So, at long last I return, with news of far off lands…
Or at least strange and alien lands.
Okay, Maybe Katsucon counts for all three…
For those of you who have followed the series and ourselves for a while, you should know that we are good friends with Anime Depot, and every Katsucon and Otakon we go and help them out with the convention booth. And this was no different.
Things began in earnest on Thursday, as after work and school was finished Myself, Rob Morris, Jordan Jones, and Abbi Unger packed into the truck and headed down to Katsu for a weekend that promised to be mostly work free and a smooth and enjoyable experience.
The road in almost did us in. Previously, I thought I’d seen it all. LA, Chicago, New Jersey, I’d tamed them all. No road was bad enough to bring us down. Then we hit the Crystal City Highways.
The cars nearly killed us. The road nearly killed us. The GPS was definitely trying to kill us. We aren’t sure how many unprepared con goers didn’t make it. I prefer not to think about that.
Fortunately, the con proved to be a much more positive experience.
As it turns out, we were somewhat over booked on people (a surprising change of events) leading to the elder booth members being told to go and have fun…
There we met many strange people: cosplayers, anime geeks, con geeks, and a couple new friends such as comic creator/animator Steve Bennett, the guys of Half Pixel.com, and many, many others.
A very special thanks goes out to all of Half Pixel.com, but especially Brad Guigar of Evil Inc. and Kristofer Straub of Starslip Crisis. Both Kris and Brad were kind enough to give me a bit of their time to discuss the ‘well, how do I do this’, and ‘what about that?’ The time they gave to our questions about how we can do things more professionally was absolutely priceless.
However, like all good things, Katsucon did eventually come to an end. By 4 PM on Sunday we were packing up the booth. By 8 PM, we had actually seized control of the freight elevator from the evil Hyatt employees, allowing us to evacuate the last remnants of the booth and get the heck out.
Then there was the gate… But we won’t talk about that…
And Briefly I have an admission for all our fans out there:
Due to some ‘interesting’ events behind the scenes these last four months I still can‘t discuss, I had been questioning whether or not I truly had the desire to continue Running Gun, or if it was better to simply finish Spriggs and call it there.
The decision that I reached over this weekend is that Running Gun is not over yet, although things may start to change after Spriggs. So don’t be scared folks, we’re not done yet. In fact, betting that this is just the beginning…
Michael Reed
Director, Writer, & Voice of Triple M
Chief Executive Officer, Running Gun LLC