"Why does everything look cooler with Japanese on it?" asked Doug.

"Huh?" Jay said absently.

They strode forward, slowly, deliberately, taking it all in — this goblin market at the nexus of all realities where a circa 1980s Iron Man and an original 1963 Iron Man and Naruto and Sherlock Holmes could all be waiting for the same bathroom. Would it convey the scale of the thing to know that there was a person who elected to dress as the Kool-Aid Man? Would it convey it better to know there were two?

"Look," said Doug. "Those two Kool-Aid Men are fighting."

"I don’t know what to do," said Jay. "I don’t know what to do."

"About what? The Kool-Aid Men?"

Jay shook his head. Then he motioned at the whole thing, at everything: the comics and the culture and the people pulling the first Kool-Aid Man off the second Kool-Aid Man.

"We’re going to walk around and look at things," said Doug.

"But what things? Which ones? What if we don’t see all of them? What if we look at the wrong things?"

"Look. Calm down. We’re just going to get the lay of the land. We’re going to skim through the program and circle things. If someone tries to hand us something, we let them. If we pass a trivia quiz, we’re going to shout ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths!’ because that’s usually the answer. Are you going to be okay?"

Jay swallowed and nodded. The convention hall was filling with people. Someone in Spider-Man tights crouched near them and pointed with two web-slinging fingers.