Snow Screen: Deadpool

Since we were in Hollywood for Creed this past Thursday, it meant that a viewing of new flick Deadpool would have to wait until the weekend. Trekking back to Hwood to the Arclight, we dined and drank in the bar where they had pint glasses available to coincide with the movie. The early word on Deadpool had been positive and it would be a nice change of pace to see an R rated superhero flick with cursing, sex and violence. After Ryan Reynolds was introduced as Deadpool in the disastrous X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the road back to the big screen would take nearly 10 years and a leaked trailer to get there. As former special forces soldier turned low level criminal Wade Wilson, Reynolds brings his natural smarmy, almost douchebag charm to the big mouthed, smart ass'd role. Stricken with cancer, Wilson volunteers for a program run by the nefarious Francis aka Ajax (surprise Game of Thrones breakout Ed Skrein) where he'll be tortured and experimented on until his dormant mutation manifests. Wilson's powers turn out to be of the self healing kind and I don't think he feels much pain either.

Donning the red tights to cover up blood stains, Deadpool works his way up Ajax's cronie list on his way to a final confrontation with the guy who ruined his life. Oh all of this is for love, in a shoehorned relationship with working girl Vanessa (Morena Baccarin). X-Men Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) show up as does superpowered baddie Angel Dust (Gina Carano). The film starts off fantastically with a near Fox trademark opening of moving through trash or space in slow motion (seriously, Fight Club, X-Men and more, Fox loves their CGI breakdowns), funny credits and a shout out to co-creator Rob Liefeld. The Lie gets several acknowledgements including his name misspelled on a highway sign in the Tim Miller directed, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick scripted film. Opening action sequence gets split up into several scenes as a clunky origin story is shoved in. But the shooting, slashing, flipping and kicking action is well done and Deadpool going up against the metal Colossus is creative, funny and cringe worthy. Budgeted at under $60 million, you kind of feel it in what seemed like a lack of action. Or that the action scenes are always interrupted so it just feels short? Deadpool and Ajax fight it out on what looks like a decrepit SHIELD helicarrier at the end which is just one of many references to Marvel and it's cinematic universe.

Deadpool takes full advantage of it's R rating with violence, sex, nudity and cursing. I've never read any of his headlining comics so no clue if it's a truthful representation to the source material. The film opened up phenomenally over President's Day weekend with an ad campaign that seemed to be everywhere and effective without wearing you down. Grossing $150 million over four days and another $100 million plus overseas, the movie that nearly didn't happen grossed $264 million worldwide in under a week. A sequel has already been greenlit and is referred to in the film itself. Time traveling, cybernetic soldier Cable is touted to appear and hopefully that leads to an X-Force film. Stephen Lang wants the role while Tom Hardy and Jon Hamm are on Liefeld's wish list. But once again, I'm voting for Michael Biehn. His age probably takes him out of the running already but having played a time traveling resistance fighter in The Terminator and armor clad space marine in Aliens makes a nice through line to Cable.

Cable Sunday: Michael Biehn

The X-Men film franchise started as a major gamble for studio Fox which saw 2000's first film given a decent if unspectacular budget of $75 million, a few familiar faces in the cast and a relatively new director in Bryan Singer. Production was shut down in the middle of shooting to reassess and scripts from the likes of Joss Whedon, Ed Solomon and finally David Hayter had piled up for years. It was a $300 million grossing hit and paved the way for six follow ups in 14 years. The 80's set X-Men: Apocalypse begins shooting soon as does the lower budgeted take on 4th wall breaking, Merc with a mouth Deadpool starring Ryan Reynolds to follow last year's near $750 million dollar grossing Days of Future Past. Last summer, rumors of an X-Force script began to circulate and it was confirmed that Never Back Down and Kick-Ass 2 filmmaker Jeff Wadlow was penning a draft. Then came reports that Channing Tatum would pick up the bo staff, playing cards and New Orleans accent of X-Man Gambit for his own standalone flick.

