Will he team up with Steampunk Palin?

March 31, 2011 8:58 PM

Smilin Stan Lee, co-creator of everyone from Spider-Man to Striperella, is teaming up with Arnold Schwarzenegger for a comic and cartoon called The Governator. According to the article, Athe Governator will have a fleet of super vehicles at his disposal, a closet full of “Super Suits” that allow him to fly and perform other super stunts, and a team of colorful sidekicks, such as Zeke Muckerberg, the precocious 13-year-old computer whiz who acts as the Governator’s cybersecurity expert. Naturally, there will also be recurring supervillains — including an evil organization called Gangsters Imposters Racketeers Liars & Irredeemable Ex-cons (or G.I.R.L.I.E. Men, for short). There's an excerpt on the EW site. Excelsior!
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn (54 comments total)

Stan Lee is impish and cute, but this still makes me a little sad. :/
posted by kavasa at 9:01 PM on March 31, 2011 [6 favorites]

He's been like this for most of my life, sadly enough. I was going to link the Backstreet Boys online cartoon he did but I couldn't find anything solid. Then there's his NHL mascot comics . Or his horrible redesigns of DC comics.

Politics aside, Arnie actually makes more sense than those because he's got so many larger than life characters and would be pretty handy in a fight. So of course Stan Lee turns him into an off-brand Batman and gives him a cast of Saturday morning cartoon rejects.

God knows nobody would want to read a comic that's just about a politician and bodybuilder punching things.

Stan's also the big comics person known by non comic people so its assumed he's good. Still, I"m wearing my Spider-Man shirt today, so...
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:05 PM on March 31, 2011

You posted this a few minutes early. Right? Please?
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 9:07 PM on March 31, 2011

I can't wait to see him take on the nurse's union, working people, and economic prosperity in general.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:09 PM on March 31, 2011 [7 favorites]

He must be doing it because he needs the money, I can't think of any other reason. The cameos in all the recent Marvel movies just aren't bringing in enough cash, the songwriting royalties from the Merry Marvel Marching Society theme song dried up because of all those illegal downloads and the protracted legal skirmishes with the estate of a one-time collaborator have bled him dry. Oh, and Steve Ditko wasn't available to articulate The Governator's Randian world view...

Yes, it must truly suck to be Stan Lee.
posted by motown missile at 9:09 PM on March 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

Nope. Was thinking of calling this 'Not an April Fool's gag! not an imaginary story!' but imaginary stories are a DC thing. it could be a gag, but it looks like it ran on March 31 in the States.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:10 PM on March 31, 2011

I can't wait to see him take on the nurse's union, working people, and economic prosperity in general.

back in the day most of his heroes were pretty working class and beaten down. i'd imagine Ben Grimm is pretty pro-union
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:11 PM on March 31, 2011

By "him" I meant The Governator, since those were the "villains" he spent his time in office fighting.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:13 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

the Governator will have a fleet of super vehicles at his disposal, a closet full of “Super Suits” that allow him to fly and perform other super stunts, and a team of colorful sidekicks, such as Zeke Muckerberg, the precocious 13-year-old computer whiz who acts as the Governator’s cybersecurity expert. Naturally, there will also be recurring supervillains — including an evil organization called Gangsters Imposters Racketeers Liars & Irredeemable Ex-cons (or G.I.R.L.I.E. Men, for short)

He tried to pay for it with a tax hike, but couldn't get a 2/3 majority in the legislature, so they paid for it by cutting the education budget. Either that or they finally legalized pot and there was a lot of new tax revenue and comic book enthusiasm.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 9:15 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

Maybe The Governator will tweet a lot because, man, Schwarzenegger loves him some Twitter.
posted by Burhanistan at 9:15 PM on March 31, 2011

I swear that 'Heavy Armor B' is just the MasterChief's armor from Halo.

