Outside the Gold Ring: Notes from the First Ever Middle East Film and Comic Con

V drifts along in front of the main stage, black cape sagging, the yachts of the 0.0001 percent in the marina beyond. Alan Moore’s vigilante looks happy as he vectors toward the shwarma hut.

My wife’s lounging on a pink beanbag in the lawn with my son, waiting for Jason Mamoa (Conan, Khal Drogo) to roll out. But a stoked Brit is emceeing with an Emirati-American dude, and soon we’re bobbing our heads to Abu Dhabi-engineered electronica, watching Zulu Nation robot-dance in full sun. This is the first really hot day of many to come in Dubai, and that guy’s gotta be burning up in his pirate gear. Mamoa is delayed.

This event, the first Middle East Film and Comic Con, is a surprise. Here we have punks, goths, otakus, and Filipinos, Americans and Emiratis all rocking with their Spock out like they just don’t give a damn. The fanboy volume is turned way up, even as conservatively dressed Emirati families mill through the crowds in mirrorshades, bemused.

An old Dutch alpha-geek and his pushy girlfriend order falafel at the vendor just ahead — his semi-pornographic t-shirt suggests he’s still mourning Moebius. But aren’t we all? An off-white zombie couple stagger into a clique of well-kanduraed Arabic gents. The ghoul make up, white and red, becomes lost among the checkered pattern of guthras, white and red. Later in the day, a clot of Abayaed-teens would gawk in horror at a suggestive comic book cover. They did not look away for a long time.

This Con is a surprise because of the open clash between music, sex, film, and popular culture on one hand, and the deeply religious and conservative attitudes of most Emirati families on the other.

But, in other ways, this event should have been expected, and is actually overdue. The crowd, after all, is self-selected. If you’re a teenage boy from Ajman whose daddy says cosplay is haram, then you wouldn’t have turned up at MEFCC in the first place. And the university girls in Dubai (the future leaders of the UAE) seem to have an appetite for manga romances. How far of a leap is it from lite yaoi to Lost Girls? Anyway, one of the most celebrated young Emirati creatives is Qais Sedki, author of Gold Ring — the Japanified story of an Arabic falconer. And Ms. Marzouqi’s cartoons and design work are all over Gulf media. The people here are eating it up — whether they’re Australian expats here for a laugh, or angsty Muslim kids from conservative families who’ve finally "found the others."

Harley Quinn, the Joker’s obsessive sidekick, surprises me as I step out into the light. She’s there smiling, sweating, ready to get up to some kind of no-good. I smile and step around, find my way back to my family. My wife’s got her pic of Khal Drogo. I’ve got a copy of Skottie Young’s Marvelous Land of Oz for my boy. We’re good. Let’s go.

Next year, they’ll need a bigger marina.

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