Comic Book Resources

It may be trashy, but it is damn entertaining.

Go Whip-Snap!

I only watched five minutes of the first season, it was the final interview with Stan between Feedback and Big Momma. Feedback went first and said the real reason he wanted to be a superhero is because his father left him/died at a young age and the surrogate father figures in his life became Stan Lee’s Marvel characters, and how their message, via Lee, shaped his worldview and helped him get over the fact that he was raised poor, by a single mother.

Feedback, understandably, broke down and started crying as he was saying this, and Stan the Man just sat at his desk and nodded. When Feedback finished, Stan just deadpanned, “Thank you. Now, could you please send in Big Momma?”

I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t focus enough to watch the rest of the episode, and I haven’t seen a second of it since. It may have been the funniest reality TV moment in the history of mankind, excluding every episode of “Little People, Big World”

Does this make me a bad person?

I used to be a fan of reality tv but I’ve really stopped watching them as they turned into talent contests and who could be the biggest jerk. What sets Who Wants to Be a Superhero apart is that unlike Survivor or Big Brother, on Who Wants to Be a Superhero, the contestants win by being (or at least pretending to be) good people. Sure there may be stupid things like Stan Lee, creator of the Fantastic Four, telling people that they can’t reveal their secret identity, but in reality, if you are a jerk, you get kicked off.

And the campyness is just icing on the cake.

This and Derren Brown’s Mind COntrol on after this are my Thursday must-see-tv.

What sets Who Wants to Be a Superhero apart is that unlike Survivor or Big Brother, on Who Wants to Be a Superhero, the contestants win by being (or at least pretending to be) good people.

That’s why my wife Julie likes it, actually. She approves of a show where contestants are encouraged to be nicer people.

Well, some time during or before Bob Hope’s death, some blogger (It may have been Mark Evanier) had a post to the effect that they or someone they knew visited Bob at his home and was proudly shown a complete collection of the Bob Hope comic book. How involved he personally might have been with approvals, or whether one of his “people” just eyeballed each issue is hard to say, but it’s nice to think some celebrity was still flattered to be thus immortalized.
What was shocking to me when Bob died was the flood of tribute editorial cartoons, mostly of Hope and Crosby playing golf in Heaven, which could not do a decent Bob Hope caricature to save their lives. Bob. Oksner. people.

Ooops, I’m way OT here.

Sigh. It was a much better show last season. This year, as you say, too much seems really, really staged (although this was starting to be true even in the latter part of the first season), and everyone is playing to the camera too much. For all its hokiness, it was much more “authentic” last year — it had a real heart that, for me, was lacking in this season’s premiere. But, having said all that — glad you are enjoying it and that it has found more viewers. It’s a worthy concept, I think.

You know, it’s just a sweet show. Everyone is on the joke, but it’s not condescending to them.

I used to be a fan of reality tv but I’ve really stopped watching them as they turned into talent contests and who could be the biggest jerk.

What were they before?

And the campyness is just icing on the cake.

Is icing usually made out of turds?

Hey, it’s a better summer watch than Big Brother, which is the Special Olympics of reality television. Last year, I recapped the first three episodes (one, two, three), and I’ve gotten sketches of three of the heroes: Monkey Woman (by Danielle Corsetto), Tyveculus (Jamal Igle), Major Victory (Fred Hembeck…quite fitting) and Fat Momma (quickie from Kyle Baker).

The second season so far? It’s so-so. The production values are better, but the cast isn’t as good. Mr. Mitzvah is a little too much, and Ms. Limelight is too much to take. As a matter of fact, somebody on another forum identified her as a frequent talk show guest, somebody who has been accused of acting flighty. So far, there’s no real de facto favorite, though Whip-Snap seems to be getting the sympathetic edit.

I watched last year, but Cell Phone Girl and Major Victory not winning took me out of it.

Major Victory was chastised for taking off his cape durring acts of heroism…by Stan Lee…who had mainly heroes without capes…feh.

And Cell phone Girl was hot. so there.

Wow, I just flipped through the channels on TV and guess who is a contestant on Gameshow Network’s Lingo? Chris Watters aka Major Victory!

