Todd Terwilliger

One of the things I picked up from this past New York Comic Con was an old luchador movie, Blue Demon vs. Podor Satanico (Blue Demon vs. the Satanic Power). Just this week I got around to watching it, in fabulous black and white with a total lack of subtitles. Let it be known: I do not speak Spanish. Not a word. This very fact thrilled me. I would experience the film entirely visually, unsullied by dialog or exposition. This was to be a pure experience, in the purest sense of the word.

It was inevitable that, having compiled the list of events at comic that I most wanted to attend, I would actually participate in almost none of them. Inevitable, perhaps, but not tragic. The convention grounds were so carpeted with pageantry, pomp, and circumstance, the air so thick with geek pheromones, that the panels and screenings, not undesirable by any means, were out of sight and thus out of mind.