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Day 2 of the Tucson Comic-Con kicked off at 10am and it was a glorious day for strolling around and taking in all that awesome. Thanks again to Mike and the other fine folks that run this event for providing us with media passes.

After wandering the floor again for a while and ogling awesome art work such as this beauty:

Patrick was nice enough to spot me the Slim Jims so I could walk home with that Macho Madness.

Midnight Show/Underbelly Panel

This panel was hosted by Newt Wallen from Underbelly and Midnight Show infamy.

He brought out some great videos, my personal favorite was the Underbelly episode about Aquaman.

Newt is a funny guy and no stranger to hosting panels, he engaged the otherwise dead-eyed audience and insulted the Tucson school system which I am ok with not having gone to primary or high school here. You should really check out the Underbelly link above for some other Cons they have attended and Panels they have conducted. I am really looking forward to his Midnight Show project which is a collect of grindhouse trailers that should warm even the coldest heart cockles of anyone with a bit of horror nostalgia. Check out the preview here.

Orbital Decay

Next up I met up with some familiar faces of Jacob Breckenridge and Mike Esham who respectively illustrate and write the comic Orbital Decay. Which is described, by those gentlemen themselves, as “Archer meets Star Trek” and I couldn’t agree more the written and drawn visual gags always have me chuckling. I really enjoy that the main character Hornick is a jackass but it is justified why he isn’t shoved out an airlock because his Pops is high level space brass. The latest issue finds our crew dealing with the Vis an alien race that applied to age old technique of relationship subterfuge and guile (guilt trip and passive aggressiveness) to deal with unwanted visitors. This title is really building up steam with it’s third issue, I highly recommend picking up #1 and #2 as well.  I foresee them being on the podcast in future for a more in-depth discussion of their comic.

Besides being some really cool dudes, another good reason to visit with them is that Jacob is purveyor of finely drawn fat superheros/supervillains.

We had both these cool cats on the podcast as well as Henry Barajas on special edition of the podcast from the floor of the comic-con. Things were a bit weird as everyone was cagey after 2 days attendance.

Falling Rock National Park

Falling Rock National Park is written and drawn by Josh Shalek, he was kind enough to provide me with copies of Falling Rock National Park Issue 2 and Tomb of the Zombies for review. I found myself unable to put down Tomb of the Zombies, it was a great story with a quick pace that had me laughing at the absurdity of it all. A Mad Scientist invites his niece (Kate) to intern for the summer as his lab assistant, in order to impress a society of super scientist he raises a zombie army after his experiment to create the perfect werewolf instead yields a docile yet highly intelligent wolfman servant. The great thing is that Josh doesn’t let us off without a bit of an emotional subplot about the Kate’s Grandma and her mental state, it was cool to see something like this handled so well in an world where the absurd seems the norm.

Falling Rock National Park has a short form story structure with a few different stories contained. I like the idea of nefarious prairie dogs hording gold for what could perhaps be the greater good or at least keeping the Ghostbusters out of work. Ernesto has that terrible curse of being mistaken for a store employee, in this case it’s even worse because it’s a shoe salesmen and he handles with with all the charm of a reptilian Al Bundy. The last story closes out on a great overlook on art critics, lesson learned beware your bias.  Awesome indie stuff that you need to check out.

Cosplay Awesome

Below are just some peeps that I ran across and had my camera handy. If you happen to be one these awesome folks below and want me to link to something just drop me an email at charles@thebuzzmedia.com

Sir Robin of Loxley

Hawkgirl!

60s era Batman and Catwoman

Uncle Fester with lightbulb action!

Oh! It’s the Juggernaut!

Batman and Rogues.