I don’t know if this was taped before or after Who Wants to Be a Superhero but it is weird that the episode with him on it would be on the same day this was posted!

Was Feedback’s comic any good? Did anyone read it?

It wasn’t that good. Yadda yadda yadda, we all love Stan, but his prime was decades ago.

How have I not heard about this. I have to see this, if just once. I read your article and looked through the local listings, and it doesn’t look to be on, on Fridays or otherwise, unless I missed it. Does anybody know if it’s being carried in Canada, in Vancouver?

How low and silly can reality TV get? and how shameless in self-promotion can Stanley Leiber (the man) sink? I doubt that we’ve yet seen the rock bottom for either, but now we can say we have seen the point where their bar graphs bisect.

Gotta see this show.

aargh i hate when i sign in as anonymous

I had an old Human Fly comic and never understood the “He’s real” angle. I can barely remember it but there was nothing in the comic that brought in the real world Fly. Not that I would have believed it.

Yadda yadda yadda, we all love Stan, but his prime was decades ago.

Actually, you look at the work from decades ago and it’s about on the same level. Technically the new work is a little more competent. Same as the “Just Imagine…” Stan Lee stuff.

The difference is that then it was wildly innovative. Now it’s baseline-competent. Modern superhero comics melodrama is a form that Stan essentially created, so nowadays the style it sprang from, Stan’s natural writing style, is going to look utterly generic.

Jack Kirby ran into a similar problem when he returned to Captain America in the 70′s, following Steve Englehart. Stan and Jack trained everyone to expect, not their style, but rather the idea of wild innovation. We got spoiled rotten.

But their actual styles still work fine for kids who are relatively new to comics, just not for jaded old farts like us. The idea that their “later work isn’t as good as the earlier stuff” mostly comes from industry context.

You can argue that they should have kept up with the times, but that’s a different argument.

…the prize is to become fictional.

Now I want a season directed by Grant Morrison.

How have I not heard about this. I have to see this, if just once. I read your article and looked through the local listings, and it doesn’t look to be on, on Fridays or otherwise, unless I missed it. Does anybody know if it’s being carried in Canada, in Vancouver?

Well, the official website is here. I believe there are episodes available for download, as well as some sort of web-only after-show talk thing starring Feedback. We’re on dialup, so I can’t see any of it, but it’s there.

But nevertheless, Stan Lee’s Who Wants To Be A Superhero? has become appointment television for us.

Always weird when marketing terms cross over into public use.

That’s why my wife Julie likes it, actually. She approves of a show where contestants are encouraged to be nicer people.

The best I saw was an Australian one, called something like ‘Treasure Island’.
Two teams set out to find buried treasure, competing for clues etc.
What set it apart, was that it wasn’t the losing team voting someone off or anything like that.
They competed for clues, and then everyone, winning team or not, had to fill out a form saying where they thought the treasure was.
Whoever was the least close got sent off.
So, while there was double crossing (mostly the teams setting each other up when they had to swap items between them), it actually came down to who was the smartest on the island – which made it entertaining as they had no say over who came and went.

And then the winner gave a thousand dollars to everyone who’d been on his team, and a thousand to the person from the other team who came second.
So it was a good show, and the nice guy one.

Yeah, Major Victory was robbed. It wasn’t just the cape thing, either (and seriously, didn’t Superman use his cape as a tool every other issue in the Silver Age?). Here was Stan Lee, half-creator of Spider-Man, saying the guy made too many quips. Huh?

None of the ones on the new season are grabbing me quite as much, so far.

Hi Greg-

Great article, and well researched as usual!

Having never seen the show before, I recently caught two back-to-back episodes of WWTBASH? last week on Sci-Fi. I think it’s quite possible that comic book fans are NOT the intended audience. Of course I’m basing this only on the fact that both my wife and her best friend (neither of whom read comics) are addicted to the show and persuaded me to watch it. So, perhaps the series is not so much for us, but for the general public looking for a different take on the overdone reality-show concept.

