5. The Middleman

What’s it about?

Wendy Watson(Natalie Morales), a struggling artist is suddenly recruited by a secret agency to work with The Middleman(Matt Keeslar) a freelancer of sort that deals with ‘exotic problems’.

Why it should be right up my ally?

Those exotic problems mentioned above? They’re of the comic book and B movie variety. We’re talking mad scientists, parallel universes, robots, monsters, and everything that is cool and right with the world. While the fact that it’s based on fairly popular comic book doesn’t automatically put it on my list of shows to watch, the general consensus so far is that it captures the crazyness of the comic book really well.

Oh, and did I mention that Wendy is a comic book fan? And one with good taste, as she’s cited her favorites being Powers, Fell, Mouse Guard, and Flash(although apparently we have yet to find out the important question, Barry or Wally?)

Why aren’t I watching?

In a perfect world, advertising would have nothing to do with my decisions. But seeing as Daniel Way is writing a Deadpool comic, we know this isn’t a perfect world. Hey, it’s my geek column, I’m allowed to throw a comic book joke every now and then. Sadly, The Middleman was one of those shows that while I had heard about before it went on the air, I never heard it was a must watch. I’ll admit to being a bit biased with the fact that it was airing on ABCFamily. And while I digged the casting of Wendy from the beginning, Mat Keeslar didn’t seem that interesting to me in the beginning.

4. Eureka

What’s it about?

Eureka is the name of a town located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, inhabited almost entirely of brilliant scientists, U.S Marshall Jack Carter(Colin Ferguson) ends up becoming the new sheriff of the town and has to deal with experiments gone awry.

Why should it be right up my alley?

It’s light hearted science fiction, which is my favorite sort of science fiction. The premise is actually quite smart, and from the snips that I seen, the special effects are actually surprisingly good for a television.

Why aren’t I watching?

Because Sci Fi pulled a FOX on Eureka’s first season, airing episodes out of order. Supposedly this wasn’t as bad as Firefly, but nonetheless when I heard of that, it just left a bad taste in my mouth. I have watched a few episodes, and while they are cute, that’s all they seem to be. There is very little connecting storyline from show to show, and it seems to be more of a “monster of the week” type of show.

3. Reaper

What’s it about?

On his 21st birthday, Sam Olivier(Brett Harrison) discovers that his parents promised him to the devil(Ray Wise). So now Sam must save as a bounty hunter, capturing escaped demons and souls and taking them back to hell, all while juggling his job and romantic life.

Why it should be right up me alley?

First, the casting. I been a fan of Brett since Grounded for Life, and I actually also liked him in his short live FOX comedy The Loop. And tell me the choice of Ray Wise as the devil wasn’t an inspired one. Much like most of the shows on this list, the premise is also really cool, and something we could only see in this geek accepting era of television. To prove that, the first episode was directed by Kevin Smith. Plus I always been a sucker for religion in popular fiction.

Why aren’t I watching?

Out of all five shows, this is probably the one that I really wanted to like and continue to watch. I really enjoyed the first episode, as the interaction between Sam and his fellow Work Bench employee’s was fun and witty. Unfortunately the spark from the first episode quickly started to go out. This is a show that should have started to build a mythology from the beginning. Now, I’m not saying make it a Lost level of mythology, but they should have been building up to something early on. I don’t know if it’s because of the writer’s strike, but instead the show focused on single episodes, which quickly began to get old. Plus it has Michael Ian Black.

2. Battlestar Galactica

What’s it about?

I don’t think there’s much of a need for this, but here it is anyways. A successful re imagining of the 1978 series it deals with a future war between Cylons, robots originally created by mankind and the last remaining humans.

Why it should be right up my alley?

Because it has arguably become the geek show to watch. Lost might get more viewers, but for the hardcore, BSG is where it’s at. Plus I’ll admit that it seems to have a somewhat fascinating mix of science fiction, religion, and human storyline. This is another show that doesn’t look ‘cheap’, as the effects, from the inside of the space ships, to the battles themselves have a very realistic edge to them. Plus come on, it stars some of the hottest women in television.

Why aren’t I watching?

It seems entirely too depressing and serious. Look at the rest of the shows on this list, they are all somewhat light hearted entertainment. I get the impression that joy was killed in that universe. Every time I have manage to catch it, everyone is one hundred percent serious, and full of anguish. I can’t imagine sitting down and watching more than one episode. It’s gotta be draining man. Also, you can’t just turn on the television and watch an episode, this is a show that demands to be watched from the beginning.