An X-Force flick could work pretty well as the team is a bit more rough and tumble than Professor Xavier's crew. Instead of a soothing, intelligent and mentor style leader, X-Force is headed by the gruff and calculating soldier from the future Cable. With a scarred face, cybernetic arm and always carrying a huge gun, Cable was designed to be the opposite of the wheelchair bound, talk and think it out Charles. This guy is all about the action and taking down the bad guys "cold, hard and mean". Training his young mutants to be more of a military style response team, X-Force runs into the Mutant Liberation Front and their pack of super powered terrorists working for dude in a ton of armor with a superiority complex, Stryfe. X-Force is made up of Cable's chick and comrade in battle Domino, high flying southern guy Cannonball, the blood thirsty wolf-woman Feral, explosion tossing smartass Boom Boom, native tribesman strong dude Warpath and man from another planet/dimension bred to be a warrior Shatterstar. Whipping this rag tag team of outcasts to fight an organized and maniacal threat to humanity is total fodder for a high octane, fast moving action flick filled with hand to hand battle and CGI spectacle. With more of a focus on close quarter combat, you could build up some match ups and showdowns between characters heading into the I'm sure to be explosion and destruction filled finale. Which would be a nice change of pace from previous superhero flicks where our team fights an army of faceless goons a la X-Men: The Last Stand or The Avengers.

Way back in the 90's, Wizard Magazine nominated Clint Eastwood to play Cable in a yet to be produced X-Men movie that also included Michael Biehn as Cyclops, Dolph Lundgren as Colossus and Jean-Claude Van Damme as Gambit. Creator Rob Liefeld has read the first draft of X-Force and could barely contain his excitement. While production is still a ways off, The Liefeld dropped names like Tom Hardy, Jon Hamm and Stephen Lang for Cable. It's an interesting role to fill as Cable is an older character; white haired and grizzled with scars on his face. Not exactly Hollywood's favorite casting call. Tom Hardy seems a bit young for it while Hamm has the jawline if not the presence. Stephen Lang is a pretty close call given his role and appearance in Avatar as the hard ass, pumped up military leader with scars down his head. But for me, I can't help but think this is a role for the one and only Michael Biehn. Given Cable's time traveling history, sent back to prevent an incident with future repercussions is at least in passing similar to Biehn's Kyle Reese in James Cameron's The Terminator. If you'll recall, Skynet's machines have risen, wiped out most of the human population with nuclear strikes and uses the remaining survivors as labor. Leader of the resistance John Connor is a pain in their side so they send a killing machine back to 1984 to kill his mother Sarah before he's born. Soldier Reese travels back to protect her, essentially giving his life for a woman he's never met but fallen in love with through stories and a single photograph.

From there Biehn donned a headset, body armor and giant Pulse Rifle as a space Marine in Aliens and has played his fair share of gun toting and futuristic cops, soldiers and secret agent types in flicks like Navy Seals, The Rock and Planet Terror. Now pushing 60, the Biehn is the perfect age and amount of grizzled to play Cable. His memorable baggage as a time traveler and space soldier make a nice through line to the metallic mutant. Still lithe and athletic, it's not hard to imagine Biehn pumping up a bit and donning a white wig and fake scars while running around barking orders, firing off future guns and being the hard yet reliable heart of the upstarts. Just think the vulnerable physicality of Kyle Reese with the taciturn hard ass-ness of The Rock's Commander Anderson only with shoulder pads and a metal arm. Since Cable is always dealing with potential futures and alternate time lines, it would be a weird fan theory full circle as X-Men was originally set up at Carolco at Cameron's request before being sold off to Fox. Biehn would have been an awesome Cyclops in a Cameron produced X-Men film from the 90's and Cable is actually Cyke's kid in the comics so if he couldn't play the father, how about the son?