The series is mainly harmless and is not as melodramatic as some of the reality fare being passed off as entertainment. What I found most funny about the series was how Stan (whom most of the characters simply addressed as “Sir” and who only appeared via video monitor) asked each charcter to describe his or her origin, after which Stan said “no, no, no…” and TOLD them their origin. This, to me, was amazingly funny, and anyone who thinks Stan was doing this off the cuff is simply fooling him/herself. El scripto.

I also find it interesting that Stan, during the elimination round at the end of each episode, defined the aspect of what makes a hero a hero. Of course Stan was the acknowledged master of creating iconic heroes back in the day, but ya know, the times they are a’changing. Though mostly I agree with Stan’s perceptions about heroes (not that he’s looking for my approval, natch). What interests me most is the arrogance some characters portrayed. I’m thinking about the portly bald character who was dismissed for being too headstrong. He reminded me of Iron Man and Captain America back around the time of the Korvac saga in The Avengers when the team seemed to be imploding with hostility toward one another.

Another funny aspect of the series is the voiceover which, during the opening credits, describes Stan as the “greatest super-hero writer in the history of comics” (I’m paraphrasing, but that was the basic implication). And of course there is merit to this statement, but I also think it’s open to debate. But hey, it’s only television (well, not quite television, “reality” television, which wouldn’t exist were it not for the WGA strike back in the day [ah, to get me one of them time machines and learn contract negotiation...]).

The one question I have (and do not know the answer to) is what does this show do for comics in general? Does it advance our medium or send us back 30 years to the days of Adam West and Burt Ward and “Pow!” and “Bam!”? It has taken so long for comics to still be taken seriously in the US (and really, I doubt that mainstream America really sees us as anything but an annoyance), so I wonder if WWTBASH? is simply reinforcing a stereotype that we’ve been trying so desperately to overcome.

Best-
david

Any thoughts on the latest episode? Two big headaches gone, and six heroes left, any one of them a potential winner. Right now, I’m thinking Partheon is in the lead for the grand prize.

I’d like John Wu to direct the next season of Superhero. Get those geeks out there dodging bullets.

Greetings to all the lovely people…

I have not been a regular watcher of TV shows in about 9 years… still love movies and all that… I wished that I had caught the “Who Wants to be a Superhero” though for a few reasons (after the fact, I found out that my sister-in-law worked on the production, as well as other reality shows of the day)… when I saw that there was going to be such a show, my first thought was of…

Richard Pesta. Captain Sticky.The Captain. My Captain.

I met Captain Sticky in 1988 through a friend who occasionally drove limos for him. I ended up driving limos for him as well, off and on for several years, and stayed in contact as a friend for many more after (even during the lean “garage years” when I helped him move one of several times). I had a deja vu when we met, because I had actually seen him get married on television, years before on the show “Real People.”

I even helped him design the most marvelous limo to grace San Diego… a 1965 Caddy Hearse dubbed Club Dead (he wanted to call it Goldfinger and go with a different motif, but when he told me he was putting a dance floor in a hearse, it was the only time I got him to stop talking when I said “you’re putting a dance floor in a hearse?? – You should call it Club Dead!” – it took him two weeks to shift gears, but he went whole hog, and the car was a thing of beauty).

He was probably the biggest dreamer that I’ve ever known… he would take the weirdest, half-baked idea and turn it into reality.

Anyway… there was a comic. It was self published on newsprint drawn by an artist named “J. Holmes” … I have a copy of it (and some other pertinent literature). The cover is blue with gold and black lettering – “From out of the 21st Century… presenting Captain Sticky! Destroyer of Evil!” There is a center folded photo poster of the Captain, in “full battle regalia,” as he liked to call it. The back page had an order form with a Long Beach address for t-shirts, posters and bumper stickers . I will try to take pictures of it to share if I hear from you.

I miss the guy, and am glad that I wasn’t the only one who thought of him with respect to this wacky show.

-Dano

I as well drove for the Captain, we fought evil and badness with niceness and goodness! I drove a couple of bubble tops one being “Club Dead”, with a dance floor , disco ball and a 32 inch tv along with seats in back.

I he was a card, especially everytime we went out to lunch he forgot his wallet