Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1287: New York Comic Con 2025

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

I just returned from New York Comic Con. This podcast talks all about it.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so I just got back from New York City because I attended my very first New York Comic-Con. So I'm going to talk all about it. I've been to San Diego Comic-Con many, many times, and I've been to some other Comic-Con.

We have one in Seattle called Emerald City Comic-Con. I've been to a lot. And I've been to a few others. But I've never been to New York Comic-Con, which is a pretty big Comic-Con. Close on part of San Diego Comic-Con. It is huge, and I don't know exactly, but I would guess over 100,000 people.

So I'm going to walk through all the cool things New York City Comic-Con, including talking about all the magic that was there. And then I will talk about that. So, okay, so, for starters, we were at the Javitt Center, which is a giant convention center in New York and Comic-Con took up all of it.

All of it was New York City Comic-Con. And it's a very big place. Okay, so, first there was a main hall for all the distributors, the different stores, and people wanting to sell things. Magic Wizards Coast had a booth fair. So one of the challenges, which was interesting, is we were promoting three different universes beyond sets

because the current set that out is Spider-Rexam. Man. The next set that comes out is Avatar of the Last Airbender. And as I'll talk about in a second, we did a panel where we premiered a brand new set from next year, the second set of next year, which was another universe is beyond set, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So that meant that the booth had to reflect three different brands without those brands commingling with each other. There had be different sections that were different brands. And we did it. Josie was the person in charge of putting all together. Josie did a great job. So, what it was is one side, there was a big mural of Spider-Man, and there were tables there, and it was learned to play, and you could learn to play with the Welcome Decks, the Spider-Man Welcome Decks.

Also, in this section, if you came by every day, we were handing out Welcome Decks until we ran out of Welcome Decks. And that happened every day around noon, I was told, between noon and one. One day, actually, it might have been before noon. But anyway, you can come by and get a Welcome Decks. For those who have never seen the Spider-Man Welcome decks, there are two 30-card decks each wrapped within this box. The box lists a color on it. White is Peter Parker, blue is Spider-Man 29-Nine,

black is Venom, red is Gwen, Stacey, and green is Miles Morales. And when you get the box, you get one color that's promised on the outside of the box, and then the second other color that's random, but not a repeat of the color you have in the box. And the idea is, with this box, you can play against each other. Each of the 30-car decks is playable. And anyway, it was, they're pretty fun.

I've done a lot of teaching with them, and they're cool. So anyway, you could come to that section. That's the Spider-Man section. You could learn to play, and there were tables to play. Then, around the corner, was an Avatar section, and that had a photo op. There was the cabbage cart, and there was somebody dressed up like the cabbage cart and you could come and take photos.

And then the last section was kind of like, it looked like a toying game store. like a comic store sort of with game, comic and game store. And inside it, it was our push for Teenage Mutant Turtle. It wasn't open on Thursday, because it wasn't until Friday that the panel announced the existence of turtles.

And inside that was, it looked like a comic shop, and then on all the different shelves and things were various Teenage Muti Ninja toys and different things that we will be selling. There was a case that showed all the different products, and then we had, like, you know, we have different partners that make stuff.

Anyway, so I was there, you can see it. We had a giveaway, a card that was a teenage Mutant Ninja card, and you either could come by the booth to get it when you were getting your Spider-Man Welcome deck or I think you could also get it, and it went into the Turtles line. The other thing we did is there were food trucks out front that people could go do to get food. And we sponsored a food truck that was a pizza truck.

That was a Teenage Mutin Ninja-flavored pizza truck. And at it, you could get one of three pizzas. You could get a cheese pizza. You get a vegan cheese pizza. Or you get a sausage and gummy worm pizza. The sausage or gummy worm comes straight from the comics. For those that might not be aware, that Teenage Mutin Ninja Turtles are very, very big on pizza.

