I think there’s some hazy, undefined rite of passage where you reach a certain age and all of sudden popular culture begins making references to vestiges from your childhood. My generation is post-college, all growns up, and – just as Harry Potter will be the “fundamental lingua franca of the 2025 hipster” – its video game, commercial, television, music, and other obsessions are now part of the ethos of the mainstream and provide a ripe lexicon for its burgeoning comics and writers.
I first consciously realized that kids my age had crossed this threshold last year when I stumbled upon Power Pad from Team Tiger Awesome (Tilzy.TV page). It’s one of the Texas-born, LA-based sketch comedy group’s first shorts, and is jam packed with late-80s/early-90s goodness (the Mr. Belvedere intro and beginnings of a philosophical thread about aging in Thundercats being my favorites):
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Nick Mundy, Clint Gage, and Michael Truly are the threesome behind the Awesome and, with independently produced series like 28 Days Slater to Super Deluxe-sponsored viral one-offs like Halo Nights, have leveraged their intelligent brand of “frat boy, early-90s, pop culture bullshit” into representation by William Morris and shorts that pay the bills and generate a whole lotta laughs.
A few weeks ago, I was able to catch up with two-thirds of the team and learn more about how they got together, where they’re going, and why they want to be the Poison of the internet. They mean like the band, not a toxic substance.
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Check out the crew’s latest below that Mundy mentioned above. It’s an epic, good vs. evil, mythological twist on the origin of Santa Claus that ran out of funding and had to employ the use of cheesy sets and camera hungry talent. Like the majority of Team Tiger’s catalog, it’s good, funny, and pretty awesome.