Unfortunately X-Force is stuck in development as producers are leery about having more than two X-Men related movies in a year given the glut of superhero flicks from Marvel, DC and Fox's own Fantastic Four hitting theaters in the next few years. After casting hot at the time Taylor Kitsch as Gambit in the woeful Wolverine Origins flick they've upgraded to Tatum for a follow up so I'm sure they'll go with someone with more heat for Cable if a flick ever does get made.  But here's hoping Biehn returns for Alien 5, it's a huge hit and it leads him right into X-Force.

Body slide to HQ...

Cable Sunday: Paneled Goods

After picking up the collected Cable: Classic at Long Beach Con and a fistful of X-Force from Earth 2's parking lot sale, I was ready to strap on my shoulder pads and pack my belt and suspender pouches full of 90's action awesomeness. The 90's are dubbed the most action packed decade in comic book history. And for good reason. With splashy, vibrant, kinetic art from the likes of Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Mark Silvestri, Ron Lim and a host of others ruling the sales charts, the 90's became the era of the artist. Men were hyper muscular and women super impossibly hot in poses looking like they were always flying and action that screamed spectacle and splash pages. Created by Louise Simonson and Rob Liefeld, Cable was to be a "man of action" and opposite to the wheelchair bound, tolerance spouting Professor Charles Xavier from the X-Men. Cable: Classic collects his first full appearance in 1990's New Mutants # 87, two part series Blood & Metal and the first four issues of his own ongoing series.

The action starts with a force from the Mutant Liberation Front storming a secret facility to bust out some captured young mutants. After the super powered strike force of Wildside, Forearm, Reaper, Strobe, Tempo and Thumbellina take out the facility guards, from nowhere a huge man decked out in giant shoulder pads, future guns, a metal arm, spiked bracelets and a big scar over his eye appears. This is Cable, time traveling soldier from the future. We don't get too much of his personality besides being a hardass tracking down the same mutants the MLF is after. We're introduced to the armored, masked and spike covered Stryfe, leader of the Liberation who is out to prove mutant superiority over humans by breaking into their facilities after his demands are not met. Cable nearly takes out Stryfe's group single handed but ends up losing his mechanical hand and the MLF breaks out the mutant captives.

From there we move into 1992's two-shot, Blood & Metal from Fabian Nicieza and John Romita, Jr. Here, we go back in Cable's past as a member of the Wild Pack, also known as Six Pack along with Domino, G.W. Bridge, Garrison Kane, Grizzly and Hammer. The bandanna wearing, shoulder pad suited and heavily armed unit lands in Iran, wasting a ton of hostile locals about to execute some hostages. That's just a cover though as the hardcore group is actually there on behalf of a rich corporation and blow up a competitor's building. Cut to years later and the team has been disbanded, some members being permanently injured from a job Kane believes Cable turned on them and left them to die. Cable tracks a team of MLF'ers stealing artifacts from various parts of the world and across numerous centuries on Stryfe's behalf. After getting caught in an explosion on the botched mission; Kane is now the armored up, metal armed, hand disengaging Weapon X and tracks Cable down to his safe house in Switzerland where the two brawl through the house and outside in the snow, hitting each other with trees. Kane joins Cable in his quest to stop Stryfe from collecting the artifacts on the condition that the future warrior help their wheelchair bound former comrade Hammer. Cable had to shoot Hammer in the back on the disastrous mission to stop him from jeopardizing it. That's leadership, kids. The two jump to the future where Kane is made whole again with the intention of bringing back some technology to make Hammer walk. I really dug Blood & Metal, John Romita, Jr's art is very clean and dynamic. The over the top costumes actually look somewhat practical and streamlined here versus Liefeld's early mish mash of pads, bracelets, belts, pods and ammo. The black ops style military group was a key theme in the 90's with many of your Image Comics being based on military teams who imploded on that one bad job and how members come back to haunt the others years later after feeling betrayed or left behind.

