Friday is when things start to get serious at Comic-Con. The jet lag has finally begun to fade after two straight nights of slamming into the “I don’t care what the clock says, I’m your body and I say it’s 2 a.m.” wall. The legs are still on the safe “achy” side of the “crippled” scale they will be redlining by Sunday, and the levels of misanthropic hate are still at acceptable levels… although tripping over a couple more strollers and staring impotently at the “Network error” message on your Cell Phone as you attempt to Twitter a picture of you with some D-List television personality you paid ten bucks for will soon make you want to start laying hands on people, even if you’re out of hand sanitizer.
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Yesterday as we were walking to the convention center, an underfed
Mexican kid saw our laminates and our Comic-Con bag and asked yelled from across the street, “You going to Comic-Con? Can I follow you?” We said okay… we were tired and obviously not thinking clearly.
The guy immediately began to regale us with his love of Transformers. “I want to get a Shockwave with all three transforming tapes!” He gushed. He said that it was his first Comic-Con, but, “Oh, it’s not my first convention. I went to BotCon in Providence, RI last year.”
“You call that a convention?” I muttered, “The biggest con in Rhode Island history involved Buddy Cianci and construction contractors. You have no idea what you’re in for.”
“Is there some kind of coat check at the convention center?” He asked.
“Sure. Just give your coat to the guy dressed as The Joker. If you want it to be free, the password is, ‘I’m looking for the glory hole.'”
As he continued to blithely yammer about Transformers, I whispered to my girl, “What the hell is wrong with this guy?
“He stinks of Asperger’s Disease,” she said. “They become maniacally focused on one thing, and they don’t understand simple physical cues.”
“That explains why he doesn’t flinch when I threaten to punch him in the face.”
He finally peeled off when we reached the convention center, and we moved to the main floor so I could look for my annual purchase of original art to bring home… and found ourselves stutter-walking past people who had left strollers packed with squalling infants to haggle with artists right in the middle of the aisle, into the backs of people who had suddenly stopped in a foot traffic line of 10,000 people to take pictures of a dude dressed as Wonder Girl, and who leapt into my sides to ogle the latest Terminator replicas from Sideshow Collectibles… all without regards for what the people around them were doing.
And I realized: Comic-Con has fucking Asperger’s Syndrome.
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That said? Totally worth it… since I am now the proud owner of the original proof art from Batman and The Mad Monk issue 1, page 11. Comic-Con may put y0u in the hospital, but you’ll go there with shit you can’t get anywhere else, like coming home from Costa Rica with a botworm larvae in your sack.
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I know there are no pictures yet; the bandwidth problem on both Wi-Fi and cell phones has become crippling. I’ll try to get some up this evening.
[tags]San Diego Comic-Con, Nerd Prom[/tags]
