It was one thing to see Mary Marvel's new Skin Two-friendly get-up in the recent third issue of DC's summer event book, Final Crisis - writer Grant Morrison has flirted with BDSM imagery before in books like The Invisibles, and has also given uber-badguy Darkseid's minions a very submissive attitude before, after all (Fittingly, considering that Darkseid is all about the eradication of anything but his will, and employs a team of "female furies" with names like "Lashina") - but this week's first appearance of new X-Men villain Red Queen seemed to suggest that maybe we're at the start of a new zeitgeist of superwomen getting their kink on.


What's next? Wonder Woman to start using that lasso in the ways that her creator intended? The Wasp to start using her stings to punish very bad boys? Batwoman with a ball-gag (Oh, wait; that's already happened - Look at the last page of Final Crisis #3)? We wait with baited breath... if we have your permission, of course, Mistress.

Final Crisis #3 [DC Comics], Uncanny X-Men #501 [Marvel Comics]

(And to everyone who's undoubtedly already writing their comments: We're already working on a run-down of the best subtextual Dominatrix Supervillains. Patience is a virtue.)

So this shell of a human being gets to be the Muse of Stan Lee? Okay fine. Let's at least take some past experiences and input them into her character. So what should her costume be? A government issued orange jumpsuit, or perhaps a a teeny tiny dress made from a magic sweatshop? Or a white leotard with a giant red bullseye and then we can send her to Iraq to stop the war?

What about super powers? How about the ability to regurgitate champagne across a room with great accuracy and speed? What about the ability to deflect mind control. Remember Magneto's mind-control-blocking helmet? Paris' super power is like that, but only because she doesn't actually have a mind to control. Still, she should definitely have night vision.

What should her weakness be? Shame? No that hasn't been proven to work yet. What about class or tact? Whenever she's around someone with social decorum she begins to weaken until she says something inappropriate and regains her strength.

Suddenly I'm really excited for this super-cartoon.

[Comic Book Movie]

According to Marvel's Director of Merchandising, Damon Nee, the show brought the show to a standstill:

Traffic stopped all around the booth as fans craned their necks to take in the costumes... Well, the models in the costumes.

Maybe people were so stunned by the tackiness that they lost the ability to use their legs? It's definitely a possibility with outfits like these:

That's right. It's the cast of the long awaited What If Marvel's Superheroes Were Played By E!'s The Girls Next Door.

Marvel say that these costumes will be available in time for Hallowe'en this year, with their official letter of apology to signficant others of superhero fetishists who were forced to wear said costumes by their partners being available the next day.

Marvel Fashion Show Recap [Marvel.com]

In 2005, Chris Preksta conceived “Captain Blasto” as a feature-length film, giving it an award-studded turn on the festival circuit. With a $7,000 budget, he created a wonderfully stark universe in which to house his unhappy cast of characters. Pretska himself plays Colin, an ordinary kid crushed beneath his daily routine. He spends his days at high school bored and ignored, with only the janitor Daryl for company.

Colin’s sole source of inspiration is Captain Blasto, a comic book and radio drama hero who derives his powers from a magic ring. Knowing he won’t find a magic ring of his own, Colin sets out to transform himself into the costumed crime fighter, at least in the eyes of the public. He and Daryl begin staging petty crimes, with Captain Blasto stepping in at the last minute to save the day. Colin even dons a pair of Clark Kent glasses and lands a job at the local rag so as to chronicle his manufactured heroics. But Colin isn’t the only one frustrated with life, and soon he has a whole crew of men ready to fake a life of crime.

They eagerly turn their lives into a send-up of heist films, B-movies, and, of course, comic books. “Captain Blasto” updates biweekly.

[Captain Blasto]

The Greatest American Hero. Soon to be a major motion picture, probably starring Will Ferrell or Jack Black. This TV show features probably the most archetypal semi-competent hero, complete with out-of-control flying and crashing into things. Ralph Hinkley loses the instruction manual for his super-suit and is stuck trying to figure out how to control its awesome powers by himself.

Green Hornet. No, not the original radio or TV versions of the Batman-esque crime-fighter — stop writing those angry comments! — but we're getting the distinct impression the upcoming Seth Rogen movie will feature a sloppy hero whose sidekick, Kato, is the famous and can-do member of the duo.

Ambush Bug. Actually, is Ambush Bug even a hero? In his first appearance (which I have somewhere, and which is probably worth a whole dollar now) the teleporting insect guy tries to assassinate the mayor of Metropolis. But he quickly becomes a kinda-sorta superhero, who mostly mocks the conventions and tropes of comics and gets killed over and over again. He also fails to save his doll sidekick, Cheeks The Toy Wonder, from being dismembered. Poor Cheeks.

Most of The Tick's supporting cast. At least in the animated TV show (It's been forever since I read the comics), the Tick is a semi-competent hero who often misses what's right in front of him. But at least he manages to defeat his enemies most of the time, with the help of his sidekick Arthur. Most of the other heroes i the Tick's world, like Die Fledermaus, American Maid and Sewer Urchin, are too self-absorbed or silly to be much use most of the time.

Most of the cast of Jim Valentino's normalman. Normalman crashes on a planet where he's the only non-superhero, but most of the superheroes he meets are worse than useless. Sure, Captain Everything has every super power ever, but he's so dim-witted he usually just makes matters worse. And Levram's main superhero team is too busy taking attendance to do anything else.

The Legion Of Substitute Heroes. They're the superheroes whose powers aren't cool or useful enough to join the future Legion of Super Heroes, but they keep trying anyway, and finally do save the world from an alien plant invasion. Antenna Lad can tune into radio broadcasts from any era, but only at random. Chlorophyll Kid can make plants grow fast. Color Kid can change the color of any object. Infectious Lass can inflict disease, but has a hard time aiming this ability properly. Etc. etc.

Rod Rescueman is a bumbling superhero in the animated movie Twice Upon A Time. He's got his superhero learner's permit, which is just a blank piece of paper (but it's notarized!). Attempting a practice run at rescuing a "damsel in distress," he inhales all the flames around her — then breathes fire at her, singeing her to a crisp.

The Inferior Five. Another parody superhero team, they have the requisite lame or out-of-control powers. "He can fly — if the wind's with him!" "She's stronger than an Ox — and almost as smart!" Ha ha, aaaaah yeah. Anyway, weirdly enough they had their own title that lasted 12 issues.

Irving Forbush. Marvel Comics' semi-mascot and hero of its Not Brand Echh comic, Forbush Man wears a crockpot on his head and stumbles through a series of wacky adventures.

Major Bummer. Soon to be a major motion picture (well, according to IMDB anyway), this short-lived 1990s comic was about a slacker who accidentally gets superpowers from aliens. But he just wants to sit around on his couch and watch TV. Unfortunately, the aliens also cause him to attract supervillains, including a Nazi dinosaur called Tyrannosaurus Reich.

Mystery Men. Already a major motion picture! William H. Macy, Ben Stiller and Hank Azaria are loser superheroes: Macy's The Shoveler, who can handle a shovel, Stiller's Mr. Furious, who has rage powers, and Azaria's "effete British superhero" The Blue Raja. Loosely based on the awesome Flaming Carrot comic by Bob Burden, this movie shows second-rate superheroes who finally do triumph over the A-list supervillain Casanova Frankenstein.

