PEOPLE WATCHING AT COMIC-PORN

Women in black fishnet stockings and knee-high boots, ass cheeks almost totally exposed, leather boostiers propping up breasts towards the heavens. Stickers of hardcore pinup models who look like a cross between Betty Paige and Jenna Jameson with eloquent names like Drop a Load, Game Show Ho and Trampy Vamp.

The porn convention in Las Vegas? No. Welcome to Comic-Con, the annual Mecca for Goth-adorned fans of erotic animation.

Six months after Superbowl XXXVII brought mayhem to the Gaslamp, America's Finest City played host to another one of the country's largest pop-culture spectacles. July 17 through 20 at the Convention Center, the 34th annual Comic-Con International was host to an estimated 65,000 people.

Forget the hundreds of comic book dealers and creators who represented the artistic stock. Forget the interactive, digital demonstrations and technological fantasias. Forget the film screenings, workshops and panel discussions that aimed to mentor aspiring young comics. You can even forget the plethora of celebrities (Halle Berry, Daryl Hannah, Hugh Jackman, Angelina Jolie) who were there to promote their newest projects.

The main attraction of Comic-Con is always the fans, a subculture of archetypically pale, pimply, unfit underdogs who, for one weekend, gather with fellow high school pariahs to revel in one of the world's largest conventions of popular arts.

For most people, Comic-Con represents a reprieve from the mundane. The costumes, the comics and their surreal narratives, the fantasy-based games-they all provide an alternate world of special powers and good triumphing over evil, a world where the football jock gets his intestines ripped out for stuffing the comic-loving geek in the gym locker.

Comics have come a long way since the S-adorned wonderboy and the Batmobile-driving dark antihero first popularized the art form. As with any booming cultural enterprise, the world of comics has both matured and learned to exploit the timeless intoxicant for young teens-sex.

A majority of the comic books, movies and video games for sale on the convention floor featured a heroine scantily clad in black leather. Futuristic Goth girls handed out flyers to nervous teens, promoting comics, upcoming animated television shows, movies and projects like The Anime Network, a cable channel that will soon launch in San Diego.

Clairemont-based Bloodfire Studios also relied on curvy, devil-outfitted girls with demonic eye contacts à la Marilyn Manson to pedal their wares. They sold copies of Kindergoth (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets the Power Puff Girls), Dark Tarot (Tarot card readings for vampires) and Citadels Roth (a cyberpunk Mad Max-like saga).

Arwen Swink, a Bloodfire promotional model, yelled to some curious onlookers, “Make sure you come out to our rave tonight in Hillcrest!”

There were approximately 20 attendees hanging around the Bloodfire booth. By contrast, caddy-corner was Gemstone Entertainment, which publishes Walt Disney's Daffy Duck comics. There were only four people around the Gemstone booth, all in their 40s or 50s.

Daniel, a 13-year-old from Santee, uses comics as a way of controlling his prepubescent hormonal urges. He's infatuated with Lara Croft, the heroine of the popular video game, Tomb Raider. For those not familiar with Croft, she's a smart, sexy virtual mercenary-the hottest non-reality pop icon since Jessica Rabbit.

“She's a very alternative superhero,” said Daniel. “She's mega hot and she kicks ass.” He hoped to meet Angelina Jolie, the real-life megahottie who's played Lara Croft in both installments of the Tomb Raider feature film.

Kat Rocha, a 20-year old budding erotica artist and a San Diego resident, was fixated on Micahel Manning. Dressed as part-Catholic school girl, part-Wonder Woman, she held his book, In a Metal Web, an animated erotica series. The cover of In a Metal Web featured two futuristic women resembling Medusa with tentacles attached in various orifices, engaged in a loving 69 embrace.

“I love your artwork and your stories,” Rocha told Manning, who was selling books and signing autographs in a booth that occupied just a few of the 400,000 square feet of Exhibit Hall space. “Your work is erotic and tasteful. In America, everything is about tits and ass and not much else; but your work has beautiful presentation.

“It's never dirty,” she added.

Georg Rice of Santa Barbara perused an edition of Strangers in Paradise, a reality-based novel and comic that tells the story of lesbian lovers Katchoo and Francine. Rice was at Comic Con for the twelfth time. She explained her love for Strangers in Paradise, a series created by Terry Moore.

“It's only been recently that Moore has unequivocally portrayed Katchoo and Francine's open love for each other,” Rice said. Rice opined that Moore and other animators and writers, attuned to society's relaxed view towards alternative lifestyles, are now more open to depicting same-sex relationships.

Comics have long served as portals into creatively envisioning alterna-worlds-worlds that often explore unpopular or counter-cultural behavior. As was obvious at this year's Comic-Con, they also represent the newest outlet for the sex industry. Yet perhaps the increasing success of Comic-Con was best explained by a slogan on an attendee's t-shirt:

“Too many freaks, not enough circuses.”