Some came for autographs, or to catch a glimpse of a legendary comic book artist. Others were there to browse the seemingly endless rows of tables piled with graphic novels and shelves filled with Japanese anime figurines. Plenty of fans flocked to the New York Comic Con in midtown Manhattan yesterday for a chance to dress up like Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi. For Steve Vincent and Mike McLaughlin, owners of a Forked River, Ocean County, comic book company, this weekend’s three-day convention was a chance to catch up with old friends and sell a few comics.

It’s like a family reunion of weirdos and people who don’t fit in,” Vincent, 36, said from behind the table he and McLaughlin were manning. “We look forward to it, just having some fun more than anything else.” Vincent and McLaughlin, 37, were two of more than 50,000 fans and artists who flocked to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for the event, which was created three years ago as New York’s answer to Comic Con International: San Diego. The New York expo has quickly become the largest popular culture convention on the East Coast.

Vincent and McLaughlin are former high school classmates who created their company, Angry Drunk Graphics, 10 years ago to publish Vincent’s comic books and promote the work of other young comic book artists.

A venture that started with the two trading comic books for beer in the parking lots of heavy metal concerts has become a full-fledged passion, and now they spend many weekends setting up merchandise tables at local punk and metal shows, where the attendees seem to like the dark, sometimes twisted tales explored in the comics they sell.

By day, Vincent is a mild-mannered public works employee in Forked River, and McLaughlin works with his father, selling and installing irrigation systems and sprinklers. They pride themselves on promoting artists whose work is unique, and sometimes uniquely offensive; the books displayed on their table were organized into sections of “all ages,” “PG-13″ and, in Vincent’s words, “really horrible.”

This is the one weekend a year that the biggest geeks in New York could spend a Saturday night with the likes of sexy actress Eva Mendes.

Mendes is among the celebrities headlining New York Comic-Con, the rapidly growing sci-fi and comics convention that is drawing tens of thousands of rabid fans to the Javits Center - many dressed for the part in spandex, capes and cowls.

It’s the one place in the city where Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee can get the same worshipful treatment as the Pope.

“I consider myself a freak, so I’m right at home,” said Mendes, who with comics legend-turned-director Frank Miller, is promoting her upcoming movie, “The Spirit.”

“Halloween is my favorite time of the year, so Comic-Con is right up my alley.”

Now in its third year, the three-day convention has grown faster than a speeding bullet.

Last year, an estimated 49,000 zealots attended; organizers rented a space that’s 100,000 square feet bigger this year.

They learned their lesson from the inaugural event, where overcrowding forced fire marshals to turn away ticket holders.

“The geeks are coming out of the closet,” said Flynn, founder of the New York Jedi, a team of “Star Wars” enthusiasts who stage lightsaber battles for the conventiongoers.

During a panel at the New York Comic Convention today, Marvel Comics announced that they will be working with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Orson Scott Card to adapt two of his most acclaimed novels, Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, into comic books later this year.

Ender’s Game, a cult-favorite novel about a child prodigy named Ender recruited to help fight an alien army, and Ender’s Shadow, a concurrent book focused on another young soldier, will launch as separate comics in late 2008, with the first Ender’s Game collection due out in summer 2009.

Like Marvel’s other literary crossovers, the Ender’s Game comics aim not only to woo new readers into comic stores, but also to continue the push of graphic novels and trade paperback collections into traditional bookstores and libraries where they can reach a more mainstream audience.

Card, who also currently scripts the Ultimate Iron Man superhero comic with Marvel, says he was eager to pursue a comic book adaptation, but that the rights were previously bound up in film deal for the two novels, which were optioned by Warner Brothers, the parent company of DC Comics.

“The moment I got the comic book and game rights extracted from the movie option deal, I let Marvel and other [publishers] know about the availability,” says Card. “I truly was open-minded about who would end up doing the books, [but] Marvel got there first, with a terrific, ambitious plan for Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.”