Oh, that's gonna leave a mark. I'd be up for a Wonder Man Disney+ show starring Nathan Fillion - what say you? He was fun in The Suicide Squad but deserves a bigger spotlight.
Wonder man here is by the legendary Gene Colan and Scorch is by the amazing Ed McGuiness - I was fortunate enough to be able to pick up a sketch by each of them several years back:
I just saw "Suicide Squad 2" (as I prefer to call it), yesterday. If it wasn't for his name in the ending cast credits, I wouldn't have even known he had a part! And a very minor part, at that.
ReplyDeleteAs for Starro (shameless spoilers ahead); in this film, he looked more like a giant one-eyed Patrick from the Sponge Bob Square-pants movies. Terrifying only to modern pre-schoolers. Definitely not so much to adult movie-goers!
To sum it up? There were only two other people, besides me, in the theater showing this flick. And not one of us laughed at any of the intentional jokes...or even the unintended ones. Making this movie even worse than "Harley and the Birds of Prey!"
Nathan Fillion wasted his talents in that mega-flop. The Detachable Kid?! Sounds like a jazzed-up version of Arms-Fall-Off Boy from the Silver Age Legion of Superheroes! What happened? Did he get stuck in an alternate past as a result of the Arrowverse Crisis or something?
ReplyDeleteP.S.---I have to confess, I've never heard of Scorch. From the way he was illustrated on the original cover, my initial guess would be a hybridized clone of Johnny Storm and the Submariner. Sort of a pyrokinetic version of post-Doomsday Superboy!
ReplyDeleteNot only am I pleased by the idea of a show with Fillion as Simon Williams, but I actually wrote a fan trailer script for such:
ReplyDeletehttps://archiveofourown.org/works/12213375/chapters/68666115
The only trouble I see with having Nathan play a live-action Wonder Man is his age; he's currently 50 years old. Otherwise he's about as good as we're likely to get for that character. And I certainly hope we get to see the red-jacket outfit seen here; most of the Wonder Man cosplayers I see (who aren't Wonder Woman gender-benders) wear the black outfit with the red W on the front.
ReplyDeleteI gotta agree with Bob. NF is no spring firefly.
ReplyDeletehey Ross, seeing Wonder Man up there got me thinking about a cover idea....
ReplyDeletehow about Wonder Man (Simon Williams) from The Guardions of the Galaxy 2 extras....
and Mal Reynolds from Firefly/Serenity.....
and The Detachable Kid from The Suicide Squad....
and Captain Hammer from the Doctor Horrible Sing-Along Blog....
for an all Nathan Fillion tribute cover....
along with any other characters which this blog's cast of characters could come up with....
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"P.S.---I have to confess, I've never heard of Scorch. From the way he was illustrated on the original cover, my initial guess would be a hybridized clone of Johnny Storm and the Submariner. Sort of a pyrokinetic version of post-Doomsday Superboy!"
Scorch was a "she", not a "he", and had only Fire-based powers.
She made her debut in the 'Emperor Joker' storyline, in which the Joker managed to steal 99% of Mr. Mxyptzlk'a power (after being offered just 01%, because Mxy wondered what he'd do with it) and remade reality to suit himself: A cubical Earth ( cf. the original version of 'Bizarro World') with the Joker as its emperor; a bodyguard of super-powered characters, including Scorch, who'd never been seen before & who didn't have any origin stories beyond this; Batman in prison being tortured to death every day & then revived for a repeat on the next day; Superman -- in whose comics this took place -- hunted as an outlaw; Lois Lane (bald, IIRC) as one of the Joker's devoted consorts [!]; Lex Luthor as the court jester :D ; the other Justice Leaguers basically turned into jokes [e.g. J'onn into a copy of 'Marvin the Martian']; and the formation of a 'Justice League of Anarchy' (including Plastic Man).
What did the Joker have for his dinner yesterday? Chinese... "all billion of them; but you know how it is, half an hour later and you're wanting more..."
And when he decided to destroy the entire universe (because any universe that could produce him needed putting out of misery), and Harley Quinn didn't want to be destroyed, he went the Classical route and turned her into a constellation of stars: "Just what I always wanted to see, my dame in lights." :D
Anyway, after about 4-5 issues Superman managed to defeat the Joker (by pointing out to him that he couldn't envisage existence without Batman, and hadn't been able to remake or mentally break Bats), so that the power returned to Mxy who then re-made reality... more or less. Scorch was on the "more" side of that change, surviving -- as did some of her former colleagues -- into the restored normality. She reformed, and tried to help J'onn deal with his Martian weakness to fire (in that storyline explained as a psychological limitation implanted by the Guardians of the Universe to weaken the [aggressive & dangerous] Martian race), with them growing close during this process... but without that fear he became a deadly "Burning Martian" who was capable of bringing down the entire League! Scorch sacrificed her life somehow (I haven't read that issue of JLA) to stop him.
Oh! Maybe that's why Marvel felt safe in adopting the name for a male mutant from the same alternate future as Bishop.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDelete"Oh! Maybe that's why Marvel felt safe in adopting the name for a male mutant from the same alternate future as Bishop."
There's been quite a bit of other duplication of names between companies anyway. I'm not sure whether names (as well as images) are covered by trademark legislation, but if so then probably that's still only for well-known ones.
(e.g. both Marvel and DC have had characters called 'Blackwing', at least for a while with their periods of existence overlapping).
@Simreeve: You are correct -- character names are subject to Trademark, as are their symbols, but they have to be registered so it's generally the big money-makers and other "flag-bearers" that the companies take the trouble to file. The tale of the Captain Marvel name is one of the starkest illustrations of why this is done.
ReplyDelete(Hero Games, whose superhero setting is nearly as rich as Marvel's or DC's, has nearly as much name duplication with those two as they have with each other, most memorably Nighthawk, Quantum, Icicle, Brick, and The Champions. There's even a character who shares a civilian identity: Foxbat, the lunatic nuisance in the Champions game, is Freddy Foswell, the same name as Marvel's Big Man.)
@Bob: close, but no cigar. Foxbat's real name is actually Freddy FosGOOD.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: only @ Comic Vine. Every place else (especially Champions Online), he's listed as "Foswell."
ReplyDeleteProving that all's good that ends "well."
ReplyDeleteFake preacher asks: "Can I hear a bigger groan?"
*GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAN!*
ReplyDelete@Anon & Cary: It's also Foswell in every printed Champions book that he's ever appeared or been mentioned in, back to 1982 (Enemies II).
ReplyDeleteYou tell him, Bob. :-)
ReplyDelete