Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1058: 2023 San Diego Comic-Con

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about my trip to the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con and my history with the San Diego Comic-Con.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work at Home Edition. So I am back at home after being in San Diego for the 2023 San Diego Comic-Con. So today's podcast is going to talk all about the Comic-Con. And I'm going to also hit a little bit on the history of San Diego Comic-Con and my connection with it and magic. So I'll talk a little bit about that as well. Anyway, so, okay, so in 1993, I'm going to first talk a little bit about my history with San Diego Comic-Con. And then we'll get into this year's trip to San Diego Comic-Con. So in 1993, I was working part-time at a game store called The Game Keeper.

And people were coming in and asking about this game called Magic that at the time we did not have. And I looked for it, but I couldn't find it as well. It was Magic. So just a little behind the scenes here. When Magic first came out, it was mostly on the West Coast and there wasn't a lot. You know, the actual run of Alpha was not a very – I mean, I know that Peter and the company thought they were making six months supply and it sold out instantaneously. But there really wasn't that much out there. It wasn't – people were looking for it, but there just wasn't, overall,

you know, the phenomenon that magic became happened pretty quickly, and so it was almost impossible to find magic in the early days. And so people came in our, because I worked

at a game store, and they're like, do you have this? And that's the first I had ever heard of magic. And the funniest thing is, I'm not even sure everybody who walked in

like even knew the name of it. They would just kind of describe it, you know. But I'd heard of it, and I was intrigued by it. And so, the first time I actually saw Magic Cards was at the 93

San Diego Comic Con. I lived in LA at the time, so I drove down. Let's see, when was the 93? So the 93 Comic-Con was August 19th through the 22nd. So the game came out at Gen Con in early August. So this is like that month, the month it came out.

Now, the funny thing was I couldn't buy product. None was for sale. I looked around and tried to see if I could find some magic. But I did find somebody. There was a woman at one of the booths that had a deck. And I'm like, can I see it? I'd heard so much about it, but I hadn't seen it. So she let me look at the deck.

Once again, I couldn't buy anything yet. I would later buy later that month at the end of August. So a couple weeks later, there was, I think it's called OrkCon, but there's a, there's three conventions, at least back in the day. There were three gaming conventions, and one was, like, Labor Day weekend. And that's where I first saw, for the first time, and bought, bought my Alpha Packs, was at that convention. Anyway, I was at San Diego Comic-Con. I, for the first time, actually got to hold magic cards in my hand and got to see them.

And I was, I mean, the interesting thing for me was I didn't, I just heard of them. Like, people described them. It was like this mystical beast that people just, you know,

so to actually see them. And I was really, I was quite blown away. I remember the first time that I saw the cards. They just looked so pretty and they had the art and I didn't even know what to expect.

That's the other funny thing was, I mean, I guess I knew they were cards because people say it was a card game. But for some reason, like I hadn't pictured them with all this colored art. Anyway, I was quite blown away. And so in 93, San Diego Comic-Con,

it's the first time I saw magic. 94, so back in the day, I lived in Los Angeles. I would go every year to Comic-Con because it's the first time I saw Magic. 94, so, back in the day I lived in Los Angeles, I would go every year to Comic-Con because it was in San Diego, which is like two, two and a half hours drive away. And in 94, I got a chance, Wizards had a booth.

I don't think Wizards had a booth at 93. I don't think they were big enough yet. They had just gone to Gen Con, and so they weren't big enough yet. They were going to San Diego Comic Con the same month. But in 94, Wizards had their first booth at Comic Con.

And so I had the first chance to go to the booth. And that's the first opportunity I had to actually meet employees of Wizards of the Coast, was at Comic Con. And then, I, 94 and 95. 95, I went to the booth knowing that I was going to get hired by Wizards. I hadn't been hired yet because my job started in October.

