Hall H Show – Ep. 10: Matt Dunford (San Diego Comic Fest)

The episode features San Diego Comic Fest Chairman, Matt Dunford.

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Show Notes:

Hey there fellow nerds and geeks!

Aaron Nabus here and thank you for listening to the Hall H Show!

The start of the convention season is upon us and I can’t think of a better one to kick it off with than San Diego Comic Fest 2017 – a four day event that will take place from Friday, February 17 to Monday, February 20 (which is President’s Day weekend). How lucky for us that our special guest today is the newly appointed chairman of San Diego Comic Fest, Matt Dunford.

Welcome to the Hall H Show, Matt!

I’m also joined by my co-host and HallH.com co-founder Alex Benedicto and writer, producer, filmmaker and HallH.com contributor, Jason Lethert!

On this episode, we will:

1. Put the spotlight on Matt Dunford and get to know him a little better.
2. Learn what’s new for this year’s San Diego Comic Fest.
3. Bring the thunder in our “Thunder Round” – our set of off the beaten path questions.
4. “Flash Forward” and talk about the future of SD Comic Fest and we’ll also see what other projects Matt has going on.
5. Then we’ll end our conversation with “Where in the World is Matt?” and a few closing remarks.

Guest Spotlight:

Here are a few things we asked Matt about:

1. In a recent comicsbeat.com article, you recount your first experiences as a kid with Legos and Spider-man comics. Can you tell our audience a bit about these experiences?
2. It looks like your comic book fandom lead to an interest in comic book history. Can you tell us how you became “The World’s Youngest, Comic Book Historian”?
3. It looks like you are an avid cosplayer (most recently as Reverse Flash). How long have you been doing it and what motivated you to cosplay in the first place? How do you determine who you will cosplay as?
4. What other cosplays do you plan on doing? Will you be cosplaying at SD Comic Fest?
5. Can you tell us about your involvement with Little Fish Comic Book Studio?

About San Diego Comic Fest:

This year’s San Diego Comic Fest looks to be a monumental one.  Here is just a partial list of a tributes, guests and events that caught our our eye, which Matt goes into a bit more detail about:

1. Jack Kirby Tribute (celebrating his 100th birthday)
2. X-Men: The Animated Series (25 Year tribute):
   1. Special guests for the 2017 25th anniversary of X-Men: The Animated Series:
      1. Producer/Director: Larry Houston
      2. Writers, Story Editor, Series Co-Developer: Eric Lewald and Julia Lewald
      3. Writer: David McDermott
      4. Writer: Steven Melching
      5. Writer: Len Uhley
3. Celebrating 25 years of Image Comics (Guest of Honor: Jim Valentino)
4. Some of the guests attending:
   1. Stan Sakai (Creator of of Usagi Yojimbo)
   2. Floyd Norman (Disney Legend, animator, writer, comics creator)
   3. Rob Salkowitz (Writer on pop culture for Forbes and ICv2, communications educator, and author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture)
5. Lee Kohse Live Painting
6. X-Men Mock Trial on Mutant Rights
7. Cocktails (yes, please!)

Thunder Round:

In this episode’s Thunder Round, we ask Matt:

1. Out of all the characters you have cosplayed as, which one would you want to be for real and why?
2. While it looks like you are donating a large amount of your single issue comic collection…you are still hanging on to your hard-covers. I hope this never happens…but San Diego is prone to wildfires. If you had to quickly evacuate and could only carry 10 hard-covers…which ones would you choose?
3. Silver Surfer vs. Thor. Who wins and why? (spoiler: Matt says Silver Surfer…so if we still used MySpace, he’d be in Aaron’s top eight)
4. The West Coast Avengers are relocating to San Diego and they tap you to build a roster. Who do you pick for the new team?
5. It looks like you enjoy your beer. If you could have a few beers with anyone dead, alive, or fictional, who would it be what kind of beers would you have?
6. If a movie was made about you…what kind of music would be on the soundtrack?
7. What do you think 85 year old Matt would tell the current you?
8. When you become famous (or infamous)…How would you like your Wikipedia page to read?
9. What’s one thing our audience would be surprised to know about you?
10. What’s one thing your Mom would be surprised to know about you?

Where in the World is Matt Dunford online?:

Facebook | Instagram

Thanks again to Matt for being a guest on the Hall H Show. We also want to give a huge shout out to San Diego Comic Art Gallery Manager, TJ Shevlin, for letting us record the podcast there. If you ever are in San Diego…please go check out the gallery in Liberty Station. Thank YOU for listening and please start getting SDCCfit for SDCC…you’ll have a much better convention experience!

Peace, Cheers and see you next time!

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