EVER wondered whether the Batmobile might make your commute cooler? Or if mind control might secure you a date? You are not alone. In turbulent times, with unemployment high, terrorists running wild and true love elusive, many people wish they had super powers. Some make that fantasy explicit by dressing the part. Over Labour Day weekend more than 62,000 daydreamers flocked to Atlanta for the 28th Dragon Con, an annual shindig celebrating comic books, sci-fi and lycra-clad crusaders for justice.

One visitor, Brittany Lea, says she loves the gathering as it allows people “really to be themselves”. Which in her case involves dressing up as someone completely different. Ms Lea’s day job is selling shoes in south Georgia; at Dragon Con she wears a bright red catsuit and pretends to be Deadpool, a superhumanly lethal Marvel comics assassin.

Some fans take their costumes very seriously. Carla Pullitte spent $700 on Etsy, a crafts website, for a white gown and silver crown to make herself look like Galadriel, an elf from “The Lord of the Rings”. Her husband cannot complain: he paid $2,000 for a custom-made Batman suit. Other fans take a more relaxed approach. Sporting a trucker’s cap, grimy shirt and camouflage shorts, “Bubba Fett” claims to be the redneck half-brother of Boba Fett, a bounty hunter from “Star Wars”.

Geeky tastes have come to dominate popular entertainment. The top five movies at the American box office since 2000 all featured extraterrestrials, superheroes or a green ogre. This year’s top two, “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, each present characters originally from Marvel comics. Hollywood is playing it safe. Special effects are so costly these days that studios can ill afford a megaflop. So they crank out new films with old characters who already have lots of fans. With a little updating, they seem contemporary. Captain America, who first appeared in 1941, used to fight the Axis powers. Now he confronts giant killer drones that zap people whom the government’s data-crunchers predict will one day pose a threat to national security.

Fantasy fashions change. Books about vampires are out; gargoyles are in, apparently. Yet fans have long memories. More than 30 years ago Erin Gray played Colonel Wilma Deering in “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”, a television series based on a comic book from the 1920s. At Dragon Con people still want her autograph. She says she loves hearing how young girls were inspired by her role as a female commander of the Earth’s defences. America has yet to elect a female commander-in-chief, but with examples like Ms Gray it will doubtless do so before the 25th century.