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Stan Lee Comics Save the Net?
App writes "Comic book fans may want to check out this article from ZD Net. Seems Stan Lee hasn't given up on new ideas. "
This is amusing. There will be 6-7 new heros, and they will
get their powers from the net. Run in terror. Methinks that
Stan is passed his prime. Funny in Mallrats tho.
It's CAN'T be that hookey! I mean, this would be like having super heroes getting their power from television and telephones - two other technologies that were going to (and did btw) revolutionize the world.
Well, nobody ever claimed that a super hero was logical. I want to see radioactive man syndicated.
I definetly think that Mr. Lee has lost his mind. He is trying to take the mentality of a 12 year old in 1960 and apply to a 12 year old of 1999. Sure, a superhero that got his energy from the big new thing of the time, say TV, in the 60's was a plausible idea, but in the day of T&A, Big Guns, Death, and even Bigger Guns, throwing some kids into the large social medium of the day just doesn't cut the mustard.
Sidenote: Mr. Lee says that he has been shelving characters for the past 30 years.. wouldn't those most likely be the property of Marvel Comics, his employer for the past 30 years? Could this turn into another Blade/Wolfman/Marvel legal triangle?
I definetly think that Mr. Lee has lost his mind. He is trying to take the mentality of a 12 year old in 1960 and apply to a 12 year old of 1999. Sure, a superhero that got his energy from the big new thing of the time, say TV, in the 60's was a plausible idea, but in the day of T&A, Big Guns, Death, and even Bigger Guns, throwing some kids into the large social medium of the day just doesn't cut the mustard.
Sidenote: Mr. Lee says that he has been shelving characters for the past 30 years.. wouldn't those most likely be the property of Marvel Comics, his employer for the past 30 years? Could this turn into another Blade/Wolfman/Marvel legal triangle?
Matt Fuerst - fuerstma@pilot.msu.edu
Sounds like another tired rehash of Captain Planet, except environmentalism isn't as chic as it was in the early 90's.
As pathetic as it is, this is largely the way mainstream comics writers draw inspiration. The "hot new thing" of the moment is translated into their next piece of pornography (literally, "whore writing"). No need to mourn the death of true free expression; the world turned its preferences to hackneyed pap long, long ago, and hasn't turned back since.
I hear Eric S. Raymond is lobbying to be one of the 'net superheroes.
Let's see, what possible powers could one get from the 'net? The power of lagginess? The ability to drop FTP connections with a single bound? Will these new heros be tossing teardrops at bad guys while deftly leaping over flaming firewalls?
Gah. I hate it when authors start pulling in 'gee-gosh' current technologies into their stories. It makes Lee sound like an extreme latecomer to the whole starry-eyed internet hype scene.
i've seen that movie about 6-7 times and it still cheers me up on a rainy day. the only thing about it that i don't like is that cute blonde with the super high pitched voice. don't bother renting chasing amy, she pretty much ruins the movie with her damn whining and screaming.
peece
Geez, people. Lose != loose. Past != passed. And apostrophes are not an announcement of, "Here comes an 's'!" (to paraphrase someone else). Know != no. Too != to != two. Words mean things.
Jim Lee's current comic, Divine Right, has the hero Max Faraday acquiring God-like powers from accidentally downloading some top-secret formula off the Net. It's not a bad book at all. There's even a Net romance
http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/snotley/plural.gif
i wana see Fortran-man fight the evil powers of Doctor Cobol!! (or should it be the otherway around?) ;-)
Probably people have already pointed this out but:
"Past his prime"
is just as acceptable as
"passed his prime"
One refers to: (He is) past his prime
the other: (Ha has) passed his prime
Both are slang too anyhow.
http://www.zdnet.com/talkback/22 _25142_102967.html
Yeah cute blonds are the worst. Are you ignorant?
As a fan of the comics medium, I have a really hard time deifying Stan Lee like most other fans do. Yes, Lee has created some memorable characters. Yes, Lee has crafted some decent plots in his day. And yes, Lee was funny as hell in Mallrats...
But have any of you actually READ the comics Lee has written? They're just awful. At best, they're all like a crazy grampa telling bedtime stories to 8-year-olds. At worst, they're examples of overzealous, grating hucksterism, forcing action in stories that should have enough action as it is. Lee is responsible for the infamous "plot-style" of writing, which involves creating a simple plot, letting the artist draw it out, then adding dialogue later. This results in comics that lack sophistication and sacrifice substance for style and hype. Fanboys will buy into some of the hype if the art is pretty enough, but a more intelligent audience will ignore it and look for quality stories first.
Lee's new project will succeed if he doesn't write these comics himself, but rather gets some decent superhero writers in his camp. (Kurt Busiek, Karl Kesel, Mark Waid, etc.) Personally, I'm waiting for IGNITION CITY, a new on-line comic from Warren Ellis. Hopefully, that project will rise out of limbo soon enough to show people that quality on-line comics CAN be done. (More information available at WarrenEllis.com.)
get a life, people.
