stan lee

Remember that crossover between Marvel Comics and the CBS soap Guiding Light that I told you about recently? The episode airs next Wednesday, November 1, and CBS.com has a sneak peek video.

Of course, I can't get the video to work at all. Can anyone else get it to work? I've tried both IE and Firefox and it doesn't load for some reason.

Anyway, the superhero is actually regular GL character Harley Cooper, who is zapped by lightning (oh, original) and gets superpowers. But will she will good or evil? Not sure, but it looks like her superhero-ness is comprised of colored contact lenses and the kind of hat that newsboys used to wear in the 1940s.

Marvel will have a special comic book featuring the superhero inserted into several other comic books in the coming weeks (a full list is at the site above).

The Sci Fi Channel has renewed Stan Lee's quirky reality series Who Wants to Be a Superhero? for a second season, ordering ten new hour-long episodes set to air next summer. Lee says the new season will be even more insane than the last, and I'll have to take his word for it because I didn't watch the first season. I must say, however, that just the idea of a reality series about people pretending to be someone they're not exposes the fundamental flaw in all reality programming, which is that once the cameras are on, reality ceases to exist. At any rate, if you're a fan of the show, consider this good news.

(S01E01) Uhm, yea.

Look, I admire Stan Lee. Back in the early 1960's he took Marvel Comics, which was in its death throes at the time, and turned it completely around by introducing a whole new group of superheroes, including such mainstays as Spider-man, The Hulk, The X-Men, and The Fantastic Four. These people didn't just have abilities beyond those of mortal men: they had feelings and hearts and realized that their powers came with a price. As Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker 'With great power comes great responsibility'. So, Mr. Lee had every right to become the icon that he is today.

But Stan . . . Stan, Stan, Stan. What the heck were you thinking when you created Who Wants to be a Superhero? Don't get me wrong, the concept is good: enlist normal people to dress up as original comic book heroes (with self-made costumes) and compete in an elimination tournament where the winner would get their own comic book and an original movie on the Sci-Fi Channel. However, the outcome that premiered was, well, not very good at all.

We've been reporting on-and-off for several months now about Spider-Man creator Stan Lee's new series called Who Wants to be a Superhero, which will be appearing on the Sci-Fi Channel. Well, the premiere of the series is a mere two weeks away and the 11 superheroes that will be competing for a chance to appear in their own comic book and a Sci-Fi Channel movie have been chosen.

You can see the chosen heroes at Sci-Fi Channel's website. Some of the contestants take their hero personas seriously. For example, Matthew Atherton's alter ego, Feedback, absorbs powers and abilities from video games that he plays. That's a pretty decent concept. On the other hand, Chelsea Weld's Cell Phone Girl doesn't seem to be taking to whole thing seriously (well, seriously enough for a contest involving real life superheroes).

Maybe it's the name Cell Phone Girl that causes problems. I mean, would you really pick up an issue of Cell Phone Girl number one hundred, or watch a movie entitled The Further Adventures of Cell Phone Girl? Maybe the producers of Superhero will ask her to change her name to something like Free Minutes, or Roaming.

No, we're not talking about a return of the old Beatles cartoons; that would be the Fab Four. We're talking about the long-running Marvel Comics series created by Stan "The Man" Lee that became a popular movie last year. Starting in the fall, Cartoon Network will air 26 new half-hour episodes of the Fantastic Four animated series.

Produced in cooperation between Marvel Studios and Moonscoop, the animated series will incorporate both 2D and 3D animation styles. According to Marvel Chief Operating Officer Michael Helfant, the animated series will be part of an aggressive strategy to promote their comic book characters through a number of different media outlets.