The TV presence at Comic-Con has expanded to the point where shows that only vaguely fit the Con's mission (say, “Sons of Anarchy”) have become popular fixtures. Hulu's “The Awesomes,” which returned for a second season today (you can see the first two new episodes here, along with all 10 episodes from season 1), though, fits several overlapping core Comic-Con constituencies. It's a show about a team of super-heroes – albeit misfit super heroes whose great powers are undercut by stupidity, or deep-seated mommy issues, or various physical and emotional ailments that make the team's most powerful member, Seth Meyers' Prock (who can stop time) a guy who rarely does anything useful with his gifts – made by people (including Meyers, his “Late Night” producer Mike Shoemaker, and writer Dan Mintz, whom you might recognize as the voice of Tina Belcher on “Bob's Burgers”) with clear love and knowledge of many eras of comic book-dom. (One of the supers is Gadget Girl, a de-aged '40s heroine played by Paula Pell, who'd fitjust fine into old Justice Society stories with only the smallest of tweaks.) And the cast includes a bunch of “SNL” and “SNL”-adjacent actors, including Meyers, Taran Killam (as the dim-witted speedster Frantic), Keenan Thompson (as the fashion-conscious, mother-obsessed Impresario) and, this season, Amy Poehler (as a barracuda of a lawyer who may be a love interest for Prock) and Will Forte (as the accountant son of season 1's chief villain). And while it mainly exists as a comedy, it's not really a satire; The Awesomes have actual adventures (even if they bungle their way into solutions), there are big character and story arcs to each season, etc.
At Comic-Con, I had a few minutes to speak with Meyers, Shoemaker, Killam, Mintz and Meyers' brother Josh (who plays the insufferable, aptly-named hero Perfectman) about the show, about which members of the cast and crew are actually into comics – and what it's like for the very nerdy Killam to be married to SHIELD Agent Maria Hill (aka Cobie Smulders) – and more.