Those Post Denver Comic Con Blues...

Written by Joel T. Lewis

​Our feet are bruised and blistered from walking the floor, our eyes are watery from the wash of original art and colorful cosplay that danced across them, and our wallets slump, allowing a lone moth to flutter its way to freedom as we blew our overly optimistic budget within 10 minutes of hitting Merchant Mesa. Now we’re back at work, back to being mild-mannered desk assistants, mail carriers, and policy makers, back to our secret identities and it's hard to believe we got to be ourselves so completely for the 3 days now past.
 
It’s hard to make casual chit chat with Fred from accounting over coffee about how your weekend was when you met the Flash, and you got to be Jyn Erso, and you got to shake the hand of an artist whose comics you’ve been reading since you were old enough to read. How do you translate all of that into Monday morning small talk? How do you explain that over the weekend you were home? Truly home. And now you have to wait a whole year to feel that accepted, comfortable, and seen again.
 
I don’t know if I can speak to how to cope with the Post-Con Blues, but I can say that I’m comforted by the fact that my Instagram feed is full of new artists I met in Artists Valley, the signatures I got from Tom King, Mitch Gerads, David Finch, and Jeff Smith are shining up at me from the stack of comics I haven’t had the heart to file away into their long boxes, and the sweet clay figures from Timid Monsters that I couldn’t get out of my head all weekend are settling into their new homes on my desk at work. Actually, its Post-Con Blues that led to my writing for Nerds That Geek in the first place, which in turn led to my getting to know 3 of my very best friends in the world, the Movie Mumble Podcast, and my typing this out to you right this minute.
 
Tim Girard, composer, podcaster, and friend was somebody I saw every day at work, somebody I’d only ever had passing casual small talk with, but I had seen him at Denver Comic Con and when the dreaded Post-Con Monday came as it has to every year, when I saw him I asked, ‘You feeling the post Denver Comic Con Blues?’ How rare is it that you remember the first words you ever said to one of your best friends? Denver Comic Con gave me that. Commiserating over the demise of the nerd’s paradise weekend cemented a friendship that led to hour long discussions of fandom, of movies, and the in-depth comic book analysis that I’d always wanted in my friendships but hadn’t thought possible. But I found another one of my people, and through that friendship and the ones that followed now I get to interact with my people almost every day.
 
My point is this, we’re at a point in popular culture where nerds aren’t hard to find. They may dress in plain clothes and mark time in their jobs the same way you do, but you can find them, and that means that the way Denver Comic Con makes us feel inside, that acceptance, freedom, and community isn’t something that has to come just once a year. So hang your commemorative prints, Instagram your hard-won signatures, and curl up with that new tentacle kitty plushy because while Denver Comic Con ‘18 is now over, Denver Comic Con ‘19 will be here before you know it. Until Next Time, Geek On!

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