It certainly is a weird time to be a creative user of YouTube, as robotic programs troll user data in search of copyright materials, putting the users who submit it at risk of being banned or silenced. But over the course of nearly two years, Michael Agrusso has steadily picked up a die-hard geek following making videos that use his voice, action figures and nearly every bit of Apple software known to the world. He moves beyond pandering to fans with lame comic jokes, and instead plays up to inside jokes and broader commentary on the state of films and how comics have taken so long to break into that market.

Perhaps you know him better by his alter ego: It’sJustSomeRandomGuy. The series started with I’m A Marvel/I’m A DC, a creative response to the news that DC Comics had canceled their proposed plans of Wonder Woman and The Flash live-action films on the same day. Agrusso continued the parody ads between a Spider-Man and Superman action figure with Batman, Iron Man and even the Hulk. As he wrote the words, his partner and girlfriend Brianna Li (neé It’sJustSomeRandomGal) would wrangle figures and provide the ever-important ‘motion.’  Beyond the ads, the spin-off series After Hours and Happy Hour would emerge, drawing on fan reactions to recently released comic book films while remaining true to developments in the actual comics themselves–for example, Captain America visiting Superman as a ghost, or playing up the aspect that no one remembers Spider-Man was married after the controversial One More Day storyline.

More endearing than Robot Chicken’s take on “action figure comedy,” it’s been a geeky word-of-mouth phenomena, resonating with fans of both the comics and their film adaptations (even Jon Favreau adores Agrusso’s work). Recently, Agrusso has even been discussing the idea of “fan donations” for toys–the Spider-Hulk figure used in his NYCC promo was donated by a fan–-and may soon establish a means for fans to send him their figures. After Agrusso premiered the two-part Happy Hour season finale at a panel at New York Comic Con on Saturday, he took the time to chat about returning to NYCC, concerns about YouTube’s recent crack down on original content based on copyright material, and whether or not he’s yet a “web celebrity.”

Let’s talk about some of what’s been happening recently with YouTube, where they’re cracking down on content that’s considered licensed. They’re tracking down the data content, and famously with the Seal song from Batman Forever, they’re just muting the song instead of taking down the video. So I was wondering how you felt about this since you are basically using other creative content, but for humor and geekier reasons.

I don’t know, I guess it all comes down to what’s protected under fair use and parody laws. I would definitely hope that those in charge would be able to take the time to try to tell the difference between what is a blatant posting it for the sake of posting it and not adding anything and trying to use it as a slight tool for something else.

When these happened, it was basically bots doing the searching.

I’ve been buried in work here so much that I haven’t noticed anything.

How long were you working on the season finale for this? You mentioned during the panel that these take considerably longer than the shorts or commercial spoofs.

We had some computer problems at one point, we had just filmed everything of Happy Hour # 4 back in December and that gave us some time for everything to get fixed. We thought we might as well start writing Happy Hour #5, and once the computer came back we had to re-film Happy Hour #4, then we edited it and voiced it, and immediately went into post with it.  But because [#5] is twice as long as four, you’ve got a few more things to take care of –and I being kind of a perfectionist, well both of us, we worry about a lot of these things at every stage.

Taking the medium you use, it’s kind of incredible the amount of detail you put in, and you also mentioned, as a way to make some money about doing “riffs” like from Rifftrax?

They have a program where they allow people to do iRiffs. I’m a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and we had just done It’sJustSomeRandomCommentary–selling a separate audio track for our playlist so people can get insight watching, and yet not get sued. Because selling a DVD would be problematic for copyright reasons, [but] there’s no law to stop us from talking about it. We got the idea from RiffTrax and we thought why don’t we try doing a riff? We might host it on their program, but it’s a way of trying to expand and see what people respond to. Since we talk about the superhero movie right there and then.

You mentioned during the panel that you’re coming up on your two-year anniversary. Are you now a bonafide YouTube celebrity with Weezer video status?

That’d be nice, but it’s awesome to feel as embraced as we are by the fans that are aware of us. We love it. I honestly don’t know, but we’ve got more subscriptions than a lot of people. We seem to hover somewhat, whether we’re on the top “100 Most Subscribed” list. Some of that seems to be dependent on whether or not it’s the Summer Superhero Movie Season or whether they’re not in the public eye at the time. What people mainly respond to are the I’m a Marvel/I’m A DC videos. Happy Hour and After Hours, a lot of people love and watch, but it does seem to be for the hardcore fans–it appeals to them more.

You do put some nice references in for that type–especially in the season finale where you have Batman giving a turn on the ending monologue from The Dark Knight and to the comic-savvy plan with One More Day, which has been a huge deal with the fan community. And they are who you’re basically working off of–people even tonight were shouting for you to do something about Darkest Night or the Wonder Woman animated DVD.

It’s more so the latter somewhat. When we were finishing up After Hours # 7, we started to notice some comments saying “See, [Joe] Quesada! See, [Spider-Man] shouting ‘Mary-Jane!’ That’s what it’s supposed to be about!” We knew OMD was supposed to be a big thing, but we didn’t read it.  There seemed to be quite a bit of backlash within the fan community and that fed into it; and DC Comics announcing they were going to make all their heroes darker, that fed into the season finale.  It was interesting to merge the two stories into each other, what was going on simultaneously with these two characters and their franchises.  The fact that was influenced by recent events, if we can look ahead we do, but it is much more influenced by the fan reaction more so than the actual event itself.

Are you making any profit off these yet? I know you teach Voice and Speech, but you still can’t make anything off this as a labor of love.

We were compensated for the Con videos, but it’s for the fan community. Iit’s moving the amount of support we get from fans, people offering, asking for a donation button on the page and buying several copies of the commentaries. That really helps us.  We became aware as this went on, that it seems fairly unlikely we can ever directly make money off this legally, so we have to find a way to make money of it indirectly legally. That’s where “randomcommentary” comes from, but so long as we have fans and a subscribership, there is a possibility. As long as we stay true to them and ourselves–well, not to sound corny here.

You are at the perfect venue to get up on a moral podium. So how many toy donations have there been?

We got one last year–someone said the only toy I’ve got is a Spider-Hulk. And I said, oh I remember this comic, it was one issue. I didn’t know how we were going to use it, and then the idea came up that we could use it in a New York Comic Con video this year. It worked pretty well, it was a visual gag. We have not actually had a lot, and people are starting to embrace that. If they want to give them to us, it saves us the trouble to look. If we use them, we use them, if we don’t, we don’t.

Below, the Season Finale for After Hours:

But we can’t recomend enough starting from the beginning.