Detective John Jones and the psychedelic alien in his head from DC Comics’ deeply trippy Absolute Martian Manhunter.

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. Their inaugural 2014 shindig (under the original moniker “Indy PopCon”) was a massive undertaking and a phenomenal experience, where we met actors from some of our favorite works and were pretty impressed at a first-time comic-con being so well-run. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice.

We also attended the next two years’ shows, but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics — fewer actors under 50, far more anime voice actors, YouTubers, and other influencers and fields outside our Gen-X spheres. We can’t blame them for giving the people what they want, especially after 2015’s special guest Markiplier brought in, by my conservative estimate, 630 million fans dying to meet him and willing to wait the rest of their lives in line if necessary. Some of them may still be there to this day, perhaps a bit miffed that he took such a long break to go film Iron Lung for a while before he resumed signing. His lines were quite the rodeo to witness from the outside, but it wasn’t our rodeo.

IPC 2016 held a few highlights for us, such as the only YouTuber I’ve ever wanted to meet, one of the most awkward comics panels I’ve ever asked a question in, and the height of Deadpool variant cosplay mania. But we bowed out for a while after that. It’s not them, it’s us. (Well, mostly us. It also didn’t help that sometimes their biggest guests were actors we’d already met at other cons.) But hey! Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”.

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