And pizza plays a role in the set. In fact, we have Pizza Lans. And anyway, pizza plays a role. So if you went and got the pizza, which was very reasonably priced for a convention, it's like $3 for cheese and $4 hours for the sausage and coming warm. Anyway, if you got a piece of pizza, you got a box, a pizza box that looks similar to a product that's coming out later that we're doing that's meant to look like a pizza box, but this one's a natural pizza box.

And inside you got a card, which was for the promotional card we were handing out. So if you got the pizza, no matter what time you got the pizza, We saved enough cards to go with the cards we were giving up with the pizza. So you could come and turn in your card and get your Turtles card. Anyway, that was the main floor. So on two of the days, on Saturday and Sunday, in the Turtles area, I did a signing. I did a, we call it a meet-and-greet. The idea is you can come, you can meet me, I will sign things, I will take pictures, I will answer questions.

It was very fun. I had a long line. It lasted the full hour each day. And I got to meet people to some highlights. I met a lot of families. I met a lot of people, like, multi-generational families where everybody was playing, where the parent had played and they taught the kids to play. So that was super fun.

I met a woman who told me a great story about how she was playing magic in a game store and she's playing against this guy and she beat him by casting um what did she cast uh anyway she cast a big spell and defeated him uh and then he didn't take it really well and was not so gracious about losing but then he came back later and he apologized and he said that really he reacted poorly and it wasn't her fault and he apologized to her and they ended up going out on a date and now they are married and so um the idea that uh they first met by her beating him in magic was the story she told me. So, anyway, very

cool. I mean, a lot of people, and it was really neat, and I always loved doing meet and greets. If you ever at a MagicCon, I do all the Magicons I'm at, and I do Meeting Greetz. And I do meeting greetings and other events that I'm at, like New York City Comic-Con. You just have to know that I'm there. Okay.

Then, the big, there was a panel that we did, which was our one magic panel. and that was we did it in conjunction with Paramount so we did the big announcement of the Teenage Muti Ninja Turtles release

now some people would ask me two weeks earlier was Magicon and at Magicon we announced everything in the 2020s schedule except for this mystery thing at the second release of the year which is the University of the Onset and people say why didn't we just announce that

at Magicon and the answer is look we work with our partner and one of the things we try to do is figure out the most apropos place to do the announcement. Teenage Mutiny Turtles has a long lineage of comics. It started as a comic book. And so they thought it was a really apropos place to announce it. It was just two weeks after Magicon.

So that allowed us a Magikad to say, hey, we're not telling you now, but in two weeks we'll tell you. And so that's why we announced it there. So anyway, I was not part of that panel. I did not work on turtles. I mean, I did some playtesting, but I was not on the team. and so they announced it and it went really well and all weekend long I've talked to people who were very excited about Teenage Beauty and Turtles.

The one other thing we did I guess is Chris Mooney they were on, there was an Avatar panel, not that we threw but it's part of Avatar doing their panel that Chris have a little section where we talked about the game about the magic expansion. So Chris was there to do that. Anyway, so

Most of my responsibilities were doing stuff like the meat and greets. I had one other responsibility, which let me talk about that. And then I'll talk about my time in New York Comic-Kine is more of a fan. So on Monday, after the event was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. On Monday, I along with Aaron Forsyth and Eric England, And Brandon Craneus and Chris, what's Chris's last name? Anyway, the five of us went to Marvel Comics. And we did learn to play.

Now, it turned out there was what called a Noriester, which was a big weather event. And although it ended up not being nearly as bad as they thought it would be, a lot of people stayed home that day because of that. And so the offices were somewhat empty. Although everybody in the office did come to, I mean, we had like 15 to 20 people in the actual Learned to Play. So if you were in the office that day, I think you came to Learned to Play. So we actually had a decent turnout for Learned to Play, even though the offices were pretty empty. And before we did a Learn to Play, we had a tour.

