Here’s where I confess to my reason for having avoided San Diego Comic-Con for so many years. The event butts up against the Television Critics Association’s Summer Press Tour, two weeks of broadcast networks, cable channels and PBS presenting the programming they have coming up in the fall, which is currently in full swing at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. A completely different experience, of course — Comic-Con is for the fans, while Press Tour grants journalists the opportunity to talk to the stars, producers and executives responsible for the new and returning series they hope we’ll be watching over the next few months.

On paper, and in real life, Comic-Con is a lot more fun. People do not wear Iron Man suits or Wonder Woman costumes at the TCAs. (In public, we should say. It does take place in a hotel, after all.) But to the uninitiated, going from Comic-Con to the TCAs sounds like asking a participant in the Tough Mudder to run a marathon during the same weekend. Just thinking about it can make the healthiest athlete’s knees spontaneously give out. Yet anyone who asks me about Comic-Con at this round of TCAs will hear the same thing: if you love movies, TV and popular culture, if you ever felt an electric spark at picking up your favorite issue of a comic book, this is a pilgrimage you simply must make at least once.

While it’s common knowledge and a point of pride to anyone who knows his or her way around a 20-sided die that Vin Diesel is a Dungeons & Dragons player, only at Comic-Con would you have been able to listen to him break down the mythology of Riddick in the language of a dungeon master, then watching him grin like a little boy and bounce up in down in his chair excitedly at the thought of it.

Only at Comic-Con would “Game of Thrones” fans be treated to a spontaneous panel-crashing by Jason Momoa (aka Khal Drogo) who ran onstage simply to plant a kiss on his co-star Emilia Clarke and roar to a cheering crowd, “I’m not dead!”

Only at Comic-Con could “Vikings” fans feel the room shudder as the crowd roared along with castmember Clive Standen as he recited the battle cry: “Up onto the overturned keel. Clamber, with a heart of steel. Cold is the ocean’s spray… and your death is on its way. With maidens you have had your way… Each must die some day!”

In this world of fractured viewing habits, Comic-Con is one of the few remaining places where the scene in “The Empire Strikes Back” in which Darth Vader telling a battered Luke Skywalker what really happened to his father still brings a crowd to a halt, and where one can watch the resulting awestruck smiles spread across tens of faces all at once.

And in an environment filled with lots of cool, exclusive evening events, the Geek & Sundry party provided a laid back place of refuge — and catharsis, as hostess Felicia Day declared the dance floor officially open at 9:45pm and many attending happily complied with the decree, dancing to the same 1980s and 1990s hits that were popular when most partygoers were elementary school and teenage geeks.

Yes, there are crowds and lines and lots of people in costumes, three things many TV journalists — a solitary sort by nature — would rather avoid. The difference, I would tell them, is that Comic-Con crowds and lines are composed of our people. We are all folks who love epic stories and larger than life characters, people who appreciate creativity and approach characters and plots with an incredible amount of thoughtfulness.  People who are patient and understanding and enthusiastic, who know a lot about the stuff they love. We are all Comic-Con nerds at heart.

Plus, the costumes really are fabulous. I’d take a gaggle of people in superhero costumes over tens of executives in Brooks Brothers suits any day of the week, any time of year.

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