--
cruel but honest
A modest manga proposal:
In a schoolyard in Japan, stands a 14-sai girl with long blonde hair. She whips out an odd-looking girl's compact, shouts
"LINUX STAR POWER, MAAAAKE-UP!!"
One 5-minute transformation sequance later, she stands there in black and white body armor designed to look vaguely like a penguin. Yes, friends, it's BISHOJO SENSHI SAILOR LINUX!!
Think it'll sell? ^_~
For some reason I get the thought of linuz in a blue jump suit hoping around with his trusty side kick john camarck.
"Holy hell hounds linuz!! Bill has bought out yet another small company and push the pre alpha to store selfs as finished products"
"To the penguin moblie!!"
I consider myself lucky that I know basic grammar and spelling rules, but I couldn't care less if Taco posted everything fehnetikally. If you can understand the post, THE LANGUAGE IS WORKING JUST FINE.
Form follows function.
Courteously submitted,
Iestyn Lewis
After having seen Clerks I had great expectations for Mallrats. It was so bad it was painful. It would be #1 on my worst ever list, but then I saw Biodome...
Really good films recently seen:
Raise the Red Lantern
Dark City
IMO :
Clerks is a classic... you just need to yell "37!" in a group of ppl and the ones in the know (prolly ~80% from my experience) will know what you're on about...
Chasing Amy was quite clever... a good movie. Although the chick's voice is annoying when she gets excited (like after the bball game)... but she's very cute and seems to be nice... I like them all in that
Mallrats is _not_ the sort of humour that impresses me, and I'm pretty easy. The characters were annoying (and yeh, they had the same character in CA, but he was a lot better then) especially Shannon Doherty (I seriously just wanted her to shut her mouth whenever she opened it) the jokes were cheap and the plot pretty much non-existant. It was like watching a dodgy early eighties teen comedy. erk. I loved Jay and Silent Bob in Clerks, and in this they were turned into an unfunny joke (which was cleverly brought up in Chasing Amy when Jay looks at the comic and says "we're not like that!!!!")
Anyway... who cares about my opinion?
AndyM
:-)
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Oh, don't work, the clueless wanna-be-techie internet hype has barely started. The Net is just the (ugly) beginning.
"He's the latest superhero with powers so profound, he can jump a dotted line in just a single bound" -Bad Religion, "Automatic Man"
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How about RetroMan? Wears 70's duds and listens to Disco while fighting crime cruisin' in his El Camino listening to 8-track tapes?
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Starring...
The fearless Tux the Penguin! The mysterious Red Hat! The mighty Mozilla Rex! The powerful Man-GNU! And the wise Enlightened One!
Watch as they defend the netizens from fiendish villains such Spamford the Terrible, the evil Dr. Ziff and the monstrous megalomaniac Billactus and his horde of Microlemmings!
Its more action packed adventure than one person should be allowed to have! Coming Soon!
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
The cartoon Freakazoid! featured a character who got his powers from the Internet -- but he was also a total goofball, which makes it sorta apropos somehow... It was a Warner Bros. production from 1995-1997 (yes, the same staff that brought us Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain).
Hey, she's not that bad. I like her, personally, but then I also think Fran Drescher is hot too. And Chasing Amy is an amazing movie, even if you don't like the girl's voice.
I must say that jumping on the bandwagon of using the internet as a medium as well as a source for new ideas is not too far flung. I personally roleplay in the SuperHeroes genre and have made multiple characters with powers related to Computers / Telecomm / et al. As long as Mr. Lee doesn't make them all run NT, they should be great heroes . Just think... From Antartica its the defender of the open source.... SuperTux!
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Actually I can see a few interesting ideas here...permission explictly granted for usage either intentional or not(there, now I can speak without causing a writer to commit suicide because I blew his concept)...however, don't take total credit if you're intentionally copying...
;-) running the show.
:-)
:-)))))))
An open source superhero might have some interesting angles--yeah, everybody knows how the powers work, but "fan submissions" for new uses for his powers keep him(or her) on top. (If I could just reach my utility belt...AHA! EAT MY MIGHTY PATCH MERGE!)
A creature built from a microcelluar network, with a benevolent dictator(the brain
On the internet, nobody know's you're a dog...I'm sure Stan has something like this already...hope the character actually is a dog...
The net connects completely dissimilar hardware...character name? Jiniyus
OK ENOUGH GEEKING OUT DAN, TIME TO CODE SOME MORE.
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
Let's see:
Fantastic Four
Spiderman
Silver Surfer
Incredible Hulk
etc, etc, etc
Stan Lee has a pretty good track record, and I for one am ready to see what he comes up with before I start bashing it. It's easy to take potshots, but I'd like to see all these flamers come up with one tenth as many memorable characters as Stan Lee has.