But I knew that was a trip when I went down that I knew I was getting hired. So, I mean, I was now a future – soon-to-be employee. And I think if I remember correctly, I actually worked the booth. Like they put me to work and I worked the booth in 95. So – and then in 96, I started working at Wizards. And then for a couple of years, I would – like my early days at Wizards, I just went everywhere. I used to travel all the time and I would go down to Comic-Con. Then what happened was, I don't know if, I mean, Wizards probably still went to Comic-Con,

but there was a period of time where I just stopped going to Comic-Con, and other things were going on. And so, like, I went to Comic-Con, like, in the, you know, mid to late 90s. But then I stopped. And then, I'm trying to think what year it was. It was, I don't know, 2010 or 11, sometime around there. My friend Mike Ryan, who you might know as the co-creator of the Weatherlight Saga,

he was working for another company and he was going to be at Comic-Con and he had a room. And he said to me, hey, if you want to come down, you can crash in my room. And I hadn't been... Once again, in the early days,

I'd been to Comic-Con a whole bunch of times. I'm a guy very familiar with Comic-Con. But I hadn't been there in a while, and what had happened in my absence is Hollywood hit it. Comic-Con in the early days, so Comic-Con first, the very first Comic-Con was in 1970.

So my interaction with it is in the late 80s and, you know, 90s, early to mid-90s. My earliest with it. So by the time I was there, it was in the San Diego Convention Center. It didn't start there. But it was still at its heart more about comics. It had definitely started to bleed in around it a little bit.

Obviously, you know, Wizard of the Coast was there, so gaming was part of it. But it's still, the Hollywoodness of it didn't really happen until somewhere in the early 2000s, you know. So when I went, and once again, like 2010, 11, 12, sometime around there, I went, Michael invited me, and I was blown away. It was just way bigger than anything I'd ever seen. And it was just fascinating. I had a great time.

And then I had such a good time, I said to Michael, okay, I'm in, let's do it next year. And so what happened the next year is something happened. I forget what it was, and Michael couldn't make it. But he, I was able to, he did give me the room, because and, but anyway, I went down, but Michael actually couldn't make it that year. And then it dawned on me, I said, hey, why aren't we doing panels here? So I went to the Magic Brand Manager, which I think was Elaine Chase, and I said to them, hey, why aren't we doing a panel? Like, this is so, you know, Comic-Con is squarely, you know, in our neck of the woods, you know, this is, you know, like the geek convention of all geek conventions and, you know, gaming is very, very much part of it.

I said, we should do a panel. And I, so I said to Elaine, I go, do you mind, can I do a panel? Would you mind if I did a panel? And Elaine's like, no, you can do a panel. So I signed up to do a panel. But in the meantime, we're sort of spread around wizards. And they said, you know what? Maybe we should do a whole, but not just, said you know what maybe we should do do a whole

but not just you know just you let's do a whole panel and so our very first panel was for original Zendikar and we sent down

like five I don't remember I think Aaron was one of them maybe Jeremy Jarvis Jenna Jenna Helen anyway

so there was a period of time where we were we were doing sort ofblown panels at Comic-Con, and we'd send down different people. And so for, I don't know, six, seven years maybe, we did sort of big full-blown panels. And at some point, I think they decided

that we were trying to cut back a little bit. We were doing too many events and whatever. And so they decided not to do Comic-Con. But again, I went, I don't know if it's Elaine or whatever, but I went and I said, well, I'm happy to go. I can run it. I can do a panel by myself. And the idea basically at this point,

I had started my blog, Blog Talk. I'm like, look, I'll just, it'll just be like a live version of my blog. People ask me questions every day on my blog. They'll ask me questions there, you know, and I'll preview some stuff and I'll just, it'll just be like a live version of my blog. People ask me questions every day on my blog. They'll ask me questions there. You know, and I'll preview some stuff and they'll ask me questions. And so for the last, I don't know, like six or so years, I've just done Blogatog Live, which is, I mean, it's called the Match of the Gathering panel. And then it's called Blogatog Live.

And basically what I do is I do some preview information and then I will take questions from the audience. Okay. So what happened was in 2020 and 2021, the pandemic, it had to be online. So I don't know if you saw, but I recorded stuff and we posted it online. So we had panels, but the panels were all online. And then last year was the first year back at Wizard. So last year, anyway, most of my time, I mean, I don't think, I don't know if I did podcasts about when I was at home for the pandemic. But most of the times I've been at Comic-Con, I do a podcast every year. So if you want to hear about all the different years, we can go back and we can do that. So this year, I set it all up.