This is just so wrong. Why put him in armor? Dude's an ex-body builder. Comic books are all about the idealized human form. Men are usually very muscled and quasi-homoerotic. He should wear a shirt for maybe two panels per issue. Make him something like Bane, only a good guy. He's trained his whole life to be the strongest and the best, but he finds out that he can't make a difference in politics so he hits the streets. He's old, but he's still strong. Give him ONE piece of gadgetry - some sort of super-drone AI sidekick that's a nod to Terminator and all those lesser sci-fi action flicks like The 6th Day. Have most of the combat be bare-knuckle brawling and shooting.

I read some book called 'Why Schwarzenegger Matters'. It wasn't very good, but this comic just misses his appeal.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:18 PM on March 31, 2011

I read "a closet full of 'Super Sluts'" the first time. I think that would probably be way better. I'm not interested in reading about some former body builder who is all into outfits who has the audacity to question the masculinity of his opponents by insinuating that females are something a person shouldn't emulate. I am interested in reading about a former body builder with a closet full of Super Sluts.
posted by dobie at 9:24 PM on March 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

"Zeke Muckerberg" just irritates me. Mark Zuckerberg is the new Bill Gates - go to computer guy for non computer people. and i spend 23 hours a day on Facebook
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:26 PM on March 31, 2011

Make him something like Bane

Make him something like McBain.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:28 PM on March 31, 2011 [6 favorites]

i'm thinking more of this conception of Bane

In Bane we see the triumph of the literal over the metaphysical, the body over the mind, ego over illumination, the flesh over the self. He makes us acutely aware of all of our limitations in that he symbolises the grotesque, cumbersome boundaries of the physical. In Bane all of Batman’s aspirations are scaled down to one, bloated point. We’ll never be more than a bag of sinews, bones and skin, he seems to argue and, in the final analysis, that’s what will break us.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:33 PM on March 31, 2011

Make him something like Bane

For a lot of people, especially in California, he was something like Bane. Or more accurately something like the bane of their existence, which is probably worse.
posted by motown missile at 9:34 PM on March 31, 2011

Funny. I would have thought Rob Liefeld would be the one to draw a Schwarzenegger comic.

(Actually, doesn't Arnold have the Conan sword in his office? How many of these swords are there?)
posted by MrFTBN at 9:47 PM on March 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

With the current Google-Facebook rivalry, putting "Zeke Muckerberg" in a white shirt with a nondescript "G" seems like either very understated commentary on that matter or not being able to decide which company is more relevant and wanting to hint at both.

I guess I will have to not-so-breathlessly await issue 1 to find out.
posted by pahalial at 10:00 PM on March 31, 2011

[this is embarrassing]
posted by EatTheWeak at 10:04 PM on March 31, 2011

"He must be doing it because he needs the money, I can't think of any other reason. The cameos in all the recent Marvel movies just aren't bringing in enough cash, the songwriting royalties from the Merry Marvel Marching Society theme song dried up because of all those illegal downloads and the protracted legal skirmishes with the estate of a one-time collaborator have bled him dry. Oh, and Steve Ditko wasn't available to articulate The Governator's Randian world view..."

Stan Lee's always been a hustling huckster, half writer and half carny. The Bullpen Bulletins were always full of crazy exhortations to buy utter crap under the mantra of "Make Mine Marvel!" That he hit more than he missed is why everyone loves him, but let's not pretend that Stan Lee hasn't been willing to do hackwork for cash or to pimp some pretty sorry properties, with a pretty good sense of both spectacle and what are now some moderately conservative social views.