Kinnukiman was one of the most influential characters in the Japanese Shonen Jump anthology comic back in the day — a weak superhero that you'd call on if all the other, better heroes weren't available. A muscle-bound idiot, he was always getting into wacky scrapes. Later, he turned out to be an alien prince, and he went off to fight in an intergalactic wrestling federation.

Nuklear Man: Like Hancock, the hero of Brian Clevinger's novel The Nuklear Age has amnesia, and can't remember anything before he appeared in the rubble of a nuclear attack on Metroville's power station. Also like Hancock, he has Superman-esque powers and is totally self-absorbed and obnoxious... plus, he's easily distracted by shiny objects.

Superflop was the alter ego of British comedian Les Dawson, the superhero who failed utterly to protect the town of Leeds from the Masked Fred. (Dawson's show Sez Les, regularly featured John Cleese and Olivia Newton John — a combination that' s hard to imagine.) Superflop also got to star in his own comic strip in British comics magazine Look-In.

The Roach is the all-purpose stand-in for every lame superhero, in Dave Sim's misanthropic comic Cerebus. The Roach's other guises include Wolveroach, MoonRoach (a take-off on obscure superhero Moon Knight) and Punisheroach.

Super Melvin is possibly the dumbest ventriloquist's dummy of all time, operated by ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. Here's a clip of his act, from Comedy Central.

Zeroman was an animated series a few years ago, starring Leslie Nielsen as the ne'erdowell protector of Fair City, the alter ego of mailman Les Mutton.

Webcomic VG Cats features Pantsman, the alter ego of the comic's author, who disguises his identity by wearing underpants on his head.

Demolition Man. Poor D-Man. He started out so promising, as a super-wrestler who refused to throw a fight with the Thing from the Fantastic Four. (How exactly do you throw a fight with the Thing anyway? Lose more?) Later, it turned out he was addicted to super-strength drugs and had to kick. Finally, in the pages of Daredevil, he went nuts and started stealing jewelry thinking he was collecting infinity gems for a "Cosmic Gamemaster." He was living in a pitiful sewer lair, until Ben Urich sent D-Man's idol Daredevil to get him out of there.

Captain Rightful is "the incompetent, armless superhero" in Jay Stephens' graphic novel The Land Of Nod.

Red Tornado. The original Red Tornado was Abigail "Ma" Hunkel, who put a saucepan (yes, again) on her head and went out to fight crime. But she ripped her pants and had to go home again. Later, she was replaced by an android that used to be evil but isn't any more, who has the awesome power of making wind. Yeah.

Wonderella is sort of a ditzy female version of Superman, in the webcomic The Adventures Of Wonderella.

Commenters daviddonne and Johnny Zito point out that I somehow forgot the Great Lakes Avengers, the midwestern branch of Marvel Comics' flagship super-team. They're mostly pretty useless, like Mr. Immortal, who's like Torchwood's Captain Jack — kill him and he just bounces back. But the group has a ringer: Squirrel Girl, who can control squirrels and somehow manages to defeat Doctor Doom and a number of other A-list supervillains single-handed.

And then commenter Trystero pointed out I missed The Pro, a sex worker who gets superpowers from meddling aliens. She's actually quite an effective superhero, but she's also a bad role model, urinating on a vanquished foe and using her superspeed to give tons of blow jobs for a quick profit. You can read the whole thing here, for now at least, but be warned — it's pretty NSFW.

Thanks to Lauren Davis and Graeme McMillan for research help.

The Mark: Rob Liefeld's near-mythical movie for Will Smith (First announced in 1997) possibly disappeared due to worries over its similarity to Marvel's Star Brand series (which is, itself, a rip-off of DC's Green Lantern): Smith was to play an average joe who would end up with ultimate power that he didn't want, thanks to a mysterious brand that is magically "transferred" to his body from the corpse of a Confederate soldier. The pitch meeting probably went like this: "Picture this, Will. You have this mark on your hand, right? And you're looking at it, wondering what it is, and then it has this laser blast that comes out of it and blasts through a wall in your apartment." "Can I look at the hole in the wall and say 'Awww hell naw'?" "Sure." "I'll do it!"

Warcop: In 1993, Madonna wanted to star in another movie, and thought that she'd make a good superhero. She asked Spawn creator Todd McFarlane to come up with an idea for her, and Todd - wanting nothing to do with it - gave the idea to Grant Morrison, who came up with a pitch involving a Judge Dredd-esque futuristic space cop who traveled in time back to the present day to catch a particular perp. In one of her last good career moves, Madonna decided against the project, but Grant apparently didn't; the title, at least, is about to be used for one of his new comic books.

Iron Fist: Is this adaptation of Marvel Comics' kung-fu fighter anything more than a hopeful dream for The Phantom Menace's Darth Maul, Ray Park? The stuntman-turned-actor has been talking about the perpetually-upcoming movie version of Danny Rand for more than half a decade now, and the movie has had multiple co-stars, directors and screenwriters attached at various points in its history but seems to be getting no closer to actually being made. This can only be a good thing, because it just increases the likelihood of teaming the character up with (the similarly movie-cursed) Luke Cage to give us the Power Man And Iron Fist movie the world needs to see.

Green Lantern: One of the greatest near-misses in cinema history is the fact that fan outcry halting pre-production of Jack Black's comedy movie version of DC's space cop superhero a few years ago. Hearing Jack talk about what we could've seen in an alternate world is enough reason to be grateful:

I was going to be making all kinds of stuff... I was going to be capturing bad guys with green, giant prophylactics. Some funny stuff.

To everyone who complained loudly enough to stop this movie being made: Thank you.

Spider-Man: I know, I know; you're all thinking "Wait, didn't they make Spider-Man? I'm pretty sure I've seen a Spider-Man movie." But I'm not talking about the Sam Raimi version; I'm talking about Jim Cameron's mooted early '90s version that would had a villain that kissed his girlfriends to death, a personality-less Sandman as afterthought thug, and Peter revealing his secret identity at the end of the movie to a surprisingly unimpressed Mary Jane. There's no doubt that it would've made a cool-looking special-effects bonanza, but it had none of the heart or quirkiness of Raimi's version.

Ever wanted to go on a tour of the world that the Marvel superheroes fly around in? Thanks to Flickr member ChildOfAtom, that's easier than ever. He's gone to four of the real world addresses of some of the most famous addresses of the Marvel Universe and taken photos of what's actually there, and posted those photos online along with comparisons to their cartoon counterparts. Want to see what we have instead of the Baxter Building or Daily Bugle offices? Click under the jump.

Here's the real life Baxter Building, next to its comic equivalent:

And what can be found at the address of the Daily Bugle?:

Instead of the Avengers Mansion, the real world has this:

And, finally and most depressingly, this is what we get instead of Doctor Strange's Sanctorum:

Marvel themselves aren't immune to this kind of fanboy tourism; last year, they published The Marvel Comics Guide To New York City, a 256-page book that guides readers around the real life Big Apple that inspired the four-color version. Much cheaper, however, is Wizard Magazine's version from earlier this year:

ChildofAtom's Marvel New York City [Flickr]

For those who need more than "Guys in tights punch each other a lot," there's always Superhero Nation, a website that offers your very own guide to becoming the next Stan Lee.