Anyway, it was just super fun. And anyway, I always enjoy, in general, teaching people how to play Magic. But getting to do a Marvel, I'm a, for those that somehow don't know this yet, I'm a giant Marvel fan. I've been reading Marvel comics most of my life and the chance to meet people whose names I recognize because I've been reading comics forever was really cool and it was fun teaching people. We taught them with the Spider-Man Welcome Deck

so they got to learn with Marvel characters that they're well aware of. And it's always really neat teaching people magic because I think a lot of people are very intimidated by magic and when you teach them for the first time, it becomes a lot more approachable. Like the base game of magic is not that hard. I mean, yes, they can get complicated

as you add other cards and stuff in. But the base magic is actually pretty straightforward. And so it was fun. One of the things I will stress for those who that are ever teaching. I did a whole podcast on teaching, but my one – I had a fun moment where I was teaching – I don't remember their names. There was a man and woman that I was teaching. And so she gets out – she's playing the Red Spider-Gwen deck.

He was playing the Blue Spider-Rat 29-9 deck. So she had out three creatures, a 1-1, a 2-2, and a 2-3. and he had out one single creature that was a 2-2. And he was at 3-life. So the interesting thing is one of the things you want to do when you're teaching people is you don't want to tell them what to do, but what you want to do is make them aware that they have the information. So obviously, as an experienced magic player,

she has five power of damage, she has a 2-2, he can only block one creature, she can get through for 3. He's at 3. So I know she has lethal on the board, but I've been playing magic a little longer than she had. So what I said to her is, okay, here's what you can do. You can attack with no creatures. You can attack with one creature, with two creatures or with three creatures.

He can block one of them. So I give her all the information she needs. I mean, she's got to do the math. She's got to figure it out. And at first, she was just going to attack with her two, three, because the two-three, if he blocked the two-two, and destroyed the two-two, without destroy the two-three. But then she took up and then she goes, you know what, I'm going to attack with everything. And then they realized, you know, she realized that she won if she attacked with everything.

And that was a really fun moment. And one of the many things when you're teaching people is you want to make sure that they have the opportunity. You want people to have the opportunity to make the cool discoveries themselves. That part of the fun of magic is making their discoveries. And so if you just teach people and tell them what to do all the time, then you're taking away them making opportunities. And it's really not important, by the way, when you're teaching somebody, they can play suboptimally. That is okay. You don't need to correct their plays.

They can play suboptimally. one of the other games I played I was teaching CB Savolsky who's the editor-in-chief he was playing somebody and his opponent probably would have beaten him if he had optimized his card use he was playing a green deck versus

CB was playing a black the venom deck and there were a lot of combat tricks and I think if he had better understood how to make use of the combat tricks I mean I believe on paper he would have won that game but I'm letting him make his own decisions and once again

And maybe he, you know, the cool thing is that everybody gets to have their fun experience and make decisions and choose what they want to do and that it's, I should never really, I try not to commentate too much. Every once in a while, someone's having trouble deciding things. I can give them a little bit more information to help them make their decision. But anyway, that was super fun. After the fact, after we taught them, we had lunch, we had pizza and we got to chat with them. And anyway, it was fun talking comics and talking magic. And anyway, had a great time. Definitely what I would call a bucketless item.

Okay, so that is the vast majority. At MagicCon, I usually am busy from like sunup to sundown. This one, I had a little more time to go off. San Diego Comic-Con is similar where I definitely have things I have to do, but I have a little more time to build to see the convention. So the one thing, one of the reasons that I was really interested in coming, is my daughter, Rachel, which some of you, regular listeners might remember, from replies to Rachel, I've had Rachel on this podcast.

I think like 10 times. I used to drive her to school on this podcast many years ago. Anyway, she now lives in New York. She graduated from school, and she now lives in New York. And so I kind of limit how many trips I do, just so I'm not away too much. But my wife, my wife Laura, was like, well, if you want to take an extra trip to go to New York to see your daughter, that would be fine. And so I got to go see Rachel.

And it's, I mean, obviously I love doing magic, interactive magic fans, and all that was super fun. but Marvel's great. But I also like spending time with my daughter. So one of the things we did at the convention is Rachel and I, we did walk the hall. So we did, there was 46 aisles and we walked the whole thing. And Rachel and I bought a bunch of stuff. And, you know, it just, the Comic-Cons have lots of fun geeky things.

