"Who Wants
To Be a Superhero: Feedback"
7/20/07
by:
Protoclown
Last summer, the Sci-Fi
channel aired a hilarious "reality" show called Who Wants To Be a
Superhero?, which featured eleven contestants competing for the
right to have Stan Lee write a comic book about their character, and
also they were to appear in an original Sci-Fi channel movie. I haven't
seen or heard anything about the movie yet, but the comic book featuring
last year's winner, Feedback, just came out a couple weeks ago,
and it's ridiculous enough that I decided to feature it in a Longbox
column.
Quickly! Better get to
your local comic shop before this sells out!
Er, on second thought... take your time.
While Major Victory was
definitely my favorite contestant on the show, Matthew Atherton's
Feedback was certainly entertaining as well, for his extreme intensity
if nothing else.
Whether he's fighting
supervillains or simply heading down to the local grocery
store to buy some grapes, Feedback does everything with serious
intensity.
The guy just made some of
the best facial expressions I've ever seen; he was clearly
foked on the task of being a
superhero. It was obvious from the beginning that he wanted it more than
anyone else.
Okay, not exactly at his
most fearsome here, but I think
I'd still run the other way if I saw this guy coming.
Given that the comic book
was written by Stan Lee, you'd be right to expect plenty of hilariously
cheesy moments throughout the book, but before I get into that, we'd
better go over Feedback's powers:
Imagine how much his video
game powers would suck if he was running around in the "Pong" era.
Yes, that's right; he
absorbs powers and abilities from video games. Given the wide range of
video games on the market these days, you'd think this would make him
pretty much unstoppable. Unfortunately, in this comic you will not see
him use any video game powers, instead resorting to his simple lightning
blasts. This is probably because it's very unlikely that Stan Lee knows
anything about video games.
Our story just dives right into the middle of the plot with three
mysterious figures standing over the broken form of our hero, who is
doubled over in pain with lightning and electricity crackling all over
his body.
Three massage parlor
employees decide to give their customer a "happy ending" after all.
Naturally, as is required
by the Villain's Code of Ethics and Conduct, they simply assume
this potentially life-threatening situation will finish him off, and
head for parts unknown so that he has plenty of time to escape this
danger unobserved.
The Villain Code has been
the bane of comic book and James Bond villains since time eternal.
As our hero Matthew is
lying there supposedly dying, his mind goes back to his childhood, where
after his father's death, he took refuge in comic books and video games.
Clearly he played video
games a bit differently from how I do.
His memory then shifts to
replaying the events that led him to be dying in the middle of a field.
Matthew went into business repairing broken arcade machines, and earlier
that night he got a call from a nearby arcade to fix a broken game.
While he's working on the broken machine, a couple of thugs celebrate
their video game victory across the aisle.
Just like in Hollywood
movies, real life arcades are a favorite place for
the most vicious of cutthroat punks and murderous thugs to hang out.
Unfortunately for Matthew,
these punks are so insecure that they walk across the arcade, demanding
to know why he's minding his own business instead of joining them in
their revelry. And regrettably, Matthew's big mouth gets him into
trouble when he scoffs at their meager accomplishments.
Matthew cannot help but
scoff at others when they suck, but deep inside he
yearns to tell them his greatest secret: that he is The Last
Starfighter.
As can only happen in a
1980s teen comedy or a Stan Lee comic book, the thugs tell Matthew he'd
better play the game as good as they just did... or else. Truly,
this is a delicate tightrope that Matthew walks. If he doesn't do as
well as they did, they'll kick his ass for making light of their
achievement. If he does better and shows them up, they'll lose
face and also be forced to kick their ass. It's truly a no-win tricky
political situation he's found himself in here.
If only this comic could
have featured a training montage set to some cheesy 80s song.
Matthew handily defeats
the thug's high score, causing them to accuse him of cheating by rigging
the game. A four-against-one brawl quickly ensues in the arcade, while a
mysterious figure watches from the shadows. Turns out he was watching
the whole video game competition as well, with great interest...
"Try to repair video games
at our arcade, will ya!?"
Eventually, they crash
through the window and the fight ends up in the street, where some cops
just happen to be standing by. They even make a joke about coffee and
donuts! Oh, Stan! You rascal, you!
Why is it that all brawls
must inevitably end this way?
The thugs get hauled away
by the cops while the arcade owner tells them that Matthew isn't guilty
of starting anything. An ambulance arrives to take Matthew to the
hospital while the same mysterious figure watches as they drive off into
the distance.
In the hospital, Matt
meets an attractive young nurse who finds out that he repairs
electronics and computers, and uses that as a pretense to give him her
phone number. Just in case you needed to be reminded that this is an
unrealistic comic book—because that shit never happens in real
life. In reality, he would have had to ask for her number. That's
just how the world works.
Sorry Feedback, but you
can't possibly top the heroic
feat of getting this girl's number without even asking for it.
As he walks out of the
hospital, the mysterious figure who'd been watching approaches him with
a proposal. He says he works for the Pentagon and has developed a new
military vehicle that he wants to hire Matthew to have a look at and
test the electronics of.
Every time this happens to
me, it turns out the guy's not wearing any pants.
Matthew agrees and rides
along with him to where the vehicle is being warehoused. When they
arrive at their destination, the mystery man takes off his hat and coat
for a shocking reveal!
"I need yuah clothes, yuah
boots, and yuah motohcycle."
Despite standing directly
across from him while talking to him, and then riding in a car with him,
Matthew has yet to notice that half of his body is made of metal. He
tells Matt that he's horribly disfigured from his time in the marines,
but that they managed to fix him up with prosthetics. Yes, apparently
they replaced half of his brain with prosthetics too from the look of
things. Also, his name is Ironside.
