Comic-con and its players

I never thought I would see Batman with man boobs. I did at emerald city comic -con. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Seeing people in passionate costumes made me wish I could let myself go and have fun.

I arrived, got myself a program and ruled out spending $35 to have a photo with Lance Reddick or as I know him as Lt. Daniels (The Wire). My first port of anger was not finding a Beavis and Butthead t-shirt in small but L and XL. I was told, “Small always sells out in the west coast”. So why don’t you get more smalls? Better still why assume chicks don’t watch the show and everyone who does is big. Luckily I found a Jurassic Park t-shirt.

My small fitting Jurassic tee

I also eyed off a simple but effective Laura Dern costume. No tits, just clever. This is not to say don’t get your tits out. Please do. It is to suggest that majority of the gawking didn’t seem to get the whole gender reclaiming thing. It wasn’t until I got to see Matt Fraction and illustrator Chip Zdarsky’s panel on comic Sex Criminals that I heard the whole challenging normative gender structures. Fraction discussed his personal experiences of how women act like men in their “secret” language.  This put a smile on my face.

The very awesome Matt Fraction

Comic -Con attracts a strange crowd. Not strange in the sense that it’s weird, but in terms of binaries.  Like tits and family’s rationality and creativity. I saw dads perform strange camera taking poses and heard questions about the feel of latex. I saw mums in high cut bodysuits. I saw a mermaid in a rush approached by a man for a photograph and apologised she didn’t have the time. He used the whole it’s for my daughter thing. But I didn’t see his daughter in sight. Was he lying? I do realise that people like to dress up and its fun. But it’s common manners to understand if someone says no.

I was confronted with comic- con. I wasn’t used to embracing geekdom. I love pop culture, comics, games and all that jazz. But I don’t call myself a nerd or act a certain way because I am. Maybe that’s why comic- con made me feel uneasy. I happy to say I’m into pop culture but the indie kind. I’m my own stereotype. I wished I dressed up or someone understood my angry face. I wished I had shaken the Laura Dern girl’s hand. Then I saw two girls dressed as Wayne and Garth, that’s when I enjoyed comic-con.