It's not just that Superhero Nation gives you a list of potential superpowers to give your protagonists (Although, really, does "resourcefulness" really count as a superpower?), it also walks you all the way through the writing process, from how to write a superhero fight scene:

I highly recommend capping your fights to 3 people at a time. If you really want more combatants, I’d recommend writing the battle as a series of 2-3 person duels rather than a battle royale with 8+ fighters. This was a problem in Soon I Will Be Invincible.

to common problems with psychic characters:

You’d have to explain why a telekinetic character doesn’t make the most of his powers by rearranging his enemies’ organs.

The site is at its best when giving advice that you wouldn't necessarily expect, but nonetheless appreciate:

When you tell the reader that your book is going to have dragons and ninjas or aliens and battlecruisers, those are part of the premise. One sample premise is “a dragon must learn the ways of the ninja to save the city.” That’s definitely unusual, but not much more unusual than the bestselling “a dragon must learn the ways of the British Navy to save London.” Or “turtles must learn the ways of the ninja to save New York City.” To be sure, some prospective readers won’t like an unusual premise and they’ll read something else. That’s good! 100% of the people that start reading your book like your premise. It’s not “weird” to them, any more than LOTR is “weird” to its readers.

Suddenly I foresee a rash of stories about one-on-one dragon/turtle ninja superheroes. And I mean this in a good way.

How To Write A Superhero Story [Superhero Nation]

Talking about the relocation of Marvel's favorite mutants on the WordBalloon podcast, Uncanny X-Men writer Brubaker took responsibility for the decision:

When we were sitting down and talking about what to do with the X-Men post-Messiah Complex... and it was, yet again the Mansion had been destroyed and all this stuff, I just sort of threw out the idea because I remembered that Daredevil had lived in San Francisco. I just thought 'If I were the X-Men, I would move to San Francisco. Like, get as far away from Tony Stark and all those people, stop rebuilding your mansion where there's, like, a huge target for any anti-mutant person in the world and go somewhere where you're going to be able to let your freak flag fly and be loved... It just seemed like, why not go somewhere where people will think that you're cool?

Ellis' new series No Hero doesn't exist within forty years of distraught continuity full of explosions and death, but he explained to us that his choice of setting has much more to do with San Francisco's real-life colorful history:

NO HERO comes partly out of the notion that there was a cultural move in Sixties San Francisco to bring forth a new kind of human (not least through neurochemical roadtesting and devoted ingestion of whatever old shit had been scraped off the bottom of someone's bathtub). Timothy Leary even said that The Beatles were "prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species." Notably, in the same statement, he also called them "mutants." Where else should we be telling stories about the evolutionary future of strange Americans?

It seems that, at least as far as the cape and cowl set goes, San Francisco is finally ascending to take the cultural crown of the US that it so richly deserves.

Both Uncanny X-Men #499 and No Hero #0 hit stores today.

Warren Ellis' No Hero [Avatar Press]

Playboys:

I think comics are one of the few places you still see men referred to as "playboys." Usually it's part of a phrase that also references their wealth, like "billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne." In any case, Bruce Wayne lives up to the term, bedding lots of supermodels as well as Talia Al Ghul, daughter of his arch-foe Ra's Al Ghul. When Grant Morrison took over writing Batman, he vowed to bring back "hairy-chested love god Batman," who really never left. Here's a whole article from the Long Island Voice complaining that "Batman Gets Laid Too Much." (They're uptight in Long Island, I guess.)

And then there's Tony Stark/Iron Man, who's portrayed as a total ladies' man in many of his comic-book appearances as well as his recent movie, where he seduces a hostile reporter in like 10 seconds flat.

I don't think Wolverine is a billionaire or even a millionaire, but he's hooked up with a lot of women in his time — there's one issue of Grant Morrison's New X-Men where he goes to Asia to fight some army of evil, and he meets a female mutant bad-ass ninja. A few pages later, they're off to bed together. It's part of Wolverine's mystique — his animalistic drive and beasty scent drive women wild, and his healing factor probably gives him incredible stamina. He's slept with everybody, including Black Widow. He's even had sex with the Scarlet Witch's mom (Magneto's wife) in The Ultimates.

Also, The Spirit, Will Eisner's pulpy detective/science hero/superhero, had women all over him, all the time, says Reading Comics author Douglas Wolk. Just look here. And here. And here. And Spider-Man gets his fair share of excitement, including dating a bunch of models and marrying a model/actress. He had the easiest divorce in history, courtesy of the Marvel Universe version of the Devil, and has been dating like a madman ever since. And Wally West, who took over as the Flash in the mid-1980s, was speeding through a series of one-night stands before he finally settled down with his wife Linda. Plus Luke Cage, aka the former Power Man, has scored with a number of superheroes in his time, and has been described as a big "Cape-Chaser" in Alias #6.

Other big comic-book playas include Batman's protege Nightwing, Green Arrow and his sidekick Red Arrow, and most of the Authority. There's a running subplot in recent issues of Green Lantern where John Stewart teases Hal Jordan (the original silver age Lantern) about his huge number of booty calls. And thanks to commenter Whitworthian for the list of all the women Daredevil has hooked up with.

Women of ill repute:

There's a great scene in a She Hulk comic where She Hulk goes to bed with Tony Stark, because why not? And afterwards, She Hulk and Tony have a whole conversation about the double standard: they both love having sex, with lots and lots of other people, but Tony gets to be a cool "stud," and she gets jeered at as a naughty slut. (The SHIELD helicarrier gets conveniently attacked before Tony can give a good answer.)

She Hulk's huge sexual appetite is a by-product of her Gamma-radiated superpowers, and it's a huge theme of Dan Slott's run on the comic: when she gets big and green, she gets really, really horny and has fewer inhibitions. She beds lots of male models and superheroes — but she protests that she never had sex with the Juggernaut. (The She Hulk-Juggernaut hook-up happened in a comic by reviled writer Chuck Austen.) Eventually she discovers that it was actually an alternate universe version of She-Hulk. But not before she hits on Wolverine, and he gives her shit about it. (Click to enlarge.)

In a similar vein, the poor Huntress gets all kinds of shit in Birds Of Prey, after she sleeps with her fellow hero Oracle's ex, and she sleeps with her fellow hero Black Canary's (sorta) step-son Speedy/Arsenal/Red Arrow. Says Black Canary, "Gee, Helena, maybe this would be easier if you'd just tell us who you haven't done the freak dance with?" (Later, Oracle and Canary apologize for slut-shaming Huntress — but not before Huntress has had sex with Josh the parking attendant whom she agreed to date in exchange for help on a mission.)

But Black Canary should totally not talk — she has hooked up with lots of guys during her single days, including the Ray, a teenage superhero whom she, ummm... took under her wing. (DC Comics' editors have since tried to claim the Canary-Ray hookup didn't happen, but it's right there on the page.) Another superhero woman who gets lots of nookie is Tesla Strong, daughter of Tom Strong.

Then there's The Pro, about a sex worker who gets superpowers from the all-powerful Viewer, and joins a thinly veiled parody of the Justice League. She's expelled for profanity, ultra-violence, and for giving the Saint (a Superman rip-off) a blow job.

Heroes Who Cheat:

In the movie The Specials, Ms. Indestructible proves that her sexual ethics aren't indestructible after all, by cheating on her husband the Strobe with his friend, the Weevil. Also, Scott Summers aka Cyclops cheats on his wife, Jean Grey, with the formerly evil Emma Frost — although only psychically, I think. Meanwhile, here's a guy who thinks Jean was looking at Wolverine a little too much — and he's really really really mad about it.

