The Intelligence Estimate

I've never been much into comic books. I flirted with them in college, but we decided to see other people. Thus I've never been to a comic convention, or, to use the parlance, a CON.

Well all that changed tonight.

I am very into a web cartoon called Red vs Blue. (www.redvsblue.com) It uses a video game called Halo to film a story about two armies of Marines in space who are pitted against one another. And while my description would not lead you to believe this, it is outragously funny. The creators of this series frequently attend all kinds of CONS, ones for video games, ones for comic books and ones for films. And tonight I went to a CON near my house (called The Reactor) to meet a friend of mine who is the voice of one of the characters in Red vs Blue.

The Reactor was a real education. WOW! I tried to keep an open mind about these people and their obsessions, but it was difficult to keep William Shatner's Saturday Night Live parody of Star Trek conventions out of my mind. You know the one? The one where he admonishes his fans to "Get a life!" and "Look at yourselves! You? You must be 30 years old. Have you ever kissed a girl?"

It was a cross between a chess club mixer and a costume shop explosion. There were so many OCD behaviors on display I felt like I'd wandered into a clinic of some sort. And, while I understood all the words they were using, I had no idea what they were talking about. I didn't speak the language. There were Ninjas and Demons and Aliens and Jedi and other costumes that defy categorization...by me anyway. I was REALLY out of my depth.

And yet, if I was to be honest with myself I would have to admit that I admire these fan's devotion and their disregard for the chagrin and shock of people like myself who would pass judgement on them. And, as the organizer of the event said during his opening speech, "We didn't go to Prom. We didn't go to Homecoming. We didn't go to frat parties. THIS is our frat party!" Well, I went to prom and homecoming. They didn't miss anything...except the opportunity to get sexually frustrated. And from the look of things, I think these people wrote the book on frustration. Well, the graphic novel anyway.

I applaude the Reactor and it's clientele, but I can't get far enough outside of myself to get in to it as much as those people.