On the drive home, Jeremy Long decided to do it. He was coming back to Huntsville from selling comic books at a convention south of Nashville that was poorly attended. For the past six months, after losing his job managing an Italian chain restaurant at a Huntsville mall, Long had been keeping his family afloat selling comic books at cons in Tennessee, Atlanta, Chattanooga and Birmingham.

“On the drive home,” Long recalls,” I’m thinking how they could have done this and this and this. Then I get home, and my wife says, ‘Well, you just need to do your own show.’ And I’m like, “I’ve kind of been planning a show for the last two hours.’ I was like, ‘Why isn’t there a show in Huntsville? We’re the nerdiest town in America.’”