And lo, here strode Escanor, god of sunlight and pride. Muscled arms outstretched, he wielded a golden battle ax and cast a haughty eye upon the hordes about him, the lowly goblins gathered inside the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in their green face paint and polyester gowns.
“I stand at the pinnacle of all races!” cried the god (here represented by Leighton Hardy, 23, who gamely flexed his pronounced biceps, abs, deltoids and latissimus dorsi upon request).
“Hell, yeah, that is dope!” said Samir McCloud, 33, who leaned back and took a picture of Mr. Hardy with his phone. “This is what I’ve been waiting for!”
The fan departed in the direction of Artist Alley, a gathering of more than 500 comic book illustrators and writers. When he was gone, Mr. Hardy lowered his voice and his ax and told his origin story, describing a boy who was bullied and small. The turning point was a fistfight in eighth grade: His adversary described young Leighton’s love of comic books as a disappointment to his family.
Wounded in pride and body, Mr. Hardy vowed to remake himself in the image of heroes like Escanor, the swolest character in “The Seven Deadly Sins,” a long-running Japanese manga series.
“Every muscle, every fiber is born from childhood trauma,” Mr. Hardy said of both his body and his alter ego. “Now I’m strong, and I look strong. And a little compliment like that makes my whole day.”
Mr. Hardy had arrived for the opening moments of New York Comic Con, which takes over the Javits Center this weekend. Thousands of people streamed through the doors on the Far West Side of Manhattan on Thursday. Most were dressed as regular Americans — T-shirts, sneakers, jeans or sweatpants.
Roughly a third arrived in full cosplay regalia, however, sporting the costumes and attitudes of their favorite characters from comics, video games, manga, movies, anime, streaming web series, collectible playing cards and every other medium one could think of.
A brief sampling from the first hours of Day 1: A woman dressed as a clicker zombie in “The Last of Us,” complete with gory face mask and fungal growth peeking through rips in her jeans. Several men in blue jumpsuits with elongated arms like Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four — one arm, made of papier-mâché and supported by a thin stick, was longer than its wearer was tall.
There was the horror character Babadook wearing a top hat wrapped in a rainbow scarf; a duo in soldier garb from “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild”; and a gaggle of people dressed as Tenna, an antagonist in the role-playing video game Deltarune who has a TV set for a head.
Like Mr. Hardy, many of the most dedicated cosplayers described their relationships with their characters as something deeper than pop-culture fandom. Many had experienced childhoods of painful social exclusion, they said. To arrive in such a grand venue dressed as prideful gods and battle-scarred paratroopers, as blue-faced humanoids and half-elf moon druids, is to bask, for at least a few hours, in the appreciation of a community that is both loving and vast. Organizers expect this year’s Comic Con to draw more than a quarter of a million visitors over four days.
“I’m here because I want to feel powerful,” said Steven Berry, 21, who came from his home in Saratoga, N.Y., wearing the foam-plated armor of a soldier from the video game Helldivers. “When I go outside at home, people make fun of me. And on the internet, it’s very lonesome. This is the one place where I can come and feel comfortable.”
Soon a pair of attendees stopped to take Mr. Berry’s picture. He attached his face mask to his helmet, stood at attention and raised his right hand in gallant salute.
Rooted in comic books, conventions like Comic Con have evolved from an early focus on nerd-culture totems to embrace all forms of pop culture. This year’s famous guests include Sigourney Weaver, who is scheduled to appear on Friday for a panel talk and reunion with the cast of the original “Alien” movie from 1979, and Norman Reedus, star of the last three seasons of “The Walking Dead.”
Fans provide the economic engine of such conventions, but Comic Con is not a pure expression of fan enthusiasm. Entry costs $90 a day, with V.I.P. tickets going for $800 apiece. All tickets are sold out, according to the event’s website. This year’s main stage is sponsored by Wal Mart. Exhibitors include All Nippon Airways, Atlantic Records, HBO Max, Nickelodeon and Paramount+.
“We’re here to expand our portfolio of social media content, and hopefully to meet some new clients,” said João Costa, 44, a talent agent who flew from Portugal to stand by the Javits Center entrance and pitch his company, Nerdy Core Xperience. He wore the costume of someone not actively involved in processing their childhood demons: black puffy vest, black T-shirt, white sweatpants and black Nikes.
As the audiences grow and the event’s focus continues to widen, however, Comic Con’s foundations of loving nerdiness remain. Lindley Key spent a few minutes on Thursday morning calling and texting friends to meet her on the steps in front of the convention center. She made the perfect beacon, dressed in a blue peasant skirt with a blue wig, blue face paint and black plastic horns. This was the costume of Jester Lavorre, a tiefling — a humanoid with a “devilish ancestry” — and a main character in “Critical Role,” a web show in which professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons in real time.
Ms. Key’s fondness for Jester Lavorre draws on a playground trauma, when Ms. Key’s childhood tormentors stole her “Star Wars” books and buried them outside her school in Wilkesboro, N.C. Now she stood in morning sunlight amid a huge crowd in Manhattan, and people complimented the expertise with which she had applied her freckles, which were also accented in blue.
“Being here with so many people who are just as accepting and nerdy as me is very healing to my inner child,” said Ms. Key, 34, who lives in Astoria, Queens.
Just then, Ms. Key’s friend Annie Manning arrived, dressed as Keyleth, the moon druid of “Critical Role” fame.
“Oh, my God, I love your antlers!” Ms. Key said.
The two friends hustled inside to attend a panel talk by the cast of “Critical Role.” Afterward, they came upon a kindred spirit: Elizabeth Carmichael, who was dressed as Lieve’tel Toluse, an elven cleric. The three “Critical Role” fans gasped in mutual appreciation.
“Your cape!” Ms. Manning exclaimed. “It’s gorgeous!”
Ms. Carmichael smiled and opened her cloak to show strings of fairy lights, which she had sewn in the shapes of constellations including Andromeda, Pegasus and Corvus the raven.
“Oh, man, where’s my remote?” Ms. Carmichael said, fishing around in a tote bag. When she found it, the constellations began to pulse and blink. Her new friends oohed. Her costume, including a skirt of metal leaves sewn together chain-mail-style, plus a tiara and a 3-D-printed necklace of ninja stars, took two months to fabricate.
“I always felt like I was outside of the joke, looking in,” said Ms. Carmichael, 28. “It’s healing to be in community with my fellow nerds.”
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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