This year had a few wrinkles. So let's talk a little bit about the wrinkles. The biggest wrinkle was this. was, so we were planning at San Diego Comic-Con to talk about Doctor Who, because that was one of the, we're doing Universes Beyond. And, but it was important, it was important that it got announced early

so they could do stuff at the Doctor Who booth and things. And so it was supposed to be announced on Thursday. So Gavin actually did a special, like, bonus magic panel so that we could talk all about Doctor Who. And just for those that don't know, Gavin is a Doctor Who fan, a giant fan. He led the product. And so, like, if anyone was going to talk about Doctor Who, Gavin was the. He led the product. And so, if anyone was going to talk about Doctor Who, Gavin was the right person to do it. And he did an

excellent job. So at 7 o'clock on Thursday, Gavin did his panel. So, Gavin talked a little tiny bit about Universes Beyond in general, but mostly what he was talking about was Doctor Who. He showed off, I think he showed off four cards. He showed off, I think he showed off four cards.

He showed off the TARDIS and the Tenth Doctor and Exterminate and the Parting the Ways are sagas that represent different stories. Anyway, so he premiered a bunch of stuff, showed a lot of pictures. And just did, I mean, mostly his panel was a full-blown, here's the preview for Doctor Who. Which went awesome. And if you're at all a Doctor Who fan or not even a Doctor Who fan, just like cool Commander decks, those are coming. Anyway, the challenge was I needed content for my panel. What am I talking about? Well, Gavin was doing the special Doctor Who panel, so I wasn't going to be doing that.

And here's the tricky part. So I'm recording this. I just got back from San Diego Comic-Con. On Tuesday, I leave to go to Barcelona for Barcelona Magic Con. I don't go to all the Magic Cons, but they asked me... I asked them which ones they'd like to see me at,

and they really wanted me in the Barcelona one because it's going to Europe. And I haven't been to Europe for a while, and the fans like to see me, so I'm going to Barcelona. At Barcelona, on the Friday of Barcelona, I and Gavin, again, Verhey, and a video, one of our art directors, are doing a preview panel.

And we're going to talk about a bunch of stuff. Then a week later, I'm going to Indianapolis for Gen Con where we're having another panel and we're going to preview a bunch of stuff. And so we had all this preview content coming. So I sort of went to Blake, Blake Rasmussen.

You might know him as the person who does the weekly streams. But Blake's in charge of previews and things. So I said to him, okay, Blake, what can I preview? You know, we knew Gavin was doing the Doctor Who stuff on Thursday. What can I preview? And he thought and he goes, yeah, I don't think we got anything. What do you mean?

He goes, yeah, I think we're previewed out. Everything's allocated. I don't think you can preview anything. And I'm like, well, I got to preview something. You know, this is the Comic-Con panel. I need to preview something. And he goes, you know, there's not, there's nothing to preview. So I said, okay, well, let me think about this. So one of the things that I realized when I sort of thought about things that I do. So there's this thing I started doing way back in the day in the dualist. I used to have a column called Insider Trading.

And I started doing this thing where I did what I called the dualist teasers, where I would give partial information about cards in the upcoming product. I wouldn't tell you everything. The first set I did it for was Mirage. And anyway, I would basically tell you some information, and you would be like, oh, what could that be? And it got players talking. I stopped doing them for a little while.

Then I started up again. I forget why I started them up again. I started up again and they were very popular. So now I just, I do them all the time now. So every set that comes out with, usually with new, every booster product with new content, I do teasers for. And so, okay. So anyway, that got me thinking.

I said, okay, we know that players like teasers. What can I do? So I said, okay, what if I got images? Because pictures are really good because pictures are evocative. And it's something people can, like, pictures have a lot of details in them. But if I show you a picture, I'm not giving away a lot. It's not saying mechanics. It's hinting at things, but pictures are really good.

