Marvelous Rumors from the Bullpen

Today we'll turn a recently added feature (where we discuss television series that would make great comics) on it's head to examine some of the recent rumors of Marvel properties being developed for the small screen.

HEROES FOR HIRE (focusing on ex-con Luke Cage offering to take on bad guys for a price)
DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON (a dynamic female duo, one with a bionic arm and the other a granddaughter of a samurai, open a private-detective agency)

I combined these two.  While Luke Cage is probably a strong enough character to build a series around (with or without Danny Rand) I don't think enough people even know who the DotD are and since Luke will need a supporting cast it makes sense to combine them (unlike the next category). 

I think this could really be enjoyable to watch and if they paired it with the correct show it could work.  If I were producing I think I'd start with a reverse Remington Steele approach and have the DotD all ready in business but lacking street cred so they bring on Luke Cage who's been recently let out of prison under "mysterious circumstances".  I'd leave Danny's guest appearance for the season ending cliff hanger of the second season.

MOON KNIGHT/ THE HOOD (a low-rent criminal discovers a cloak that gives him superpowers)

These two characters are not alike at all.  This leads me to believe that either a.) these two characters were never actually in the running or b.) the people in charge have only the slightest inkling of the characters they chose to develop.  If I were asked to produce it I might go with...

MoonKnight is always being compared to the Batman so to change things up I'd have Marc Spector not be the main character.  Actually that's the name of a long dead soldier who once died while under the influence of the "curse of Khonshu".  Other people who died while under the influence of the curse: Steven Grant and Jake Locksley who all now reside in the head of the main character of the television show - who's the latest person to fall under the "curse of Khonshu" which releases the vengeance of the fist of Khonshu: MoonKnight.

An entity that The Hood had been seeking for quite some time, in his battle to maintain control over New York's gangs.  Now that this new civilian has fallen under the curse and controls MoonKnight the battle between these two characters is on!

THE PUNISHER (one man wages a war on crime)

This television program would have to be cable or it would suffer from the A-Team's "many bullets, few deaths" syndrome.  If I was asked to produce this show I might....

Start things off with a Frank Castle all shot to hell.  He's powerless (and all out of ammo) to keep a federal task-force from breaching his compound and bringing Frank Castle in.  Can they escort this unique prisoner all the way to a judge and jury of his peers so that he can have his day in court?  Will Frank escape?  Will he be broken out?  If he's loose on the street will he kill again?  If so will it be a "bad person"? 

I'd insert a lot of "Cat & Mouse" into this concept much like "The Fugitive".

CLOAK & DAGGER (two mutant children, with interlinked powers of dark/light, struggle to find their place in the world)

As the resident "DC Loving" member of the FBU staff Cloak & Dagger have always been one of my faverites.  I'd personally go "balls to the wall" with this concept.  There would be so many special effects that this show couldn't afford to run weekly.

As "odd" as it sounds I'd really turn this into a mutated "Highway To Heaven" but instead of a good christian escorting an actual angel around the country righting wrongs I'd have Dagger (with her blades of solid light) continue to push Cloak (with his cloak of night) around the country - all the while trying to keep from feeding on human emotion (which their powers almost demand).

THE HULK (Bruce Banner flees when he's hunted for murdering.....himself )

I personally don't think this can work.  Let me provide you with a list of why not:

• The Bill Bixby/ Lou Ferrigno television show/ telefilms is still fresh in a lot of our minds.
• The two big screen movies made were not huge successes and failed to resonate with fans
• The Bruce Banner character's suffered from a few reboots as of late with the Hulk showing up in the Marvel "Ultimate" line of comics/ animated features.

Thoughts?

Have a great weekend,

Caine

Expanding Comics | Small Screen Infusion: StreetHawk

There have been a lot of comics made from television series. Can it go the other way successfully? We think so, we've written about two all ready here & here.

StreetHawk - an all terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime. Capable of incredible speeds up to 300 miles per hour, and immense fire power ranging from machine guns, to a particle beam, to a miniaturized missile launcher.

Ok, I'm not going to pull any punches here. Unlike Wild Wild West & Burn Notice from our previous posts the StreetHawk television series wasn't executed well at all and quite frankly it showed in more ways than one in nearly every episode but the first three (which seemingly were finished before the producers realized how damn expensive the show would become).

The concept, similar to that of Knight Rider & Air Wolf, is sound. It's so sound in fact that this same concept is successfully re-envisioned in the late 90s with shows like Cobra and Viper. In a nut shell crime is running rampant off the charts so the government has signed off on a state of the art attack motorcycle to fight crime up close and personal.

StreetHawk is intended to be a scalpel, where the regular police are a bit more hammerish, and strike at the heart of the problem. The designer of StreetHawk hand picks his rider but unfortunately he's stuck with Jesse Mach (Rex Harrison - pictured) who's a bit too reckless and has a serious problem with authority but always manages to get the job done. Which is exactly what the StreetHawk program needed.

