Two of the most pivotal chapters of Fangasm take place at the four days of contained (mostly) insanity that is Comic Con – and yes, I mean that in (mostly) a good way. We began our wild roadtrip through Supernatural fandom at Comic Con, wide-eyed and overwhelmed, newbies in every way imaginable. On our first visit, I spent most of the time either grinning like a fool at being immersed in a place where geeks were the majority and it seemed like everyone was okay with being who they were, or catastrophizing about failing once again to meet the elusive Jensen Ackles. Kathy spent most of the time shaking her head at both my smiling and nail-biting. We schemed and planned and stood in endless lines and met some wonderful Supernatural fans who are still our friends today. The nail biting finally ended in the glorious moment when I managed to say two words to Jensen, but suffice it to say, there was no way the smiling was going to end for a very long time after that. Much to Kathy’s amusement.
The next time we went back, a year later, it was a vastly different experience. We were writing a book on Supernatural, escorted past security and invited upstairs to the WB booth to meet with Eric Kripke and Sera Gamble. Instead of fighting our way through the throngs of people frantically trying to catch a glimpse of Jensen, we were looking down from the booth and hugging him and Danneel afterwards, and feeling like the luckiest fangirls in the history of ever. Of course, if you’ve read Fangasm, you know that our good luck didn’t exactly last, but that’s another story.
So returning to Comic Con, with all that history, was an emotional experience.