San Diego Comic-Con 2012: The Red Carpet Treatment

Comics making a difference was a vibe I felt, given the news, emails, and press releases sent to our office before Andy Mueller and I left for San Diego. The air was charged. From where I sat, the Mayan end of times prophecy was proving to be bogus because there were too many people acting like they were guzzling back-to-back energy drinks.

It was our first full day at San Diego Comic Con. The challenge was to figure out how we could balance our duty to “report” the news (i.e.: "who" was saying "what" at the number of panels upstairs) and how to capture the insane sideshow that was on every street corner. We were only two guys. It would be like trying to get on every ride at Disneyworld in eight hours. Simply put, a scenario that math would sum up as impossible.

So we drew straws to see what would be the best course of action for the day. And, with no surprise, we saw that we read the tea leaves right the first time (even though we were "winging it"). The action was in “the moment.” The story was in what people would say when we showed up with a microphone. This is what the crowd wanted to see on YouTube. Our public wanted Strange Days: scenes we could steal if we just walked around with a camera left on without consequence.

I figured, why not? We had an endless supply of batteries. Plenty of people who wanted to talk to us. We already knew that bloggers to professionals at satellite radio would be covering the day's panels.

“So let’s hit the trenches!” I said. “Let us storm the beaches. Tally ho, old friend.”

And we did just that, with none other than Mark Waid at the helm.

Mark was one of our earliest interviews, and in all the years that I’ve been to conventions I’ve never seen a person who can walk through a mass of people and make them move like he was Moses. The man literally parted the Red Sea on the convention floor.

For the first time, there was no crowd in front of us.

It defied description.

“We’re on our way,” Andy said.

“We chose wisely,” I retorted.

From there on, it was like we had a speed pass at the family amusement park. We just walked up to the front of every line, flashed our badges, and then it was showtime, ladies and gentlemen.

We interviewed a LOT of people on the first full day of San Diego Comic Con. We got film footage of a LOT of celebrities, and it all went down like smooth vintage whiskey.

Dave Dorman. Darwyn Cooke. Robert Kirkman. Mark Waid. Jill Thompson.

The full red carpet treatment, folks.

And the band played on, too. Michael Easton, Nathan Edmonson. Landry Walker. Eric Jones. Vince Hernandez. The list just kept going on and on. It was beautiful.

We were very fortunate to have met these professionals, and every one of them were gracious enough to let us sit down for off-the-cuff candid interviews with no script and no agenda. Just a man-on-the-street approach with some very bright minds that have very big hearts.

We've got signed comics we'll be giving away to prove it.

You’ll be seeing this stuff soon, along with a lot of pictures we took from cosplayers (God bless our Facebook page!).

A good time with the Big Guns, and it’s coming your way in mere moments….