Matt Dinniman Comicpalooza 2026

After the late night at Frightmare Week on Friday, I got up at 4 AM to be on the road by 4:30 on Saturday. I wanted to be sure I got to Comicpalooza early to get close parking and get in line for Matt Dinniman.

I have to admit, I’m clueless. About 6 months ago, I saw a reference to ‘DCC’ on a DragonCon Facebook page.  I had no idea. After reading several comments, I learned it meant Dungeon Crawler Carl. Well, that didn’t really add much light. So, I googled that. That was more productive.

This is a fairly famous and popular book series. It seems to have some hard-core fans. I have been in the dark for a while. When I mentioned it to friends, it seems everyone is surprised I am living under a dark rock…or in a dungeon. Because of the hype, I felt I had to get this autograph. However, I was too late. The free tickets were gone. One of my friends that knew about DCC, mentioned the convention was doing wait list. I joined that. I actually was selected.

My plan of getting there early was to ensure I was toward the front of Matt’s line when the signing started. I had some other graphs I wanted and didn’t want to miss out on them. Turned out I was 3^rd in line. Yeah me!

I handed over my book and told him I hadn’t read this yet but EVERYONE is talking about it. He smiled and signed. He took a closer look at my shirt and asked if that was Arizona. Yes, I was wearing my obligatory UofA golf shirt. I smiled and nodded and asked if he went there. He stated he lived there. Then I said I was there for college and actually met The Wife there. She lived in a small town south of Tucson.  I told him the town. Now his smile got big and he said he lived there for a while too. We were BOTH speechless. He mentioned the community and it sounded very familiar. We both paused again. Do we investigate this further. Do we leave it as it is. Do we exchange numbers.

Then the handler stepped up and said Matt had a LOT of people in line. And he did. Hundreds. She said they all wanted to see Matt and talk about Carl.  She was correct. I had taken more time than I expected.  Matt was great and said to the handler, that he was asking the questions and it wasn’t not my fault. We both knew we needed to move on. We shook and I went on to the next autograph.

When I got home, The Wife said Matt lived was very close to her. His neighborhood was built after she left. They never crossed paths.

AH