And Rachel, being raised by me, definitely has lots of geeky qualities. So Rachel had a good time, bought a lot of stuff. We also went to Artist Allie, saw the artist, Rachel got more stuff there. But one of the things that we really enjoyed was going to the panels. And so one of the things I've done that, like Rachel and I, every year go to BroadwayCon, I do a podcast. So one of the things I like to do when we see panels is to spend some time talking about what I learned on the panel and how I apply that. Like, why, how I can apply to what I do? Like, what was the magic design implications of the stuff I was watching?

And so I'm not going to do that. for the second half of this podcast. Okay, so on Thursday, we saw one panel. It's called Broadway to Hollywood. A Look at the New Age of Musicals. Sorry, taking a drink. So, I don't know, the title's a little misleading. Really, what it was was about a variety of people

that were taking Broadway and expanding it beyond the traditional place that Broadway often is. So there was Jason Erdison West. He's a scenic designer. He had worked on the Broadway show Redwood. Adina Mizzell did a show that closed recently. It wasn't open very long. But it had like very majestic giant trees and stuff like that.

He had also gone on, he had done some stuff for like Jesus Christ's Superstar that was a network show, like what was on networks. Jesus Christ Superstar Live, I think it was called. And he was just talking about the idea of, he was talking about seamy design and how you bring in, how you. when you present things that sometimes like when you do a Broadway show there's many shows but sometimes like the show he did live there was one show and he was making this thing and all this stuff was done

for this one presentation and this one time but the idea that a lot of people don't necessarily have the ability to come to Broadway so bringing Broadway to the people is very impactful Wendy Federman was a producer she's currently working on bringing 13 going on 30 just opened

up in London it's the Jennifer Garner movie they've made it to a musical and she talked about trying to find musicals that really have some appeal to things. I mean, there's a big push right now in Broadway. It's been going on for a while of taking existing properties. We'll talk to that a little bit as I talk about some of the panels. But it's big in Broadway right now.

One of the ways you get people to come on to see something is you adapt something they already have a passion for. They already like. And there's been a lot of really good adaptations. Not all of them have necessarily been stellar, but there have been a lot of good ones. Then Brian A. Cates, he was an editor. He just edited Kiss to the Spider Band,

which was a musical they made into a movie. And he's talking about bringing musicals to the movies and how that's another way to expand it. David Meyer was a producer for Miley Cyrus, something beautiful. He was talking about producing online and trying to once again, bring a theatrical production

to things that aren't necessarily live theater. And then Macy Schmidt, who does orchestras, his orchestration. She recently did something called Barbie Live, where people come to a stadium, and they see a live, like they show a movie live, but then an actual live orchestra plays along with a movie.

And anyway, and once again, the theme of all of these is how to expand, like Broadway is cool, and there's nothing wrong with seeing Broadway on Broadway. That's awesome. But, you know, can you go beyond that? And how can you take the Broadway experience and bring it to something larger

than just the stage? And anyway, it's a really interesting panel. one of the things in general that the way I think about magic is magic at its heart is the trading card game but there's a lot more to magic that goes beyond just the trading card game and that one of the things that I enjoy

is finding ways to bring aspects of it out for example I love the color pie I think the color pie is enjoyable even if you never play the game of magic there's something really interesting about it I enjoy talking about it I know people for example have come and listen to my podcast and read my articles that don't even play magic

but they're intrigued by the idea of the color pie And so, and beyond that, we want to expand Magic. We're working very hard to get the story to go beyond. You know, we have the Netflix TV show we're working on, and we made a deal with Legendary, and there's comic books at Dark Horse. And, you know, we really want Magic to become bigger. The franchise is bigger than just the card. Not there's anything wrong with trading card game.

