You can’t take the sky from me

The big event for us this Friday was the 10th Anniversary Reunion of Firefly. The show aired for only half a season, finished in a feature film that was a love letter to fans, and has been kept alive all these years by loyal “browncoats” as fans of the show are known. The Science Channel is bringing it back to TV and this was an opportunity to celebrate the show with creator Joss Whedon and most of the stars. And that meant a capacity crowd of 4500 or so.

That many people means insanely long lines to get in. As Michelle and I sat in the audience for W00tstock 4.0 Thursday evening, we heard people talking about lining up at midnight to get in first thing. Yikes!

I can’t handle getting in line in the middle of the night and waiting half a day. Thankfully, Michelle can, and voluntarily got into line at 4:30am. And she was far from the first; in fact she was around person 1250 in line! I met her in line around 8:30 and we were let in at 9:30.

The first panel was for the NBC comedy Community which we both love. It was a great panel, with the cast and producers clearly energized and deeply appreciative of the fans. The second was for beloved animated series Legends of Korra. I wasn’t familiar with the show but it was a fun panel with both a live table read with the voice actors and foley recording of the crowd.

The Firefly panel was clearly the one we were all there for. So much love was showered on Joss Whedon and the cast that almost all of them teared up at some point. Their love of Firefly and deep appreciation of the devotion of the fans was apparent in all their answers and in the affection they returned to the adoring crowd (Joss had even come by the line at 3am to sign autographs and shake hands with the superfans; you’d never guess that this is the golden boy of Hollywood having directed The Avengers and being able to write his own ticket).

We don’t make a habit of attending panels that require more than a few minutes of waiting but this was definitely a special event, not to be missed. We’ll talk more about it on Comics Corner Podcast and other blogs but the Firely reunion panel definitely stands out as a high point for us of Comic Con 2012.