Mark Hamill On How Comic-Con HQ's Pop Culture Quest Helps Him Embrace His Inner Geek

In today's series premiere of Mark Hamill's Pop Culture Quest from Comic-Con HQ, fans will get to [...]

By Russ Burlingame

In today's series premiere of Mark Hamill's Pop Culture Quest from Comic-Con HQ, fans will get to see Hamill doing something they probably don't generally picture him doing: geeking out a bit.

As the star of Star Wars and a major player on Batman: The Animated Series, The Flash, the Wing Commander franchise and more, Hamill

"I've always been one of them. It's not like I'm a poser," Hamill laughed. "I went to comic book conventions before I ever did Star Wars and I think people know that. When I was on General Hospital, Kerwin Mathews came on for a story arc and I freaked out. I said 'Oh my God! Sinbad!' I was badgering him in his dressing room with questions."

Hamill told us that the resulting conversation -- which happened off-set -- eventually got published in a fanzine.

"That's my bona fides right there -- the fact that I was so into those kinds of things," Hamill said. "And believe me, when I was in the giant Rancor hands all those years later, I thought of Kerwin, I thought of Fay Wray. I thought 'Man, how cool is this?'"

He said that while his father always wanted him to take a "real" job -- and even offered to split the cost of law school with him several years into Hamill's acting career -- he knew that show business was home, and that he would have settled to work on the crew in order to be a part of the entertainment industry.

After years in the business, he said, "to be the guy who goes and explores other people's collections is a thrill. While I might not be into the certain, specific items they're collecting, there's a bond between collectors. You understand their desires and their impulses. It's the same; it doesn't matter if they're collecting comic books or Civil War memorabilia, there's a certain kind of DNA that makes up a collector."

The experience of the show is a special one for Hamill -- not least of all becuase it allows him to do something different than his day-to-day.

"It's fun, becuase I get to pretend I do what you do for a living," he said. "I can pretend I'm a journalist and I can pretend I know what I'm talking about, and so far I'm really enjoying it."

The first episode of Mark Hamill's Pop Culture Quest, in which he gets a little bit meta and starts looking into The Joker, can be seen on the DC Entertainment YouTube page today.

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