comic con

As a self-confessed geek with a lifelong love of all things Start Trek, Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian etc. I figured it was past time that I visited one of the annual conventions for such people. I mean if I like stories about people in capes and masks beating and hacking each other with swords and shit it stands to reason that I should find things in common with other people who like those things?
Right?

WRONG!

Before I get into the meat of this – I should probably say that if you’re looking for insider info about upcoming movies and shit, you’re not going to find it here – and might want to stop reading about now. Nope – its not about that. Instead  I’m going to have a bitch about my disillusionment of Geekathon and being cooped up in a crowded meeting hall with a bunch of spotty teenagers and the balding, beer-gutted bespandexed man-children that they inevitably turn into.

So I get to NYC hellishly early on saturday morning after a late night spent watching Mad Max 1 & 2 on and off in between a marathon session of EVE Online and numerous cups of increasingly rancid coffee (something in the coffee brings out the beast in me). I looked not unlike this:

Needless to say I wasn’t in a terribly great frame of mind and after struggling through a line so large that it would have done justice to a Charlton Heston bible epic – I was about ready to go home again. Well maybe not… I had paid $40 for the ticket after all… and at mimimum wage that’s a good 6 hours work to pay off. So I gritted my teeth and plunged into the crowds.

Comicon is basically one big tradeshow for people who want to buy merchandise at special discount prices that still manage to be higher than what you can find online. On the plus side – many of the authors and artists are there so you can get your shit signed (for an extra fee). The down side of this is that to see stuff – you’ve basically got to navigate crowds and make constant apologies for stepping on someone’s cape or making accidental contact with someone’s private parts.

Anyway so yes – I saw some cool shit, a few people from TV shows and movies:

If you look real hard - you might make out Lou Ferrigno in the back

A few people might recognise this guy - John Noble AKA the batshit scientist on "Fringe" and the batshit king from "Lord of the Rings.

Even so I couldn’t help but find the whole thing strangely underwhelming. This might have to do with my going by myself – but I just couldn’t work up the enthusiasm to identify with all the tubby balding guys dressed as Jedis or overweight Batmen. Its not that I don’t like the material – I still enjoy a lot of the stuff I did when I was a kid – Star Wars, Batman, Spiderman, Buffy, Transformers – its all good. I just don’t get why mature adults insist on dressing up in strange costumes to go to an indoor comic sale.

I mean… Ming the Merciless is a cool villain and all, but you don’t see him navigating the dairy aisle at the supermarket or vacuuming his carpet.

I can’t explain why but it made me feel a little dirty, as if everyone around me had some weird sexual fetish and spent their free time wearing oversize diapers and doing coke of a prostitutes buttocks.

I felt a burning desire to reassert my masculinity and to distance myself from the deviants. So without further ado – here is my personal highlight from the NYC Comicon. And what a highlight it is…

Its sleazy I know but can anyone blame me? Look at that.... Just look at it!

I don't know what she's selling and I don't care!

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