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The summer of 2008 gave comic book fans quite a treat. We had the phenomenal Iron Man, well directed, well acted and a great suit. And even a tease for things to come. The Incredible Hulk promised to give the Hulk a shot at becoming a franchise worthy of repeat appearances, and delivered the kind of spectacular battle scene I want to see in the next Superman flick. There was WANTED, that I never saw, but heard good things about (I still would have preferred them to stick with the source material, if for no other reason than to make all the comic book in-jokes work on screen).
Then, there's Hancock. I don't know about anyone else, but I saw potential in Hancock. I liked the character, because I like flawed heroes. As the story developed, we got to see that he was more than just an angry, self-destructive drunk with super-powers. He's got the strength, speed and invulnerability thing going and he can fly. Everything you need to be a really GREAT hero, and he's damaged, which is what you need to make him a great character.
With the great heroes, behind everything else, there is loss. Superman lost his homeworld and all that implies, Batman lost his family and his innocence, Spider-Man lost Uncle Ben. Hancock lost his memory.
We learn that he's a lot older than he looks. He was famous for a short time, nearly 80 years ago, when he miraculously healed from a severe head injury. Soon after, he discovered he had super-human powers and believed for all this time that it was some kind of freak result of his injury. But, the hurt was deeper than that. While he was in the hospital, no one came looking for him. This line says it all.
Hancock: "I gotta wonder what a kind of a bastard I must have been, that nobody was there to claim me. I mean, I am not the most charming guy in the world, so I've been told, but... nobody?"
Later, we learn there's more to the story. He wasn't alone when he was injured, his wife was with him. We learn that they are both superhumans, immortals, but that proximity to each other causes their power to fade. The longer they're together, the more mortal they get, until they can be killed. Hancock, we never learn his true name, was in just such a weakened state when he and his wife were attacked by men in an alley. He was hurt bad and would have died, she left to allow his power to return and heal him, and when his memory never returned, she took the opportunity start a new life, several, I'd guess, since she doesn't get any older. When someone asks him for his "John Hancock", he mistakes it for his own name.
Now living in Los Angeles, her name is Mary Embrey and she's married to a mortal named Ray, who helps Hancock reform and rehabilitate his image. It seems, too, that Mary is stronger than Hancock. Possibly with powers he doesn't possess or doesn't know about, she seems to have some weather control in her. When they get to the point of discussing their history, we learn that their kind are "made in pairs" and that they are drawn to each other, but not "fated" to be together. In the end, she remains with Ray and his son Aaron.
In the end, Hancock moves to New York and picked up an eagle, somewhere along the way. He's a crime-fighter in the traditional sense, in the city where more superheroes have been based than any other. And, if that were the whole story, you could make a pretty credible and entertaining television series based on it.
But wait, there's more.
We learned from Mary that they've been around for around 3000 years. They've been called gods and angels, at various times, and there were others of their kind, in the past.
The potential is great for back-story development. I thought of how the Highlander TV series added to the Highlander mythos in ways that the movie sequels never seemed to manage.
So, the first thing I thought of was, who says Mary's right and all the other superhumans are gone? What if there were others who survived into our era and kept hidden, as she did? But, since I want this to be about Hancock, let's assume they're all dead, by this time. Dead, but not gone, in a sense.
Enter the arch-villain.
What if you knew there were immortals on Earth? What if you're a megalomaniacal paranoid who's in the right place at the right time? It's 1947, your name is Simon Esteban and you're a captain in U.S. Army Intelligence. Your team is one of those dispatched to Roswell, NM on that fateful day, the day of the crash. You find wreckage and bodies. You find technology that is centuries ahead of your own. Not all of the bodies are alien. There's a man, dead, his body burned and torn. And, there's a woman, she's hurt, bad, with her mate dead, she is beginning to heal, but her brain is so badly damaged that she will never recover. You take everything you can gather and fly it out of Roswell to an undisclosed location in Utah. Deep under the desert is the Dungeon. Esteban has been building a little empire of his own, funneling money and technology to the Dungeon for his own purposes. The aliens? We'll learn more about them, later. They are NOT, I repeat, NOT, the creators of the supers. They might be bad guys.
My take on the big-head, big eye gray type aliens.
So, you have a brain-dead female superhuman (wait, doesn't that describe most super-heroines? ouch, couldn't resist it, misogyny mode-deactivated), you have access to alien technology and you have the knowledge that the woman is both super-normal and seems to be able to heal all but the most traumatic injuries. Well, alien tech is tricky, you need to understand the theory behind some of it to learn how to use it and it takes more than 30 years to make any real progress.
