It's Springtime in San Diego, kittens and that means one thing: San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) approacheth! July 19 - 22, 2018 will find Yours Truly awash in cosplay and cultur de pop, more so than usual. Sure, it's still three months off; yet playing the big Con takes prep. Every sweltering, sunny, San Diego Summer year my Con-cohort and I, Eslilay Evoreday, immerse ourselves in all the geeky goodness at the grandest of comic book conventions.

“She called herself Bat-Girl! Gosh, I wonder who she is?”

- Robin, Batman #139, April 1961

Swooshing through an open window, Bat-Girl crashed the DC Comics clique in 1961. Resembling 1930s Norwegian, Olympic ice-skater Sonia Henie, she was more Madame Alexander doll than superhero. The first Bat-Girl, a.k.a. Betty Kane, was little more than a pretty, teenage nuisance and, according to Robin, “an inexperienced girl bound to get hurt pursuing crooks”.

On her Fiftieth, Batgirl, and we, might reflect on her personal transformations. Along her journey, she has refashioned not only her hair colour, costumes and careers, but her secret identities. Batgirl's personalities number so many, a PhD candidate might deconstruct her mythology as a dissertation on “Dissociative Identity Disorder in Pop-Culture”. However deconstructed, Batgirl's only constant is her utility belt.

"San Diego’s booming prosperity attracts unscrupulous characters ... This includes prostitutes and gamblers."

Unscrupulous is such a subjective characterization. Effervescent? Of course. Adventurous? Certainly. Creative? Sans doute! We, specifically of the Comic-Con ilk (as this post pertains to that segment of the San Diego populace) are merely carrying on Rabbitville's long-running, luxe and intricate tapestry of the curious, the frivolous, the entrepreneurial, the artistic, the devoted and the odd. We also like a good martini, an unobstructed sunset and free parking.

In the 237 summers which have come and gone since July 4th, 1776, the date has increasingly become a juncture for white sales and auto dealer blowouts. In fact, lost amidst the mall madness and car lot carnivals is a simultaneously fascinating and pedantic period of committee meetings, assignations, rewrites, copies, messengers, vote-taking and gallons of coffee, ale and wine. As I currently scribe the fourth novel in my six-part, historical-fiction series of books, Savannah of Williamsburg, Independence Day takes on a more front-and-center appearance than usual as research takes me through the 1750s, well into the meaty burgeoning of colonial revolution.

Savannah of Williamsburg devotees have been anxiously awaiting Book IV in my 18thC. historical-fiction series. Well, pour some tea and put up your feet, folks ... be prepared to wait a little longer. Happily, my non-Savannah writing affords me a bevy of opportunity: as of late, covering various comic book conventions, reviewing the odd TV series, interviewing other writers and some producers and actors, to boot. As I am inextricably bonded to geek culture, I heartily enjoy writing in this genre. Although, because it is raw-ther niche, the more I write, the more call I get to do so. It's a nerdy, vicious cycle, my pretties. Unfamiliar with some of my geek oeuvres? Find them at GoodToBeAGeek.com, under the pseudonym Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel del Coronado, and syndicated at RocketLlama.com and, soon, Nerdspan.com!