Ironside shows him the
vehicle, which turns out to be a supercar kind of like the Batmobile. He
also informs Matthew that the military is planning to use this vehicle
against the Eliminator, a dangerous terrorist the government has just
learned the location of.
Ironside shows off the new
remote controlled car he totally got for Christmas.
Ironside takes Matthew to
a "lonely area outside the city" where they can test out the car and
show off what it can do. Matthew takes a look at the car and makes a few
tweaks to it using electronics from his video game controller before
Ironside makes a shocking reveal! Matthew asks him just who the
Eliminator is, anyway, causing Ironside to call him a fool for not
figuring out that it was in fact he who was the Eliminator the
whole time, and then he punches Matt in the face. My god! Did you even
see that twist coming from miles away!?
Never trust a man who
looks like a killer cyborg from the future.
This is where we jump back
that scene from the beginning of the issue. Immediately after punching
Matthew, the Eliminator and two of his thugs are standing over him,
ready to completely finish him off. At this point however, a bolt of
lightning comes down from the heavens and zaps the shit out of Matthew,
which of course causes the bad guys to leave him for dead and wander
off.
While Matthew is
recovering from his close encounter with lightning, the Eliminator
embarks on a serious crime spree, using the vehicle to crash into bank
after bank, until he's accumulated "enough money to carry out any plan".
Apparently Matthew is lying there in that field recovering for a long
damn time.
At long last, Eliminator
finally gets that pearl necklace he's always wanted.
Eventually Matthew
recovers and realizes that the lightning did not in fact kill him, much
to his surprise. Realizing that his body is now coursing with
electricity, he immediately surmises that it must be because he was
holding onto his video game controller at the time. This has given him
superpowers, and with this realization he finally achieves his childhood
dream of becoming a superhero. Because of the nature of his power, he
decides on the superhero name of Feedback and goes rushing off to stop
the Eliminator!
You ever notice that these
kinds of scenes always seem to happen in the rain?
On his way to find the
Eliminator, Feedback finds a lost little girl in the middle of the
street, and makes a point to take the time away from his mission to "do
the right thing" and help this girl find her mother (just like in the
"reality" show!). He takes her to a nearby police station and finds her
mother waiting there, delighted to have her daughter returned to her.
"Is this the black market?
I'm looking to sell this girl for twenty gees."
And now, back to the
mission! But not before he gets himself a superhero costume! Unable to
sew a stitch himself, he calls up the nurse who gave him her number
earlier and makes a deal with her: he'll fix her computer if she'll sew
him a costume...for a masquerade party he's going to, yeah, that's it! A
short while later, his costume is ready and he's prepared to go out
there and face the Eliminator (but not before kissing nurse Sarah on the
cheek)!
"Sweet! I'm sure to
get loads of candy this Halloween!"
In short order he tracks
down the Eliminator's lair and peeks in from an open skylight on the
roof, only to overhear the Eliminator planning his final assault with
the supercar on a nuclear facility! But as he's eavesdropping on his
foes, a couple of his thugs approach him up on the rooftop and a fight
ensues!
You say "game on" and then
you knock the guy out. That's more like "game over".
You need to whip out the "game on" at the beginning of the fight.
Feedback quickly finishes
off the thugs and makes his way down into the Eliminator's lair,
where... another fight ensues! A bunch of henchmen are pummeling the
hell out of our hero and things look pretty grim, until he uses his
feedback powers that he was saving for just the right moment to take
them all down in one fell swoop! But during the fight, Eliminator has
already sent out the supercar filled with explosives! It's too late!
You know he was waiting
the whole issue to drop that line.
At this point it's just
Feedback and the Eliminator left, and Feedback lures Eliminator under a
giant hanging magnet (the same one the supercar was hanging from when he
first saw it) while Eliminator is making some standard villainous
threats. He turns on the magnet, and Eliminator is defeated with ease!
A robot man... defeated by
magnets! Inconceivable!
Then Feedback heroically
uses the remote control to direct the explosive-laden supercar back to
Eliminator's lair. He hightails it out of there before the car returns
and explodes, potentially killing everyone inside! Feedback even thinks
to himself that they're probably dead, but he's not going to lose any
sleep over them considering they were going to blow up a power plant.
This is quite a far cry from the Stan Lee heroes of the 1960s!
"See ya! Have fun
exploding into little chunks while I heroically get the fuck out of
here!"
Our final scene shows
Matthew and Sarah together after the battle. Sarah asks how Matt's
masquerade party went, and he tells her it was a blast *wink to
the audience*. They make small talk and flirt for a few moments before
moving in for a kiss at the very end.
Ooh, do you suppose they
will feel electricity when they kiss?
What gets me about this is
that she's thinking to herself "imagine if he learns I don't own a
computer!" but the assumption I made was that Matthew was fixing her
computer while he was waiting around in her house all that time while
she was making his costume. So apparently he was either a) hanging
around her house and doing nothing for however long it took her to make
that costume, or b) he thought he fixed what was her computer, but was
actually not. Perhaps she craftily mocked up a cardboard box or toaster
oven to look like a computer? Since this is almost certainly the
only Feedback comic we'll ever see, we'll probably never know.
And thus ends the magnificent adventure! For those of you who missed the
original Who Wants To Be a Superhero? series, Sci-Fi begins
airing the second season on July 26th. If it's even half as
hilariously cheesy as the first season was, I highly recommend watching
it, as I found it to be extremely entertaining. The first season is also
out on DVD, which I plan on getting and doing a feature on eventually,
so stay tuned for that. Excelsior!
Found any weird, bizarre, stupid or funny comics that
should appear in a future "Tales From the Longbox" column?
Email Protoclown and let him know!
