Alternate Takes 03.20.10: Superheroes

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 03.20.2010

It's a new era for Alternate Takes. Gone are the obscure film references and replacing them is the world of comic books. From this issue on, Alternate Takes is your home for everything comic related in the world of movies. In the relaunch of the column, join me as I talk a little about myself and what you can expect from here on in the New Alternate Takes.



Welcome to Week 95 of Alternate Takes, my name is Shawn S. Lealos and you have entered - WHAT THE BLUE HELL?!?!?!?

A strange thing happened to Alternate Takes over the last week. As we were leaving the old ball park, we were bitten by a one of the mascots, a Radioactive Water Buffalo named Buster. Days were spent picking off the fleas before we finally decided to get dipped, hoping to ease the pain. Once we came out of the tub, the world had gone mad! Women were screaming, children were crying and grown men were running in panic. Of course, that all subsided when we put our clothes back on, but we had an epiphany here at Alternate Takes.

The world needed our help. Alternate Takes took the horrible incident with that hairy bovine as a sign. We trained with martial arts masters in Tibet. We studied physics, biology, chemistry and engineering with the masters. We took our mass fortunes and built a secret headquarters filled with state of the art gadgets. We shot Gamma Rays into our ass.

When we came out, we were changed, rebuilt with state of the art technology. We were bigger than before, better, stronger, faster. We became The New Alternate Takes!



With that said, I figure it is time to let you know a little more about me. I've been writing about movies for the last few years now, and before that was an award winning sports journalist. But, before I studied journalism at the University of Oklahoma, I was once a kid. I grew up in the seventies and eighties, the era where I believe some of the best comic book work took place.

I started reading comics when I was seven or eight. We lived with my grandparents and my grandmother wasn't impressed with my hobby, as she always explained to me that these "funny books" weren't funny and she did not approve. But, she didn't stop me either. My mom didn't mind if I read comics as long as they were bought with my allowance, so I saved my money week after week.

I really got into them hardcore when I was about ten years old. Every week my mom bowled in a league and on the way to the bowling alley, we would stop at a comic shop called New World and I would spend all my allowance on that week's releases. I read mostly Marvel, but also grabbed an occasional DC comic as well. I read everything: Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America, The Defenders, Batman, Superman, The Flash, The Justice League of America, The Legion of Super Heroes and many, many others. I didn't miss an issue and soaked in the stories. At the time it wasn't about bagging and boarding the books, it was about reading them and re-reading them. They were my life.

I quit reading in about 1987 when I was in high school. It wasn't cool anymore and I had an image to sustain. Well, I kept them in a storage shed and then during a horrible storm in 1989, a tree crashed into the shed, the storm washed in, the termites attacked and my comic book collection (I'd guess almost 3000 of them) was destroyed.

In 1989, I went to my first movie on my own. I was nineteen but grew up in a religious household that didn't allow me to go to the theater. The first movie I saw was Tim Burton's Batman (I had been to two movies as a little kid with my school, but that was it). Holy crap! I was in Heaven. I didn't read comics anymore but I still loved them. I had seen the Superman movies on TV but this was world's different. I started going to movies all the time after that and wondered when I could see more of my old superhero friends on the big screen.

In 1995, I started back to college at the age of twenty-five. At this age, at a university as big as Oklahoma, I wasn't ashamed to read comics anymore. My editor at the Yearbook owns his own comic book store in Norman called Speeding Bullet Comics and I went there and was reintroduced to my old love. I started buying everything. Every Wednesday, I went to the shop and picked up all the new releases to start following them again. This lasted almost a year when I found myself in financially hard times and had to stop once again.

Since that time, I have kept up with things and reduced my purchases to graphic novels and that is how I also followed all the monthly series as well. It just seemed like a better option than going to the store weekly to buy a shitload of new comics. I graduated from OU with my journalism degree in 2000 and remained in school for two more years, taking film studies classes, preparing for a writing career with that area of expertise.

Ten years later, I am writing about movies for two websites, working on screenplays with a friend who is already in Hollywood and have eight short films under my belt. And once again, my love of comics has returned to the forefront. I have - off and on - thirty years of experience reading comics. Alternate Takes is transforming into a new breed of column, similar to what Joseph Lee does with the horror genre. I will be looking at the world of comic book movies, comparing and contrasting it to the books that are pulled from. I hope this is something you will find interesting and look forward to entertaining, educating and hopefully turning you onto a whole butt load of great movies and books at the same time.

This week, I am just going to give you a small list as we end the column, hopefully showing you the kinds of heroes that attracted me as a kid. And then next week, we will kick this new direction off in style, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.