The action was pretty interesting as you had guns and mutant powers, robot soldiers, mech suits, ninjas and the Silver Samurai! Cable is fleshed out here as being a tough leader who makes decisions for the best of the mission rather than his team leading to future conflict. Then throw in his turtleneck lounge attire when at his tech loaded safe house and you get more than just some brooding grunt. I'm still not exactly sure what Stryfe's endgame is but you see that he and Cable are spitting images of each other, clones, twins or something or other. All of this Six Pack stuff comes back to haunt Cable in his ongoing series as G.W. Bridge went on to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and was sent to capture his former teammate, Hammer becomes a revenge seeking threat and Cable totally makes a chick cry after they got busy when he thought she was someone else...Key phrases like "stab his eyes" (son of a bitch?) and "body slide by" (call for teleport) are prevalent.

Over in 1991's X-Force # 1, Cable is now leading the former New Mutants as their own unit of part rebels, part heroes consisting of the flying Cannonball, strong man Warpath, wolf like chick Feral, explosion tossing Boom Boom and bred to be a warrior alien Shatterstar. It's all action for the first 21 pages as X-Force locates and attacks a Mutant Liberation Front base, again confronting Stryfe but losing him, again. Hands get chopped off, bodies are slashed, POONTH! shots are fired, Stryfe teleports and X-Force body slides out. We learn that in addition to Cable's mechanical arm and battle experience he actually has some telekinetic powers as well. It's interesting to see how Rob Liefeld's artwork changed between New Mutants and X-Force as I think it got worse. I'm not sure if he was working under a deadline or just tried to do too much but X-Force # 1 just isn't as clean as his previous work, everyone has angry expressions on their faces and nobody has pupils. Meaning it's just a bunch of slanted white eyes...The haircuts are 90's atrocious mullets or big square do's and body language has become increasingly awkward. While Romita, Jr was able to streamline and make the outfits look somewhat plausible, Liefeld draws Cable with outrageous dimensions, outlandish shoulder pads, arms and thighs three times the size of his head making it look like a guy in an exo-suit of sorts. Still you get lots of action and banter with appearances from Juggernaut, Black Tom Cassidy and Spider-Man in the first half dozen issues. Cable's purpose is more or less highlighted when he states: "We're here to do what the police and the Avengers-types are unwilling to do -- put an end to this situation -- cold, hard and mean!" Superb.

X-Force # 1 was packaged with a limited edition trading card and became the best selling comic book of all time with a staggering 5 million copies sold. Liefeld was featured in a Levi's 501 jeans commercial directed by Spike Lee where he talks about drawing comics since he was 7 years old and never receiving any formal art training. X-Force's record would soon be broken by Jim Lee and Chris Claremont's X-Men # 1 which sold over 8 million copies with it's gimmick of having 5 different covers. Liefeld, Lee and many of Marvel's other superstar artists would then disband from the mother company and form Image where they could have more creative freedom and own the rights to their characters and art. Liefeld's Extreme Comics would produce best seller Youngblood and land the young artist on Dennis Miller's late night chat show. Brigade was another super powered team oriented book with a Cable looking leader where several of the characters die in the first issues through getting their intestines punched out or fingers sliced off. Liefeld would be kicked out of Image/resign after consistently late shipping books and poaching talent from other in house banners. In 1996, Liefeld and Lee returned to Marvel to help launch Heroes Reborn where Captain America, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four and The Avengers all died in a universe shaking battle and be brought back in new, alternate reality universes. Cable would pop up there too.

In 2004, Liefied and Fabian Nicieza relaunched X-Force with Cable still hanging/training/banging with Domino but being haunted by Skornn, a long dead being that feeds off mutants like humans eat cows. Warrior from another planet/time/dimension Shatterstar is training with some monks but signs up for some mindless violence because that's what he does. You see, Cable was originally sent back to our time from a thousand years in the future to stop some kind of catastrophic mutant event. But even all those years ahead, mutants and mankind are still at odds. Some ninja looking baddies from the future aka Agents of Humanity show up looking for The Five Fingers of Annihilation sword, the only weapon that can defeat Skornn, it's up to the reunited Cable, Domino and Shatterstar to stop them. With jump kicks, double bladed swords and punches to the face. In subsequent issues we catch back up with Cannonball, now living a peaceful life on a farm in Kentucky while Tabitha Smith aka Meltdown and formerly known as Boom Boom along with Warpath rejoin the team. Liefeld's art is substantially more palatable years on with cleaner lines along with less ridiculous body shape and sizes. Backgrounds are a little plain or non-existent but pupils are more frequent and hair styles are much better. A scene from the future takes on an ethereal and shiny quality with coloring that looks more akin to paints than vibrant and smooth computer coloring. While the story jumps back and forth between eras, it never gets too confusing or clunky.