Combine that endless verve for true believing purple prose, a general proclivity toward simplistic morals, and that he's been off his peak work for a good 40 years now? This makes perfect sense for what he wants to be doing, if not for how he wants it to be received.
posted by klangklangston at 10:05 PM on March 31, 2011 [4 favorites]

Well, it's a long way from the relative dignity of presenting that superhero reality show.
posted by Artw at 10:05 PM on March 31, 2011

Combine that endless verve for true believing purple prose

that's always been my favorite thing about him
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 10:06 PM on March 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

...the Governator will have a fleet of super vehicles at his disposal, a closet full of “Super Suits” that allow him to fly and perform other super stunts, and a team of colorful sidekicks, such as Zeke Muckerberg, the precocious 13-year-old computer whiz who acts as the Governator’s cybersecurity expert. Naturally, there will also be recurring supervillains — including an evil organization called Gangsters Imposters Racketeers Liars & Irredeemable Ex-cons (or G.I.R.L.I.E. Men, for short)...

Man, too much continuity to keep track of already. I'll wait for Ultimate Governator.
posted by tumid dahlia at 10:14 PM on March 31, 2011 [5 favorites]

I hate Stan Lee.

I love Marvel comics.

I am large, I contain dorkitudes.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:14 PM on March 31, 2011 [8 favorites]

What I want to know about Marvel is why aren't they making more books with Wolverine in them? Only twenty-six separate titles a month? That's not even an issue a day. Lame.
posted by tumid dahlia at 10:19 PM on March 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

Stan Lee's always been a hustling huckster, half writer and half carny. The Bullpen Bulletins were always full of crazy exhortations to buy utter crap under the mantra of "Make Mine Marvel!" That he hit more than he missed is why everyone loves him, but let's not pretend that Stan Lee hasn't been willing to do hackwork for cash or to pimp some pretty sorry properties, with a pretty good sense of both spectacle and what are now some moderately conservative social views.

Combine that endless verve for true believing purple prose, a general proclivity toward simplistic morals, and that he's been off his peak work for a good 40 years now? This makes perfect sense for what he wants to be doing, if not for how he wants it to be received.

What's your point?
posted by motown missile at 10:21 PM on March 31, 2011

Okay, the bubble gum mask and "speak sprays" are pretty neat, I have to say.
posted by tumid dahlia at 10:28 PM on March 31, 2011

"What's your point?"

He's not doing this because he "needs" the money. He's doing this because he's Stan Lee.
posted by klangklangston at 10:40 PM on March 31, 2011 [3 favorites]

I can't wait to see him take on the nurse's union, working people, and economic prosperity in general.

I don't know which super suit he dons when he vetos single payer health care, but I know he dons it twice.
posted by clarknova at 11:11 PM on March 31, 2011

Needs more Front Page real-estate.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 11:36 PM on March 31, 2011

I was going to try and write it in Stan's voice, but I was lazy and its Friday. here's fake Stan from the AV Club:

Salutations, true believers! The day is finally upon us! I can finally announce the top-secret project I've been teasing for the past month! No, it's not a PETER-PORKER movie from PIXAR, you knuckleheads! (Say, that gives me an idea!) No, The Smilin' One is working on a colossal collaboration with the Teutonic Titan ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER! Get this, gang: It's a new cartoon show that has Awesome Arnold steppin' into the rarefied role of a costumed crimefighter! And don't worry, frantic followers— Arnold and I have a lot more in store, so keep watching this space! (Could a crazy crossover with STRIPPERELLA be in the cards? Stan ain't sayin!)

Excelsior!
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 11:39 PM on March 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

Stan Lee manages to simultaneously evoke fond nostalgia and derisive scorn these days, doesn't he? I sometimes feel sorry for him, as he is forced to work on the outer fringes of the medium he largely came to define. Then I remember, he's Stan FUCKING Lee, the man who was the architect of the imaginations of multiple generations. If anyone can earn the right to wallow in his own excrement, it's him.
posted by KingEdRa at 12:16 AM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

My favorite version of Bane was the four-year-old boy cosplaying at SDCC two years ago. He was with his dad in the Tiny Titans line (post-Eisner!), and Franco and Baltazar kept bursting into loudspeaker-level declamations of "BBBBAAAAAAAANE!" every 30 seconds.