As I stated above, a sound concept wasn't enough for StreetHawk to survive. The bike, which looked extremely cool (particularly all lit up at night) Was actually really heavy (extra batteries for all of those lights and gadgets), slower than it should be, off balanced, and had such a small fuel tank (reduced in size to make room for batteries) that they had to refuel after nearly every take.



The costs were cutting into profits in a big way so the producers re-tooled the show. They shoved StreetHawk to the "4th reel" (meaning they only brought him out in the last 15 minutes of each episode) so that their pretty boy star with the recognizable face could have a lot more screen time to make the ladies swoon. In addition they stopped all night shooting and did everything they could to reuse the motorcycle footage they'd all ready banked instead of shooting new stuff.

All of this, on top of the biggest slap in the face to the creators of the show: refusing to let them cast an unknown by the name of George Clooney (he plays the antagonist, hired to kill StreetHawk in episode two) as their star must have caused too much grief off camera and the show was canceled just before the first season ended.

THE COMIC

We can rebuild it. Faster. Stronger. Better. Armed with a controlled budget, and learning from the past, the StreetHawk comic would be different. The bike is still state of the art (and by today's terms now with new features like satellite uplink, EMP pulse, etc etc) and one of the kind. The rider? There is a team of them all continuously jockeying for pole position (he/she who gets to ride StreetHawk the next time it's called upon) all of the time.

When not in the field dispensing justice or saving innocents atop the bike agents (riders) of the StreetHawk program would be performing other duties such as research, testifying in front of finance committees, going under cover, and exchanging briefcases with foreign dignitaries in shadowy places.

We'd run the comic with three issue story arches capped off by done in one issues in between to allow for easy jumping on points (and easy trade collection) for new readers and creative teams.

Done in the DCU the StreetHawk program would always be in danger of being folded into the Suicide Squad because Amanda Waller thought she could modify it to take down FLASH if she ever needed too. It would be a constant fight to appease the government so that the program would stay afloat independently without DeadShot being placed as a high level member of the organization.

Done in the Marvel U the StreetHawk program would have been an early prototype of SHIELD that was rescued from mothballs by some enterprising eager beaver senator who'd wanted it for his own reasons. It would be a constant fight to serve and protect the public, always fighting "mutant extinction" orders being issued by peoples unknown.

I'd do everything I could to sneak in other famous vehicles from other television show's without really naming them. You know, an attack helicopter where the pilot and co-pilot wear gray jump suits with smoke glass lenses on their helmets. A lone man with a black Trans-Am with a crazy red light running across the front. A wild eyed punk and an old man crammed into a beautiful red T-top with Coyote on the license plate. All just for the fun of it. :)

Have a great weekend.

Caine

Wild Wild West in Comics?

Last week, Caine explained why he thought Burn Notice might make a cool comic, ending with the question of what show would we, the readers like to see as comics. For me, the answer is simple and the subject of today’s post: The Wild Wild West!


The first mashup?

Today, pitching and promoting a show or comic as a mashup is sort of expected. How many bad concepts have been summarized with the words: It’s like the Dirty Dozen but with Elves? Enough that I got sick of the trend and made an interactive parody of it with my Pitchbot 3000. And yet, a mashup is exactly what the Wild Wild West was. The show combined the Western genre (a long reigning champ on television at the time) with the Spy genre, made wildly popular no thanks in part to the early Sean Connery's Bond films.

The WWW presented the adventures of two Washington Secret Service agents, well played by stars Robert Conrad as the dashing ladies man James West and Ross Martin as the man of a thousand faces, Artemus Gordon. Traveling in their own luxurious private train car, our heroes would receive telegraphs from DC ordering them to foil the scheme of some eccentric villain with a doomsday weapon or a second rate Napoleon hell-bent on taking over America. Using wits, fists and gadgets, they always managed restore the troubled nation back into the safe hands of Ulysses S. Grant. (A historical note that I always found humorous when I watched the show as a teenager.)

For four seasons, the show was a top rater on CBS, but it was eventually cancelled due to concerns about the level of violence the show. As a kid (and later as a teenager) I found the show enthralling. Now looking back on it, I think there are a couple of reasons it would make a good comic candidate.

Gadgets + Guns = Good

While careful not to overdue it, there were a lot of cool gadgets used by West and Gordon on the show. Some appear for only one or two episodes while others (like the famous boot knife) became staples of the series. Here is a small list of the tools of the trade used throughout the series:

• The gun in West’s sleeve (a popular gambler accessory)
• A lock pick in the lapel
• A knife in the collar Removable boot heels with either a derringer or explosives in them
• A small knife in the boot which popped out with a click of the heels
• Explosives in the bottom of a holster

This was no doubt in part due to the Bond influence on the show, however, it is an element that would help make the show interesting to comic readers. I could see an inventive writer taking a slightly more steam punk approach with some of the gadgets to allow for the introduction of things not seen in the series.