I love the trading card game. But we think that it can be bigger than just. So it's interesting looking at ways to talk about expanding things. The one story that really impacted me the most came from Macy. So she was talking about how, when they were doing Barrow. Barbie Live. The very first one was done in Los Angeles, I think at the Hollywood Bowl, and one of her coworkers had brought her daughter, who was like six or seven, and she remember watching her playing with her Barbies. And so there's a scene in the movie where they're doing

a flashback about America Ferrar and her daughter and like kind of how Barbie had influenced their lives. And so she had this cool idea for the LA show. She got the six-year-old to come up on stage and she taught her how to conduct that one section. So anyway, she did it and went really well, people talked about it, and then the co-worker was in London. The second show was in London. She had brought her daughter again, and she said, oh, my daughter really had fun. Do you mind if she does that one more time? So they did it again.

And that was all, like, Macy wasn't planned for this to be a regular part of the show. But the third show was in China. And when she shows up there, they had seen the first two shows, and they go, here's your six-year-old. And she's like, oh, I didn't, that wasn't something I was planning on doing, but okay. And it ended up becoming a really integral part of the... the Barbie Live experience that this one section, every time they went to, they had a six-year-old and the six-year-old performed it. You know, did that.

And anyway, it's the thing people, she said, it's the thing of everything she did. And she was talking about how she spent all this money doing pink fireworks and all this thing. The thing that everybody talked about more than anything else was this little girl in this little moment. And like, she talked about the value of moments and how that a lot of times, you know, A, that things aren't always planned and B, that the thing that can stand out to people isn't necessarily something that's a lot of money. It's just

it hits on something emotional which really hit home with me and the idea that a lot of doing design is trying to find that emotional beat. Okay, let me get going. I'm not too far from work and I have much more talk to talk about. Okay, on Friday we saw a panel on Beetlejuice Live. So, we saw

a whole bunch of Broadway panels. My daughter Rachel is very into Broadway. Obviously, I am too. We go to Broadway kind every year. So a lot of the panels we saw were Broadway oriented. Beetlejuice had the producer Mark Kaufman had the guy who plays Beetlejuice Justin Colette the woman who plays Lydia Isabella Esler and then

Kelly Goff was the person that did the marketing Rachel is very into marketing and stuff so Callie was what she was actually most interested in here from but anyway they talked about this is the third time that the production is going to Broadway within the period of like five or six years it basically went up on Broadway it got shut down Fans liked it so much they brought it back

and now they're bringing back a second time and this is the cast that was touring with it. So anyway, they talked a lot about that and it's really interesting to talk about how the driven things are by fans this is a theme you'll see running through some of these panels but one of the things that I spend a lot of time on

like I have my blog, you know, the reason I do a lot of interfacing with players is I want to understand what it is players want And a lot of times, there are little tiny things that are important that I can get voiced by people. And this is kind of a combination of the six-year-old playing and Beatles just coming back. Like, there's a lot of making people happy by finding small things that matter to them. And so I spend a lot of time to enter sort of tracking things people talk about, especially multiple people talk about over time, and then trying to find opportunities to do that.

And sometimes it takes a while to find the opportunity. but, you know, every once in a while, for example, like we're making, like, a commander deck. I'm like, oh, wow, there's been this desire for this exactly, like this collar combination with this theme, and that's perfect for here. We need to do this. That, you know, they've been asking for this forever.

We should do this. And so, anyway, I mean, A, I, I saw Beetlejuice many years ago, the original one, the first, the first era. And we really liked it, and so it was fun to go, and hearing them talk about it. It's a really fun show if you've never seen Beetlejuice. Oh, by the way, while I was there with my daughter, we did see two Broadway shows. Both were technically off Broadway, but we saw Heather's, which is one of my favorite movies, but made them to a musical.

And we saw The Play That Goes Wrong, which is an original show. Basically, they're doing a production, and as the name tells you, everything that can go wrong goes wrong with the show. It's pretty funny. Okay. Next up, the one panel I saw without my daughter, Invincible. So regular listeners might know. I'm a huge Invincible fan. I've been a big fan of the comic.

