COMICS THAT SHOULD BE MADE INTO MOVIES: DEADMAN

Deadman is another comic with a cool story that I think would make a good movie if done right. Excuse the resemblance to Daredevil. Here’s the Comicvine origin.

The Deadman, born Boston Brand, was a well known trapeze artist who was killed by newly joined member of the League of Assassins, The Hook. (It wasn’t personal, the mission was only for initiation purposes.) For the many kindnesses that Brand had performed during his life, Deadman was saved and given his powers by Hindu goddess of balance, Rama Kushna, so that he should find his killer and settle the score.

He began to hunt for his assassin, knowing only that the man had a hook for a hand. When Deadman learned that a villain called the Hook was a member of the League Of Assassins, he was certain it was the same man who killed him. Along the way of his journey, Brand continued to interact in peoples lives, doing good deeds in his own way. One of the people was another aerialist known as the Eagle. They would first meet in St. Louis where the Eagle tried to kill him during a performance while in the air. Boston Brand as Deadman would see justice done as the Deadman when the Eagle was hired to replace him.

Deadman eventually tracked down the Hook, only to watch him die at the hands of the Sensei, leader of League of Assassins. Then with his brother Cleveland and new friend Batman, Deadman then prevented the League of Assassins taking control of the fabled Himalayan land of Nanda Parbat. Deadman was subsequently called upon to do the duties expected of spirits, such as him, greeting those entering the Land of the Just Dead. In this role Deadman guided the Phantom Stranger, the Spectre, Etrigan the Demon, and Swamp Thing in order to rescue the spirit of Abby Arcane after she was murdered by her uncle.

Deadman has teamed up with other spectral heroes, joining the Phantom Stranger and Swamp Thing to combat the threat of a “primordial shadow” that imperiled Heaven and Earth. When Asmodel usurped the power of the spirit of wrath, Deadman formed part of a strike force of sentinels of magic with Doctor Occult, Felix Faust, the Phantom Stranger, Ragman, Raven, and Sentinel assembled by Zatanna to oppose the fallen angel. Deadman continues to work with people on Earth, hoping one day to achieve a peaceful reward.

Powers and Abilities

As a spectre, Deadman has many supernatural abilities, most notably, the ability to possess other living creatures. The possession is strong enough to allow Deadman total control of the host body, although some particularly strong-willed persons have been shown to be able to resist the possession and exorcise Deadman from their bodies.

He possesses the ability to fly and cross the boundaries between the land of the living and that of the dead with ease, and as such, he maintains an intimate knowledge of the supernatural world.

Deadman is also invisible to most people, with the exception being those with similar supernatural abilities to his own. This, along with his intangibility, are out of Deadman’s control.

As a human, Boston Brand was an elite gymnast and trapeze performer, capable of phenomenal feats of agility and strength.-Source

COMICS THAT SHOULD BE MADE INTO MOVIES: CLOAK AND DAGGER

Thinking about the comics I used to read, and wouldn’t mind seeing on the big screen brought me back to “Cloak and Dagger”. Apparently, the comic has been slated to be produced as a film for Paramount Pictures, but no production details have been revealed. I’m hoping it’s actually made, and done well, because the story is pretty cool. Here’s the background:

Cloak And Dagger are runaways: two lonely teenagers who ran away to New York City to seek a better life. Fate, however, had other plans for them.

Tandy Bowen grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the daugther of a multimillionaire and his trophy supermodel wife. Her dad abandoned the family while Tandy was very young, and her mother was too busy with her career and social life to pay much attention to the girl. Even her boyfriend forgot about her as soon as he went to college. Feeling empty and alone, Tandy boarded a bus for New York City with dreams of becoming a dancer.

Raised in a poor South Boston neighborhood, Tyrone Johnson was a good student despite his chronic stutter, a disability he struggled to master with the support of his best friend, Billy. When Tyrone was 17, he and Billy witnessed the robbery of a local store and the fatal shooting of its clerk. The thieves fled, and Billy ran as well, fearing that he and Tyrone might be wrongly suspected of the crime. When a policeman ordered Billy to stop, Tyrone tried to proclaim Billy’s innocence; but his stuttering made it impossible to speak clearly, and the officer shot Billy dead. Feeling responsible for Billy’s death and afraid of the police, Johnson ran away to New York City.

