| Issue 14.07 - July 2006 Subscribe to WIRED magazine and receive a FREE gift! |
I Wanna Be a Hero
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Rants + Raves
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START
- MLB.com levels baseball’s playing field
- The 1,350-hp, jet-turbine Beetle really flies
- Phew! The best apocalyptic near-misses.
- More »
PLAY
- Sufjan Stevens’ avalanche of odes to Illinois
- A mecha makeover for Japanese monster flicks
- Online craft faire – Linux blankie, anyone?
- Meet your next favorite game guru
- More »
POSTS
- Monk ebusiness
- Superheroes go ape for Stan Lee
- Lessig examines Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth
- More »
“Hurry up!” an impatient voice says. “I haven’t got all day.” The order comes from a gray-haired man who appears on a flatscreen television placed in the center of a Hollywood soundstage. A woman wearing a fur bikini and two utility belts stuffed with bananas approaches the TV and stops on a painted red X.
“What’s your name?” the man asks.
“I’m Monkeywoman,” she says, then howls like a primate on crack.
“What are your powers?” he asks.
“Superhigh sonic screeches, climbing, and banana weapons,” she says.
“And your catchphrase?”
“Don’t mess with my bananas.”
Welcome to the first day of auditions for the new SciFi Channel reality show Who Wants to Be a Superhero? That deep voice on the flatscreen belongs to none other than Stan Lee, the 73-year-old creator of such legendary comic book characters as Daredevil, Spider-Man, and the Incredible Hulk. And Monkeywoman is just one of some 250 hopefuls waiting for their shot to impress him. Buster Balloon, aka Don Caldwell, is a vaudeville-style performer who fires deadly military-engineered balloons from his fingertips. Then there’s Slimeball (29-year-old Bradd Fillmann), a pizza-delivery boy made of extraterrestrial ooze that gives him the power to crystallize his body into sharp objects. Fillmann has been perfecting Slimeball’s backstory since he was 17. Today he has painted his entire body green and drawn large, squiggly, purple circles around his eyes. “I’ll look like a jackass any day to meet Stan Lee,” he says.
Earlier that morning, Lee walked the audition line and shook every outstretched hand. “Thank you so much for the Hulk,” one prospective hero said. “You are my god. I love you,” another gushed. Never humble, Lee shot back, “I admire your taste.”
This tryout is just the first step for these super-wannabes. Lee will select 10 contestants to advance to the next round, in which they will take up residence in a secret lair (er, loft in LA) for two weeks and embody their super- personas 24/7. Lee will test them on “the genuine qualities that a superhero should have: integrity, courage, self-sacrifice, and honesty.” All of the drama will be filmed and edited to air when the show debuts July 27.
Back inside the warehouse, Monkeywoman continues to plead her case. Lee asks the real-life opera singer-cum-property investor what her hero’s weaknesses are. “Organ-grinder music,” she replies. “Well,” Lee says finally, “I think you’ve done a lot today for monkeys, wherever they may be.”
– Erin Biba