And I actually think we could use pictures more for preview content, personally. But anyway, so I said, I went to Blake, and I said, okay, here's my idea. I want to show some number of pictures for some number of products. I think I first pitched 10, but it ended up being 8. And the idea was, here are 8 images from 8 different products

that will all be previewed in the next 2 weeks. So what I said to him is, well, let me set it up. Let me sort of give people information so we can sort of build up to the preview panels, that we can get people talking. One of the things that's really important is you want people to sort of discuss stuff and that the reason i like the teasers is i like to do stuff in which i'm creating content where the content is that the players are generating content right i give you enough information the players have fun sort of figuring out what they can figure out and these pictures

uh i worked with matt danner who's um who works a lot with the story and stuff, and Matt was very careful to pick pictures that really had a lot going on, and there's things to speculate about, and so it's really fun right now, people are talking about it, it's fun to see the details people get and what they think they can figure out, so that's a lot of fun. But anyway, I got Blake to sign off, so, okay, so, now let's get to Comic-Con. Okay, so Comic-Con is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Wednesday is a preview night that's like 6 to 9. And then the other four days is open from 9.30 to 7, I believe.

This year was a weird year. Um, this year was a weird year, uh, because of the Writers Guild strikes and the Screen Actor Guild strikes. Um, usually when Hollywood wants, uh, you know, pitch a new, wants to sell an upcoming movie or TV show, they send the creatives and the actors to sell it, right? Oh, well, here's, you know, here's the people behind the show, usually like the exec producer or the main writer, and then the cast members. And that's usually a fun way to sell it.

And Comic-Con has a lot of that. They talked about how Hollywood sort of came and made a big presence. There's a thing called Hall H, which is like the biggest stadium. And Hall H is huge. It holds like 4,000 people. But people will wait in line, sometimes overnight, you know, to get in. And usually there's a lot of different announcements and major things going on. But what happened was with the strikes, a lot of things got canceled.

And so that meant that there were a lot – there were less things in Hall H. Hall H like ended earlier in the day. And it's interesting that there's a little bit more of a focus on comics. It's going back to the heart of Comic-Con. So normally, by the way, when I'm at Comic-Con, when I'm not working, you know, I will go see panels. And normally, if I go see a comic panel,

it's not hard getting in. I mean, there's nobody there. There's plenty of comic fans at Comic-Con. But it's the long lines are more to see TV shows and movies and stuff. And that if you want to see a comic book, usually it's not that hard to get in. I waited in line. I mean, I did a bunch of comic stuff

and I waited in line because because there wasn't Hall H stuff, it's sort of like the exhibition hall was more crowded. Oh, the other thing about it is there's a giant exhibition hall that is something like 50 rows or something. And it has everything from giant companies sort of talking about stuff. There's comic companies and there's movie companies and there's video game companies. And then there's a lot of individual sellers that are selling pick whatever you want to pick that's sort of comic

themed. There's comic book sellers, there's book sellers there is games yeah magic is usually, you can find magic on the floor and so one of the things that happens is that there is a lot

of like so there's the exhibition hall. And then there's individual panels and things that you can go see. So normally at a Comic-Con, normally I do my panel. And the panel for the last, like, ten years has been 630 to 730 in room 24 ABC. I think they just sort of figured out where we go and they stick us there every year. It's worked pretty well for us and it's a decent time. It ends up being the capper

for my... I normally leave on Sunday. Sunday's a little slower day. So it's always the capper for my thing. Anyway, we get in on Wednesday. Wizards doesn't have its own booth anymore. There is a pretty large Hasbro booth.

And this year, one little corner of the Hasbro booth was dedicated to Magic. And then one little corner, which was the opposite corner, was for Dungeon Dragons. And so... And it just had a bunch of stuff set up. Nothing is sold

directly there. There is a place to buy things, and there are exclusive things that Hasbro will do. Magic in the past has done exclusives. We did not do an exclusive this year. I think there was a secret lair that you could buy on site, but you could also buy it through the secret lair website. So it wasn't unique. It wasn't exclusive to Comic-Con. But anyway, so we had the booth there, the

Hasbro booth. And we had some fun stuff. There's some statues that people make, a company that makes statues. And there was Chase and Liliana and Chandra. Really elaborate. They're actually, I mean, they're like close to two feet high.