1. Doctor Who

What’s it about?

Another show that really doesn’t need an explanation. A british science fiction show, it depicts the adventures of “The Doctor”, who while looking entirely human is actually a time traveling alien. Along with his companion he travels through space and time fighting monsters and righting wrongs.

Why it should be right up my alley?

If Lost is for mainstream geeks, and BSG for hardcore geeks, Dr. Who is for old school geeks. We’re talking about a television show that has been running since the early 1960s. In fact, it holds the Guinness World Record for longest science fiction program. Then we have the fact that some episodes have been written by the likes of Neil Gaiman and Adam Douglas.

Why aren’t I watching?

Okay, there’s two big things that keep me from watching this show. The first is baggage. I’m daunted by BSG’s three seasons I would need to catch up. Dr. Who has more than FORTY YEARS worth of history. While every few years a new doctor might appear, the history of the show constantly pops up. I think I would feel like I’m always missing something. The second thing, an the one I’m sure I’ll get flak for is that well, the show is so British. Yes, yes, British wit is awesome and everything, but this is a show for anglophiles. The fact for the most part it also looks pretty cheap doesn’t help matters.

So those are the five shows. Now that I put them down on paper, I actually feel pretty bad about not watching them. Now that I actually have a DVR, I think I’m going to give them all a try. Or I will once they come back on the air.

There’s only three shows I tend to watch with any kind of consistency on the Discovery Channel. The awesomely manly Man vs. Wild(come on, it has a guy named Bear Grilles!), How it’s Made(shut up, it’s addicting), and Mythbusters.

Brand new episodes of Mythbusters started yesterday, but the real fun begins on August 20, with their return to ninja myths, because lets face it, ninjas=ratings. Then on August 27 they’ll have everyone with a tin foil hat watching as they take on the question of whether the original moon landing could have been faked or not.

So to commemorate Jaime’s bushy mustache, I decided to take a look at a few superhero myths that Jaime and Adam could and should take on in a future episodes. Cause if anything would bring ratings more than ninjas, it’s superheroes.

Like so many great ideas, I quickly realized that mine was in no way original. In fact, back in 2007 Mythbusters already had a superhero special, dealing with myths about The Phantom, Batman, and Spiderman, but I was actually kinda suprised to see some myths that weren’t done. This are the three myths I think mythbusters should attempt if they have another superhero special. Obviously I’m not a scientist, so I can’t exactly figure out the logistics of how they would go about testing them, but I do think that all three are fairly doable.

1. Using capes to glide- You see this quite a bit in comics, with Batman probably being the worst offender. The superhero standing atop a building looking down at the city that he protects, his cape billowing in the air. And then suddenly he jumps down, spreading out his arms and letting the wind catch his cape. From there he gracefully begins his descent down to the streets. The image has become so iconic that it is used to great effect in the trailer of The Dark Knight.

You could have the Mythbuster gang start off by trying to figure out if there is any kind of fabric that could actually replicate that sort of thing, where it could stay flexible enough to move around with, but at the same time rigid enough to actually glide down. They could the move on to test out the material with one of their test dummies. Hilarity would no doubt ensue.

2. Spiderman webshoooters- For those familiar only with the movie version of Spiderman, one of the key things they changed was Spidey’s web. In the comic and most other mediums Peter Parker does not have organic webs. Instead he not only creates the substance that becomes the webs, but also the shooters themselves.

I think this would be a pretty fun myth to explore. We seen before that Jaime and Adam love to compete, so there’s several ways you could tackle this. You could have both of them try to figure if there’s any way to actually create any kind of substance that could hold a certain amount of weight. You could also have them competing against each other to see who can come out with the best workable web shooters.

3. Gwen Stacy’s death- This is the big one, and I’m honestly surprised that they didn’t do it in the first superhero edition. As any comic book fan worth his weight knows, the death of Gwen Stacy has been one of the defining moment’s in Spiderman’s life. Thrown off a bridge by Spidey’s nemesis the Green Goblin, Spiderman tried to saved her by shooting out his web, catching her by the leg. Sadly, when he pulled her back up, she was already dead. So the question that fans have asked since almost the beginning is whether the shock of the fall killed her, of could have Spidey inadvertently killed her by stopping her momentum and breaking her neck?

