Surviving San Diego VI: People Watching

(A continuing series of hints, tips, and observations based
on stuff that worked for me.  Your mileage may vary.)

While you're viewing as many panels, presentations, movie screenings, elaborate booths, artwork, and comic book merch as you possibly can, you'll also be engaging in the unofficial pastime of the San Diego Comic Con:  People Watching!

After all, this isn't like a mass-gathering of 120,000 accountants...or scrapbookers...or stamp collectors.  This 120K crowd is a highly combustible cocktail of pop cultural geekery from the realms of superhero comics, sci-fi, fantasy, manga, animation, gaming, cartooning, and hundreds more interconnected tributaries.  Mix in a few thousand curious civilians on a Geek Safari, and you've got yourself the biggest freakin' Mos Eisley cantina scene in the Western Hemisphere.

Think about it:  You and your fellow fans have traveled hundreds or even thousands of miles to talk about, admire, photograph, argue about, buy, and sell stuff based on things that ultimately do not exist.  Now that's passion...and that's exactly what I love so much about the Con.  The passion.

The passion to wait in lines as far as the eye can see (click on the photos for a larger view).

The passion to be both a Stormtrooper and Elvis Presley.

The passion (and steely courage) of a minature Hawkgirl to fend off not one, but two converging fanboy potbellies!

The passion (and steely courage) of a grown-up Slave Outfit Princess Leia to endure gawking fanboy stares ("Hey sonny...watch the hand!")

The passion of a shieldless, shabby-masked Captain America to run a snack cart in the mid-day heat!

(Hey, isn't Cap supposed to be dead?)

The passion to push a (fake) corpse around in a wheelchair all day long.

The passion to endure THIS.

The passion to wear highly-chaffing vinyl and/or to paint yourself blue.

The passion to....ew.  Okay, as you can see, "passion" can occasionally boil over into "insanity".

Throw in the countless amusing t-shirts and headgear, giant rooms filled to the absolute edge of fire-code capacity, and thousands of people lugging tons of whimsical merchandise on their backs, and you've got a good definition of people whose passion for myth and make-believe is worth celebrating.

To all my fellow Con visitors this week, have a blast.  Hopefully my modest little Survival Guide has given at least some of the "newbies" a bit more confidence as they wade into one of the biggest (and most unforgettable) events of their lives.