Dan Deacon Still Waiting for Poster Contest Winner

Do you have a wealth of meaningless knowledge about obscure cartoon characters? Dan Deacon hopes so, and he's willing to reward you for it.

The one-man musical madhouse, whose fall tour will roll through US and Canadian dates in a bus that runs on vegetable oil, has outdone himself in sheer quirk factor this time around. Glowing skull atop his stage set up? Check. Purple glittery hat? Check. Chance to win $500 or a portrait of yourself painted by Deacon himself? For the first time, check.

Deacon announced last week that this tour's poster was not only a mind-melter, but also a contest. It was created by visual arts studio Post Typography and features 247 different, mostly very obscure, cartoon characters. All you have to do is name every one and send them to postercontest@whamcity.com. Easy enough, right? Not quite.

"I'm sure some people could do it in a short period of time, but I think it'll take most people days to finish it, or to come close," Deacon tells Spinner. "I've received a bunch of entry forms filled out but at least 10 percent of each are off."

The best part, Deacon says, is that the poster was created at first without any contest in mind. "Some friends and I had a good time trying to figure out who everyone was [on the poster] and I thought a contest would be a fun idea. And with the recession, why not throw in a cash prize, right? Let's live large," he says.

First place -- as in, the first person to name every single character correctly -- will take home $500. The second place winner will have a Deacon-painted portrait of himself. Third place gets the rare 'Wham City Box Set #1' and fourth wins copies of all eight of Deacon's earliest albums.

But more than the prizes, insists Deacon, the contest is just to have fun. And looking at the Sgt. Pepper's-gone-wild melee of figures, it's hard not to.

Deacon's favorites, he said, are Spider-Man, He-Man and Daffy Duck, because, "If those three started a band, it would crush the earth into 1000 moons."

And if obscure cartoons aren't your forte, Deacon's willing to give you a hint. What's one character not on the poster?

"Lance Henriksen."

Thanks, Dan. Really.