|
Up until about a month or so ago, I had not planned on going to San Diego Comic Con this year. I hadn't bothered to register in time, and wasn't sure it was in the budget. My son, however, had been planning on going for months, specifically to run a fan-table for Dr. Steel's Army of Toy Soldiers. After our son went through a number of options for getting out to San Diego, I decided to offer to drive him out there, and spend the weekend visiting family.
It turned out my son had a spare pass to Comic Con that I could use, and I ended up opting to go on Sunday, since I needed to drive back down to San Diego to pick him up for the trip home anyway.
Now, my previous trips to Comic Con have all been as a representative of Collector Times, and I've appreciated the chance to see the Con as a journalist. This time, though, I decided I was going to visit as just a plain old convention attendee. No interviews to look for; no comic titles to pick up for review; no reason to be there except to just wander the con floor and see what there is to see.
I went in my wizard costume, and ignored the swag-bags. To be honest, I have swag from previous cons still in the bags, and it really didn't make sense to get more swag to sit around collecting dust. It was nice - truly nice - to not have a heavy bag hanging from my hand all day. It was likewise nice to just talk to some of the artists whose work I enjoy, without thinking about interviews.
I had the pseudo-celebrity fun of being stopped frequently by people wanting to take my picture (having a good costume for Comic Con is very much worth the effort). One piece of advice about that, though - if you're going to put together a costume for Comic Con, don't just put the effort into making a good one. Put the effort into making one that fits YOU. I'm sorry; blue spandex and a red cape does not make a middle-aged man with a beer-gut look like Superman, and cottage-cheese thighs on a woman of similar age doesn't fit with the Wonder Woman image.
One distinct advantage of the wizard costume: I'll never get too old for it. If anything, the older I get, the better I look in the costume. Sure, wizards can be young men, but the classic wizard portrayal is the older man with the long white hair and beard. If time is going to rob me of the red in my hair, then doggone it, I'm going to make the best of it.
I had a good time, and it's made me decide that, no matter what capacity in which I might attend future Comic Cons, there will be one day that I just go as a tourist, whether it's as plain old Rick, or as Hoomi the Wizard.
|