How did I wind up at Comic Con 2008? I don't read comics. I watch movies and a couple of TV shows and that was enough not only to get me to buy a ticket, but to wake up before dawn so I could arrive early and stand in line with some extraordinarily interesting characters. Granted, it was Saturday, the day of the Comic Con Masquerade Ball, but I'm pretty sure most people at the conference dressed and acted the same way on all the other days of the conference.

As I finally settled into line at 7:30am (after a 10 minute walk to find the end of it) for Hall H and the Heroes panel, I looked around me at the Jokers and storm troopers and hard-core fanatics of things about which I have no knowledge and felt severely isolated and out-of-place. "I am not one of them," I thought. But by the end of the day, I realized that wasn't necessarily true. Perhaps I have more in common with this geeky subculture than I was previously willing to admit.

Men and women, boys and girls, all ages and ethnicities, filled the exhibition hall, browsing artwork and graphic novels, scooping up free fandom paraphernalia, buying up t-shirts, and posing for pictures with Pikachu. I've never in my life seen a more eclectic (or more enthusiastic) throng of crazy characters, where being different is a sure-fire way to fit in.

I stuck to the panels about movies and TV shows, I admit it. Heroes, Lost, and Fringe; Terminator, Bolt, and Up. But the artists and creators behind the world of comics are there, are still the core. They run the show and I felt it. And for that reason, I believe I might be in the process of becoming a comic book convert. Who knows what the years ahead hold for me and Comic Con?

But this relationship goes both ways. To the die-hard fans of the Marvel and DC universes, it might feel like my infiltration of their territory is a desecration of sacred ground, that Comic Con should always be about the comics that first inspired the conference 38 years ago. But the lines are blurring and Comic Con, for better or worse, truly has become an international, pop-culture mecca.