Also, the whole plot of Jay Faerber's Dynamo 5 series revolves around adultery — Captain Dynamo is a beloved protector of his native Tower City. But after he dies, it turns out he's slept with tons of women besides his wife — and he's had five kids by various mothers. Each one of the kids has inherited one of his superpowers, and they all have to team up to save the day.

Sexually transmitted superpowers:

Some superheroes actually get their superpowers in the sack — like the heroes of John Byrne's Next Men, mutants whose powers are triggered when they become sexually active with another superpowered person. (Because the teenagers, grown in a lab, are more innocent, they refer to sex as "dancing." Awww. They "dance" a lot, even after it's given them their superpowers already.)

Also, in OMAC #5, the OMAC nanovirus passes from Mike to Vienna when they hook up, giving her special robo-superpowers. In Alan Moore's Top Ten, there's the S.T.O.R.M.S. sexually transmitted disease, which either kills you or (in rare cases) gives you superpowers.

But my favorite is probably the novel The Bonds Of Love by J.M. Snyder, as described in this review:

Whenever Matt and Vic have sex, super-powers get conferred upon Vic. If you can think of a super-power, Vic has probably already experienced it: the ability to fly, self-heal, teleport, be invisible, or develop immense strength. Some powers are of dubious use: once his bones kept melting away, and he had to call in sick because he couldn't drive a bus with a boneless arm!

It turns out the powers originate with Matt, but he confers them onto Vic. Or something.

Okay, I'm sure I missed some incredibly awesome and obvious examples of superheroes whose booty calls outnumber their calls to adventure. (For one thing, there was an actual comic, Young Heroes In Love, all about superheroes' love lives, but it's a blur to me now.) Who else did I forget?

Thanks to Douglas Wolk, once again, for research help.

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Ahead of today's opening of the New York Licensing International Expo, The Hollywood Reporter looked at what it means to have a successful superhero movie these days:

"On a big movie, you probably will find something related to the movie, whether it's a product or promotion, in almost every major retail outlet you could imagine," said Brad Globe, president of Warner Bros. Consumer Products, which will be trumpeting its Batman lineup at the licensing show. "We have our core companies like Target, Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart, Kmart. all names cq Then you have more specialized stores," including Neiman Marcus, which has upped the merchandising ante by selling fashion-plausible T-shirts for $40 each.

Another example of upscale merchandising is Estee Lauder, which got into the Iron Man game. A page on the beauty company's Web site offers tips on how women can achieve the look of Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Iron Man alter ego Tony Stark's sexy spokesperson.

"With the amount of activity surrounding our properties, it's enabled us to create a resurgence in the marketplace for superheroes in general," [Marvel's president of consumer products, Brad] Gitter said. "Unlike in the 1990s, where you didn't have many superhero films, now you have a tremendous amount of marketing, theatrical activity, animation, theme parks, product expansion and other synergies in place to really ride the market."

No matter how cynical you might think you are about today's blockbuster movies, there's always something like this that appears and makes you even less convinced that anyone working in media today has any pure love of telling stories anymore, isn't there?

Cheryl Rubin, senior vp brand management at DC Comics, said she sees no end in sight for superhero blockbusters.

"2007 proved that 10% of domestic boxoffice gross was based on comic books and graphic novels," she said. "Consumers love superheroes."

As superheroes proliferate onscreen and off, consumers could suffer from superfatigue as the movies begin to turn to second- or even third-tier characters.

That saturation point doesn't appear to be on the near horizon, though.

All I'm saying is, it's a sad, sad day when you feel nostalgic for the days of Prince doing "Batdance" every time you turned on the radio.

Superheroes bulk up on licensing deals [Hollywood Reporter]

You can blame EW's Chris Nashawaty for starting the whole thing off with his essay, subtly titled "Superheroes: How They Ruined Summer Movies":

Looking back now, I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell out of love with summer movies: May 3, 2002. I ducked out of work early that afternoon to wait in line for the first screening of the first blockbuster movie of the summer. I remember looking around at the swarm of hooky-playing droolers and fanboys and knowing I was precisely where I was meant to be. I would've taken a bullet for these people. After all, we'd shared some indelible event-movie moments over the years. July 3, 1991: Opening day for Terminator 2. June 11, 1993: Jurassic Park. July 3, 1996: Independence Day. Hell, I'd even saved the ticket stubs. Now it was Spider-Man's turn.

Sitting in the darkness of the theater, beaten numb by the whining adolescent angst of Peter Parker, fighting back a yawn during his schmaltzy rain-soaked smooch with Mary Jane Watson, nearly going into diabetic shock from all of the sugar-spun F/X eye candy that honestly couldn't have looked more bogus, I felt...well, I felt really bored. At some point during those endless 121 minutes, I'd changed. And when the audience started whooping as the end credits rolled, I realized that my beloved summer movies were changing too.

Yes, he's really arguing that Spider-Man ruined the good name of Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. But wait — it gets better:

Just 10 years ago, summer had real movies — the kind without genetic mutants whose tortured origin stories are shamelessly cribbed from Freud 101. In the summer of '98, you could go to a multiplex and see Out of Sight, The Truman Show, or Saving Private Ryan. And if you wanted ear-shattering bombast, there was Armageddon. Don't laugh, Michael Bay's starting to look more and more like Antonioni these days.

Apparently, someone's forgotten to tell Chris that there are actually some other movies coming out this summer besides Iron Man, The Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk. Either that, or he thinks that Sex and The City was originally created by Stan Lee (Chris, if it helps, here's a list of what's being released this summer).

Television Without Pity's Zach Oat speaks up for sanity:

I feel for you, Chris, I really do, because you seem to have gone to see every terrible superhero movie ever made. I presume it's because of your job as a writer at EW and not out of some assumption of quality, but I'm a long-time comic book fan, and even I knew not to go see Catwoman or Ghost Rider or The Punisher in theatres... My advice? "Just walk away," as the great Humungus said in the summer of 1981. Stay away from the movies that are clearly causing you grief. Don't buy that ticket to Hellboy II (the original made $100 million globally, by the way); instead, go see Eddie Murphy in Meet Dave.

Nashawaty's essay is a strange piece (especially for Entertainment Weekly to run), and it feels like he hasn't thought through his argument, but does he have something resembling a point amongst his bitter ramblings? There are a lot of comic-book related movies this year (Besides the three mentioned above, add Hellboy II and Wanted to the list, and you could potentially throw Speed Racer on there if you squint hard enough as well). Maybe it's not "when did comic movies kill summer," but instead "how many comic movies are too many?"

Superheroes: How They Ruined Summer Movies [Entertainment Weekly]

How Chris Nashawaty Ruined My Summer [Television Without Pity]

9. Decompression. This term refers to a more "cinematic" style in comics, in which the "lens" lingers over every moment of a scene, and the action is slowed down. There are more splash pages, or single-page panels. And a sequence which might have taken half a page in the 1960s will take half an issue. Comics' fad for "decompression" in comics coincided with the first blush of superhero movie popularity in the early noughties, and it's best understood as an attempt to copy the experience of watching a movie. Comics Should Be Good criticized this trend in 2005, and held up this page from Warren Ellis' Ocean #1 as an example: Yes it's an entire page of a guy walking out of a building and dropping a coffee cup, which dissolves. The "decompression" boom seems to be more or less over, although most comics are still slower paced than they would have been even 15 years ago.

