Last Comic Standing’s “Comic Comeback” gives eliminated comedians a second chance in online face-offs, votes

The semifinal rounds of Last Comic Standing‘s season 8 may be coming to a close this week on the TV, but online, you still have more than a rooting chance for the other eliminated stand-up comedians who didn’t make the cut in the eyes of the judges on your NBC station.

It’s a new twist called Comic Comeback.

Since viewers at home aren’t dialing, texting or clicking votes each week for the 10 finalists (or even the other semifinalists), this is the show’s compromise to you.

How does it work?

Here’s J.B. Smoove with a quick video explainer:

In other words:

Starting June 19, you can go to NBC’s Last Comic Comic Comeback page and vote for your favorite eliminated comedian. All of the comedians will have uploaded individual videos with new stand-up sets from which to choose, watch and vote.

“And like Superman making the Earth rotate backwards…change history!” Smoove says in the clip. “Sort of.”

Eliminated comedians will face off in head-to-head online votes based on their new clips featuring jokes you haven’t seen on the show.

It sounds quite a bit like the “Last Chance Kitchen” competition held by NBC’s cable sister network, Bravo, for Top Chef contestants.

At any rate.

Last Comic producers allowed the studio audience to make the first pick ahead of this week’s episode, and they selected Nick Guerra as the first entrant into Comic Comeback competition. Who will join him? That’s up to you. Get ready to start voting June 19 after the next episode of Last Comic Standing.

*The rules:

Comic Comeback is an online head-to-head competition among comics eliminated from Last Comic Standing Season 8 (the “Program”), for an opportunity to perform a comedy set in the finale episode of the Program. Fan voting via Twitter decides the winner.

Comic Comeback starts when the semifinals round of Last Comic Standing Season 8 has concluded. The semifinals studio audience selects two comics eliminated from the Program’s semifinals round to go head-to-head in Round 1 of the Comic Comeback competition.

Following the second semifinals episode airing June 19, 2014, videos of online-only performances for the two comics in Round 1 of Comic Comeback are posted on NBC.com/Comic-Comeback. You can vote for your favorite comic on NBC.com by clicking the “vote” button for your favorite comic (which generates an automatic tweet after you log into your Twitter account), or by logging onto Twitter directly and creating a tweet that counts as a vote, as described more fully below.

Each week thereafter, the comic with the most valid votes at the end of that week’s Voting Period (as defined below) will move forward to the next round of Comic Comeback to face off against a comic eliminated in the following week’s episode. There are five rounds total; the comic who wins the head-to-head matchup in the fifth round is the winner.

• Voting each week occurs on Twitter between 10:55 p.m. Eastern each Thursday and noon Pacific the following Wednesday.
• One vote per comedian per Twitter account — your vote will be registered as a prepared Tweet through NBC.com/Comic-Comeback. If you do it yourself independently, your Tweet must contain the hashtag #ComicComeback and a keyword consisting of the first name of the comic competing in that round whom you have selected to receive your vote. There must be a space between the hashtag and the keyword for your vote to count. You must then select “[Tweet]” for your vote to be posted to Twitter and to count as a valid vote. To participate in this vote, you must have your Twitter account set to public.