Get hyped for Hypecon

Martin, Rager
Martin, Rager

Billed as an indoor pop culture festival this year, Hypecon will enjoy a new location at the Four States Fairgrounds Entertainment Center on June 29 and 30.

From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday, Hypecon brings special guests like "Dragon Ball Z" and "Dragon Ball Super" voice actors Chris Rager (Hercule) and Josh Martin (Majin Buu).

Hypecon creator Jesse Darby-Tillis II said this year's second annual event coincides with Sparks in the Park as a daytime event to complement the night activities.

"This is kind of a testing thing to see if this can grow into a weekend special yearly thing," he said, noting Hypecon adds to the hype of weekend fun.

Panels, cosplay contests both days, video game tournaments, table top games and more will bring the fun. That includes combat entertainment, too-"you get to shoot each other with bows and arrows," said McKayla Cox, an event organizer with Darby-Tillis.

This year has an increased emphasis on being interactive, such as a dinosaur exhibit for the children and sumo wrestling suits to wear.

"This year is more of like a Hype festival, if you will. There's a lot more interactions. There's more to do," Darby-Tillis said.

KC's Rolling Video Games brings a video game truck to the premises. Partnering with gamer group TXKHotSauce, Hypecon hosts tournaments with Super Smash Bros singles and doubles, Street Fighter V, Mortal Kombat 11 and Tekken 7.

"The big tournaments are on Saturday, but we will have a lot more light gaming on Sunday," Darby-Tillis said.

An art contest will be held again this year in collaboration with Texarkana Arkansas Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association. The winner gets to do the second issue of the Razorman comic, which will total 10 pages, along with $100. Razorman is a Texarkana superhero.

About the headlining guests, Darby-Tillis said they're actually good friends in addition to "Dragon Ball" voice actors. "They play best friends, their characters are, but they're also best friends in real life," he said.

Table top games were a big hit last year, he said. Exploding Unicorns, in particular, was popular. "We have some DMs, dungeon masters, that do a lot of one-off games for people that just want to sit down and play, roll dice," Darby-Tillis said. Trading card games like Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering will be going.

Another special guest is Vic Mignogna, voice actor for "Bleach," "One Punch Man" and "Naruto." Cosplayer guests include Courtney Cosplay, Venture Bros, 2 Nerds in Love and Alecta Arcana. Artist Clinton Hobart, who has Disney experience, will attend.

Halloween art contest winner Wild West will serve as guest artist, while last year's art contest winner, Treno Nights, will have a booth. Another talented, local creative, author DC Gomez, will attend, too. In all, about 30 to 40 vendors will participate, including artists, jewelry makers, soap makers and comic vendors.

With Ark-La-Tex Comic Con folding, Hypecon is now the one locally-based comic con held here. Darby-Tillis said he'll see if it can be expanded based on this year's experience. He'd like to see it go three days next year. That's his main goal.

"This is the biggest venue for it, so this is something to grow into," Darby-Tillis said, also noting it's already bigger than he anticipated it would be. "I'm playing catch-up to Hypecon," he said.

(Tickets: one-day pass for $20, two-day pass for $35, $100 for a two-day family package of four. Get tickets at etix.com. More event info at the Hypecon 2019 event page on Facebook.)

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