-Eric
I agree. I worked at a comic book store for 2 years and it seemd as if the "artists" became obsessed with the idea of "Who can create the super-vixen with the largest breasts?". The idea of "plot" died long ago.
O.K., so the idea sounds a little hokey on the surface, but if there's anyone that could pull it off, it's Stan Lee.
I've been lucky enough to talk to him a couple of times, and the guy is still sharp as a tack even though he's like a billion years old. He's also got a major interest in the Internet -- the times I got to meet him were when he'd drop by the web production company I used to work at, and he wanted to know how everything worked, and what could be done with the technology. He just absorbed it all like a little grinning sponge.
The man is a legend in his business, and he's still got a lot of good years in him. I wish him luck.
How about a nerdy little kid with glasses, when he shouts "MegaNerd!" he turns into an even nerdier kid with even thicker glasses and a 486 running linux
I started with nothing and I still have most of it.
6 kids from all over Yuppie Valley are gathered together in the secret mountaintop fortress (that's visible for miles in any direction) of Linus Torvalds. They are given a share of the power of Open Source and become mighty hackers for the cause of "Good".
Their mission, to fight the evil of Billgatus of the Microschlockians. (Or Caseus of the evil AOL empire, or Governmentus Overregulatum and it's nasty horde of encryption-fearing freaks). The possibilities are endless! That's what's so scary!
The only thing that could be worse is that the Sabanistas could replace the Linus character with Billgatus! **SHUDDER**
Okay. I admit it. I'm a sick individual. So sue me. My shrinks have all my money anyhow.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Man, that would be a cool power.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As for all those "superheroes" that want to save the world from someone doing something vile on the 'Net, I hope you folks have seen the second Mahou Shoujo Pretty Samy OAV series (it's available here in the US in dubbed/subtitled form from Pioneer LDCA).
In the story, a villian named "Biff Standard" is trying to take over the world's computers, and it's up to Pretty Samy and friends to stop him from completing his evil scheme. "Biff Standard" looks and acts suspiciously like this CEO who works in Redmond, WA. (^_^)
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
...that Marvel kicked out Stan. It's like sacking
Walt Disney being fired from Disney, or Steve Jobs being fired from Apple...oh.
In a year or two, Stan might be able to buy back the remains of Marvel...if Time Warner doesn't get to it first (which would be fairly cool)
Hey, I want to see Perl Man and Dr. Python battle the evil Visual C++...
Anyone remember that show?
No, those characters wouldn't be owned by Marvel. Marvel may be many things but it's not Disney.
Disney has the clause in the contracts they force animators to sign which says ANYTHING an animator creates while working under the pervasive Disney influence is owned by Disney, even stuff created on personal time.
Unless his contract states the same, I doubt Marvel could lay claim. Marvel can only lay claim to the characters that they publish under a work-for-hire system that all freelancers agree to, with special exceptions, such as the Epic line.
Interestingly for this web site, Cerebus creator Dave Sim works closest to the open source credo as one is going to find in comicdom. If his creative partner, Gerhard, were to leave the Cerebus book, Sim has said Gerhard would be well within his rights to publish a Cerebus comic all his own. And let the better book win.
-Augie
For one, does anyone in journalism have any sense of creativity at all?!? Or is it in their writer's guidelines that any story mentioning comic books or super-heroes must start with "Wham!" or "Bang" or "Zap"?!?
Secondly, Stan Lee has created other new characters in the past thirty years. For one, he created RAVAGE 2099. Now, he might not wish to take credit for it, but it was his creation. (John Byrne didn't approve of the name "Ravage" for a hero and so left the project, amongst other reasons. His quote at the time was something along the lines of "Would you want your daughter to be dating some guy named 'Ravage'?")
-Augie
Using a "hot topic" as a jumping-off point for a story is not necessarily bad. If done well it's called timely. There are plenty of examples of comics doing a good job at dealing with the "hot issues".
:)
You didn't like Captain Planet? Fine. But what about Animal Man? He was definately an environmentalist. Or the "Hard Choices" storyline in New Warriors that intelligently dealt with environmentalism (and, shock of all shocks, considered everyone's viewpoint).
And computer stuff? There was a nice story by John Francis Moore in Doom 2099 about a technopagan. The story was a fun, well-written read.
My point is that stories about the "hot new thing" can be done well. And without looking to current technologies and societal issues for inspiration we would have characters like the Vision, the All-New, All-Different X-Men, or Barb Wire
Don't be so quick to give up on the idea of "Web Heroes". The zdnet article is pretty scanty on details. There is nothing to say that Stan's Internet is going to be the "real" Internet as of 1999.
For example, if he takes his cue from Vernor Vinge's classic "True Names" he could have a great universe for his stories.