8 Antiques Con by Barbara Allan

gesturing in a sarcastic after-you manner, saying, “Go on ahead.”
    As we went by, Mother held her head high, throwing a comment back at the guardian of the gate: “You dishonor your late founder!”
    Mother had a point. The staffer had been brusque and borderline rude, which didn’t match up very well with the late Tommy’s vision of a kinder, gentler convention.
    “That’s no way to treat honored guests,” Mother harrumphed.
    “Let it go, Mother. She was right.”
    “Well, she didn’t have to be snippy about it.”
    “You’re lucky that other staffer—the Hispanic one?—didn’t clobber you for that ‘steenking badges’ remark.”
    “That was meant in good fun! Well, isn’t this quite the spectacle . . . ?”
    And it was, a sort of World’s Fair of popular culture, wide aisles between facing rows of dealers’ booths, predominantly comic book sellers with wall displays of precious rare issues (“Golden Age!” “Silver Age!”) and long boxes of other comics, all plastic bagged, for fans to leaf through. Now and then a booth would offer posters or t-shirts or DVDs, and an occasional booth would center around video games. The biggest, showiest displays—so typical of a trade show—were by the major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and a few others.
    What made this comic con different—and what had been a precept of Tommy Bufford’s retro thinking—was a ban on Hollywood movie studios from attending. This had been an outrageous and dangerous move on Tommy’s part, because Hollywood usually pumped tens of thousands of dollars into the big comic book conventions. But that emphasis on movies and TV had pushed actual comic book fans off into a ghetto-ish corner of the world they had created.
    And Tommy had wanted to take a big, nostalgic step backward.
    So comic books were king in the realm of the Globetrotter Room, which was packed with fans, both in and out of costumes, creating a steady stream of nerdity flowing by us as we moved slowly, cautiously along. I had to take hold of Mother’s hand so we wouldn’t get separated, and we fell in step with the others, letting the crowd sweep us along, driftwood carried to no particular destination. Sushi was distracted by the various smells, the best of which came from fast-food carts, and didn’t seem to realize we were engulfed in a mob.
    And we had been told today would be the slow day. . . .
    The upbeat if frantic atmosphere suggested that the news of Tommy’s demise hadn’t reached most attendees, and I doubted Violet would have made any announcements over the sound system. Still, her Net news releases about the tragedy would almost certainly have gone viral by now, and here and there clusters of fans stood with stunned expressions, some teary eyed, others just sad and staggered as the news spread further via word of mouth and texting.
    As we walked wide-eyed, like children at their first carnival, allowing the crowd to dictate our pace, we suddenly sensed movement behind us. The crowd parted like the Red Sea as a phalanx of media moved through, on their way somewhere, anywhere.
    Not just one group, either—but clusters from various networks and local TV stations. Of course, it was not unusual for local TV, even national news outlets, to cover a comic con. All that pop culture sharing space with nerds made for good visuals and cheap laughs on the five o’clock news.
    I was happy to move aside as they trooped by.
    Unfortunately, Mother had other ideas.
    “Well, dear, I think the time has come,” she said, trying to sound casual but with a manic edge to her voice, as she watched the army of microphones and HD-cams marching by. “Now that the word is out, it’s best to take the bull by the horns.”
    And before I could think to stop her, much less try, she was knifing through the crowd and down past the media storm troopers. I pressed forward, too, not enough to catch up, but still able to see her fling herself in front of the press