Josh walks by your side, wearing his The Thing T-shirt that’s older than all your kids combined, and wearing a sour smile because, according to him, “back then these conventions were the real deal, not this Funko Pop fair.”

Your three kids, on the other hand, walk ahead as if the floor were lava, hopping from booth to booth. One stops in front of a My Hero Academia display case and blurts out: —Dad, these are real heroes, not your weird little black-and-white drawings.

Josh freezes, the veins in his neck about to burst, but all he does is turn to you with narrowed eyes. —Did you hear that? Did you hear what our own son just said? My son. Our son.

You try to hold back your laughter, but Josh keeps preaching as he walks, fingers raised like he’s delivering a sermon: —These brats don’t understand what it meant to hunt down a copy of Hellboy in the nineties, or what an exclusive Sandman edition meant. They think the world started with Netflix and TikTok!

One of the kids turns around and replies, with the natural ease of someone who doesn’t realize they’re summoning the apocalypse: —Dad, nobody reads comics on paper anymore, that’s for old people.