In fact, many years ago, someone asked me of, like, a recommendation for comics, and then I said, you know, invincible is great. You should read invincible. And then somebody found this comment many years later, and they're like, hey, wait a minute, the Amazon Prime Show didn't exist yet when he said this. No, it was the comic.

I loved the comic. So, long before there was a show. But now that there's an Amazon Prime show, just had his third season this year, four seasons next year, this panel was in a giant hall with lots of people. So it is very cool to see something that was small and become something big and large.

You know, magic's gone through a similar trajectory where you just keep getting larger and larger. But anyway, as a fan of Invincible for a long time, it is fun just seeing it. So they had Robert Kirkman, who was the creator of Invincible, also created Walking Dead. I've seen him many times. I saw him stand there on Comic-Con this year.

Super funny. I always like seeing him. He had Stephen Young, who plays Mark, who plays the main character, Invincible, and Gillian Jacobs, who plays E. Adam Eve. And then they had as a special guest, Lee Pace, who's playing Thrag, one of the big villains of season four.

Anyway, that was a lot of fun. And the interesting thing there is it's fun to be on the fan side of something. We're like, okay, I'm the big fan that love this property, that's, you know, diehard, you know, super fan. And kind of see what they do. Like, you know, anyway, it's fun to be on the fan side of things to watch just because I want to make sure that we. on our side when

we're the people who are talking to the fans that we're likewise being exciting for the fans as other people are and so it was super fun like I said one thing I always enjoy about Robert Kirkman is he always manages to make it fun regardless like he's just his

personality and his presentation and I really try hard what I do sort of magic stuff to bring that kind of energy and you know personality to it Okay, next is Saturday. So Saturday we saw a Death Becomes Her panel on the Death Becomes Her musical. So for those that don't know, Death Becomes Her is a 90s film that got made with Merrill Streep and Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis.

That got made into a Broadway show. Rachel has seen the show. I have not seen the show. I've heard very good things about it. They had two of the cast members, Christopher Seber and Michelle Williams. and then they had the director, Christopher Catelli. And then they had Julia Madison and Noel Carey, who wrote and wrote the music and lyrics for the show.

And this was their first, like, big break. There was really interesting hearing. Like, I really, really enjoyed behind-the-scenes stuff, which is one of the reasons that I have taken so much time and energy to try to be that guy for magic, that I spent a lot of time and energy trying to do behind-the-scenes things. I think it's really fun.

I think it's a big part of what makes it, you know, exciting. And so, anyway, it was really neat hearing all the different stories. I mean, hearing from the actress is always fine. That's enjoyable. And obviously, people like seeing the people they know from the show. But talking to the creators is the thing that I find the most fascinating. So hearing the director and songwriters sort of talk about how they shaped the musical was super fun. Then we saw a panel called the Big Broadway Nerd Panel,

which was a bunch of Broadway stars who also nerds, who just loved. loved things that made, you know, that were at New York Comic-Con. By the way, all these Broadway panels, a lot of them were presented by Playbill. If you ever been to Broadway show, they're the people that make the program. But anyway, they did a lot of fun program, so a lot of the stuff we saw was the Broadway

program, which was super fun. And anyway, the big Broadway nerd panel was just people talking about how they too. Yeah, the Broadway stars, but they're nerds too. And anyway, that was very approachable. Okay, I'm almost at work here, or actually, I'm at work, but I'm going to quickly finish this up. I have two more to talk about. So my favorite

panel. I really enjoyed the invincible panel, but I think my favorite panel of the weekend was on Sunday was the Little Shop of Horrors panel. So I love musicals, but my favorite musical of all musicals is Little Shop of Horrors, which is funny. I'm not really that into horror, but I do like comedy, and I like black comedy, and it is a black comedy show. Anyway, I really enjoy it. So what they had done is they had Thomas Doherty, who plays C.E. Moore on Broadway right now. Madeline Brewer, Brewer, who playser, who plays Audrey and Major Adaway, who plays

who's the voice for Audrey too. But the coolest part of this was Alan Mencken was there. So for those who don't know, Alan Mencken and Howard Ashman were the creators of Little Shop of Horrors. They went on to write the music and lyrics for Little Mermaid, the Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, then sadly Howard Ashman died.

