New York Comic-Con 2008 is officially over. In keeping with a tradition I've held since the very first NY Comic-Con, I opted not to attend. For those who do choose to attend, however, there are many joys to experience at Comic-Con--purchasing a comic book while being crushed in by 100,000 other people; getting your photograph taken with the guy who played Greedo; receiving a free Iron Man movie poster with your convention badge, then carrying the rolled-up poster around all day and, after finally coming to terms with the fact that you are never going to hang this Iron Man movie poster in your apartment or anywhere else, depositing it among the thousands of other Iron Man movie posters in one of the trash cans at the convention center exit. But for die-hard comic fans who look forward to this convention as a way to relax and show their true colors, perhaps no joy is greater than being asked to appear on-camera by one of the hundreds of correspondents attending the convention in the hopes of pointing a camera at a chubby IT professional in Darth Maul make-up, with sarcastically hilarious results.

For every three diehard comic book and sci-fi fans, there was probably at least one person with a microphone hoping to produce a local news story, late-night comedy remote piece or barely-credentialed Web video, frantically searching the convention floor for the most outlandishly dressed or most socially awkward attendee to interview/tease. For those of us who did not attend this convention, we can at least enjoy the experience of watching a very smug person pretending to be interested in Comic-Con while scarcely able to suppress his very fresh "virgin" and "living in your parents' basement" jokes long enough to lull his interviewees into their false sense of security. Sorry, Comic-Convention attendees! If you didn't want to get made fun of, maybe you shouldn't have attended a convention that was ostensibly designed to let you indulge and celebrate your slightly fringe subculture amongst other like-minded fans in a safe, semi-private environment.

As editors work overtime, I will wake up each morning bright and early, eager to see one of the many wonderful videos of someone coaxing two Star Wars-obsessed attendees into a toy light saber duel as he stands back and gives that very essential "get a load of these queers" wink to the camera, just so we all know that he does not condone these nerdy shenanigans. Seriously, what is it with those nerds, right? Do they think they're real Jedis or what? Sometimes, if the interviewer is really interested in making his Comic-Con video really soar in quality, he will go the extra mile and throw himself into the mix for a good laugh, taking light saber to hand to join the fight, as his eyes ask the camera person, "Holy crap are you getting all this?" This kind of dedication to expertly mocking one's interview subject really lets us, the audience, know "I am not too scared to appear as if I am actually friends with these people for a few minutes but stay tuned for the part where I act extra over-the-top, because that is my signal to you that I am above all of this and as soon as the camera is turned off I will probably go somewhere and do pretty cool stuff like drive a sports car, or see a live band or get a bunch of ass."

So thank you, journalists, for your intrepid and mocking coverage of Comic-Con. It's comforting to know that, yet another year, someone (i.e. all 200 of you) had the uniquely great thought that, "Hey, I'll bet if I went to Comic-Con I could find a ton of nerds dressed all crazy. That might be something someone would want to see." And thank you even more, for following through on that instinct and bringing a news crew to Comic-Con over the weekend, then pointing your camera at someone wearing an painstakingly handmade Ghostbusters costume so the rest of us can laugh, shake our heads, and say, "yeah, man, those guys are certainly not cool like me. Case closed." You really exposed the shit out of that one. See you in a few months, at the Celebrity Impersonator Convention.