Motorcycle events are not always drawn from the same predictable vendor, bike game, wet T-shirt contest formula. Sometimes they’re disguised as something else. At San Diego’s colossal carnival of sci-fi and horror fans and freaks, Comic Con devotees spilled out of the Convention Center and their skin-tight latex and almost-nothing costumes into what we can only describe as a kind of large-scale, pagan hoochie-coochie ritual. Sturgis should be this much fun.

Women beamed in from around the known cosmos in various forms of undress, posing (we assume) as Gossip Girls, Pan Am stewardesses, Captain America USO girls, WACs, slave girls, policewomen, zombie mommies, undead strippers, and super busty Total Recall mommas. We even spotted Media Girl, a lone reporter intrepidly interviewing hot vendor models and leather-clad, probably sex-crazy motorcyclists, undoubtedly zapping unsuspecting citizens with her beguiling super powers of journalism.

It appeared to be some resurrection of Star Wars’ characters, or at least Princess Leia. Strutting around in a sort of outer-space Amazon warrior metallic bikini, we saw Slave Princess Leia, Evil Princess Leia, Good Princess Leia and a few of your standard, plain Princess Leias.

Faux biker chicks crossed paths with real biker chicks, exchanging scowls and beauty tips. We could tell faux from genuine by their extreme pastiness and unordinary lack of helmet hair. What really stood out at Comic Con was the palpable feeling of downtown San Diego in a good mood. This stuff is pure fun, a happy escape from the stubborn misery of the foreclosed world.

Wicked women in killer stilettos cheerfully hammed it up for the camera; in fact, we couldn’t stop them. In countless years of event coverage, we have never seen so many people not only willing to have their picture taken, but insisting on it; pursuing us to immortalize them on the Internet. At most rallies, bikers are too busy looking like a badass to show the world they’re smiling on the inside, and actually having a good time.

Comic Con, it seems, captures that certain sexy something, a heady mix of carnal posturing, sweaty sex pheromones, animal hides, bare skin, high heels and a playful, irresistible call to adventure, be it on the naked road or a galaxy far, far away.

Perhaps a common thread runs through bikers, princesses, vampires, super do-gooders, super bad villains, and the even the ravenous, rotting dead. We are all menacing creatures of peril, addicted to adrenalin and a weird, unspoken primal urge to break free of reality. Nothing wrong with wanting to fly half-naked into the wind, or occasionally munch a few measly brains, is there?