Stormtrooper Elvis has become such a fixture that I almost didn’t bother taking a picture of him when I saw him this year… but then I noticed his pose, and the Sauron statue in the background.

There were a number of people walking around with “Free Hugs” signs, most of them women, but a few men. I never actually saw someone take one of them up on the offer, though.

On the subject of “Free” signs, I found it amusing that the Bantam Dell booth was trying to attract people with a hand-lettered cardboard sign proclaiming, “FREE!”

At one point I looked upward at the ceiling of Ballroom 20. With The Dark is Rising being made into a movie, I saw this lighting fixture and cross-beams and immediately thought of the Sign of Fire.

This guy had the ultimate cheap costume: A roll of tape. He just took every freebie flyer that was handed to him, and taped it to himself.

There’s apparently a band called CKY. Some of their merchandise manages to work the name into a rather rude saying…

There was a group of women in identical red dresses, with identical hairdos, and identical shoes. I saw a few of them wandering the floor on Saturday, but didn’t realize just how many there were until we left the convention center for dinner, and saw them crossing the street.

Edit: Mystery solved? The Resident Evil panel featured 17 Milla Jovovich doubles wearing her iconic red dress. This looks like more than 17, and the dresses don’t seem to be ripped in the right place, but this could be them.

Continued in Strange Sights of San Diego.

She did the makeup from scratch, using latex and fake blood, and got a lot of attention. In fact, while waiting in line two hours to get into the panel, series director Allan Arkush walked past, stopped… and took her picture!

Sadly, even after waiting two hours she wasn’t able to get into the room, which was about half as big as it needed to be for the audience. Lots of people left at that point, but she was among the group that stayed hoping to get into the Battlestar Galactica panel afterward (which she did). While bored in line, she and the fan next to her posed as Sylar and victim. Edit: we have a copy of the photo, and permission to post it!

So you can see the result of the traumatic experience of the day:

She got her revenge, though. After we went to see the Buffy the Vampire Slayer 10th anniversary screening of “Once More With Feeling” (described in my Saturday guest post at Comics Should be Good), we went out to the Ghirardelli shop in the Gaslamp District. She got a dark chocolate raspberry sundae, and the raspberry sauce was dripping around the edge of the glass, just so…

While all four of the major Flashes have been men, DC has published a number of female speedsters, including several alternate-reality Flashes and two who have worn the Flash symbol in-continuity: Lady Flash and Jesse Quick.

I also found it interesting that both costume designs incorporated sunglasses, reminiscent of one of Jesse’s later costumes and of the Kingdom Come version of Iris West II.

Update August 3: Wallyoeste and West both pointed out CBR’s 3rd Photo Parade, which includes two pictures of a couple in Flash costumes. Part 4 has a picture of a DC group with a fifth. This brings it up to at least 5 Flashes at the convention: 3 women and 2 men.

I think it was Saturday afternoon that I noticed a huge cluster of people in really good hall costumes, all ringing the G4 TV booth. I noticed the words, “For the next two hours…” scrolling by on the teleprompter, and realized they were probably trying to film an intro to their con report with all the cosplayers in the background.

No wonder people get the impression that everyone dresses up!

For the record: Katie dressed as a pirate on Saturday. Ironically, she got more attention for the Serenity T-shirt she wore on Friday. I just wore a T-shirt and shorts all four days.

I’ll post more photos later this week. Right now I want to finish the “Only in San Diego” series and then go to bed. It’s been a looong weekend!