I mean, I'm gonna do a lot of other things. Anyway, I love behind the scenes stuff. So hearing behind the scenes from the creator of my favorite Broadway musical, like he was singing songs that didn't make the cut, and he told stories of how there was a, like suddenly Susan was one of two ballads

and they decided to pull a ballad because they only wanted a one ballad. Anyway, all this really juicy behind the scene stuff that was super fun. And it only had been invigorated me that like that is a quest I need to continue. I definitely want to be the person doing that. What is your favorite magic set? Well, I will talk about what happened behind the scenes of your favorite magic set. That's why I'm trying to do a podcast for every single magic sets that ever happened. And I'm

a good chunk along my way there. 1,200 in and I haven't finished that project yet. But I will. There's just a lot of magic sets. But anyway, that was, from a fandom standpoint, my favorite panel. And then the final panel, which was actually a really interesting panel, and actually applies a lot. So it's called The Fandem Effect, How Fan Shaped Pop Culture. So it had Alessandre Ferreari, who's the head content at Wattpad. Me Ann Shen, who's a founder-editor of Mixed Feelings. Allegra Rosenberg, she's a journalist and fandom expert. Claire Dodson, she was assistant director of Culture at Teen Vogue.

Elizabeth Winnipeg? Minnekeg? Minnekech? Sorry. she's a co-host of fansplaining of fansplaining it's a podcast and then Jenna Wren was a moderator

she's host of Portrait of a Fangirl podcast so the thing they were talking about which was really interesting is how fandom is shaping content the idea that the fans that at some point in this I mean

as the journalist was talking about as Allegra was talking about that this actually goes back to like the 70s in some level of creators realizing that there was fans that were liked what they doing and got feedback and that the feedback started to shape

what they would do. As a good example, I have a blog where people write to me and I mean the classic example is we're making a brand new Japanese-inspired world based on pop culture and the original idea was it not to be Kamagawa but I had all this people talk to me on my blog

but how much they wanted to go back to Kamagawa. I'm like, oh, well, maybe this could be Kamagawa. Let's not shut off the door and ended up really designing a structure that required it. It's modernity versus tradition, but then half it has to be a tradition. How can it be a tradition? Well, what if it's actually a Kamagawa, you know? And actually, and steering into that because I got that feedback from my blog. And that's probably the largest example.

But there's lots of little examples of pushing themes or this or maybe we should do that or, you know, people like this. and the idea that the fans themselves have a lot of say and input has never been more to, I mean, magic also has a thing where we keep evolving, right? A lot of things, you make something, and that's it, you've made it. And maybe, you know, things tweak a little bit over time. But magic is constantly reinventing itself. We're constantly making new content. And so having sort of feedback from the audience is really big and has a much bigger impact.

And so I found this panel really interesting in trying to understand. stand sort of, and one of the tricky things for me is, like, I was listening to what they were talking about, not on the side of the fans, although I'm a fan in things like Invincible, but on the side of the content creators. And so, anyway, it was fascinating. I really enjoyed, in general, I should say, I enjoyed all my time in New York City Comic Con. I obviously enjoyed meeting people. I enjoyed talking magic. I enjoyed, I enjoyed Gordon, Marvel was great. And I enjoyed New York City Comic-Con as a fan. I enjoyed seeing all the panels and obviously I enjoyed spending time with my daughter.

So anyway, it was just, it was a wonderful trip. There's a lot of cool things there. If you are ever in New York and have a chance to go to New York Comic-Con, highly recommend it. It's really fun. And hopefully I will go back. Now that my daughter lives in New York, and I have, you know, some opportunity to do that.

I might take a few more New York trips, and some of those might be New York Comic-Con. But anyway, guys, thanks for listening. But I am now at work. So we all know that means? That means instead of talking magic, it's time for medium making magic. So anyway, thanks for listening today,

and I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.