Revenge of the nerds?

Deep in the innards of Cyprus Comic Con, standing before an empty stall for Snickers chocolate, a teenage girl, surrounded by her equally teenage friends, is holding up handwritten cardboard signs.

The signs are long and thin, like street signs. I watch as she chats for a while with a passer-by peering at the signs – then approach to find out more.

She instantly panics. “Is it not allowed?” she asks, crestfallen, obviously spooked by my advanced years and impressive-looking media badge. I assure her I’m just writing an article – but is what not allowed? What exactly are they doing here?

There are three signs, each with a scrawled question. ‘Who is the strongest character?’ reads one sign. ‘Who is the best villain?’ asks the second. ‘Timebomb or CaitVi?’ enquires the third.

“We just wanted to get the opinion of other anime fans,” says the girl, with her friends looking on in amusement. Their idea is to do a poll, with random fans scrawling their replies on the signs below the questions. At the moment, only the ‘best villain’ sign has elicited suggestions, two of them so far: Lord Brevon and Aizen. “We’ve only just started,” explains the girl.

What will they do with the results? Will they put them online?

“We’re thinking about it. Maybe, maybe not. It’s mostly just for fun.”

This, in a nutshell, is the spirit of Comic Con – not just the DIY approach, but the sense of community. If these girls took the signs to school, for instance, fellow anime fanatics would presumably stop and answer the survey – but unsympathetic classmates might deride them as geeks or nerds. What, after all, could be nerdier and more Reddit-like than making a ranked list of fictional characters, for no reason other than the fun of it?

Here, on the other hand, at this huge three-day event on the grounds of the old State Fair in Nicosia, they feel confident that everyone around them will be as excited about the project as they are – and even if they’re not (maybe because they’re into Marvel rather than anime), they certainly won’t tear it down. No wonder she’s so crestfallen to see an obvious outsider like me enter the chat.

It’s also, of course, a way of meeting like-minded people. Nerds are supposed to be unsociable, but the vibe at this year’s CCC (which took place on October 3-5) was surprisingly convivial. Walking to the entrance on Saturday – a long walk; the parking situation is out of control – I note a young man dressed in black, holding up a giant black obelisk the size of a person, and ask who he’s cosplaying.

“Guts from Berserk,” he replies in a Slavic accent. “You know Berserk?”

“I don’t. But I’ll take a look at it now.”

“I highly recommend it!”

That’s the idea, shilling for your favourite shows and making friends in general. Marcus Anastasiou and Luca (15 and 19, respectively) are leaving as I arrive. They got some food and met “a bunch of new people,” says Luca, a low-key character in a black T-shirt. Marcus, on the other hand, sports assorted rings and a Mohawk straight out of 1980s Soho. He’s cosplaying, right?

“Yeah, I am,” he replies, then shrugs. “I mean, both, sort of.” His usual style isn’t really so different to this current look – but “I changed a little bit of my outfit, so it would look like the character”.

Who’s the character?

“Stevo, from SLC Punk.”   

I’m taken aback (and taken back), initially assuming that SLC Punk must’ve been turned into a show, or an anime – but no, these teenagers are indeed inspired by an obscure film from 1998 (starring Matthew Lillard, the gangly one from Scream) that wasn’t especially big even in 1998. It’s a reminder, firstly, that pop culture has become a sprawling, hydra-headed beast, all of it available to an online generation who may well venture down less-travelled paths – and, secondly, that, unlike carnivals with their array of familiar Spider-Men and Batmen, Comic Con is a case of self-expression where your cosplay can be meaningful only to yourself.

Thus, for instance, the woman (also with a Slavic accent) holding an umbrella of red streamers, who seems downright embarrassed by the inevitable ‘Who are you?’.

“I’m Hua Cheng,” she says, and shakes her head: “It’s – it’s Chinese novel…”

It’s all very idyllic and individualistic; but here’s the catch, in the age of late-stage capitalism. Everyone’s more ‘themselves’ than ever – but we’re also in a world that’s more corporate than ever.

Take, for instance, the girl with the handwritten signs outside the Snickers stall. I was only there briefly, so apologies if I’m misjudging Snickers – but I wouldn’t be surprised if that stall stayed empty for the whole three days. It’s entirely plausible that Snickers, or any large company, would take a stall at Comic Con purely as a marketing ploy, the cost (about €500, as I was told by participants) being a mere blip in their advertising budget – cheaper than renting a billboard and way more effective, allowing their logo to be glimpsed by over 30,000 people.

That was the expected number of visitors – obviously huge for Cyprus, many times the number who came to the first CCC back in 2014, and catnip to companies looking to showcase their brand.

Stephanis, for instance, the large electronics department store, had a stall this year. So did Soloneion bookshop. Both, you might say, are pop-culture-adjacent (Stephanis sell hardware; Soloneion have a comic-book section), but still very mainstream. The whole event was “powered” by digital-banking platform ECOMMBX, who greeted visitors with ‘Welcome to the Ecommverse’.

