Peace, Love, and Comic-Con!

It kind of all started when I went to the first MCM Comic-Con in Manchester several years ago. It was also my first comic-con and I went on my own, I didn’t dress up and I spent about £10 buying a cookies and cream Kit Kat and a can of Mountain Dew from the America food stall. That was my comic-con experience. Pretty lackluster really. Fast forward to 2018, I’ve been to university, had a small break down, grown more confident psychically and mentally, I’ve grown a beard and got myself some tattoos, I have a vast Blu-ray collection, I collect Funkos, I’m an even bigger gamer, watch a lot of anime, and now I go to Comic-Con too! The last three or four years, I have made it my mission to go to as many as Cons as possible and so far I have managed to go to everything Comic-Con in both Birmingham and Manchester but have never managed to venture to the holy grail of cons in the UK, London Comic-Con. That is, until now.

After debating whether to go or not for many weeks, I finally pulled the trigger! I grabbed two of my good friends, booked a hotel, and got myself tickets for the event and a little over a week ago me and my buddies met up in London. A two-hour train journey plus a few stops on the underground and we had made it to our hotel and at first, everything seemed pretty normal. Dumping our bags and heading back out into the world to hunt for food, however, we knew we were in the right place when a group of people in full cosplay strolled pass up as we left our hotel. The hotel was a short walk to the London Excel, the home of Comic-Con, and we soon found ourselves swamped by cosplayers. By this point, it was eight in the evening and the first day of Comic-Con had finished hours ago, but the area around the venue was buzzing with activity. People sword fighting (with fake swords obviously but none the less vigorously), skateboarding, dancing, drinking, and having mini photo shoots with other cosplayers. It was like I had walked right into a whole new world!

The bar next to the arena, I'm sure seasoned veterans will know the one I’m talking about, was jam-packed! But that didn’t stop people from taking their drinks outside and into the street. The party spilled all the way down several streets with people playing music, chilling on walls, in the street on every patch of free grass, even the local takeaways and shops had been overrun with Con-goers. It was madness, a good kind of madness, but madness nonetheless. I had never experienced an atmosphere like this before, it was overwhelming. Everyone was having such a good time and getting on rather than what would happen on a typical uni night out where someone would cause fights, create drama, or do something stupid and generally ruin the night. But here I couldn’t have felt more at home or as accepted as part of this huge gathering. That evening we decided to keep our distance from the bar because it was so packed and didn't fancy the hassle that and it had been a long day of traveling and we wanted to be fresh for the next day and Comic-Con itself! Vowing we would be back the following night a vengeance!

Waking up, we rushed downstairs to take advantage of our free breakfast, making sure we had fueled ourselves for the long day ahead. While hitting up the breakfast buffet, we were greeted by a couple of anime girls and Cloud from Final Fantasy VII a perfect way to set the tone for the rest of the day and putting us all in an even greater mood! An hour later having eaten and waited in line for about 20 minutes, we had made it! So many cool cosplays, stalls to visit and things to see and buy, we didn’t know where to start! Playing it smart, we worked our way around one hall first before stopping for lunch and then tackling the second hall ending by doing a quick sweep of both halls to make sure we had seen everything we wanted and picking up those last minute purchases. The height of my haul being Eden of the East complete series box set on Blu-ray and a Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid Manga!

While the Con had us hyped knowing what awaited us, that evening almost overshadowed the day itself! So after a stop off at the hotel to rest, grab food, shower, and a change of clothes, we made our way to the bar! Like the outside, the inside of the was packed! And it took a good 30 minutes to get served, all while in a boiling hot room with sweat literally running down my back, it was kind of horrible but that soon changed when the Pokemon theme blasted through the place sending everyone into a frenzy. With everyone singing along I knew I was where I wanted to be! It then somehow managed to get even better when this was followed up by the Power Rangers theme song to which I lost my shit! I had made it, the trip had peaked! There was nothing that could have made the experience any more perfect even if I have planned it this way and we still had a full day of sightseeing to come.

The rest of the night was spent dancing and watching all the carnival-like antics going on around us. In the gents' toilets, there was some sort of mini wrestling show going on as a guy dressed like The Rock came bursting out of one of the stalls and started cutting a promo. There was a guy playing the tuba dubbed tuba guy, people were drinking, dancing, and loving each other. Whether you were cosplaying or not, everyone was getting on and letting out their inner geek and simply having a good time with no bullshit! We decided that the bar was way too hot to stay inside so we joined the fleet of people just chilling in the street. We became pretty wise to the fact that instead of queuing 30 minutes for one drink that cost a fiver, the smart people were hitting the off license and grabbing four cans of beer for a £5! Naturally, we followed suit, returning to the street where we found a nice spot under the trees to just talk drink and take in the scenes around us into the night! Well, until a torrential downpour sent everyone scurrying like mice for cover. At that point, we called it a night.

I may not have dressed up for Comic-Con, I may not have even directly participated in the festivities going on around me but by being there in the first place was more than enough to feel like I was participating. That alone seemed to be the only necessary requirement to be apart of this little corner of society. There’s a theory called participatory culture and in a nutshell, it is the act of participating without saying or doing anything is still participating if you are all united under a common aspiration. This is how I felt, I belonged to something, I didn’t feel isolated for being a geek or a nerd, yet I simply showed up. But showing up was all that mattered and I hope that I can build on this experience to make my next venture even more meaningful!

I can now see why people keeping coming back to Comic-Con, when what was originally an event that would last a few hours thanks to my fellow nerds, turned a few hours into an entire weekend of fun. A series of adventures that played out very different from how I saw my trip to London would ever go. Comic-Con is more than just an event, it was a festival of nerds and geeks coming together peacefully, with love for Comic-Con and so much more! But before we knew it; it was Monday and when we came down for breakfast on our last morning there was no one anime girls or Judge Dredd. Everyone had seemingly retreated back into their normal routines as quickly as they unleashed them. It was over…