One of your evil scientists has an idea, harvest the super-woman's eggs and inseminate some of them and see what happens. Most fail, but once in awhile, they get a viable zygote. A hybrid of baseline and superhuman. Some powers, not on the level of the natural superhumans, but still quite impressive. And, we know that Hancock and Mary are a little...unstable...so mightn't the Hybrids be, as well? You get some monsters, too, just for fun.
One of those "monsters" is Lynx. Lynx has retractable claws in his fingers and toes and some cat-like facial features. He looks a little like Vincent, from the "Beauty and the Beast" TV series, but with short hair and he's a bounty hunter. And not such a nice guy, though not a bad guy, in the strictest sense.
Esteban lost Lynx, somehow, back in the 1980s.
Esteban's supers are more conventional. Among the oldest is Crusher, a strongman who amplifies his strength and endurance with steroids and performance enhancing chemicals. At max strength, he's a close match for Hancock, but he's not as tough and he's a lot more "ragey".
Fuego is a female martial artist with flaming extremities. She may also have a little super-speed in her, as well. She has to wear special gloves and boots to douse her flames, otherwise they burn all the time. It's especially tricky when she's eating and such. "Water features" figure prominently in her home decor.
And Fling, whose telekinetic powers make her the girl most likely to rip the Moon from its orbit. She's got issues. Think, Jean Grey if her father had been an abusive drunk and Prof. X had been an obsessive megalomaniac with unlimited resources and a penchant for torture. (wait, that does sound eerily close to Prof. X doesn't it, putting kids into the "Danger Room" and invading their minds, hmmm)
But, Esteban won't be the only source of trouble for Hancock. I figure that the gov't would want to get involved, as well. Harold J. Standish is a special agent with the Office of Scientific Intelligence, I think of his as equal parts Fox Mulder from "X-Files" and Milton Dammers from "The Frighteners". Standish is a believer, he's also a dogged investigator and he knows a lot about a lot of things. He might even know how to kill a full-powered immortal.
And then there's an old man, with vaguely Asian features, who lives on the beach in Florida. He's a bit of a hermit and he may, or may not, be one of Hancock's ancestors. Everyone calls him The Elder. He has a wicked sense of humor and an infallible bullshit detector.
There's the Grigori Society. A secret society that's been around, according to them, since the end of the last ice age. They take their name from the choir of angels, the Grigori, called the Watchers. You didn't think I was gonna recycle that term, again, did you? It has been the Grigori, throughout history, who have "mythologized" the stories about the immortals. It is their belief that humanity needs to develop without intervention from the super-normals. They are not necessarily well-intentioned. They may have been involved in eliminating many of the immortals in the past.
And lastly, there are the kids . Twelve of them, because in most mythologies there are twelve gods in the pantheon, usually with a thirteenth who is something of an outsider. They are simply twelve extraordinarily gifted children who may be the next step in human evolution, or who may be the next crop of immortals. Esteban doesn't know about them, but the Grigori have uncovered hints about their existence and Standish's sources have him on the trail.
As a television series, the story would be about Hancock and the people whose lives he touches. It would be about his recovery and working the steps, trying to make amends for his decades of anti-social behavior. They'd be about him helping people, and people helping him. He's reconnecting with humanity.
Visually, he wears the movie costume a lot. Maybe with a bit of design change to make it more comfortable, it looks a bit "binding", also it might be hot. I didn't do any design work on it, I tried to stay as close as possible to the stills I could find of the movie costume. The design could be sleeker and I'm a fan of boots, but this still works. It does resemble the leather X-Men costumes, which is referenced in the movie by a criminal, so some cosmetic alterations might be in order, just to make it more distinctive. I think Mary and Ray would show up, once in awhile, but being on the other coast would make them only rare guest appearances. Plus, Mary is Hancock's kryptonite, so it's best to keep them apart.
As well as the humor and the action, there's the history to develop. Who was Hancock in his previous life? Who was he, back in the age of gods and demigods? What enemies might lurk in the hidden places of the Earth, waiting for a chance at vengeance? There's a potential for variety, for telling human stories and big, damn adventure stories. There are the small stories, saving one person from danger, and there's the chance for big stories, leading up to big story arcs.
In the first season, I see a beginning story arc, The Hero Thing, where we learn what it is to be a hero in this world, in this setting. I'd want an episode or two showing some of his life before the events seen in the movie, like "What did you do in the war, Hancock?", is it possible that Hancock helped win WWII? Could he possibly have inspired two boys in Cleveland to create the best-known super-hero in the world? And then, WHAM, have him run headlong into Esteban's supers. He's had it easy, dealing with normal criminals and the occasional criminal mastermind.
Mad scientists, super-villains, and a mysterious past, all juicy story-generating stuff. Okay, Hollywood, here it is, if you use it, just gimme a mention in the credits, etc. I really think it has the potential to be a hit TV show.
Laters...
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Copyright © 2009 Joe Singleton
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