And then Mark Waid stopped by to steal the Eisner, saying it was the closest he'd ever get to one. Best signing line *ever.* And I got a sketch of Tiny Kid Devil.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 12:18 AM on April 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

(Actually, doesn't Arnold have the Conan sword in his office? How many of these swords are there?)

How many men does he have to kill?
posted by JHarris at 12:45 AM on April 1, 2011

Even Sarah Palin versus the World looks better than this.
posted by benzenedream at 12:46 AM on April 1, 2011

Even Sarah Palin versus the World looks better than this.

No, it doesn't.
posted by motown missile at 1:58 AM on April 1, 2011

This doesn't surprise me at all... I worked for Mr. Lee in the dying days of the dot com boom, at his ill-fated internet startup. (Sorry, we were responsible for that Backstreet Boys thing.) There was also a Beyonce-as-superhero project, and I seem to recall others in the works that never happened.

You can't help but love the guy, but he is definitely an inveterate huckster! I worked there when the first X-Men movie was released and he was doing a lot of interviews, some of which were shot on the other side of my cubicle wall (in true dot com fashion we had a fancy office done up in a futuristic/comic book style, which made a good backdrop) and it's amazing to listen to him tirelessly tell the same old story about how he created Spider-Man and X-Men and The Incredible Hulk over and over and make it sound like he's giving you the scoop for the first time.

Even if his co-founder and one of the other execs hadn't monkeyed with the stock, the company would not have survived; apart from turning celebrities into superheroes, they had a stable full of animators turning out animated "webisodes" featuring new characters created by Stan Lee. The problem was that the characters all felt like retreads and the head writers (who were old buddies of Stan's) were writing for their 1950's and 60's kid selves, not the 1990's kids they should have been targeting. It was pretty weak stuff when you held it up against the stuff being done by IceBox, who was our main competitor.

Nevertheless, it was a good experience in many ways. I acquired a lot of skills at that job, and sitting in a private, pre-release screening of X-Men (which the company sponsored as an employee morale-building thing) with Stan fricking Lee sitting right behind me was pretty sweet.
posted by usonian at 5:22 AM on April 1, 2011 [3 favorites]

Stan Lee has not created enough Captains America to excuse this crap.
posted by Legomancer at 6:36 AM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

He's trained his whole life to be the strongest and the best, but he finds out that he can't make a difference in politics so he hits the streets. He's old, but he's still strong.

Metro City, a well known crime capital, has been ruled by violence and death for many years...
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:37 AM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm holding out for the Snooki comic. C'mon, Stan! Help turn this into reality! or did I want the Toni Morrison comic? So many choices!
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 7:35 AM on April 1, 2011

I hate Stan Lee.

I love Marvel comics.

I am large, I contain dorkitudes.

Exactly this. I have no nostalgia for this man. I love the characters he created, but I love them when they are written by someone else. His creative output since, like, 1980, while impressive in sheer volume is nonetheless fucking awful shit. Awful.
posted by graventy at 8:06 AM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Stan Lee is like the comic book world's version of Gene Simmons. The blatant anything-for-a-buck hustle is just part of his charm.

And ultimately, even this isn't as stupid as Spider-Man making a deal with the devil (or analogue thereof) to save the life of his already-so-old-she's-at-death's-door aunt at the price of his happy marriage to the love of his life. That there's a hard-core failure of imagination. This? This is just silliness. It won't go far, but it'll be good for a laugh.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:20 AM on April 1, 2011

Creating characters variations on the same character over and over is the only thing Stan The Man has ever done. His storytelling has always been pathetically bad.

