Regrets? I've Had A Few

Here I sit, hundreds of miles away, as the magic continues to unfurl hundreds of miles south of me. It's not the Magic Kingdom that I'm missing. It's Comic-Con. Described by many as "mecca for geeks," I have yet to make my pilgrimage to those hallowed convention halls in San Diego. Forty years of debate about Marvel versus DC, collecting and trading back issues of Creepy magazine. Did I say "creepy?" That's probably because I believe that while I sit somewhere on the demographic slide that feeds this beast, but I don't know if I have what it takes to hang with the big dogs.
Don't get me wrong, I can toss around cultural references with the best of them, but when it comes to obsessive fandom, my box of silver-age Spider Man comics hardly qualifies me to get to the front of the line. Nor does my ability to recite the entire scripts of "Animal House" and "Caddyshack." The fact that I have no love for Japanese anime and the backward comics they inspire probably keeps me from being offered a guest membership.
None of these things, however, keeps me from pining over what I might be missing in the lectures and symposiums going on down San Diego way. Would I have liked to have been amongst those who got to see the cast of the Avengers movie introduced by Samuel Jackson? Would I have liked a chance to find a reasonable facsimile of Captain America's mask amongst the myriad booths of obscure collectibles? Would I have enjoyed a chance to be amongst those people with whom I grew up?
In a word "yes." And "no." I went to the Bay Area version of the big event, Wonder-Con this past spring. I went with my wife, who got us all in because she is a "creative professional," having just recently published her cartoon memoir, and was eager to hob knob and network with those like her. My son was looking for a very specific action figure. I was eager for a chance to hang with my peeps. My wife made some very nice connections. My son found his "War Machine." I felt like I was drowning.
That's the thing about crowds: the bigger they are, the more people show up. Soon I felt the walls of the vast underground bunker that is the Moscone Center closing in on me. I wanted to be more interested, but I had this sudden, sad urge to watch it all on TV. I don't know if it was any more crowded than the car show we attended just a few months previous in the same location, but my eyes began to rotate counterclockwise and I began looking for the door after an hour or so.
Maybe I am more accustomed to being the only one in the room with an unhealthy attachment to super heroes. Or perhaps I could hear William Shatner's admonition to the audience of Trekkers on Saturday Night Live: "Get a life." And so I will continue to pursue each new dispatch from Comic-Con 2010 on Al Gore's Internet with bated breath. In my Venom shirt, drinking from my collectible Simpson's tumbler. I suppose the best reason to make the trip to San Diego each year is the chance to get out of your mother's basement.