The mythbusting would revolve around whether falling from a large height, only to be suddenly stopped could break someone’s neck, thereby killing the person. They have done similar things in the pass with true to life test dummies, so I imagine that Jaime and Adam’s mind could come out with the right equation and way of doing this.

So there you have it. Those are three of my ideas for a future episode of Mythbusters. I think they would all be entertaining, and with the superhero trend being as big as it currently is, I’m sure we’ll see another superhero edition sooner rather than later.

But it’s not just in movie theaters where you can catch comic book heroes doing what they do best. Long before Hollywood had become interested in comic books, they could be found on the small screen. Both Marvel and DC have had a history of having their most popular characters show up on TV under various guises. In the spirit of that, I’m pitting three of the biggest comic book characters against each other to see not only who have had the most interpretations on the small screen, but also which one has had the best. So let’s have yourself a good old fashion SUPER HERO BATTLE ROYALE!

Let’s begin by setting up some ground rules shall we? I’ll count both cartoon and live action iterations, but no guest roles. Also, straight to video does not count, so you won’t see any of the later Superman animated movies on this list. With that said…Let’s get it on!!

Superman- Ah Kal-El, Earth’s adopted son. With powers of flight, super strength, x-ray, heat vision, and ice breath just to name a few, in a real comic book fight Big Blue would easily come out winning. While Superman might indeed be more powerful than a speeding locomotive, it’s his powers that has hurt him in the world of television. In order to be faithful to character, a live action show would have to have a tremendous budget to due justice to the character. Television writers also end up facing a problem comic book writers have been struggling with for years. How do you give an almost invincible man credible threats? Strangely enough, that hasn’t kept people from making live action shows. The earliest version of Superman was Max Flesicher’s Superman cartoon. This is the show that originated the “faster than a speeding bullet” line, and is also famous for using rotoscoping, which is the process of tracing drawings over live action figures. This not only provided a more realistic image, but has also made the show still look good by today’s standard. Supes cartoon history continued with ensemble shows such as The Superman-Aquaman hour, and the always popular 70’s version, Superfriends.

On the live action end, there’s been several iconic interpretations of Superman. From the Adventures of Superman, which is as well known for its tragic star George Reeves, to Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, with Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher.

TOTAL NUMBER OF SHOWS:12

WORST INTERPRETATION- Smallville. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, as the creators of the show have admitted that they came in knowing nothing about the character. The changes can be spotted from the beginning of the show, where we see numerous comets crashing into the town of Smallville, instead of the solitary one that brought Superman to earth. Instead of the Elderly Kent couple found in the comics and other media, we see a much younger Martha and Johnathan Kent. Supporting characters from Superman’s past, such as Pete Ross and Lana Lang can be found in the show, but the show also introduced new characters such as Lex’s dad Lionel, or geeky Editor-in-Chief of the school’s newspaper, Chloe. For the most part, the show has focused less on the “Super” part and more on the “man” one..or I guess boy in the early seasons. The story lines, especially in the first few seasons revolved around Clark’s feelings of being an outcast more than bang up action. Now, while that can be an interesting approach to take for the character, before long you just want to see Superman beat up someone. In the latest season the characters have introduced Doomsday, who in the comic book bested Superman while managing to bring down most of Metropolis in the process. Oh, and he looks like this;

In the show, he’s a serial killer and looks like this;

BEST - Superman. This one was between either Max Fleischer’s 1940 version, or the Bruce Timm’s 1990’s version. I ended up choosing Timm’s version, because it adhered closer to the Superman that I was personally used to reading about. This, along with Batman: The Animated Series started the Timm/Dini universe that would continue on with Justice League Unlimited. Clancy Brown and Tim Daily’s version of Lex Luthor and Clark Kent/Superman have become almost as iconic as the characters themselves, and they provided a version of Darkseid that would wipe the floor with the Superfriend’s version.

WHAT’S NEXT? Smallville continues with its eight season.

SPIDERMAN- Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever, a spider can… who doesn’t know the catchy theme song from the 1967 cartoon? Spider-Man has had a relatively good luck with most of his television shows. He’s had a fairly  successful run of television shows, starting with that cartoon and continuing with Spiderman and his Amazing Friends, which featured my boyhood crush(uh, Firestar, not Iceman). The longest running show was Spiderman on Fox’s cartoon block of the 90’s. While the animation might not portray Spidey’s nimbleness, it stuck very close to the comic book. There was also the CGI Spiderman: The New Animated Series show on MTV, which had Neil Patrick Harris as Parker and Lisa Loeb as Mary Jane. While the CG was slightly blocky, it was probably the first show to truly capture Spiderman’s agility and way of moving.