8. Better, and fewer, costumes. Superhero movies are often loathe to cover up the faces of A-list actors, so masks tend to go out the window. You could get righteously sloshed if you drank to every occasion where Peter Parker loses his mask in Spider-Man 2. And many superhero movies avoid the gaudy spandex in general — most notably the X-Men movies, which influenced the comics to move over to the more dignified black leather uniforms... for a few years, at least. On television, Heroes chose to explore superheroic themes without any costumes at all, and it's becoming more common to see heroes in their civvies for long stretches in comics as well.

7. More Hollywood writers.
Comic book writers used to be their own breed, many of whom had started out as assistant editors at the big comic-book publishers before "graduating" to writing. But these days, you're just as likely to see a revolving door between Hollywood and comics, with writers like Jeph Loeb, James Robinson and Brian K. Vaughn working in both comics and TV/movies. And more slumming Hollywood writers, starting with comics buff Kevin Smith, have ventured into writing comics in their spare time — which has led to horrendous delays between issues.

6. Back to basics. If you liked Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movie, and you wanted to read comics about that character, you might pick up a Spider-Man comic — only to read about a married high-school teacher who's some kind of mystical spider-totem and wears exo-armor. And goes around saying things like, "I AM THE SPIDER!!". (First J.M. DeMatteis, then J.M. Straczynski, explored the "spiritual"/mystical side of Spider-Man, adding a lot of baggage.) So Marvel started putting out Ultimate Spider-Man and other Ultimate titles, which retell the origins of their classic heroes. And as writer Mark Millar has pointed out, the Ultimate version of Tony Stark ended up being a huge influence on the new Iron Man movie. And of course, every now and then there's a huge effort to go back to basics in regular continuity, like in Spider-Man's "One More Day" storyline — which erased Spidey's marriage, his exo-skeleton, his unmasking and a ton of other baggage.

5. Reconstruction. In the 1980s, the watchword in comics was "deconstruction," meaning that writers like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Frank Miller were dismantling comics characters and critiquing them through works like Watchmen. In the 1990s, there was a wave of nostalgia and comics creators paid tribute to the innocence classic comics — which Moore creating the "1963" series of comics that were supposed to look like they'd been published in 1963, and later the "America's Best" comics. But it wasn't until superhero movies started to take off that the trend of "reconstruction" went mainstream, and superhero comics made a concerted effort to build up their heroic characters instead of taking them apart. Take Batman, whose spine got smushed in the early 1990s and then spent the rest of the decade mired in angst and self-doubt. Grant Morrison and other writers swung the pendulum the opposite way and started turning him into an almost infallible (well, except for that "Brother Eye" business) Nietzschean demigod.

4. The movie pitch in graphic novel form. This is one way that the rise of comic-book movies didn't necessarily make comics better — comics publishers put out a lot of graphic novels that were obviously only aimed at generating new characters and ideas that could result in a movie deal. In the worst cases, the graphic novels in question didn't have much to say besides, "Here's a cool concept and some kick-ass characters. Can't you just see Brad Pitt playing this guy?"

3. (Somewhat) more realistic art. In the 1990s, the trends in "mainstream" comics art were running away from realism as fast as possible. Hot artists included Rob Liefeld, who could not draw the human body if you put a gun to his head, and Todd McFarlane, whose art got more and more scratchy and gothic. There was also a huge trend towards cartoony Manga-influenced artists like Humberto Ramos, whose work lacked the expressiveness and detail of real Manga art, and was often just confusing to look at. In the noughties, as superhero movies have exploded, a more photorealistic art style has taken hold in superhero comics. This hasn't always been a good thing, as artists like Greg Horn apparently take photos from porn magazines and trace over them to create female characters. But it's an improvement over the bug-in-a-shitstorm art styles of the 1990s.

2. Every time, it's personal. One of the defining characteristics of superhero movies is that they take place in a small world. The villain of a superhero movie is usually someone the hero knows personally. Often, the villain plays a part in the hero's origin — think Batman Begins, where ubervillain Ra's Al Ghul trains Batman to be a super-ninja. This trend has carried over to superhero comics, where newer villains are more likely to have a personal issue with the hero. Like new-ish Bat-villain Hush, who turned out to be a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne's.

1. Villain stew. In superhero comics of the 1990s and earlier, each storyline would usually feature one villain at a time. Sometimes villains would team up, and they would have to come up with a cool name for their joint venture. Like the Sinister Six. Or the Superman Revenge Squad. Villains couldn't just have an ad-hoc team-up. And you would seldom have villains just randomly running around in the same storyline, each with their own agendas. But movies, starting with Batman Returns, regularly featured two or more villains per movie, just on a "more is better" theory. And comics started to follow suit, until every Daredevil villain, from the Owl to the Kingpin, would put in an appearance in the same story arc. Instead of getting defeated and then disappearing for a few months, the villains just hang around and keep getting in each other's hair.

Action, Ohio - Loving tribute to superheroes or Watchmen-style expose of
the flaws of the genre? Discuss.

Now, Graeme... why can't it be both? Honestly, it's probably more tribute than expose but really explores what you see more and more in 21st Century superhero comic books - showcasing how superheroes or the existence thereof would affect the real world. If you discovered superhumans lived one town over, what would that do to YOUR life? How would it affect your family? The company you worked for? What if the company you worked for was a comic book company?

Showcasing the Silver Age, deconstructing the heroes that changed the face of superhero comics, allows me to look at our world through the eyes of a Barry Allen, a Steve Rogers, a Charles Xavier or Ray Palmer. It allows me to see the wonder, the horror, the gifts and blessing of being a superhero in today's Internet Age. And hopefully the strip conveys all of that to the reader.

We've kind of been here before - The strip is reminiscent of both Sci Fi Channel's Eureka and Wildstorm Comics' Welcome To Tranquility, where small town America is detourned by the fantastic - but this seems to be less about "Hey! Hicks with weird shit!" and more story-led. What made you come up with the concept, and this particular take on it?

Basically, I was sitting around and thinking about the new renaissance of comic book superhero movies. Remember when Spider-Man came out? Everywhere you turned in NYC, you saw a big, billboard Spidey swinging across the the skyline. Then it was Batman Begins. Now it's Iron Man. When you read a Marvel Comic and you see a throwaway billboard as Daredevil jumps across rooftops advertising an Iron Man movie, it's fun because it's comics. Did you ever think you'd be driving down the West Side Highway staring at a big old picture of Iron Man? It's almost like Tony Stark lives in our world, is the new celebrity. Well, imagine if you learned that those heroes - the ones you read about month after month, follow their adventures and watch their films, lived in this great nation of ours? As a comic book fan, wouldn't you want to visit?

And after reading a lifetime of books about Galactus, The Rogues Gallery and various Crises, wouldn't you be scared to death?

You bring the fear of the atomic age subtext of Marvel's superheroes to the forefront here, making it directly responsible for the creation of superheroes as a funnybook concept. Do you think that superheroes as we know them are inherently rooted in that kind of 1950s/60s timeframe? Are there any modern superheroes reflecting today's culture, or is that your next Zuda comic?