MY TOP 8 FAVORITE SUPERHEROES

8. Moon Knight

Moon Knight was one of those incredibly interesting characters that seemed unlike anything I had seen before. Yeah, he might be seen as Marvel's answer to Batman, but I liked him for his unique character. Like Batman, he was a man with no powers who relied on tools and gadgets developed thanks to his wealth, but there was much more to him than that. What initially interested me were his multiple personalities and aliases. He was Marc Spector, a soldier-for-hire. He was also Steven Grant, a financier. Also, to gather information he became Jake Lockley, a cab driver. He wasn't just a superhero with a secret identity. He was a guy with four different identities, living separate lives for all of them. Over time, he developed various powers attuned to the moon, but that is less interesting to me. He was revitalized in Marvel Knights recently and remains a favorite, although to some, lesser known hero.




7. The Human Torch

Maybe it's because I have always been drawn to hothead superheroes but characters like The Human Torch have always ranked as my favorites. I loved The Fantastic Four as a kid. It was a simpler time back then. There were no marital problems and the team was never in danger to split up (or allow The Freaking She Hulk to join). The only thing that seemed to be dysfunctional about the entire dynamic was the relationship between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm. I loved the Abbott and Costello relationship between The Torch and The Thing and that made this comic one of the most fun to read. Plus they fought badass bad guys like Galactus and Dr. Doom! The Torch reminds me a lot of a more confident Spider-Man, a very good thing. I never missed an issue of The Fantastic Four as a kid and The Human Torch remains my favorite member by a long shot.




6. The Incredible Hulk

When I was a kid, Friday nights were a one-two shot of my favorite TV shows. At 7:00 was The Incredible Hulk and at 8:00 was The Dukes of Hazzard. God, that was freaking cool to have one of my favorite comic book characters on TV. I also remember when I started to love The Hulk. It was Issue #278 and Banner had taken over the intelligence of The Hulk, finally finding acceptance with the world's heroes (and President Ronald Reagan, who grants him amnesty). It was like a giant resolution for the torment this character always faced. This would last less than two years before The Secret Wars and nightmares involving a savage beast from within tore him apart and he became more dangerous than ever. That is The Hulk I love, the monster who rampages, despite the alter ego that wants peace. I don't want "Hulk Smash" in my comics. I want The Hulk to smash things in my comics. Then more recently, with Planet Hulk and World War Hulk, I found even more reasons to love the big green lug.




5. Wolverine

I was never as big of an X-Men fan as my friends. I thought they were cool but the members were just a little too out there for me. I liked the original team and thought some of the new characters introduced in Giant-Size X-Men #1 were decent. It was Wolverine that caught my attention at the end of the day as the best of the new X-Men. He is brash, violent and the ultimate bad ass. He doesn't care about many people other than himself and is the prototypical antihero, but is also loyal to those he is determined to protect. One of my favorite stories was when Wolverine got his own title, went off to Japan and, Thank God, this is the direction the second X-Men: Origins movie is heading. I can't wait.




4. Batman

If you can't tell by this list, I was not much of a DC Comics fan. There were characters I followed from that world, Superman and Batman being the main ones. There were teams I liked such as The Teen Titans, Outsiders and Legion of Super Heroes. However, DC Comics did not consistently put out the kind of comics I liked to read. I preferred less God-like characters and that is probably why Batman is the only one I religiously followed regardless of anything else DC produced. He had great villains like The Joker, The Riddler and Cat Woman. Plus, there is the bonus fact that I watched the live-action show on TV when I was a kid ("same bat time, same bat channel"). Batman was one of the coolest characters in either superhero universe and it is easy to see why he might be the most popular superhero in mainstream America today.




3. Yellowjacket

Henry Pym has been around since the beginning as the diminutive Ant Man, able to shrink using a group of subatomic particles known as "Pym Particles." He was kind of a cheesy character at that time, able to communicate with ants kind of like an insect Aquaman. He soon gave his concoction to Janet Van Dyne and the two became crime fighting partners, Ant-Man and The Wasp. Later, Pym reversed the effects and developed a serum to allow him to grow to a giant height and fought as the Avenger Giant-Man (later Goliath). He still remained uninteresting to me. Then something happened. Pym snapped and immediately he became one of my favorite superheroes. He was in love with The Wasp but because of his repressed personality refused to allow that to be known. He was also wracked with guilt after accidentally releasing the super villain Ultron on the world. He was involved in a gas released accident in his laboratory and became Yellowjacket. He married Wasp and the two lived happily - until depression led to more battles of schizophrenia. After his recklessness caused The Avengers to be put in great danger he was suspended and given an in house court marshal. Hoping to save himself, he built a robot to attack so he could save the day but failed and was kicked out of the group. He was soon framed by his old enemy Egghead, arrested and put on trial. He eventually cleared his name and retired from crime fighting for a time. It was an amazing story, from start to finish, and completely won me over. It may be the actual plot that I loved here but it made me a huge Yellowjacket fan.