Arriving at Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, a penniless Tyrone considered robbing Tandy Bowen, a rich girl who had also run away from home; yet when someone else robbed her first, Tyrone impulsively tackled the thief and returned Tandy’s purse. The two teens became fast friends. When the naïve Tandy accepted an offer of shelter from some strange men, a wary Tyrone went along to protect her; however, the two teens were soon forcibly delivered to criminal chemist Simon Marshall.

Marshall was developing a new synthetic heroin for the Maggia, testing it on runaway teens with fatal results. Johnson and Bowen somehow survived injections of the drug, and they fled. During their escape, Tyrone found himself engulfed in darkness and seized by a strange hunger which eased in the presence of Tandy, who was glowing with a brilliant light. Trying to hide his newly shadowy appearance in a makeshift cloak, Tyrone began absorbing Marshall’s thugs into his darkness while Tandy struck them down with daggers of light. The two teens dubbed themselves Cloak & Dagger and declared war on drug crime.

Cloak & Dagger started out as merciless vigilantes, killing Marshall despite the interference of Spider-Man, who saw the duo as misguided innocents and gradually became their friend. After ill-fated assassination attempts on the crimelords Silvermane and Kingpin, Dagger became less ruthless and tried to steer Cloak in a similar direction; however, since his power compelled him to consume living beings, Cloak found it more difficult to follow this gentler path, even though Dagger’s light could satisfy his hunger temporarily.

Cloak & Dagger befriended the super-powered preteens Power Pack and twice aided the New Mutants, junior trainees of the X-Men. The duo eventually learned they were mutants themselves, and that Marshall’s drug had awakened their latent powers. Though they tend to target ordinary street criminals, they have faced such diverse foes as Doctor Doom, the Beyonder, Vermin, the Zapper, the Disciplinarian, the Warlord of Kampuchea, Set, Mephisto, Thanos, the Assembly of Evil, Firebrand, and Lightmaster.

Cloak & Dagger found sanctuary at the Holy Ghost Church with the sympathetic Father Francis Delgado; but over time, Delgado became romantically obsessed with Tandy. Regarding Cloak as a demonic influence, Delgado tried and failed to split up the duo, going mad in the process. After Delgado was institutionalized, Cloak & Dagger found a new mentor in Tandy’s uncle, Father Michael Bowen. Tandy’s father, meanwhile, had become a cult leader as the Lord of Light in India. A “light vampire” who fed on others’ life force, he clashed with Cloak and Dagger until he realized what he had become and tried to atone by hurling himself into Cloak’s ebony abyss.

Police detective Brigid O’Reilly regarded the duo as a menace until they helped her capture serial poisoner Duane Hellman and told her of their origins. Later, when O’Reilly was betrayed and left for dead by corrupt cops, Cloak & Dagger used their powers to save her life, but the experience mutated Brigid’s body and warped her mind. She became the vicious superhuman vigilante Mayhem, often fighting crime alongside Cloak & Dagger. O’Reilly’s former partner, police detective Rebecca “Rusty” Nales, would become an ally to Cloak & Dagger as well. -Read the rest at Marvel’s Official Site

COMICS THAT SHOULD MADE INTO MOVIES: DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON

Back in the day I was big fan of the “Iron Fist and Power Man” comics, and one of the off-shoots, was the story of Colleen Wing, and Misty Knight. Recently I was thinking about old characters that could translate well into todays cinema, and remembered, “The Daughters of the Dragon”. Here is the science:

The Daughters of the Dragon is the name of a two woman team with Colleen Wing and Misty Knight because they are both expert matrial artists.

Colleen was born in the United States to parents of mixed Asian descent, her father being a professor of Asian studies in New York. She spent most of her youth in northen Japan however, being raised by her grandfather. It was her grandfather, Kanji, who would teach her the ways of the samurai.
Upon returning to the New York Collen would meet and befriend Danny Rand, also known as the hero Iron Fist. He would call upon her and her skills numerous times, particularly when confronting the Kara-Kai Death Cult. Also while visiting New York, Colleen would be saved by an NYPD officer named Misty Knight during a shoot-out.