Well, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, when creating characters like Spider-man and the Hulk and the X-Men, and the various DC creators that dreamed up the Silver Age Green Lantern, Flash and the Atom knew that the advent of the atom bomb really opened up a whole new world of science - and storytelling. I feel the Silver Age has its roots in two things - that post-1950s, dawn of the space race, fear of nuclear warfare excitement, and a clinging legacy to the generation that came before - the Justice Society, Captain America, Superman and Batman. I LOVE the term "mysterymen", but the Silver Age heroes, while deeply rooted in their secret identities (and in many Marvel characters cases, their psychoses), were not "mysteries." Sure - you had your Spider-man and the X-Men, but they weren't hiding in the shadows with costumes like those, nor in the way they operated. The Justice League and Avengers were role models - loved by the world.

Today, I feel there are many cases where superheroes reflect our times... but much of that has to do with their evolution. Captain America will always fight terrorists and nihilists - he just needs to do it differently now than he used to do in 1944. I think we're past the violent nineties and getting back to smart, worldy superheroes - supported by the information age, fighting evil that's evolved to meet the new millenium. Examples would be the wonderful Birds of Prey comic and the completely overhauled Green Lantern series. One thing I love about DC is that you really have seen these characters grow - sidekicks become heroes of their own, heroes like the Flash and Red Arrow have children and new responsibilities. As the times change, so do the heroes. Only... not in Action, Ohio.

Seeing Action continue right now requires a lot of votes at Zudacomics.com; how're you planning to convince everyone to give you their X in the virtual box?

Well, it isn't enough to hope that good storytelling, amazing art and a genuine love for the medium will win through. I have to rely on the marketer inside me to make some waves, right?

First off, Action, Ohio is a full service comic - there's a production blog at http://actionohio.blogspot.com where folks can check out original sketches, behind the scenes commentary and promotional banners they can use on their website, blog, email signature and rocking denim jacket. Interested parties can also friend the MySpace page at www.myspace.com/actionohio and check out the Facebook group.

Paul and I are cooking up a contest for next week and to promote offline, I'll be a guest at Tuesday's Comic Book Club here in NYC on May 13th at 8PM. CBC is an improvised talk shows about comic books and the men and women who love them and is hosted by Alex Zalben, Justin Tyler and Pete LePage. Please come by and talk Zuda and Action, Ohio with me.

Finally... a vote for us is a vote against the evil that's evolved to meet the new millenium. You don't want evil to win, do you?

Action, Ohio [Zuda Comics]

According to the Hollywood Reporter:

"Legion of 5" — owned jointly by Rainmaker, POW! and Brighton — is planned as a series of CG-animated films but with a cross-platform approach to include games, online and mobile releases. Merchandizing is part of the plan as well.

Details of the characters and story line are being kept under wraps.

That said, that kind of idea isn't worth millions of dollars, and that's the spend that Lee is looking at here:

Rainmaker CEO Warren Franklin reported that the partners are raising about $24 million to get things going. "We are hoping to develop a strong franchise with the characters," he said.

Stan Lee to launch new superhero franchise [Hollywood Reporter]

"Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again!": What you have to remember at all times is that you should use this line, or variations on it, at all times when talking about your event, but fail to actually follow through on it. On the rare occasions when you appear to follow through, leave yourself at least two different ways of getting out of it if the fan backlash becomes too loud. Case in point: Marvel's Civil War can easily be undone if all of the pro-registration heroes are revealed to have been undercover aliens or brainwashed into becoming fascist dictators. Or, for that matter, if the Scarlet Witch re-writes reality, as per-House of M. Or Mephisto gets rid of another marriage. Or one of another hundred of reasons.

(The corollary of that statement is "What the hell happened?": There should be a point in the center of each event where even the most jaded fan feels the stirrings of something resembling hope that maybe, just maybe, this one will be different and actually mean something. A plot point, perhaps, which promises the potential of real change and growth for characters or a situation. This point should be immediately followed by a return to the status quo or as close to the status quo as is possible while still pretending to be something new. Think of the aftermath of Civil War where none of the "unregistered" heroes had to actually deal with the fact that they're theoretically being hunted down by government forces and breaking the law. Yes, I know that the New Avengers keep being threatened with arrest every couple of issues. But each time that they do, those threatening arrest always change their mind and let them walk away, so it really doesn't count.)

"No-one Gets Out Of Here Alive!": No "event" is complete without a superhero or two dying. What you have to remember is to make sure that the superhero dying is one who is well known enough for fans to feel something approaching nerd emotion but not popular enough to actually matter. See: Any of the body count in DC's Infinite Crisis. I mean, people got their arms ripped off and their heads punched off their bodies, and besides the fact that they were Teen Titans, I have no idea who they were. This idea ties in tightly with...

"From Out Of The Ashes... A Hero Reborn!": If you're killing off some characters, it's only fair to renew some trademarks at the same time. The ideal crossover book will set up multiple new comics to spin off, most if not all of which will be critical and commercial flops that ultimately sully whatever credibility your event will have. For example: Civil War spun out Heroes for Hire, World War Hulk spun out Warbound and Gamma Corps and Infinite Crisis spun out (deep breath) The Trials of Shazam, OMAC and a Creeper book that I can't even remember the name of.

The most important lesson to remember when crafting your ideal superhero crossover epic, of course, is "Everything Can Be Solved With Punching": Sure, it makes the rubes lay down their hard-earned dollars by having some kind of psychological hook to sell your story on ("The heroes of the DC Universe have ideological differences regarding killing!" "The heroes of the Marvel Universe don't know who to trust because of alien invaders!"), but just remember this: There is no problem that can't be solved with good, old-fashioned violence. And if there is, then that's not something that people will want to read (Who really remembers, for example, DC's Genesis, where superheroes tried to discover the shared root of their superpowers without punching, or The Final Night, where superheroes tried to relight the extinguished sun without punching? Exactly). Look at some recent greats: Infinite Crisis started with Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman having fallen out over the murder of a supervillain, and by the end had turned into everyone punching an evil Superboy. Result? Happy fans.

Civil War was initially about whether superheroes needed to be trained in order to be superheroes, but ended with Captain America whaling on Iron Man before losing when he was too much of a pussy to beat his privileged face into mush. Fans may have been upset when Cap lost, but it wasn't because he had the better argument - It was because he had given up punching. That's why he had to die. Almost everyone who has ever read a comic agrees that the greatest recent crossover was World War Hulk, because it started with punching, and then kept punching for each and every issue following. Yes, the conclusion may have disappointed, but that's only because they replaced punching with a deus ex machine laser beam that made the Hulk happy and non-Hulklike or something like that. If it had ended with someone punching the Hulk to death? Comics could've just given up as a medium right there and then; it wouldn't have gotten any better.

So now you know: Promise change, fail to deliver, kill off minor characters, service trademarks and have lots of punching. Follow those simple instructions and one day, you too may be the one person fans pretend could manage to kill Batman.

Marvel & DC - The Summer's Events In A Nutshell [Comic Nerd]

Sky High (Disney). Comic books already gave us a high-school for superheroes (P.S. 238), but did it have Kurt Russell as a famous superhero and father to the next generation of heroes? I didn't think so. Plus Lynda Carter is the school's principal. The business about the school separating kids into Heroes and Sidekicks is a bit too comic book-y, in some ways. But it's a cute romp, despite the fact that the main character's superpowers suddenly manifest themselves at the most convenient moment.

