What Comic-Con is (the color post)

Comic-Con -- Comic-Con is black T-shirts. It's waiting in line, waiting for ballroom panels, for food, for bathrooms and even the escalator. Lines stretching everywhere like it's opening night of a summer tentpole movie, lined with fans waiting patiently to see their heroes. The fans don't look as if they feel particularly fortunate, but they are. They have the best of both worlds -- disposable incomes and disposable time. Comic-Con is all pretty much what you think, but more immense and more crowded. There's costumes, sure, though not as many as you probably imagine (Heath Ledger's insta-classic portrayal of The Joker is the most pronounced new addition). Comic-Con is where the creative seeds planted by artists and marketers bear their most colorful and long-lasting fruit. It's where outcast guys with cluttered bedrooms commune. Where Goth girls wear their most revealing Halloween costumes and get clocked by more pairs of eyes in a day than in a non-Comic-Con month. There are many overeaters, yet few smokers. Do the packed ballrooms really reek of body odor? No, not really, and no more so than what you would expect after thousands of people trekked from their hotels to the convention center in the San Diego sun. The exhibit floor proves there is very little that one cannot collect. Comic-Con is nervous moderators and appreciative, forgiving audiences. And lots of walking.