By Mike Sangregorio

Thursday morning, first full day of Comic Con 2016, saw the live recording of the Marvel Live podcast at the Neil Morgan Auditorium of the San Diego Library. In attendance were Ryan Penagos, "Agent M," Marc Strom, Patrick Cavanagh, and special guest Jesse Falcon, Director of Merchandising. After spoiling Moby Dick for a few of us who have not gotten around to reading it the panel got down to introducing Jesse to the audience. As a show of good faith, Jesse has offered to buy each of you lunch if you visit him at his day job at Disney.

Jesse reminded us that there was a time when Marvel and DC got along as there were Batman movie action figures and products being made by Toy Biz back in the good old days of the nineteen nineties. As part of the early days of the merchandising phenomenon, there was a transition from crafting figures by hand to doing so by computer and using software to make what you would need to put into production. Jesse also has a hand in the stop-motion, Marvel themed web series "What The–?" which he also does voices for the show and informed us that his MODOK is equal parts Shecky Greene and Stan Lee.

Jesse informed the audience that he just sold a show to Adult Swim which he describes as "very dark" and comes out of his history working in improv with the likes of Amy Poehler and Nick Kroll and his previous experience with "Children's Hospital" on Adult Swim.

Next up was the spinning of the prize wheel (tell people there are free shirts and you get a line, magic). First up was "Bleeding Cool's" own Mike Rohrssen who successfully convinced the panel that his reasoning for teaming up with Groot over Rocket was "right." Subsequent questions included the categories of "Are they an Avenger?" and "Is it an alien race or is it cheese?"

The panel ended on time with the panelists reminding us all to listen to the latest episodes each week from Marvel Live.