If you have been noticing some radio silence on this end, it is because the SPACE team is hearing up for the Annual San Diego Comicon.

This convention is massive, and it is our 'Super Bowl'. It is eight football fields, 125,000 attendees, and roughly 5,000 professionals. The Convention preview is Wednesday evening, and then the con hits high gear on Thursday. Sunday is the final day, and in those few days we will be conducting hours of interviews and shooting footage of the con.

We've been planning for this since January, but as always things are written in sand. Interviews keep moving around, guests and events keep being added, and the stress keeps rising!

I have been attending Comicon since 1987. I was a freelance writer looking for work in comics. I'd just left managing the Silver Snail, and I had always heard that Comicon was the place to go if you wanted to meet people in the industry. Even in 1987 the con seemed huge. It was a Three ring Circus! Over 20,000 people attended, and big names like Jack Kirby, Will Eisner and Stan Lee very approachable. The highlight for me was attending Jack Kirby's 70th Birthday Party at the Hotel San Diego. Not only did I get to meet Jack and his wife Roz, but it seemed that the whole comic book world attended the event.

1989 was the first year that I attended as media, and it was a revelation. I was able to set up most of the interviews weeks in advance, and most people said 'yes'. This run of luck lasted until 1994, when Comicon seemed to have become too big. I think 50,000 people attended- astonishing at the time!

And now.

Comicon is now attended by 125,000 people. This week it made the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Hollywood has 'discovered' San Diego in a big way, and now it is very tough to book everything you want. Forget 'Three Ring Circus'. Comicon is now an 18 ring Circus spread across eight football fields!

This year we are attending with two full crews, with a host, a producer and a camera-person on each team. We are tackling the con in a new way- we are going to try to give you a sense of the Comicon experience. This is a truly an experiment for us. We want to see if we can produce a one hour Comic-Con-fidential. The show will air on Friday August 1 at 7pm et.