Tod Browning’s Comic-Con

“I read something in the local paper yesterday about your comic book thing.”

“Comic-Con, Mom. It’s called Comic-Con.”

“Okay, Comic-Con,” she said. “I can’t believe that 125,000 people would show up for something like that.”

“It’s fun, Mom. If you like comic books, it’s New Year’s Eve in Times Square with free beer, hookers and amyl nitrate.”

“Language, please. And as I remember, it wasn’t that much fun when that Greg boy from up the street was beating you up for wearing Spider-Man Underoos.”

“Oh Mom, stop reminding me of my twenty-fifth birthday.” That kind of quick, hacky line always gets a chuckle out of Mom. “Yeah, getting the crap kicked out of me by that Raiders-loving mongoloid sucked, but which one of us graduated in the top ten percent of their class, and which one got arrested for bringing a shotgun into the high school cafeteria, threatening suicide because he thought his previous assault arrest would blow his football ride to SUNY Albany?”

“Yes, but – ”

“The fact of the matter is, one of us got a 700 on the English part of the SATs, a 99th percentile on the test of standard written English, and can read 1,200 words per minute, and the other manages a Taco Bell in Latham, New York. Terry Bradshaw sure as hell didn’t teach Greg anything worthwhile.”

“I think Terry Bradshaw played for the Cowboys -”

“Who gives a shit? The point is, Greg’s dad bought him a football. My dad bought me comic books and never told me it was wrong. Anything I am today is because I had Spider-Man and Batman.”

“But you’re thirty-six years old. I can’t believe you still read those things.”

“Hell Mom, I’m proud to read those things. The high point of my seventy-hour week is Saturday afternoon, when I walk to my local comic store to get my week’s take to read over a case of beer. I love them. I spend more a month on comic books than I do on cigarettes.”

“That’s something else I wanted to talk to you about…” And from there, the conversation really went to hell.

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I never outgrew comic books, and based on over a billion dollars gross from the Spider-Man movies, I’m not alone. Spider-Man taught me to read, that a geek could bang a hot redhead, and that cloning is a really bad fucking idea.

It’s easy to make fun of a pack of geeks who like to play dress-up… and God knows I have. But to ignore the fact this the medium of comic books is perceived as a valid art form for millions of people, young and old alike, is to be an elitist. Yeah, a lot of us took shit from the jocks for reading comics while we were growing up. But, as an adult, I refuse to take shit from people who make fun of a guy who dresses up for Comic-Con while wearing a Red Sox jersey and a Red Sox cap while playing Fantasy Baseball. And, having been to Comic-Con, I can say with some authority that there are a hell of a lot of us who feel that way.

Jesus Christ; even the fucking President’s into cosplay. So leave us the fuck alone.

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That said, it is easy to make fun of geeks who play dress up, and I sure as hell don’t intend to stop:

I looked at this girl from all angles before I took the picture, and trust me: this is not a crafty special effect. Miramax hired a one-legged girl to hump the Grindhouse DVD, and threw her on a pedestal for geeks to ogle at. For what purpose? Well, leave it to Comic-Con to find a way to cater to the depraved sexual fetishes of people even creepier than furries.

I don’t know if I’m more weirded out by the fact that this woman made the commitment to completely purple herself up, or that she apparently saw something even weirder that she needed a picture of.

The Blue Man Group is mad as hell about losing awards to Nathan Lane, and they’re not going to take this anymore!

Spider-Man claims that his client uses nutritional supplements; denies use of performance-enhancing drugs, refuses to testify before Congress.

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Thus endeth The American Jerk’s coverage of Comic-Con 2007. I have a lot more freak pictures, so I’ve set up a Flickr Group where you can check them out. I’ll be uploading more pictures and captions there over the next couple of days.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to examine that Grindhouse picture a little closer. If you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom… but for the love of fucking God, knock first.

[tags]San Diego Comic-Con, Nerd Prom, comic books, Spider-Man, Batman, Grindhouse, dark humor[/tags]