After a devastating injury in which Misty lost an arm after a bomb blast, Colleen stood by her new friend and helped her through her recovery even though Misty’s days as an officer seemed over. Eventually, Misty’s arm was replaced by a bionic one, and the two women teamed up to form a partnership as heroes for hire. They are sometimes referred to as the “Daughters of the Dragon” because of Colleen’s background.

Her new role as a hero for hire would put her into conflict against her old Iron Fist when both Colleen and Misty were enslaved by Angar the Screamer and Master Khan, forcing them to fight against their will although they would later recover. After a similar altercation in which Colleen was captured by another foe she developed a heroin addiction. Misty Knight was able to help her friend once more, as the two had done for each other many times before, and Wing not only kicked the habit but got revenge on her captor.

The heroes for hire, who go by the name Kinghtwing Restorations Ltd, would go onto to aid many other heroes during their careers together, including the X-Men during adventures that took them from Japan to Canada and back. –Source (Comicvine)

COMICS THAT SHOULD BE MADE INTO MOVIES: PSYLOCKE

Yea, I know. Hollywood has run the X-Men franchise into the ground, but I still wouldn’t mind a Psylocke off shoot. Maybe revitalize the movies with a femme fatale angle. The storyline I think they should focus on is “The Transfer”.  Here’s the science (It will make more sense if you have reasonable X-Men comic knowledge, but it’s still a good story):

Psylocke (Elizabeth “Betsy” Braddock) is a master of many forms of karate and is also a master of Ninjitsu. She wields a katana as her weapon of choice. She also has vast mental power: she can read minds, project thoughts and illusions, and she can manifest her powers more powerfully by attacking her victims with her psychic knife. Here is how a British psychic became fused with the body of a ninja…

To prevent the X-Men’s death, which she had foreseen in a precognitive vision, Betsy sent the team through the Siege Perilous, a device given to her by Roma, Merlyn’s daughter. The Siege Perilous would give them all new lives. Betsy awoke on an island near China without her memories. She was found by the evil ninja group, The Hand. The leader of The Hand, Matsuo Tsurayaba, wanted to save the life of his brain-dead girlfriend, Kwannon. To do so, he had Spiral’s Bodyshoppe switch Betsy’s and Kwannon’s souls. Spiral not only switched their bodies but also fused their minds and physical features. They shared the same memories and shared half of Psylocke’s telepathic powers.

Betsy was given to The Mandarin to serve as his assassin. While working as an assassin, Betsy changed her armour to a more revealing outfit, and learned to focus her psychic energy and turn them into the “psychic knife”. On her first assignment as Lady Mandarin, she had to battle Wolverine. When she stabbed Wolverine in the head with her psychic knife, it showed her his memories and revealed to Psylocke who she truly was. Psylocke then rejected her role as Lady Mandarin and escaped with Wolverine and Jubilee to Genosha. In Genosha Psylocke, Wolverine, and Jubilee discovered that the X-Men and the New Mutants had been captured by Cameron Hodge. They also met Havok on Genosha, then they went on and defeated Cameron Hodge. Once the X-Men were free they all headed back to New York.

When the X-Men split into two teams, Psylocke joined Cyclops’ team. She eventually started flirting with him and when Jean Grey found out, the two started fighting. They were interrupted when Kwannon (now calling herself Revanche turned up at the Xavier Institute (in Betsy’s body) and claimed to be the real Psylocke. Not knowing what or who to believe, the X-Men had no choice but allow her to stay. Revanche then confessed to Psylocke that she had contracted the Legacy Virus thanks to Spiral.Soon after, Revanche was mercy-killed by Matsuo Tsurayaba. Upon her death Betsy gained her full telepathic powers and the and remaining pieces of herself but was still able to retain Revanche’s martial arts skills. Kwannon’s fractured memories and personality were also removed from Psyocke’s mind by Matsuo who gained a small fraction of Kwannon’s psychic powers. Afterwards, Jean re-trained Betsy to use her telepathy, she also started a relationship with Angel. -Source ComicVine