The San Diego Comic-Con is organized by Comic-Con International. From the program:
“Comic-Con International is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to creating awareness of and appreciation for comics and related popular arts forms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.”
They’re skating around it, but really what they mean by “related popular arts forms” is films, video games, and, mostly, TOYS. Lots of toys. Toys dominate the convention floor. Many retailers have the toys more prominently displayed than their comics. And toys exist for almost any obscure property you could name; I’m sure Christopher Guest’s “My Dinner with Andre” action playset in “Waiting for Guffman” is not too far off the mark.
Habsro has a large booth here, with display cases featuring many products, both new and classic. One case contains a very large-scale GI JOE battle, with what looks like hundreds of figures and dozens of vehicles warring it out on a mountainside.
One of the Hasbro booth’s other features is a grown woman standing around dressed as the Baroness, the sexy, bespectacled female member of GI JOE’s terrorist rival, Cobra. While passing through the booth today I saw the Baroness commiserating with several people clad in stormtrooper outfits (from Star Wars, not from the Third Reich). It occurred to me that GI JOE would really have its hands full if Cobra and the Empire teamed up, especially if Luke Skywalker were the only Jedi around when it happened.
The whole set-up, for some reason, brought back a long-lost memory: that of one of my earliest semi-erotic dreams. I certainly couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old, and I don’t remember any other details of the dream, aside from this indelible image: a stormtrooper removing the front plate of its armor, revealing a set of naked breasts. Naked girl breasts.
Episode II, of course, revealed that all stormtroopers are clones of Jango Fett, who is a male character. So it seems that my dream could not have taken place in the Star Wars universe. Perhaps, though, it was a vision of the future, in which the Baroness went back to her hotel room with a stormtrooper during a comic convention, and, after having a little fun with him, tried on his armor.
It could happen.