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Saturday, August 30, 2008
Dragon*Con: ‘The Joker’ and other sightings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jason is a proud “Trekkie” and Dragon*Con fan. He started watching “Star Trek” at four. His earliest memories are of Captain Kirk, phasers and green Orion slave girls. And, at seven, he watched “Star Wars” 19 times in one summer. “I was awed by the power and possibilities of the human imagination,” he said. His otherworldly interests include comic books, of which he has more than 4,000 spread over two states. He’s a graduate of Riverdale High School and Northwestern University’s School of Communication. After Northwestern, he moved to L.A. to start a film and television career. There, he worked as a writer’s production assistant on “Roswell” and other shows. Although back in Atlanta, Jason has worked as a writer and creative consultant on the non-fiction series “The Universe” for The History Channel. He hopes to move back to L.A. (another world to some) to create his own fantastic universe.
When you walk into a hotel lobby and the first people you see are Batman, the Spider-Man villianess the Black Cat and a dude spray-painted green to look like The Hulk, you know you’ve wandered off the beaten path.
If you are a mere mortal cruising down Peachtree Street, no doubt you do a few double takes. These folks are obviously not here for the Alabama-Clemson game.
But it’s a typical day like at Dragon*Con, which draws a multi-genre mix of sci-fi, fantasy and gaming fans. I ran into about a dozen Jokers from “The Dark Knight,” most obviously inspired by the late Heath Ledger’s take on Batman’s nemesis. Many Con-goers were walking around with real swords or battle axes looking like they were armed for medieval combat in downtown Atlanta.
The Con had everything from a space devoted exclusively to horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos to a stall specializing in imported Japanese video games (with Japanese packaging so it was kind of hard to tell what they were about) was open for business and being perused by eager fans. I was able to snag a 5-foot long carbon steel Batman sword that I had been looking searching for for three years.
Costume shops were a mainstay, with corsets being a popular item. And even Dragon*Con can’t escape politics. I saw several people sporting T-shirt featuring presidential candidate Barack Obama ripping open his suit a la Superman to reveal a stylized “O” underneath.
If you’re at Dragon*Con or just walking around downtown, what’s the best costume you’ve seen so far? As I walked around downtown I saw a number of Clemson and Alabama fans decked out in the schools’ colors. So, I just have to ask: Who’s more fanatical - the diehard football faithful who paint their faces every weekend in the fall or hardcore sci-fi/fantasy followers who go all out and dress up once a year?
