In the middle of all of the hustle and bustle of ACE Comic Con Midwest 2019, we sat down with Gareb Shamus, CEO of ACE Universe, pop culture enthusiast, and one-half of the Shamus brothers that are so beloved by ACE Universe fans everywhere.

Veteran comic and entertainment convention-goers will be the first to tell you that not all comic cons are created equally or, really, with a singular fan experience in mind. That’s what makes ACE Universe and ACE Comic Cons different.

As someone who created a career and a successful business out of being a fan himself, I couldn’t wait to talk about dream celebrity guests, and the Facebook group that sets ACE Universe apart from other conventions, and more!

Our interview with ACE Universe CEO Gareb Shamus

Hypable: So first, I want to start this out by saying that today [October 13, 2019] is a sort of special day for me as it’s the one-year anniversary of my meeting Chris Evans at ACE Comic Con Midwest last year.

Gareb Shamus: Oh my god. Wow, congratulations!

Thank you very much! He has always been my #1, and so I wanted to thank you for that because that meant a lot to me that you and Stephen brought him here.

You know that’s a big part of what we do. We want this to be about making dreams come true. Getting to work with the talent that has either never done [a convention] before or done it very rarely and making it so easy and comfortable for them to meet their fans. And we’re the biggest fans too, so literally everybody is on our list. We want to work with everybody so that’s so awesome to hear.

It was amazing. I’d been waiting for [Chris Evans] for a while and it was wonderful. Actually that leads into my first question: I know that you guys are huge fans of things in general. What made you decide to take the leap from being a fan to starting this business where you’re helping other fans make their dreams come true?

So it all started actually many years ago. My mom has a comic book and sports card store that I had growing up with my family. When I couldn’t get a job out of college in 1990, I started a newsletter about comic books for the store. And then I eventually turned that into a magazine named Wizard and it took off on a global basis.

Back then, to be a “geek” or a “nerd” was a very derogatory [thing]. I used to joke that it’s like you might as well tell people you have a virus or disease. That’s how they felt about you. For me, there’s really been two things in life that have really helped turned the geeks and the nerds into cool people. One of them is technology and the second is superheroes. I’ve spent my whole life helping turn the geeks and the nerds into the “cool” people.

The magazine did so well that we wanted to create a live version of it, and that’s when I got into the comic con business. [At the time,] there was this kind of big disconnect; we were reaching millions of people a month through the magazine but the shows were just old people selling old comic books.

Yeah, it was very much like a trade show kind of feel, wasn’t it?

Yeah, and it was very garage sale oriented. Because we were reaching so many [fans] of the studios, networks, TV shows, video games, toys and the comic books, we were like, “Hey, why don’t we bring that all together? Why don’t we do a live version of what we do in the magazine?”

And it worked. Literally. We had 10,000 people, all these disenfranchised people came together, and that really kind of galvanized the movement. And that first event we did was here at Rosemont at the Donald E. Stephens center.

Was it really?!

Yep, back in 1997.

No way!

Yes! So cut to over 20 years later, my brother and I had gotten out of our old company, took some time off, and decided to reinvent the whole comic con world and that whole experience. Even though it had grown, not just my old company but so many of them all over the world, we said to ourselves, “What do we want to see in the future?” We could start with a blank slate, and rather than try to do more of what we used to do, it was, “How do we reinvent it? How do we create the future of it? How do we turn it from a convention into an experience?” That was the genesis of how ACE got started and to be back here in Rosemont with ACE is the biggest homecoming for us.

That’s so cool! With that experience, you started the Facebook group, which is something that I thought was really neat as a way for you to connect with all of the people that you’re putting these events on for. What made you want to reach out and engage with the ACE Universe audience in that way?

So the first thing that we set out to do with ACE, the first thought that we had was that we had spent 25+ years on acceptance out there and being accepted. And now that we’re accepted out there, the next phase of our life is, “How do we build community?” We’ve got hundreds of millions of fans all over the world who love superheroes and how do we keep them connected?

