, a twenty-something named Jimmy whose mother gets remarried to the most notorious pimp in Nevada. After my co-Con adventurer and I laughed at this premise, Jasorka threw in the kicker: “And everyone is trying not to get AIDS…Yeah, it’s pretty funny.” I suppose that part remains to be seen.

Also in the small press area was Dan Goodsell with his world of Mr. Toast. Goodsell makes single panel cartoons that follow the adventures of, you guessed it, the eponymous piece of toast and his friends Lemonhead, Shaky Bacon, Mope the Onion, and Joe the Egg. Though the art is far from complex or subtle, the bright, simple cartoons and gags are delightful in their childlike silliness, and it seems fitting that Goodsell loves puns. If my father made cartoons, these would be them.

Goodsell also boasted one of my favorite pieces of the Con: a small painting of Mr. Toast dressed like Spider-man, swinging down from spider web thread. If anything I saw on Saturday summed up the whole affair, that painting was it: the alternative guys fighting to stay afloat in a sea of superheroes.

–Jillian Steinhauer