And then we were showing off a bunch of things, some secret layers and different stuff. Now, the other thing that goes on is Comic-Con is so big that some of the events take place at hotels nearby.

The convention center gets completely filled up. So, for the last bunch of years, Magic has had its own room in the Marriott, which is one of the hotels next to the convention center. So on the first day, not

Wednesday night, not preview night, but on Thursday, I went over there and there were lots of people playing lots of games, and one of the events they ran is a single box sealed where you get a box of product, and you make your sealed decks out of a box of product, which was really cool.

I also told them there's a format that R&D had made way back in the day we called deck and draft, where you open up a box, and you open each of the 36 packs and draft one card out of it, and you make your deck. They didn't do decadent draft. They just did a whole box draft. But there was all sorts of stuff,

you know, just lots of formats and drafts and all sorts of things. And then they have prizes. This year, the thing that everyone was focused on was they had some giant magic cards that had been used for some event, and they were trying to get rid of them,

so they priced them to move. So I know I saw a bunch of people with giant magic cards during the weekend. And then, normally, in most Comic-Cons, I do a signing. For some reason, I just didn't... I don't know if there was... It was busy at the booth. Normally there's a little area at the booth

where they do events at the booth. And so I did not do a signing this year. Normally I do. And also the other thing I often do at Comic-Con is I'll do interviews. I do press interviews, but this year I did not do any press interviews. So anyway, I had a lighter year than normal.

So Thursday and Friday, But this year, I did not do any press interviews. So anyway, I had a lighter year than normal. So Thursday and Friday, I poked my head in a few things. And there were, oh, Gavin. 7 o'clock on Thursday was Gavin's panel. I went to that. And then it was exciting. And like I said, Gavin did an amazing job and everybody was really pumped

and then Saturday was my panel so I actually had some time to sort of see some panels so one of the things I was most I'll geek behind the scene you can see my comic geekiness here so my favorite comic

Robert Kirkman, the guy who makes The Walking Dead, makes a comic called Invincible. And for many years, I would say Invincible is my favorite comic, and the response I always got was, I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never heard of that.

But then Amazon made a show out of it, an animated series, and it was a giant hit. And so season one went so well that they ordered season two and season three. Season one happened right when the pandemic started. It probably helped it because everyone was trapped in their home.

But anyway, season two is just coming out right now. So I got a chance to go to some panels on Invincible and these were giant rooms that were filled to the completely filled with fans. So it's interesting to see something that was this little niche tiny thing

and you get to media anyway. So it's cool. Okay, so then on Saturday, I had the panel. So what we did is I started, I showed all the stuff that, the stuff that Gavin had showed in his preview, his panel, because not everybody in this panel had been to the other panel. And hey, if there was new content this weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, I wanted you to see it.

So Gavin had four cards, four normal cards, three planes and one phenomenon. And then we also showed some tokens that had fun art on it. Then I showed my thing. So basically I called it Maru's Visual Teaser. I showed eight images, and I'm not sure when this is going up, but the images are online. They're on – I retweeted them on Twitter, and they're on my blog. Anyway, there's eight images from eight different products,

and there's a lot of fun then. I'm having a lot of fun watching people sort of see what they can figure out. So anyway, I showed off that. And then I went to question and answers. And I got a lot of fun questions. So let me talk real quick about Q&As. I love doing Q&As. Obviously, I do a blog every day where I answer questions every day.

But there's something really fun about doing it. Like, I like to write. So I enjoy answering questions in written form. But it's also a lot of fun doing it, like, vocally answering questions. It's a little more right for telling stories. You get a little more emotion in there. And so it is fun. And I got a lot of great questions and people asking about everything from, like, how we handle power level to are we going back to things like Tarkir.