What we’re trying to do with the events is to create more of a boutique experience so that everybody’s welcome and everybody feels included so that it’s not just about people of comic books, but people of superheroes. Over 90% of the people today in the world love these characters through the movies and television, and may never have read a comic book, and we wanted everyone to feel welcome.

So with the place where we wanted to create the community, it’s important to have that kind of communication. [We want to] have them feel like they’re part of the experience and actually engage them so they can help us to spread the word. That’s what community is all about.

By starting [the Facebook group], we’ve empowered our audience to work with us and to share their experiences with other fans so that, by the time a new fan gets here, [veteran fans have] shared so much of the knowledge and experience [for new fans to learn from].

We’re very active on the boards, especially my brother Stephen Shamus.

Oh yeah! You guys are a bit of a celebrity yourselves!

Totally. Everybody wants selfies this weekend and it’s so charming and we love it.

By having the fan group out there, it’s really enabled us to answer so many questions for people that they have, because for so many people, this is their first time. It’s their first entry into this world. They’ve never been to a comic con before. They don’t know what to do or where to go or what they should be asking, what they should wear, what to get here. By having this community, everybody has an opportunity to feel like they’re part of it even before they walk in the door.

And as someone who has attended multiple conventions, I’ve found so many helpful answers in that group. It’s been really great.

Which is what it’s meant for.

What is the most challenging aspect of running an event like this being a fan yourself? Is there a line that you have to walk between being a fan but also obviously getting things done?

Because we’ve run over 180 comic cons before, we’re very good at coordinating, working with lots of people, getting to lots of places, working with lots of vendors, and the unions, and the setup, and all that. We’ve really done a really great job on that over so many years. And really, with the new company we’ve streamlined that.

The place where it gets challenging is with all the talent. We’re not trying to bring in 30, 40, 50, 100 celebrities. We’re trying to get 10 or 11 of the people that people absolutely want to see. Because they’re so world-famous and everybody wants to see them, it’s really hard to make sure that everybody has the best experience that they can have.

So we do a lot of things where we make a lot of VIP opportunities, but then what we also try to do, and this is really key, is [make sure that] nobody is excluded from having access to the celebrity or the talent because we do these open panels. There are no doors. There’s nobody excluded. If you’re in the room, with every GA ticket you have the opportunity to be able to see the celebrity on stage. I think a lot of shows that may have had a big celebrity or somebody more popular, [their panels are] always in a closed room. There’s limited seats, there’s lines, you’ve gotta stay overnight or it’s hours in line just to hopefully get a seat…

If you bought a ticket, if you’ve gone through the trouble of getting here–whether it’s a hotel, airfare, driving with your friends–you don’t want to be excluded from the thing you want to see the most. And we want to make sure that everybody gets to be part of that.

I love that. It’s been great to be able to just walk in and out and hear throughout the entire hall–you can hear your favorite celebrity speaking.

Yeah. And that’s why we’ve run much larger shows physically with lots more people, but we didn’t want to do that. We really wanted to focus on the quality experience, not the quantity of it.

I think the thing that I heard, yesterday very much so, is, ‘Everyone gets what they came here to do. If you have an autograph, if you have a photo op, you’re going to get it. Don’t worry.’

I don’t know of any other company that would make sure that their fans get the experience.

Thank you very much. We invest very, very heavily in customer service. For us, you came here to meet a celebrity or get something or meet somebody or get an autograph, and we want to make sure that that happens. That’s first and foremost on our list.

We actually have a whole bunch of extra people there to make sure that we can accommodate people. We know that [fans’ convention schedules are] always busy and they might have two things that are conflicting, but whatever we can do to make it work so that you can have the right experience when you’re here, we want to make sure that that happens.

You succeed at it. If you can say, as a fan, who is on your dream list to bring to one of these events?

Oh, well certainly Robert Downey Jr., of course. But there are so many other amazing superheroes and villains out there and in so many other franchises.

We’ve just started [ACE Universe], [and] it’s almost like an all-star show. We started getting into the Game of Thrones cast, Norman Reedus from The Walking Dead, Taron Egerton… So, we really started breaking with some of the MCU characters, but there are still so many amazing talented actors and actresses out there, franchises that we’ll be working with.

 
This interview has been edited for clarity.