Special Guests
Saluki Con 2025 Special Guests
Saluki Con is an immersion of Science, Technology, Arts, Humanities, and the comic world. We are pleased to announce that our featured special guests will represent a cross-section of these areas and regional stars.
Special Saturday Night Speaker
Sean Astin
Actor & Filmmaker
Lord of the Rings, Stranger Things, Goonies, Rudy
Shryock Auditorium - 7pm - Saturday, February 15, 2025
Sean is only appearing at this time and will not be on the Con floor. Saluki Con pass, plus Special Speaker
add-on needed for entry. Limited Capacity
Sean Astin is an American film actor, director, voice artist and producer, best known for his film roles as Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Mikey Walsh in The Goonies, the title character of Rudy, and Bob Newby in Netflix’s hit series, Stranger Things 2. He is also the author of the New York Times best-selling There and Back Again, a memoir – co-written with Joe Layden – of his film career with emphasis on his experiences with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Son of Academy Award winning actress Patty Duke and acclaimed actor John Astin, Sean Astin scored a career defining, triumphant success in the inspirational and universally applauded college football biopic Rudy, about the life-changing struggles and rewards of the title character, Daniel Ruettiger. In the early 2000s, he experienced another career breakthrough with his role as Samwise Gamgee in Peter Jackson’s the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, released in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Along with the many awards bestowed upon the trilogy – eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture – Astin received nominations for his own performance. He took home the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor and awards from the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, the Seattle Film Critics, the Utah Film Critics Association and the Phoenix Film Critics Society. Astin has been a long-distance runner since his teens. To date, he has participated in four LA Marathons, the San Francisco Marathon and the Chicago Marathon, running in all three cities in 2013. While training for the LA Marathon in 2012, he began a Twitter campaign using #Run3rd, a way to dedicate his runs to causes and ideas that mattered not just to him, but to others. From July 2006 through August 2013, he amassed more than 3,000 miles using his Nike+ sensor. Sean Astin attended the Crossroads High School for the Arts and later a master class at the Stella Adler Conservatory in Los Angeles. He graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in History and English. An alumnus of Los Angeles Valley College, he served on the school’s Board of Directors of the Patrons Association and the Arts Council. Since Lord of the Rings , Astin has served on the board of several non-profit organizations, including the National Center for Family Literacy. A vocal advocate for literacy, mental health awareness, bi-polar disorder, civic engagement and other issues, Astin is an energetic, passionate speaker who promotes a culture of volunteerism to all audiences.
Dan Payne
In his early 20s, Payne was a professional volleyball player. After his retirement, he was convinced by his brother Josh to move to Australia, where Josh was already living. Dan began his acting career by creating short films with his brother.
Payne had numerous roles on the 2002-2005 science fiction series Stargate SG-1, and its 2004-2009 spin-off series Stargate Atlantis, both shot in Vancouver; these included Kull Warriors and an Ashrak assassin on Stargate SG-1, and the Wraith king in the Stargate Atlantis episode "Sateda".
Payne also appeared in Battlestar Galactica, Watchmen, Cabin in the Woods, and Disney’s Descendants.
Payne has starring roles in Hallmark Channel's 2016 movies All Yours, with Nicollette Sheridan, and A Time To Dance, with Jennie Garth. Payne also landed a recurring role on Good Witch.
Challenging the notions and definitions of art and illustration, Brad Moore is a psychedelic surrealist painter, draftsman, comic book creator, and thinker.
Coming from the world of horror comics, Moore had carved out a unique niche in the universe of Death Metal Art. Using rigorously complex imagery, audacious application of color theory, and subject matter so radically apart from the mainstream, Moore’s art stands outside the accepted world of critique and observation.
Published worldwide over 600 times, Brad Moore has amassed a cult following, and his album cover for Worm's "Foreverglade" was voted #11 out of the the top 30 metal album covers of 2021. No less a legend than H.R. Giger invited Moore to exhibit in his castle in Switzerland. Working in arcane realms of advanced artistry, Brad Moore continues to create for a world-wide audience.
Zac Atkinson is a comic creator, cartoonist, and designer. He resides somewhere in the corn of Illinois and has worked in the comic industry for over 20 years as a colorist.
You can see Zac's work in titles like Bruce Lee, Shazam, Marvel Action Spider-Man, Justice Society, Young Justice, Transformers, Amory Wars, Farscape, and many others.
When he's not making comics for others, he's making comics for himself at zacsart.com.
Sean Dulaney is a writer, broadcaster and artist. Based out of southeastern Illinois, his work has appeared in books from Amryl Press, Digital Webbing, Markosia, Pro Se, and Arcana Press, along with his own BIMOR imprint.
His popular 400 COURT STREET podcast led to a series of books on the history of professional wrestling in Evansville, Indiana—with two volumes released in 2022, along with a True Crime title set in Nashville, Tennessee.