Sketches from Florida Supercon

By Brian Butler | June 30th, 2012 | No Comments

On Friday, comic book/anime/animation/video game/fantasy/sci-fi/pop culture fest Florida Supercon 2012 kicked off its seventh surreal year at the Miami Airport Convention Center with a performance by ska punk band Less Than Jake. What a treat.

A series of off-beat wrestling matches with a roster as random as playing spin the bottle at a zoo stirred the audience into a polarized frenzy of nerds who were frazzled about Marvel and Hasbro universes colliding. Fred Flinstone fought the boss from the ninth level of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!! (That third explanation point is mine.) Neither was victorious after a Cee-Lo Green impostor rushed the ring (as fast as a 400-pound man can rush) to knockout both competitors with a frog-splash. Then Super Mario fought that long-haired creep from House of 1000 Corpses. Mario, a crowd favorite, kindly introduced himself with his signature phrase — “It’za me, Mario!” — and insisted on hugging several audience members in similar Nintendo-centric attire.

Less Than Jake tore down any of the remaining barriers to reality when they covered the Animaniacs theme song, and Link from Zelda stage-dived into the audience. But it took the Sponge Bob Squarepants theme to truly mesh the worlds of fiction and reality, when the world’s largest circle pit of comic, sci-fi, and cartoon characters erupted in the middle of Exhibitor Hall A. Finn from Adventure Time was skanking alongside Sherlock Holmes, who was one beat away from being trampled by a herd of Bronies. The final blow to reality was Less Than Jake’s cover of the iCarly theme song, when a couple from MSPaint Adventures were found making-out on a pile of empty Pocky boxes.

Brian Butler is artist, designer, miniature golfer, Ice Cream People research coordinator. To learn more about him, visit theupperhandart.com.

---