And someone asked about Alara. People were asking about how we make planeswalkers. We had questions about all sorts of things. Anyway, so I spent a lot of time sort of walking through. all sorts of things. Anyway, so I spent a lot of time sort of walking through. Usually what happens when, one of the things I want to do is

whenever someone asks a question, I want to A, answer the question, but B, I want to see if, can I involve, can I tell a story, can I give behind the scenes stuff? So whenever I can, I'm trying to give information about, hey, you might not know this,

but you know, let me tell you about this. Like someone asked about the ring mechanic from Lord of the Rings, and so I talked about, you know, the evolution, how it came about, and, you know, it started as a mechanic

called Leadership that was going to be... Dominaria originally had a small set associated with it, but we cut that to make a course ad, and so it's a lot of fun, and so I, you know,

one of the things that's really neat is you get to interact and talk with, you know... It's fun to sort of viscerally share the stories. And the audience really had a good time. I finally remembered, by the way, every year my wife says, you know, can you take a picture of you in the crowd? And this year I finally did a selfie of me in the crowd, which I, I mean, this is my 14th or something panel. But anyway, the other thing was the panel after us,

there was a gap before the panel after us and so they let me run a little long. So I actually answered more questions than normal. And then afterwards, what I always do is we go outside the room because there's another panel coming in the room and then I sign autographs and take pictures. So anybody who wants to take a picture, have an autograph

signed or ask a question, I usually do that. That takes 20 minutes or so. and take pictures. So anybody who wants to take a picture, have an autograph signed, or ask a question, I usually do that. That takes 20 minutes or so. Then after that, we have a tradition. We always do a staff dinner on Saturdays. I think the tradition started because Whitney Williams, who does a lot of our organizing,

way back when, was planning it. And she said, I want to plan a staff dinner. What would most excite you for a staff dinner? And I said, well, my favorite food is Alaskan king crab legs. If you know my birthday tradition, I'm a big fan of king crab legs. And so she found a place. It's called the Ocean of kink crab legs. And so she found a place. It's called the Ocean Air that had crab legs. And so for many, many years, our tradition was on the final day,

we went to the Ocean Air and had seafood. It was very good. And then in the pandemic, it shut down. The Ocean Air shut down. So we still do a staff dinner. So this year, Gavin was at a staff dinner. So this year, Gavin was at a staff dinner and

Chris and some of our interns. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. We get to sort of chat and tell stories and tell, you know, behind the scenes stuff and stuff like that. So I had a fun story. I got to know Felicia Day from she came and did some stuff on Corset 2014.

And then she has a company called Geek & Sundry that we did Spellflingers through. So anyway, I've had a chance to interact with her over the years. And so I got to run into her on the street and we had a chance to chat. That was fun. There's not a lot of celebrities that I can meet on the street who actually will know who I am. So it's fun. And anyway, I had a great Comic-Con. Like I said, I think Gavin's panel went great.

My panel went great. So we had two magic panels, twice the norm. And I think it went really well. And the booth went well. And supposedly from talking to people, the event stuff went well. So it was a fine and fun Comic-Con. Like I said, I got home today.

I literally got home and I'm recording my podcast. I'm doing a lot of traveling. So this week, this last week I was at Comic-Con. Next week I'm at Barcelona. And the following week I'm at Gen Con in Indianapolis. So you will have a podcast on each of those items so you can hear about them. There's a lot of fun stuff coming up.

Anyway, that is my 2023 trip to San Diego Comic Con. It was a lot of fun. Thanks to everybody who was there. Oh, another thing real quickly. One of the things I always joke about is that I can tell the general popularity of Magic based on how much I get recognized on the floor, like on the exhibition hall.

And so magic seems to be doing really well. I got recognized a lot. So it was a lot of fun. And so anyway, if you ever see me at a convention or out and about, I will not bite. I'm happy to take pictures and sign stuff or answer questions. So if you see me at an event, please don't be afraid. I'm very kind. I promise.

I will be nice. But anyway, that is the trip. So I hope you guys enjoyed this little venture through magic at San Diego Comic-Con 2023. But I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. That means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you guys

next time. Bye-bye.