by S.J. Borger Thrilling Adventure Hour and Night Vale Save the, Well, Everything

Thrilling Adventure Hour returned to Comic Con last month in a cross over show with Welcome to Night Vale, an event of such magnitude that they last time they tried it (in Seattle, in March), the recording equipment literally could. not. even.

Performing to a packed house at the Spreckles Theatre in San Diego, the show followed Sparks Nevada, Marshal of Mars (Marc Even Jackson), Crouch (Mark Gagliardi) and the usual Sparks Nevada: Marshall of Mars crew as they travel through space and time to save the moon–allowing for the “Marshal of Mars” and the Night Vale worlds to collide.

Done in three acts (with an intermission!) the first act opens with Wil Wheaton–as the omniscient narrator/god-like being–and quickly segues into “Marshal on Mars”, with Sparks Nevada (Marc Evan Jackson) and Croach (Mark Gagliardi) dealing with the subversively silly criminal element (this time it’s James Urbaniak as a good-guy shoe salesman turned bad and his two robot outlaws). Things go from bad to worse when Pemily Stallwark (Molly Quinn), now Marshal of the Moon, shows up needing help to save Earth’s lunar satellite. An introduction of a timey-wimey-super-duper-don’t-think-about-it-too-hard device allows people to travel across space, time, and apparently dimensions, and Croach is zapped to Night Vale.

Act II begins like a typical Night Vale episode. Cecil (Cecil Baldwin) begins with the news that there is a new Destroy-the-Moon initiative. The citizens of Night Vale, Cecil tells us, have tried throwing objects at the Moon and will shortly escalate to yelling insults at it. Also, a strange, overly literal being has been going around town demanding that people cease their plans to destroy the moon. Cecil, the Mayor Dana Cardinal (Jasika Nicole), Carlos the Scientist (Dylan Marron) and Steve Carlsberg (Hal Lublin) end up getting zapped back to Mars with Croach. And thus ends Act II.

Act III (after a fairly interminable intermission) has the combined casts banding together to save the moon with some (extremely convenient) time-zapping, a few deaths (!!!), a few more resurrections, and heartfelt professions of love, friendships and respect between various pairs. There’s also some discussion about paradoxes and the general head-ache-inducing vagaries of time (and dimension!) travel.

While maybe not the most coherently plotted Sparks Nevada episode (Night Vale tends to eschew plots completely, so it wins by comparison), the combined cast elevated the show; and the audience, eager and ecstatic at the combining of the two fan-favorite shows, did not let a joke slip by them. The verbal sparring between Baldwin, Sparks and Gagliardi is quite possibly some of the best comedic repartee we’ve heard in awhile, and the 30-second half written/half-improv’d competing cries-of-alarm between Carlsberg and Felton (Craig Cackowski) brought the house down.

All in all, the cross over was extremely successful in bringing together the two worlds; it was funny, irreverent, touching and, well, everything we’ve come to expect from both shows.

The episode won’t be aired for awhile, but you can catch up on all the most recent episodes of Thrilling Adventure Hour here and Night Vale here while you wait!