Meteor Man (Not Disney). we already assassinated this one recently. I loved Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle, and really wanted this movie to be amazing. It actually had its good moments, but dissolved into incoherence and luke-warm gags. Townsend plays Jefferson Reed, a school teacher who finds a piece of meteorite that gives him superpowers, and uses it to confront gangs in his inner-city neighborhood.

The Incredibles (Disney/Pixar). Yes, I know you're going to say this movie is a rip-off of the Fantastic Four. But it's actually just different enough to have its own identity — nobody would confuse Mr. Incredible's big-lunk persona with Mr. Fantastic's brainy gumby schtick. And this is a textbook case for why superhero movies can be better without a direct comic-book source. The Pixar crew are free to create their own backstory for the Incredibles, including an anti-hero law and a special superhero tailor. it doesn't have to try and shoehorn in Doctor Doom, the Negative Zone, or any of the other trappings of the FF.

Darkman (Not Disney). Supposedly Sam Raimi wanted to do a movie starring Batman or The Shadow, but couldn't get the rights. So instead he created his own hero, a scientist who gets disfigured in an attack by mobsters, then gains the ability to disguise himself as anyone thanks to a new synthetic skin. An incredible cast, including Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand, helps elevate this movie above the usual superhero fare, and it's easily as good as Raimi's first two Spider-Man movies. (And much, much better than the third one.)

Unbreakable (Disney's Touchstone Pictures). I harshed on M. Night Shyamalan yesterday, but this one actually isn't bad. It's sort of a meditation on how a comic-book villain (Samuel L. Jackson, with his wackiest hair yet) actually creates his own superhero (Bruce Willis). Given that many movies and comics now revolve around the idea of superheroes like Batman creating villains like the Joker, it's refreshing to see it the other way around.

Underdog (Disney). A movie based on the 1970s cartoon series about a superpowered dog who comes here to save the day. A failed police dog gets experimented on, and develops amazing superpowers. Then he gets adopted and renamed Shoeshine, but secretly sneaks out to fight crime on the side.

Greatest American Hero (Disney). Another movie based on a TV show, this time the live-action show about a schoolteacher (again) who finds a costume that gives him amazing powers — but he doesn't have the instruction manual for how to use them. Luckily, he does have a cranky FBI agent snarking at him. Why is that lucky? Actually, I'm not sure. The movie starts filming in July, and it features a new villain, another schoolteacher who gets his own superpowered costume from aliens who want to exploit the Earth.

The Green Hornet (Not Disney). Originally a radio serial about a Batman-esque rich guy who runs a crusading newspaper and fights crime at night in a mask, with his Korean chauffeur Kato, the Green Hornet became a series of movies in the 1940s. And in the 1960s, it was a short-lived TV series that included Bruce Lee as Kato. And now it's going to be a movie again, supposedly starring Seth (Knocked Up) Rogen. Somehow Rogen beat out George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg for the lead role (or, more likely, they turned it down.) I'm imagining with Rogen in the lead role, it's not going to be a dead serious rendering of the Hornet's story.

Blankman (Not Disney). Another blaxploitation superhero spoof, this time starring Damon Wayans as a genius inventor who learns to make clothes bulletproof and becomes the lowest-budget superhero ever, Blankman. David Allen Grier stars as the friend, who's skeptical but winds up becoming Blankman's sidekick, Other Guy.

Black Scorpion (Not Disney). On the heels of Tim Burton's slightly less campy reinvention of Batman, Roger Corman decided to bring back the camp with Black Scorpion, his story of a policewoman (Joan Severance) who can't find justice. So she straps on a shiny black rubber bustier and a black fetishy mask and prowls the streets in her high-powered car. The original film includes a character named Tender Lovin', which is really all you need to know. (Actually the Corman connection might be all you need to know.) The film earned a sequel, Black Scorpion II: Aftershock, and a short-lived TV series on, wait for it... the Sci Fi Channel. Slogan: Justice has a nasty sting.

The Specials (Not Disney). I actually meant to include this one originally, but couldn't remember the title and had a hard time finding it online. Thanks to Whitworthian for reminding me of its name. The Specials deals with a group of misfit third-string superheroes on their day off, leading their dysfunctional lives and horrifying their newest member, Nightbird. One of the few superhero comedies that doesn't go for the super-broad humor and stereotypes, unlike...

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (Not Disney). I forgot to include this one originally, maybe just because I was repressing it. I did blog about it a while ago. Luke Wilson dumps Uma Thurman's superhero, G-Girl, and she goes on a vengeful rampage. So he sells her out to a supervillain, Professor Bedlam, and nearly destroys the world in the process. Blah.

Orgazmo (Definitely Not Disney). Another classic I somehow overlooked, even though it's one of my favorite movies. (Thanks, tralu!) Orgazmo is a porno superhero whose schtick is that he can cause people to climax with his raygun. But when he decides to fight back against his sleazy producer, he discovers he can wield the power of Orgazmo for real.

A spin-off of a Green Lantern subplot, Millennium wasn't exactly the paranoiac's delight that Secret Invasion threatens to be, in that there was an upside to the story, as well. Representatives of the well-named Guardians of The Universe had come to Earth to select ten humans that would help usher in the greatest evolutionary step in a thousand years (hence the title), and the alien Manhunters - themselves created by the Guardians - went undercover to try and make sure that no-one helped that happen. The result was a line-wide story that switched between hippie lessons about the nature of life as the chosen few expanded their cosmic consciousness and revelations that many familiar faces - including a hypnotized Lana Lang, replaced Commisioner Gordon and the DC-Universe Nancy Reagan - were actually working with the bad guys to stall the process.

The series is a wonderful example of the schizophrenia of late-80s superhero comics, where political themes are attempted (The Iraqi woman chosen by the Guardians is stoned to death, for example, while the English chosen doesn't see the point of helping a humanity that helped put Margaret Thatcher in power) but everything devolves into a punchfest nonetheless. Once they achieve cosmic consciousness, the chosen turn into... more superheroes. Sadly never reprinted, there are two things that this series should be remembered for - the creation of the first openly gay superhero for either DC or Marvel (Admittedly, he called himself Extrano, but that's because he was a Mexican rip-off of Marvel's Doctor Strange as much as any queer joke), and the fact that The New Guardians, the spin-off comic starring the chosen cosmic avatars, not only featured HIV+ vampire assassins and bad guys fuelled by magic cocaine in its desire to be socially relevant. Ah, those more innocent days before it was all evil aliens trying to take over the world...

Millennium [Amazon]

Despite news that the movie - originally completed two years ago, but subject to controversial re-shoots last year - will now be released in two different versions on DVD (with nerd dying of cancer) and theatrically (without the cancer), the (original) filmmakers aren't convinced of the studio's good intent. Producer Kevin Mann says that the studio is just trying to persuade fans not to boycott their other geek-friendly movie in protest:

This is more about avoiding picket lines at 'Superhero [Movie]' than it was about making a decision about the release of our movie.

Faced with a grass-roots boycott of its films, bicoastal protests at screenings of its Friday opener "Superhero Movie" and a campaign calling its co-chairman "Darth Weinstein," the Weinstein Co. said Monday that it now plans to release two versions of "Fanboys."

