July 27, 2006
ENTERTAINMENT: It Takes More Than Tights to Make a ‘Superhero’
By Terry Morrow
Scripps Howard News Service
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| Comic-book icon Stan Lee. (SHNS photo by Glenn Harris / photorazzi.com)
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After hosting the reality competition show "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?," Lee, 83, says that now he's not so quick to judge.
On the show (9 p.m. EDT/PDT Thursdays, Sci Fi), the man who helped create Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the Hulk is picking the ultimate such fan.
The "Apprentice"-like series features contestants who dream up alter egos and put together homemade costumes. They imagined what their powers would be and give the fictitious characters a backstory. They go by names like Fat Momma, Cell Phone Girl, Monkey Woman and Major Victory.
Contestants endure physical and mental challenges to determine who best lives up to the ideals symbolic of a comic-book hero. Contestants are eliminated, and the last one to stand gets a piece of comic-book immortality. Lee will publish a comic book using the character he or she created.
The competitors, it turns out, aren't lonely outcasts. They're perfectly respectable members of society who hold down jobs like housewives or firefighters.
"Ty'Veculus is a hero in his own life. He's a fireman. He's saved 20, 30 people's lives. He's delivered babies. He's a hero in his neighborhood," says producer Scott Satin.
Going into it, Lee expected contestants to be those eccentric types you see at comic-book shows.
"These are very serious people, and they take superhero stories very seriously," says Lee.
But after getting to see them in action, he says he was wrong to prejudge them.
"They are normal, nice and even admirable people," he says. "That changed me. It made me think that all those kids I used to think were so nutty weren't so bad, either.
"Maybe I should have been more tolerant in my evaluation of them." He says he sees nothing wrong with someone dressing up in costume at the comic-book shows.
"People do things like that for enjoyment," he says. "It doesn't mean they are crazy. It just means this is what they do for fun."
Well, there was the one kid on the show, Nitro G, who constantly wanted to hear Lee's stories of how he created some of Marvel Comics' signature characters. And even this newly enlightened Lee found Nitro G to be a little, uh, obsessive.
"He kept talking to me about my career," Lee says with a laugh. "I finally had to say, 'Enough already!' "
Contact Terry Morrow of The Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee at www.knoxnews.com.
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