Posted in: Movies, san diego comic con, TV | Tagged: 2016, comic con, comiccon, comicon, Comics, entertainment, july, san diego, san diego comic con, sdcc, sdcc '16, sdcc16, sdcc2016

Comic Con HQ Fights For Your Streaming Dollars At San Diego Comic-Con

By Jeremy Konrad

What is there to say about the new streaming channel Comic Con HQ? They certainly have a very ambitious plan to bring a load of content to us in the form of "Bringing the excitement of Comic Con to you", but beyond its scripted series, how much of it should we be willing to pay for since it is a pay channel?

The panel Thursday attempted to answer these questions. It was a packed panel, as they brought talent from both scripted and non-scripted programming. Up first were creator of the series Con Man P.J. Haarsma to talk about season 2 of the show starring Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion (neither was there) as stars of a popular sci-fi show that was canceled prematurely (sound familiar?) and how they cope with the fandom around it. Season One just wrapped up, and they showed a trailer recapping it. From there, Casper Van Dien from the show chimed in with strange tales about his character being a ghost or something? Strange fellow. At one point later in the panel he joked about "owning" his girlfriend, but nobody really laughed at that one.

Up next was the most popular part of the panel with the crowd, as Kings of Con was discussed. Starring Rob Benedict and Richard Speight Jr. of Supernatural fame. Fangirl flailing all over the place. The show is going to be about "being super famous…13 weeks out of the year". In other words, behind the scenes of what crazy antics happen behind the scenes. The two "sprinkled some truth" into the show. The two co-wrote every episode and from the looks of the trailer had a ball.

Take every weird Internet video you have ever seen and mash them together and you get the show Mostly Harmless from creator and star Steve Zaragoza. Lots of yelling and eccentric humor involved, not really my thing, but the crowd really seemed to enjoy it.Think MadTV meets YouTube.

What's News is their twice weekly show going over all the TV, film, and geek culture goings on from the week hosted by Tricia Hershberger and Anthony Carboni. Both have really winning personalities and it seems like they have a great handle on how to deliver a "geek version of the Daily Show". Having watched Carboni on his Star Wars YouTube channel coverage, I knew he could handle it already, and they really play well off each other in the clips shown.

I was most interested going in about the Film HQ show hosted by John Campea and John Schnepp, and while they were the only show that didn't have a clip prepared, anyone that ever listened to or watched any of their work with Collider know what to expect. Discussions on the latest goings on in Hollywood and interviews with celebrities. They really do have a deep knowledge of film history, and the show is proof of that.

The last two shows previewed were Adam Sessler & The Interesting People starring Adam Sessler of G4 fame interviewing people from all aspects of geek culture including scientists, writer, comic creators, celebrities etc and picking their brains about what they do. FInally, the most interesting show previewed was Impossible Science starring Jason Lattimer will show how concepts from sci-if movies and shows etc can be real and introduce us to people in leading scientific fields proving it can happen. Both of these shows seemed very interesting and a little out of place to be honest with everything else shown, with more of a science bend to their shows than comedy or film news.

To close the panel, they showed a video recorded from Mark Hamill himself to announce his new show Pop Culture Quest, where he will visit people in their homes to check out off beat collections and be "a type of therapy" for them. He said he really wants to get to the root of why people collect what they do, and not just show off what they have in their collections. He was going to be on panel, but he just flew in from Europe and couldn't make it. Something about filming a movie that people may know about…

Really though, I was quite surprised they didn't answer any of my questions going in. How much does this cost? What devices can I watch it on? It's one thing to put these kinds of answers on your website, but you have a captive audience right there, they didn't mention a single way to actually watch their programming, just what they were doing over at the Hilton this week at this installation. Which we all can go to, but the people at home can't. That's who this channel is for, people who are not at these events. It felt like a bit of a missed opportunity to get the info out there.

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