NUMBER OF SHOWS: 8

WORST- It’s probably not much of a surprise that just like Superman, Spidey’s worst interpretation came out of live action. What might be surprising though is that not many people have seen it. Created for Japanese television, this is the description taken right out wikipedia:

Young motorcycle racer Takuya Yamashiro sees a UFO falling to earth, in fact a combat spacecraft named the “Marveller”. Takuya’s father Dr. Hiroshi Yamashiro, a space archaeologist, investigates the case. The incident also brings the attention of Professor Monster and his evil Iron Cross Army (Tetsu-Jyuuji-Gun), an alien group that plans to rule the universe.

I defy you to find anything related to the Spiderman you and I know in that synopsis.

BEST- Spectacular Spiderman. I had doubts about this show when it was first announced. It was being created by the same people that did The Batman, which I’ll write about soon enough, and the few images released in the beginning did not inspired much confidence. But I was pleasantly surprised upon seeing the first few episodes how good the series is. Taking place during Peter’s High School years, there are a few changes, such as Gwen Stacy being Peter’s nerdy friend who clearly has a crush on him, but nonetheless it simply captures Spiderman’s dual lives perfectly. Spidey quips just like he should, while Peter has the patented Parker luck that keeps him from getting on time to a date with Mary Jane. The animation is crisp, and at times even brutal, such as the scene with the Sinister Six. Definitely one to to check out.

WHAT’S NEXT? Season 2 of Spectacular Spiderman will begin to air later this fall. The question many are asking is if Gwen will die just like in the comic or not.

BATMAN- While Spiderman might have a damn catchy song, nothing beats the na na na song of 1960’s Batman. There’s been a dichotomy of sorts in how Batman has been portrayed in Television. You have the light, campy affair best highlighted in the 1960’s live action The Batman, along with the darker twinge of the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm Batman: The Animated Series. Batman Beyond, which is also in the same universe, except in the future was also a great series, dealing with a Batman living in a Blade Runner like future.

NUMBER OF SHOWS:5

WORST- You might think this would be an easy choice. Just pick Adam West’s version right? But see, despite how campy the show was, it actually did a good job of reflecting the tone of the comic book at the time. It might have had the Joker with a visible mustache, but it’s not the worst Batman interpretation. No, that honor goes to 2004’s WB cartoon The Batman. This was the main reason I was doubtful of Spectacular Spiderman. The main thing this show had going against it was the aesthetic. It’s okay to have a Batman who is not drenched in darkness, but when Bruce Wayne starts to look asian, eyebrows are raised. The show also tries to hip up the villains to a point where they start to become parodies of themselves. Okay, so the villain Scarface, with his history of being a mafia puppet(and I’m talking about honest to god ’stick a hand up his back’ puppet) might seem ridiculous, but at least it was better than the show’s version, who had be a Tony Montoya puppet. Plus we have this Joker;

BEST- That’s an easy one. Nothing beats Batman: The Animated Series. The creators of the choice were clearly Batman fans, and more importantly than that, they just got Batman. There is a noir sensibility that ran through the entire show. Catwoman was sexy, Bruce Wayne was a playboy, and Batman was scary. Alot of this also had to do with the voices of the show. Before Heath Ledger came along, Mark Hamill’s(Yes, Luke Skywalker) Joker was the one everyone held in highest regard. His laughter is still pitch perfect. And Kevin Conroy as Batman is just as great. Just as importantly though, the series actually created two characters that would move on to the comics. Harley Quinn, Joker’s female sidekick, and Renee Montoya, who went on to become The Question.

WHAT’S NEXT- It was just recently announced that a new Batman series would start up, titled Batman: The Brave and The Bold. Inspired by the comic of the sane name, every episode will have Batman teaming up with another DC character. Sounds pretty good right? This show is being pegged for a younger audience, as Batman looks to be taken right of Adam West’s version.

AND THE WINNER IS…

SUPERMAN!

Through his history in television, Superman has had more than double the amount of shows than either Spiderman and Batman. And more than that, most of them have remained pretty damn true to the character. The main reason I had to give him the win was because Superman: The Animated Series created the DC animated universe and that ushered in not only the best Batman cartoons, but also the epic Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.