I spend way too much time talking about my own projects here on the blog, and definitely way too much time talking about vintage anime, so it's nice to have a topic that's neither of those things. Okay, it is a little bit about me, but we'll come back to that. In the meantime, take a minute to watch the following short trailer. Don't worry, I'll wait.
That was a bit more than a minute, wasn't it? But hey, it's fine, it's not like I've anything better to be doing. Anyway, great trailer, right? Awesome concept, right? You want to watch more, right? Well, you can, right now, for free, because the entire show, in eleven mini-episodes, is available at this link. But hey, this time maybe wait until I've finished the post, huh?
Right. Good. So, that's You Don't Have to be a Superhero to Work Here but It Helps..., and it's the brainchild of my oldest and dearest friend Lawrence Axe, and an endeavour more years in the making than either of us would entirely care to think about: Lawrence because it's always frustrating when you have a fantastic idea that refuses to quite get to the point where you can show it to other people and me because I've been radiating around this project ever since the beginning.
Indeed, for a while I was doing more than that: there's a version of a feature film-length script in existence that I had a hand in, and for a while it looked as though that would be the form that saw the light of day. I love that script with all my heart, but in hindsight, it's right that the version that eventually made it to screens was principally Lawrence's creation: he co-directed the web series that its become along with fellow filmmaker Robbie Gibbon, wrote the bulk of the script, did the editing, and was responsible for a whole bunch of other behind-the-scenes stuff too. And the upshot of that is that its current incarnation is about as unfiltered as any version got; people like me tended to get itchy about his mixing up of heroes and villains and comic book characters with cartoon characters, and to not realise that doing that is just plain funny. I mean, it is; watch the show! It's the perfect combination of affection and disrespect, and if its off-kilter skewering of our childhood nostalgia was a neat idea when Lawrence first had it, it's a downright perfect one now, when we're being fed all the childhood nostalgia we can stomach on a minutely basis.
And let me stress again, it really is funny. The show, I mean, not the endless parade of nostalgia. The funniest bits in the trailer are by no means the funniest bits full stop, I know for a fact that Lawrence picked them largely at random, and could get away with doing so because every minute is crammed to the rafters with great gags and generally amusing weirdness. There were some lines in the treatment I worked on that still crack me up to remember, and obviously it would have been nice for both of us to go to Hollywood and drink margaritas with George Clooney and whatever it is Hollywood people do, but, again, these glorious bite-sized chunks of silliness are the ideal form for You Don't Have to be a Superhero to Work Here but It Helps..., in all its wry dementedness.
And here I am talking it up when you could just as easily be watching it yourself. Go on, now's your chance! Unlike, say, Avengers: Infinity War, you can binge watch all of You Don't Have to be a Superhero to Work Here but It Helps... in a long lunch break, which of course makes it much better. And to save you wasting precious seconds by scrolling all the way back up to the top, here's that link again...
That was a bit more than a minute, wasn't it? But hey, it's fine, it's not like I've anything better to be doing. Anyway, great trailer, right? Awesome concept, right? You want to watch more, right? Well, you can, right now, for free, because the entire show, in eleven mini-episodes, is available at this link. But hey, this time maybe wait until I've finished the post, huh?
Right. Good. So, that's You Don't Have to be a Superhero to Work Here but It Helps..., and it's the brainchild of my oldest and dearest friend Lawrence Axe, and an endeavour more years in the making than either of us would entirely care to think about: Lawrence because it's always frustrating when you have a fantastic idea that refuses to quite get to the point where you can show it to other people and me because I've been radiating around this project ever since the beginning.
Indeed, for a while I was doing more than that: there's a version of a feature film-length script in existence that I had a hand in, and for a while it looked as though that would be the form that saw the light of day. I love that script with all my heart, but in hindsight, it's right that the version that eventually made it to screens was principally Lawrence's creation: he co-directed the web series that its become along with fellow filmmaker Robbie Gibbon, wrote the bulk of the script, did the editing, and was responsible for a whole bunch of other behind-the-scenes stuff too. And the upshot of that is that its current incarnation is about as unfiltered as any version got; people like me tended to get itchy about his mixing up of heroes and villains and comic book characters with cartoon characters, and to not realise that doing that is just plain funny. I mean, it is; watch the show! It's the perfect combination of affection and disrespect, and if its off-kilter skewering of our childhood nostalgia was a neat idea when Lawrence first had it, it's a downright perfect one now, when we're being fed all the childhood nostalgia we can stomach on a minutely basis.
And let me stress again, it really is funny. The show, I mean, not the endless parade of nostalgia. The funniest bits in the trailer are by no means the funniest bits full stop, I know for a fact that Lawrence picked them largely at random, and could get away with doing so because every minute is crammed to the rafters with great gags and generally amusing weirdness. There were some lines in the treatment I worked on that still crack me up to remember, and obviously it would have been nice for both of us to go to Hollywood and drink margaritas with George Clooney and whatever it is Hollywood people do, but, again, these glorious bite-sized chunks of silliness are the ideal form for You Don't Have to be a Superhero to Work Here but It Helps..., in all its wry dementedness.
And here I am talking it up when you could just as easily be watching it yourself. Go on, now's your chance! Unlike, say, Avengers: Infinity War, you can binge watch all of You Don't Have to be a Superhero to Work Here but It Helps... in a long lunch break, which of course makes it much better. And to save you wasting precious seconds by scrolling all the way back up to the top, here's that link again...
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