Stan Lee is walking, talking proof that nostalgia is more important than reality.
posted by paisley henosis at 8:37 AM on April 1, 2011

Each one of these projects is more proof that his co-creators deserve all the credit for Spidey and the Ff and all of them.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 9:02 AM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

As others have said, we know Lee is a hack. He readily admits it himself; that's part of the appeal. And this is just hack work. I'm sure I won't be reading it, but I'm not sure I think it merits umbrage.
posted by Amanojaku at 11:57 AM on April 1, 2011

Each one of these projects is more proof that his co-creators deserve all the credit for Spidey and the Ff and all of them.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think this is pretty silly. People don't generally replicate their early success in later years, for a variety of reasons. I love Kirby and Ditko as much as the next guy (in fact, I probably love Ditko more than the next guy -- it's a little embarassing for a non-Objectivist), but let's not delude ourselves about their later work: The Mocker and Tiger-Man and Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers aren't exactly Spider-Man or Thor or Iron Man or the Hulk.

Again: there's nothing wrong with hackwork. Everybody needs to eat. But the New York Times compared Ditko's work on -- the Transformers coloring book? A Bob's Big Boy comic? -- to Orson Wells doing his famous frozen pea commercial. The myth of the heroic artist losing the credit to the vocal hack is still a myth.
posted by Amanojaku at 12:25 PM on April 1, 2011

that superhero reality show.

I watched most of that (well, the first season.) It had moments of genuine charm.

Each one of these projects is more proof that his co-creators deserve all the credit for Spidey and the Ff and all of them.

And, yet, his famous co-creators did their best work in collaboration with him. Kirby with Lee: the X-men, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Inhumans, the list goes on and on (yeah, I know the Silver Surfer was straight out of Kirby's head and Lee had to ask who that was -- but he still resulted from their collaboration.) Kirby after Lee: Darkseid, the New Gods, and the Fourth World. The Eternals. Ditko with Lee: Spider-Man, Dr. Strange. Ditko after Lee: The Question, Mr. A.

Obviously, it's an enormous injustice that Lee's a zillionaire and Ditko is impecunious and Kirby was never well-off. But I think the disparity in the above lists suggests Lee was bringing something to the party.
posted by Zed at 12:55 PM on April 1, 2011 [2 favorites]

Stan Lee has not created enough Captains America to excuse this crap.

Stan Lee actually hasn't created any Captains America. He wrote a lot of it. But that character was created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon.

And, yet, his famous co-creators did their best work in collaboration with him.

That's extremely debatable. They certainly did their most Marvel-y work in collaboration with Stan, but is that their best? The Kirby I am most fond of is '70s Kirby -- New Gods, The Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Devil Dinosaur. Those characters may be less famous than the FF or the X-Men, but they're pretty well-known; and anyway, since when is fame a litmus for quality? Re: Ditko, his Doctor Strange and Spider-Man are definitely his best-known superhero strips*, but his short horror and science fiction stories have much to recommend them, and his Randian work -- however dubious its philosophies may be -- is artistically fascinating comics.

*Although it's fair to say that his Charlton characters -- Captain Atom, The Question, Nightshade, Blue Beetle -- are at the very least the boilerplates for Watchmen's Doctor Manhattan, Rorschach, Silk Spectre and Nite-Owl. Hence, one could make an argument for Ditko as a co-creator of Watchmen, which isn't too shabby a credit, really.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:17 PM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like The Question.
posted by tumid dahlia at 5:13 PM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

(Darkseid's pretty amazing, too)
posted by EatTheWeak at 6:25 PM on April 1, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, 'Kirby after Lee' did mind-blowing work.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:50 PM on April 1, 2011

I wonder whether they'll have the Governator sexually molesting women, and paying large cash settlements to women around the world to protect his reputation. If so, I'd actually consider seeing it! I prefer anti-heroes, really.

(Though I'd rather see the alternate history version where a 28-year-old steroid-using statutory rapist is busted, deported, and forced to be a security guard for his good friend Kurt Waldheim. )
posted by markkraft at 2:14 AM on April 3, 2011

first trailer is up
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:32 PM on April 4, 2011

Just picked up Mark Evanier's Kirby: King of Comics, which was out in remaindered at my local Half Price Books. It's a beautiful book.
posted by Zed at 9:29 PM on April 15, 2011