2. Hawkeye

I was a huge fan of the Avengers when I was collecting comics as a kid. I didn't care who was on the team, I followed them month-by-month without missing a beat. I was always happy when the standbys were members (Cap, Iron Man, Thor) but I didn't care who else was on the team - with one exception. It was issue #221 and The Avengers were trying to fill in two vacant spots thanks and the big question was who would fill these positions. I didn't give a crap about The She Hulk joining but when Cap and Iron Man went and asked Hawkeye if he would come back, and he said yes, I was overjoyed. Hawkeye was always one of my favorite heroes, thanks in large part to his independent nature. He is the only reason I cared to start picking up West Coast Avengers when it came out. He was the perfect antihero for a twelve year old kid to follow and remained a favorite in the years to come.




1. Spider-Man

This is an easy choice. When I was a kid, it was always Spider-Man that caught my attention every time I went to get the week's new releases. Part of it was the fact he was that awkward kid who always got kicked around by the bully. When he put on his costume, however, he was able to fly high, kick bad guys' butts and always had a great one liner. I think the one thing I missed most from the movies was his quips when he was kicking butt. I don't care if he was fighting a regular villain like Doc Ock or if he was going toe-to-toe with a stone-cold hunter like Kraven or The Punisher, he was always the cool one, telling them what was what, and never backing down. For a kid, he was the best of the best.






Well, that was the easy part. Starting next week I will be looking at comic book movies from here on out, from Spider-Man to Batman, from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Sin City. I am going to be looking at the good, bad and ugly of comic book adaptations and with that I'm leaving you with some advice my uncle gave me once before he died.

With great power comes great responsibility.



Upcoming Releases

April 9, 2010 - The Losers: Check out the trailer on the movie's official website
April 16, 2010 - Kick-Ass: Check out the trailer on the movie's official website
May 7, 2010 - Iron Man 2: Check out the trailer on the movie's official website
May 18, 2010 - Jonah Hex
July 27, 2010 - Batman: Under the Red Hood (Animated, DTV)
August 13, 2010 - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
October, 22, 2010 - Red
Dec. 22, 2010 - The Green Hornet
2010 - Dead of Night (completed, no U.S. release date yet)

January 14, 2011 - Priest
May 06, 2011 - Thor
June 17, 2011 - Green Lantern
July 22, 2011 - The First Avenger: Captain America
July 29, 2011 - Cowboys and Aliens
December 23, 2011 - The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn

May 4, 2012 - The Avengers
July 03, 2012 - Spider-Man 4

In Development

Deadpool (2011) - Ryan Reynolds is set to star
Untitled Batman project (2011) - In Pre-Production
Untitled Sam Raimi project (2011) - Will involve Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Avenger (all pulp comic stars of the ‘30s and ‘40s)
Superman: Man of Steel (2011) - David Goyer (The Dark Knight) has been hired to write the script
X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2 (2011) - Supposed to start production in January 2011
Y: The Last Man (2011) - D.J. Caruso (Eagle Eye) is set to direct
Luke Cage (2011) - Tyrese Gibson is set to star, John Singleton to direct
Preacher (2011) - Sam Mendes is still attached to direct
Sin City 2 (2011) - Reportedly being shopped to studios by Robert Rodriguez
Deathlok (2011) - David Self (Road to Perdition) has been hired to write the script, no director onboard yet
Cobalt 60 (2011) - Zack Snyder (Watchmen) is onboard as director, currently searching for a writer
The Flash (2011) - no director or stars as of yet

Venom (2012) - Gary Ross (Pleasantville) is rewriting the script
Sgt. Rock (2012) - A script has been turned in, Francis Lawrence (Constantine) is set to direct
Constantine 2 (2012) - no director or stars as of yet
Shazam (2012) - writers have been hired, Peter Segal (Get Smart) is set to direct

Akira (2013) - Marvel is in talks with the Hughes Brothers (Book of Eli)

AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS BE MY FRIEND ON FACEBOOK http://www.twitter.com/411mania http://www.twitter.com/411wrestling http://www.twitter.com/411moviestv http://www.twitter.com/411music http://www.twitter.com/411games http://www.twitter.com/411mma MY CALENDAR Monday, March 15, 2010: Super Mario Bros. (DVD) - Read my Review in Pixels 'n Bits Tuesday, March 16, 2010: I spent most the day watching old WrestleMania cards - Read my Countdown article here Wednesday, March 17, 2010: The Bounty Hunter - watch for my review this weekend Thursday, March 18, 2010: I also spent most of the last week playing MLB 10: The Show (PS3) - Read my Review of the game here