Hey Kids! It’s Summer (not Brooks, the season) and that can only mean one thing…

The San Diego Comic-Con! Hip, Hip, Hoo-rah!

Yup, yep, yah, it’s time to fish out your old Sailor Moon costume, book a $900 room at the Motel 6 and head on down the apogee of geekinees, The Con.

This will be my 9th year going to the Con and honestly, it still takes my breath away. If you haven’t been to it and you are reading this post on Slice of SciFi by choice, then you are doing yourself a disservice. NOTHING comes close to the overall madness, coolness and feeling of acceptance for being your weird old self as a pilgrimage to San Diego in late July.

I have gone to Con in several incarnations, including:

* An average lover of SciFi

* An industry professional

* A panel member (For my role on The Invisible Man TV series)

* One of four Jar-Jar Binks

* A wisecracking robot

* Captain Kirk looking for love (Is there any other kind), chronicled here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTUEkayvc5Y

The last three were not, of course, official designations, but rather a testament to fact that you can dress up as ANYBODY and pretty much get away with it. That’s the way the Con rolls (or maybe roles? Rick Rolls?) I have also seen some of the coolest things there. Sneak peeks at movies, legends of comic book and science fiction at panels, pilots for new series (personal favorite: Bruce Timm sneaked a trailer for the 2nd season of Justice League: Unlimited then showed the finale of the 1st season). It brings people from the furthest fringe of genre and Hollywood’s most precious assets and mixes them together with amazing, frightening and sometimes hilarious results.

It’s also changed a lot in nine years, and in some ways not for the best. The most notable and ironic aspect is that Comic-Con has very little to do with COMICS these days. There are panels on interesting academic topics concerning topics, some companies that evaluate young artists work and a few indie comic book creators at booths (like my friends who write Hard Eight and SCUD: the Disposable Assassin. Plug!) tucked away in the corners of the 17 mile long convention floor. But the truth is, they are ghosts of what the Con used to be, fading shadows in the blinding sun of the giant entertainment corporations that now bully there way into the frame to preview the new Care Bears movie staring Ashlee Simpson and Samuel L. Jackson. True, you’ll see cool clips of next years scifi films (although apparently no Star Trek movie… methinks that there is trouble with the Trek) and probably even the actors and directors of those blockbusters, but it did come at a price. The truth is, Comic-Con would almost be better served if there were TWO cons running — one that served comic books and all things indie, counter culture and hip in sci-fi, and the other convention of the megamovies, TV shows and stars.

But it’s a quibble that I mention here. The fact is that when I step into that cavernous convention center, there’s a part of me that says “home”. As I walk past the plus sized stormtroopers with the 7 Princess Leia’s in Slave girl outfits, bump into Superman while he’s eating a chalupa or see a 15 year old with a tin foil sword twice her size, I know that all is well. Here the terms “Geek”, “Nerd” and “Dork” are badges of honor, terms of respect. At the Con you and not just “you”, but anyone else you want to try out. And that’s pretty cool.

BTW- if you’re at the Con, I call an unofficial Slicer convention Friday night. Follow me on @mikemccafferty for time and place as well as thoughts on the Con.