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If You Build It, Will They Come?
 A Hero's Journey - David Strugger with Paul Gertz For David Strugger, it wasn’t a baseball field that brought his dream to fruition but a website. Strugger, aka GlitchBob is the ultimate ReBoot fan. I first started watching ReBoot when I was nine, during its premiere on ABC back in 1994. I was immediately hooked on the adventures of Bob and his friends…Also, due to my age, I wondered if such a thing could really be taking place within my very own computer. When ReBoot was cancelled, Strugger spent years waiting for his beloved show to make a comeback. Then he decided to take matters into his own hands. That’s when Strugger’s website, ReBoot Revival , was born. My strategy was to gather as many fans as possible. Whether they be old or new, we'd use the large gathering to have them show an American television network that there was indeed a market for ReBoot. We would send the network a large mailing of letters which would show in volume, the actual number of fans who wished to see their favorite series back. Strugger was not alone in his pursuit… there were many, many others. Two ReBoot fans, Peter Buller and Chris Johnson , drove the “Roadboot”, a traveling ReBoot convention, across North America in 2006. Julia Gilbert continues to log ReBoot fan art and fiction and moderates an active ReBoot forum at RBcorner.com, almost six years after the last ReBoot episode aired. Fast forward one year. Rainmaker Entertainment now owns Mainframe and CEO Warren Franken and the new EVP Paul Gertz decide to explore the possibility of a ReBoot relaunch as a trilogy of feature-length films. They join with Zeros 2 Heroes to launch an online initiative to re-engage the fans. As luck would have it Matt Toner, President of Zeros 2 Heroes, found Strugger’s website while Gertz was on a business trip to New York. Strugger, a kid from the Bronx, has a chance to meet the man with the power to bring back the show. At first I honestly was saying to myself "Is this for real?!" and "Did I actually do it?!” Soon after Strugger met with Gertz in New York a handful of other active fans were selected to voice their opinions and help with the ReBoot relaunch. All participated in a conference call with Rainmaker executives planning the relaunch. What followed is old news for followers of the Zeros 2 Heroes website. Five pitches went straight from the executives’ desks to the site, where they were ruthlessly rated, reviewed and referred by the legions of ReBoot fans. And from this month-long process, a consensus winner emerged and was announced at Toronto’s FanExpo. And who was front and center on the panel? David Strugger. For Strugger it’s still hard to believe that his hard work has paid off. I've always dreamed of having this chance, and now I get to live that dream. I've fully enjoyed having the opportunity to work with a company such as Rainmaker who is very interested in bringing one of my all time favorite series back, and doing it right. And there are fringe benefits too – after the FanExpo panel, another ReBoot fan asked an abashed Strugger for his autograph.
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