Image: MyBroadband
I made one mistake at my first Comic Con Africa: I dressed like myself.
I didn’t cosplay. My thinking was that I would just go, look around and experience it properly before committing to a costume. That decision lasted about five minutes. There was Harley Quinn, Batman, the Joker, Cinderella and what felt like every anime character ever created walking around the Johannesburg Expo Centre in Nasrec. People hadn’t just dressed up either. They had committed. Full costumes, makeup, props, wigs, everything. Safe to say, next year I’m not making the same mistake.
For anyone who has never been to Comic Con, imagine stepping into all the fantasy worlds you grew up watching and getting to live inside them for a day with thousands of other people who like the same things. Remember those episodes of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon and the guys would dress up and go to Comic Con? It felt exactly like that. I had somehow walked into one.
And this wasn’t some tiny gathering of hardcore comic fans. Comic Con Africa ran from 24 to 27 September at the Johannesburg Expo Centre and was expected to draw roughly 70,000 visitors across four days for cosplay, anime, comics, gaming, art, tabletop RPGs and everything in between.
The scale of it surprised me. Capitec had its name across the event and supported the main fan experience, while Hall 6 alone gave more than 7,000 square metres to gaming, including free-to-play games, esports and Telkom VS Gaming competitions. There was something slightly funny about seeing a bank sponsor a place where grown adults were walking around carrying swords. But somehow, once you were inside, none of it felt weird.
At some point, I played Dungeons & Dragons. Then I ended up LARPing. For those who don’t know what LARPing is, it is basically adults dressing up and fighting each other with foam swords and shields. Naturally, I joined in. Somewhere between rolling dice and trying not to get hit with a foam sword, my inner child was having an absolute field day. What I didn’t expect was how easy it became to stop thinking about all the normal adult things for a while. Work, deadlines, what I should be doing next and whether I’m progressing quickly enough all became considerably less important when somebody was coming at me with a foam sword. And for a while, I was just having fun.
Your twenties and thirties come with this strange pressure to constantly become something. Build your career. Make more money. Move out. Buy the car. Have a plan. Obviously, those things matter. Comic Con does not make your bills disappear because you spent Friday afternoon pretending you knew how Dungeons & Dragons worked. But looking around at thousands of adults gaming, cosplaying, buying collectibles and getting genuinely excited about the things they loved made me wonder when growing up became the same thing as being serious all the time. The person dressed as Batman still has responsibilities. Cinderella probably has emails waiting for her. I still had work to go back to. For one day, though, none of us had to make those things our entire personality. Maybe play was never something we were supposed to completely grow out of.
I don’t think the lesson here is that everybody needs to start LARPing. Although, having tried it, I’m not against the idea. Maybe it is simply about making room for the things that feel silly, weird or fun because you enjoy them. Watch the cartoon. Build the Lego set. Play the game. Dress up as Batman. Do the thing you keep telling yourself you are probably too old for. You don’t have to stop being an adult. Maybe every once in a while, you just need to take your inner child for a walk. And next Comic Con?
I’m wearing the costume.