The other night as I watched the Golden Globes with all those celebrities passing across the television screen, whether they were winners or just happy to be nominated or just plain seat fillers, I was reminded of something that happened this past summer.
Each year I attend the San Diego Comic Con International, and when there is somewhere around 120,000 people packing into the halls its hard to remember a face in that crowd, but a face did come back to me all these many months later.
I headed upstairs to attend a panel, though no longer remember what it was, and the line of people waiting to get in was already wrapped down the hallway and around two corners by the time I joined in at the back.
There were three guys just ahead of me, two were standing and a third was sitting on the floor (I know how he felt, read my blog on how much my feet hurt at the con). When I joined them they were in a discussion of DC Comic’s New52. At that point in time we only had a vague idea of what was coming, each expressing their own opinions and how to do it better (fans you gotta love us).
Anyway, as the conversation lulled and changed, I eventually had an opportunity to talk about FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY. If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that FGHOG is the webcomic, which I illustrate and co-write with Shannon Muir. Click the link to the right to check it out; we’re currently celebrating our 10th Anniversary.
I was carrying with me business cards, some for myself, and some to promote the comic. They are small and can easily slip into your pocket (which you’ll discover cleaning out your luggage when you get home, or turned into a mashed ball of wet paper when you pull it out of the washer), but they seem to work. What really worked for me was that I included a QR Code box on the reverse side of the card. (QR Code, you know, those strange little boxes filled with even smaller white and black boxes). People could use their ‘smart phones’ to scan the code and pull up our webcomic. If nothing else, it was a conversation starter.
While standing in line, it hadn’t started to move yet; I gave a card to each of the three guys I had been talking with. After explaining about the code on the back, the one sitting on the floor pulled out his phone and scanned the card and checked out a few pages of the webcomic.
I got a polite “Cool,” from him.
One problem I have at conventions is that name tags hanging from their lanyards and always turn backwards so I never can see a person’s name. Not very helpful.
All I knew was the color of the nametag told me he was professional like myself. So just as the line began to move I asked him what he does? Figuring he’d be an artist or something.
He looked at me and simply answered: “I’m an actor.”
The line moved on and I didn’t get a chance to ask anything further. I had this feeling from his expression that I should have known who he was, but was also glad that I didn’t know.
So, here I am, months later and watching the Golden Globes when it hits me.
I am more then ninety percent certain that the man who had been sitting on the floor, who took my business card, and looked at my webcomic, was the actor Seth Rogen.
Could be wrong of course, watching him now on the stage, and thinking back to the convention, he could have easily disappeared in to a crowd of geeks and nerds, and someone like me would never have been the wiser.
All the same I have to have a little thrill from this…
Seth Rogen thought FLYING GLORY AND THE HOUNDS OF GLORY was “cool.”