Phew! Some fun reading with lots of ads for Marvel shirts and toys that made me miss my awesome double sided Jim Lee X-Men shirt from 4th grade. It wasn't as extreme as Brigade though as those comics just got me amped up and the test (testosterone) flowing making you want to lift weights and punch holes in walls. Until next time, body slide by one...

Sherman Oaks Saturday: Earth 2 Comics & The One Up

Wow what a week! Started a kick ass new gig all while going into the final days leading up to the Sunbow Animation Celebration double feature of The Transformers and G.I. Joe: The Movies, fighting a cold and planning another big movie night. Saturday it was off to Sherman Oaks to check out a parking lot sale of comics with thousands of issues advertised for a buck a piece. Earth 2 Comics is located right on Ventura Blvd off the 405 a few minutes from The Galleria. The Galleria? John Conner alert! I think that was Glendale actually...Anyways, it was already a bustling scene
with people elbow to elbow skimming through books. Toys, calendars, figurines and more were also on sale but I was more there looking for issues. After whetting my appetite with some Cable (Body slide by one) from last week's Long Beach Comic Expo, I was hoping I'd run into some more 90's action and was not disappointed as I scooped up some of Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza's X-Force from 1991. Also grabbed were several issues of Nick Fury: Agent of Shield, some more 80's Captain America that I already have in boxes in Ohio, Sgt. Rock and a couple of random issues of West Coast Avengers with interesting covers. There seemed to be a lot of DC for sale and I hauled up a few issues of The Flash written by the TV writing duo of the 1990 show, Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo. If you bought 20, the price went down to .50 cents so it was money well spent. The staff there were all super cool and say they hold the sale a couple times a year so we'll be sure to come back.

Since we were already in The Oaks, we cruised down to The One Up for a midday cocktail and some more brawling action following up on The Punisher mayhem from a few weeks ago. It was barely noon so the place was empty but with Space Balls on the tube and a Jameson Mule aka Dublin Donkey in hand, it was time to check out what other oddities and classics the 400 game emulator had in store for us. I really hoping for Aliens VS Predator so I could be video game Arnold aka Dutch but with a metal arm and fight xenomorphs. Alas AVP was not included but 1991's forgotten yet awesome side scrolling beat'em up Knights of the Round from Capcom was. I remember playing the crap out of that game as Lancelot, Arthur and Perceval. We settled on Cadillacs and Dinosaurs for the sheer WTF value as it's a beat'em up but with a story involving cars and dinosaurs. A comic book series turned cartoon, the Capcom arcade game came out in 1993 where you play as the hyper buff dude Jack Tenrec or hot diplomat Hannah Dundee along with fast fighting Mustapha or heavy hitter Mess O'Bradovich.

Like Final Fight or The Punisher, you roll down the streets of some crazy city where dinosaurs have been hunted and modified, becoming violent tools of gang warlords. Using your fists, feet, uzi's, shotguns, knives and TNT, you fight your way through various parts of The City by the Sea and a nearby jungle. The game had a BLARING rock and roll soundtrack and was really, really loud. But fun to button mash and brawl. It was surprisingly violent with dead dinosaur carcases, being able to use swords to hack peeps and of course shoot them with a variety of firearms. One stage you're driving a Caddy and literally trying to mow down the baddies in your way. Road rage! It was a fun morning before we needed to head to Hollywood for the big show...