D.C.’s best and biggest people watching event has come and gone. Awesome Con swept into town on a tornado of comic books and collectible figurines. We saw real human skulls, watched Johnny Bravo vape, took a picture with a picture of Val Kilmer, kicked it with a bunch of CIA robots (the CIA has an Instagram now) dancing to 90s era techno and saw a ton of people carrying around “mystery boxes” filled with… something? Toys? Comic books? Existential dread? Who can say! They were very popular.
Besides the interesting panels and the shopping for days (the Convention Center had essentially mutated into D.C.’s biggest / most niche mall; there was a tchotchke for every segment of pop culture), the best thing about Awesome Con is how it makes our city a little bit weirder for one nerdy as hell weekend every year. Seeing Iron Man on the Metro, getting a drink at the hotel bar with Pikachu and standing in line behind Invader Zim at CVS makes our city a little more magical.
