San Diego Comic-Con About to Blast Off - East Idaho News
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San Diego Comic-Con About to Blast Off

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GETTY 072314 ComicCon?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1406127562126iStock Editorial/Thinkstock(SAN DIEGO) — The high holiday of geekdom is almost here — Comic-Con International: San Diego starts Thursday, though the festivities kick off with preview night on Wednesday.

Chris Hardwick is the founder of pop-culture outlet Nerdist, and his geek cred also boasts hosting @Midnight on Comedy Central, as well as AMC’s Talking Dead. Not surprisingly, he’s become the go-to guy to moderate the major Comic-Con celebrity Q&A panels, which break news on upcoming projects and for which diehards wait in line for hours to witness the bleeding edge of pop culture news. This year he’s the ringleader for panels from Marvel, Warner Bros., The Walking Dead, and more.

So what’s it like to be on stage in the fabled Hall H in front of 7,000 fans, giving them sneak peeks that often make them cry?

He tells ABC News Radio, “There’s nothing like the experience of being on stage in Hall H and they’re showing some footage that people have never seen before, and the stage is rattling, and everyone just loses their mind…[T]here’s no other energy like that that I can imagine anywhere else.”

Considering his pop-culture bona fides, however, Hardwick explains he’s not privy to many spoilers ahead of time. Marvel, for example, will have a huge presence at this year’s Comic-Con, though Hardwick says he doesn’t know who’s going to be on their panel or what will be revealed: “…[T]hose are all things I’ll find out like the night before,” he tells ABC News Radio. “You know, we’ll do sort of a walk-through of what the panel’s going to be. But I don’t know anything yet.”

The pop culture-infused, game-show formatted @Midnight airs on Comedy Central on weeknights at — when else? — midnight.


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