Fans press Weinstein on 'Fanboys' [Hollywood Reporter]

Now that Hancock director Peter Berg is officially remaking Dune, it's hard not to see his superhero romp as a bad omen. Official synopses of Hancock have portrayed it as the story of a drunken has-been superhero (Smith), who gets a press agent (Jason Bateman) but then has an affair with the agent's wife (Charlize Theron). But a rough cut of the film just screened in Texas, and attendees came out with much, much weirder plot descriptions.

According to the early reviews, Will Smith's Hancock is an immortal god, created thousands of years ago. But he's suffering from amnesia and doesn't realize his true nature. Plus he got mugged 20 years ago (when he'd lost his powers) and remains traumatized by the experience. Now he's a superhero who abuses his powers and does more harm than good.

Then Hancock saves Bateman's marketing exec, who offers to salvage his image in return. Bateman's big idea: Hancock should turn himself in and offer to go to jail for all the damage his heroics have caused, plus an underage girl he had sex with. (Apparently, when Hancock ejaculates, his sperm blasts through the roof of the trailer he lives in.) But then it turns out that Bateman's wife (Theron) is also a superhero, and is actually married to Hancock from thousands of years ago. But when Smith and Theron are together, they lose their superpowers for some reason.

When Bateman learns his wife is an all-powerful god who was created thousands of years ago to be Will Smith's perfect mate, he's somewhat distraught. Then Smith and Theron have to stop some escaped convicts, but can't get too close to each other without losing their powers. [Superhero Movie clip from MTV Movies. Hancock reviews at Ain't It Cool News.]

Named the "hottest comic of 1993" by Wizard Magazine — so now you know it must be good — Harbinger centered around teenager Pete Stanchek, an "omega harbinger" who can activate superpowers in other people, and his attempt to save those potential superpeople from an evil older omega, Toyo Harada and the equally evil "Harbinger" foundation. The series was created by former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter (the man responsible for Secret Wars and Spider-Man's black costume) and featured early work by creator David Lapham, who went on to produce cult crime comic Stray Bullets.

Paramount's movie version is still in early planning stages: No writer has been attached to the project yet, and it's not known exactly which studio will be "officially" pushing the project, either; it may be an MTV production, making it possible for the tagline "From the company that brought you Blades of Glory and the ill-fated Aeon Flux movie" to be used in trailers. [Variety]

Taking his role of "Official Intellectual Who Makes It Okay to Think About Comics" very seriously, Chabon's essay "Secret Skin" strips Superman and friends of their clothes piece by piece to consider just what's so powerful about the image of people in tights fighting crime:

So let's lose the cape. As for the boots—we are not married to the boots. After all, Iron Fist sports a pair of kung-fu slippers, the Spirit wears brown brogues, Zatanna works her magic in stiletto heels, and Beast, Ka-Zar, and Mantis wear no shoes at all. Perhaps, though, we had better hold on to our unitards, crafted of some nameless but readily available fabric that, like a thin matte layer, at once coats and divulges the splendor of our musculature. Assemble the collective, all-time memberships of the Justice League of America, the Justice Society of America, the Avengers, the Defenders, the Invaders, the X-Men, and the Legion of Super-Heroes (and let us not forget the Legion of Substitute Heroes), and you will probably find that almost all of them, from Nighthawk to the Chlorophyll Kid, arrive wearing some version of the classic leotard-tights ensemble. And yet—not everyone. Not Wonder Woman, in her star-spangled hot pants and eagle bustier; not the Incredible Hulk or Martian Manhunter or the Sub-Mariner.

Consideration of the last named leads us to cast a critical eye, finally, on our little swim trunks, typically worn with a belt, pioneered by Kit Walker (for the Ghost Who Walks), the Phantom of the old newspaper strip, and popularized by the super-trendsetter of Metropolis. The Sub-Mariner wears nothing but a Eurotrashy green Speedo, suggesting that, at least by the decency standards of the old Comics Code, this minimal garment marks the zero degree of superheroic attire. And yet, of course, the Flash, Green Lantern, and many others make do without trunks over their tights; the forgoing of trunks in favor of a continuous flow of fabric from legs to torso is frequently employed to lend a suggestion of speed, sleekness, a kind of uncluttered modernism. And the Hulk never goes around in anything but those tattered purple trousers.

Second Skin [New Yorker]

The answer, sadly, is no. If the story of modern superhero comics is escapist power inflation (with even powerless Batman becoming more and more unstoppable) then postmodern superhero lit is your bitter antidote. The classic pomo superhero novel is about the hero's inadequacy and feebleness. Levitate yourself downwards, into the abyss, with our roundup of the lamest superheroes of postmodern lit.

Moisture Man. The hero of the title story of Charles Yu's collection Third Class Superhero, Moisture Man's power is to generate moisture. Not a flood or anything, just a little bit of dampness or vapor or whatever. He longs to join the equivalent of the Justice League on his world, but he's next to useless unless you're stuck in a desert somewhere. And then when he finally does get the chance to join the A-list heroes on a mission, he sells them out in exchange for a real superpower.

David Brinkley. (No, really, that's his name.) The hero of Super-Folks, the original pomo superhero novel from 1977, which Grant Morrison accused Alan Moore of stealing all his ideas from. A Superman analog, David Brinkley comes from the planet Cronk, and his only weakness is the substance Cronkite. He loses all his powers because criminals dosed all sorts of common consumer products with a small amount of Cronkite. And then he has a mid-life crisis and loses his hair, and mopes. And mopes. Finally, he does get his powers back thanks to the CIA, just in time to save the day one last time.

Elphin. Soon I Will Be Invincible by io9 contributor Austin Grossman is full of crappy-ass superheroes, including the drug-dependent Rainbow Triumph, who has to keep taking her meds every few hours or she loses her abilities. But Elphin, the fairy princess from the 10th century, is the lamest, with her childlike whispers and her beauty products. She keeps changing her story about where she comes from and what her abilities are, and always comes up with ridiculous excuses for why she can't use her powers in a particular situation, like she can't use her powers on iron due to fairy laws. Whatever, Elf girl!

Power Grrrl. From The Notebooks Of Dr. Brain by Minister Faust is another book that's chock full of lame superheroes facing a collective midlife crisis in psychotherapy — from the crappy Batman knock-off Flying Squirrel to the jive-talking Spider-Man clone Brotherfly. But the one you'd least want to have your back is probably Power Grrrl, a post-feminist Spice Girls-esque heroine whose main power is to turn other people into clones of herself, in a parable of super-narcissism. Just in case you miss her lameness, she talks in bimbo speak, punctuated with lots of "Like, duhs," and all of her statements are questions. And she smacks chewing gum a lot.

David Zucker has been producing and directing comedy movies sporadically since Airplane!, and most recently directed Scary Movie 3, 4, and 5. I suppose if you're on a roll, why not stick with what you know... but do people care anymore? I seriously kept waiting for something funny to happen in this trailer, thinking it would elicit at least one laugh. Well, I was wrong. It devolves quickly into tired jokes and a superhero getting partially pantsed. Whoa! You can see his skivvies! Haw haw. The trailer for Hancock had more laughs than this did. In fact, remember Will Smith talking to the mannequins in I Am Legend? That was comedy gold in comparison.

We don't want to see Leslie Nielsen brought to this. But at least now you know what Brent "Data" Spiner has been up to. Please tell us their next project isn't Science Fiction Movie.