Earth's Mightiest Podcast Comes To Town

CHARLESTON - Comic book fans love to talk about their favorite books and characters and writers and illustrators and just about anything else related to the genre.

On Friday owner Mike Campbell is welcoming two of the three hosts of The Earth's Mightiest Podcast to the store to chat and mingle with customers and show off some of their own work.

Alex Smith and Viet Huynh, both natives of the Goose Creek and Hanahan, run the bi-weekly podcast focused on Marvel Comics' Avengers characters along with Corwin Crowl. Smith still lives in the Charleston area and works as a professional graphic designer for Mount Pleasant based Jantzi Test Prep, Inc. Huynh now lives in Atlanta where he works as a structural engineer, but is coming home for the holidays and he and Smith decided to put in an appearance at Captain's Comics.

"It's just a little something for the people that like this kind of stuff," Campbell said. "We're calling it Art, Amusement and Action Figures."

The name comes from Smith's and Huynh's other hobbies. Aside from holding down real world jobs and running the podcast, they also spend a lot of time dabbling in and around the comic book world.

Smith would love to work full time as a comic book artist.

"I have shown my work to a few people (in the comics industry) and gotten some good advice," Smith said. "But trying to be a professional comic artists is like trying to be a professional football player, except there's only one team. There are only about 30 guys that actually make a living drawing comics full time."

Smith isn't discouraged though, he still spends a lot of his free time drawing, and he will be doing sketches and selling some of his work at Captain's Comics on Friday.

When Huynh isn't busy at work as a structural engineer, he also dabbles in the comics world, though he focuses on making custom action figures.

"He takes existing action figures and turns them into minor characters that wouldn't ordinarily get a figure of their own," Campbell explains.

He also mines his vast knowledge of comics and comic geeks for his own brand of nerd humor in his stand-up comedy routines. He has given more than a dozen performances at clubs and college campuses an has appeared on the Comcast "Comedy on Demand" program. He has also won a few stand-up competitions and been a finalist in others.

The pair said the podcast, which reconnected them after Huynh moved away, was originally supposed to focus on the X-Men comics.

"But there were a bunch of X-Men podcasts and there weren't any Avengers ones, so we decided to go with the Avengers," Huynh said. "We're the most popular Avengers podcast, we're the only Avengers podcast, but we're still the most popular."

Smith ended up as one of the hosts after what was supposed to be a temporary spot to fill in for another host, but landed the job, albeit one that doesn't pay anything, when it became apparent that the other person wouldn't be able to host regularly.

"He lived in Ireland, so the timing never really worked out with him being so far ahead of us time-wise," Huynh said.

Smith, Huynh and Crowl just posted their latest podcast Monday. Their next one, episode 20, is slated for the day after Christmas. In addition to their website, the podcast is also available through iTunes, Smith said.

"It's really just a good excuse to hang out in a comic shop," Smith says of the Art, Amusement and Action Figures event.