Gadgets weren’t the only similarity to the Bond films the series shared. Like 007, West and Gordon were more than ready to gun down opponents when the situation required such tactics. Because the show took take place in the wild untamed west it allowed our heroes plenty of opportunities to come out with guns blazing. (This was most likely a large bit of the appeal of Westerns in general...) And while not necessarily my cup of tea, there are quite a number of comic readers who prefer gun toting comic heroes (whether they be scarred ex-confederate bounty hunters or skull bearing vigilantes.)

Villains and Vistas

There are some people who believe it is not good heroes that make good comics, but rather interesting villains and vistas. They example that alwasy gets trotted out is the early Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four. If that rule is true, then the WWW would seem to contain enough of the same things to be a successful comic. Without a doubt, one of the features that made the show so popular was the colorful cast of villains writers came up with each week. One of the shows most famous, Miguelito Quixote Loveless was recently named as one of the Top Ten television villains of all time by Entertainment Weekly. Agnes Moorehead won an Emmy for her portrayal of villainess Emma Valentine in The Night of the Vicious Valentine.

Here are a few of my favorites notable villains from just the first season of the series:

• Prof. Orkney Cadwallader, a mad scientist who uses nitroglycerin to make man made earthquakesplayed by Burgess Meredith
• Ecstasy LaJoie, an assassin armed with an explosive garter and a deadly ring.played by Yvonne Craig
• Morgan Midas, a scientist who uses a diamond derived formula to move faster than sight played by Robert Drivas
• General Grimm, a leader of a ruthless paramilitary group played by Martin Landau
• Colonel “Iron Man” Torres, a man who has rebuilt himself into a 19th century cyborg played by John Dehner

While most were just one shot villains, Loveless, played by the masterful stage actor Michael Dunn, would return again and again to the show. It was often his schemes which would lead to the most interesting plot scenarios. In The Night of the Raven he he shrunk James West down to the size of a mouse. In Night of the Surreal McCoy, he developed a way to enter the world of two dimensional paintings. In one episode, he shows up in a medieval suit of armor with a plan to destroy all plant life. Yeah, it sounds a little wacky, but Dunn always manages to sell the script.

Now as RKB mentioned last week, some Wild Wild West comics actually were printed by Gold Key back in the 60's...

Gold Key and Dell used to do all kinds of TV show adaptations, but they mostly all had that diamond in the rough quality to them. You read through a issue, read through a issue, a lot of 'it's okay' and some 'this is bland' mixed in with a few real gems...

I tend to agree with RKB's assessment. But now, based on how some companies are coming out with great adaptations of older shows now, I think it would be a good time for someone to tackle the Wild Wild West again.

Have a great weekend

- Jim

Expanding Comics | Small Screen Infusion: Burn Notice

If you had a favorite action or adventure television series in the 80s, chances are there was some kind of comic book published about it.



You don't see comic books based on television series anywhere near as much any more. Video games sure, but not television and I think it's a crying shame. I don't think the comic book industry can really afford not to publish a book that may pull in a few hundred new readers (or more) based on the success of the property in other mediums.

That's why there should be a comic about Burn Notice.

For those of you that may not have ever experienced the show: Burn Notice is about an ex-spy who's been "burned" which means he can't work as a spy, or really anything else legitimately, and hope to have a life of any kind. The C.I.A. wants him to stay out of sight, but they don't want him gone, or they'd have just killed him instead of dumping him back in his home town.

If you follow the link you can view a trailer or two.

Why would Burn Notice make a good comic book? Lots of reasons:

STRUCTURE
Each episode has Michael helping someone out of a jam for money, and each problem solved is easily wrapped up in 50 minutes, which could easily be translated to 22 pages.

DIALOGUE
Michael is prone to "Magnum P.I." and "MacGyver" style inner monologues as he explains the inner workings of the spy culture and what goes on in social situations, the minds of the good guys, the minds of the bad guys etc etc. They'd make great square narration boxes on a comic book page.

STYLE
With the book using Miami as the setting of the stories (like the series) a comic book publisher could easily use a revolving set of creators, each bringing a different flavor to the book and using different elements of Florida and the beach in general as inspiration.

CHARACTERS
Like many television shows, the main characters of Burn Notice started out very close to their archetypes. As the show's progressed they've been fleshed out but you can still see their archetypal cores which would transfer over to comics quite nicely.

Michael
The hard hitting spy with a heart of gold who's blood runs red, white and blue (if you're tough enough to see it). Nothing he's seen or done in the name of his country could make him turn his back on it or any of it's floundering citizens.

Sam
The old war horse who's been a soldier of one kind or another for son long that's all he knows. His stint with the F.B.I. didn't last too long because of all the office politics. With Micheal he gets to torture bad guys with a grin.

Fiona
The warrior poet who only joined the IRA to serve what she thought were her people. Michael and Sam are her people now, and she'll do anything to keep them safe, including but not limited to using her incredible explosives expertise.

THE BRUCE CAMPBELL "Axe" EFFECT
Genre fans love Bruce, have his character Sam Axe in each issue and you'll get 100 issues out of it easy!

This comic would work and sell well. What television show do you think would make a great comic book?

Have a great weekend,

Caine