That said, it all balanced out. The food court, for instance (wittily named NomNomiCon, from the noise you make when eating delicious food), had the likes of KFC and Taco Bell – but also, for instance, Takoyaki “octopus balls”, Japanese street food womanned by Japanese chefs.

Comic Con is based on inclusion, taking the edge off its corporate feel by welcoming a dizzying diversity of faces and voices. This, you might say, is the revenge of the nerds. A global chocolate brand? Sure – but teen girls with handwritten signs too.

The most obvious point, after all (not an original observation, but true nonetheless), is that Comic Con has mutated into something far bigger than its original conception, now more of a Big Top for pop culture in general.

CCC 2025 had comics and anime, sure – but also board games, trading card games, pro wrestling, a film festival, a gaming contest, a “medieval zone”. There were special guests: Paul Anderson (aka Arthur Shelby) from Peaky Blinders, Craig Fairbrass from the Rise of the Footsoldier movies, most excitingly perhaps Jason Paige, the original singer of the Pokemon theme (!). There was live music, from skull-splitting metal to J-Rock sensation ЯeaL, the first Japanese band ever to play in Cyprus.

A stroll along the retail booths illustrates the diversity. Tamara Tanakidou, for instance, has run Gatapou – a workshop in the old town – since 1999, making handcrafted dolls, bags and personal items. Not exactly part of nerd culture, she admits (though her dolls include versions of Coraline, Harry Potter and so on), but creative, and determinedly low-tech.

Just two minutes away, on the other hand – speaking of dolls, and personal items – is a booth for 3D Me Lab, an Oroklini-based company which, if you’ll stand on a revolving machine and stay perfectly still for 15 seconds, will produce a 3D-printed statue/figurine of yourself, made from highly resistant resin, ranging in size from nine to 18cm and in price from €70 to €190.

They get all sorts of customers, explains their rep. “It might be a doctor, for instance, who’d like to have his own figurine in his office”. I nod in agreement – though I must say if I saw a 3D-printed Mini-Me staring up from my physician’s desk, it wouldn’t exactly fill me with confidence.   

I’ve been dawdling (and, it must be said, sweltering) for an hour and still haven’t seen anything specifically comics-related – but here, finally, is Artists’ Alley, a space for artists to ply their wares, and of course they include comic-book artists like Nicos Koutsis, a veteran Greek illustrator who’s worked with Erik Larsen at Image Comics, or fellow illustrator Nick Ashton (aka ‘Chicken Monster’) who has a film background, worked on Harry Potter back in the day, and raves about CCC.  

In London (where he’s based) there’s MCM Comic Con, “that’s the really big one. But it’s more like a corporate business, where you don’t really get looked after – whereas here they embrace you as part of their family… People just generally seem, like, a bit more happy.”

Koutsis also compares it quite favourably with the somewhat larger Athens Con – but he also nods ruefully when I observe that comics have become almost an afterthought in today’s pop culture.

“The people who read comics are slightly older – because back then, there was nothing but comics,” sighs the middle-aged artist. “When we have a smartphone in our hands we can stream something, or play a video game – so we tend to forget about comics, or books in general.”

This, in the end, is the irony: that comics, which were once looked down on for being too visual in a literary world, are now ignored (at least by many kids) for being too literary in a visual world.

The artform can’t seem to catch a break. The annual event named after it is thriving, however – even if it’s now expanded way beyond comic-book fans. Is that okay?

“Sure,” says 34-year-old visitor George. “The more the merrier!”

George works in IT – but the reason why he stands out from the crowd is because he has a tiny infant in a baby sling in front of him. He’s been coming every year, he says, right from the very first CCC when (I presume) he was free and single. It’s a tradition, at this point.

So what’s the plan this year?

“Have a couple of beers and go,” he says, looking a little shamefaced. “Because we have to move on. With the child, you know…”

Cyprus Comic Con is for everyone. Young dads with babies, teen punks with Mohawks, little kids and big kids, artists aspiring and professional. Walking around, I see Guts from Berserk hanging out with another Guts, then a K-Pop music stall, then shelves stacked with manga. I see the Lorax, Leatherface, a six-year-old Batman, three furry-eared teenage girls dressed in blue, green and red, their outfits adorned with an ‘S’, ‘T’ and ‘A’ respectively. Whoa, wait a second – what are you guys?

“Chipmunks!”

It’s all perhaps too much, in the style of an all-you-can-eat buffet – or again not enough, in the style of a young person spending time in a magical world where everyone’s just like them, and loves what they love, before being forced to head back to the more disappointing real one.

I also have to head back, equal parts overwhelmed and elated. Walking to my car I see Ghostface from Scream coming from the other direction, dressed in black and striding a little too purposefully – and feel my body tensing up instinctively as we pass each other. Then it’s over, and the world is the world again.