Caliburn24 with exclusive from the Long Beach Comic Con with the cast of “Save the Supers” which you could probably guess from the article’s title.
“Save the Supers” is a web series available on My Damn Channel and You Tube. The series began with Issue #1: “The Super Force Versus The Bottom Line.” The season finale concluded with Issue #7: “The Super Force vs. The End.” The series was created by Sandeep Parikh. Sandeep writes the show along with Ben Benjamin. It has strong language content and humor with super heroes thrown into the real world. The leader of the group, Super Force, is Merman played by Sandeep Parikh. He is one of the merfolk with super swimming and aquatic telepathy. Mickey Hawtrey plays World Man, an alien described as a “man whore” with laser vision, super strength, and flight. The super human with super speed, Fleet Foot, is played by Jordan Black. The beautiful Mandell Maughan plays Elementra, a goddess with wind elemental powers and the “breath of truth.” The one human is Night Knight, played by Max Bird-Ridnell, an armored human who wants to make a DNA soup out of the heroes and place it in a female, someone like Elementra. Also, there is Morph Man who really is objects most of the time and an alcoholic so the vomiting lamp appears in one episode.
The “Save the Supers” panel was on Saturday at the Long Beach Comic Con. Sandeep started the panel, “This has been my baby for a long time. When I first moved out to L.A. in 2004, this was the first thing that I wrote. I feel in love with the British version of the Office. I loved super heroes and I thought what if I married the two sensibilities of The Office and the super hero world, and the ideas came flowing out and I wrote that in 2004. I shot the pilot with Mickey (Hawktrey) as World Man. It was the first thing that I ever did and it was decent, it was good, it had its moments.” Mickey Hawtrey replied, “World Man’s color scheme was orange and blue, not blue and orange, everything else was the same.”
Mandell Maughn discussed her joining the show and the atmosphere of the filming, “What drew me to the project originally the writing in the original script was hilarious, that’s why I wanted to be a part of the project. I would say like any set you’re there for several hours this set happened to be a lot of fun because we really became like a family because it was 15 hours a day for eight days a row.”
All of the cast was gracious in granting an interview after a long day at the convention and tolerating all of the recording mishaps in an interview. Sandeep was posed the question about Save the Supers as a comic book. “In the back of my mind, I would love to do comics. I got to write a comic for The Guild (The Guild: Zaboo #1 with art by Becky Cloonan) and that was a great experience, working with Scott Allie (editor for Dark Horse Comics), and it was awesome. I would love to do that. For me, the comic book experience has to be something very unique, I can’t take the show and throw it into a comic. Really, it’s going to come down to the fact that like if I’m building the world out more for a second season then I can see doing that for a comic book.”
Mickey Hawtrey described his character on the show, “World Man is just the kindest soul. He just cares about the world that’s why his name is World Man.” A comment made by Ben Benjamin, the show’s writer, that World Man is not even remotely a generous lover, brought a comment by Mickey, “That’s your assumption and when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of an umption.” Mandell discussed her character, “Well, people being into ladies, Elementra is the only lady. So we cover that audience.” Jordan talked about the appeal of the show, “People are familiar with all of the archetypes from the different comic book characters that we represent. It’s kind of like seeing the behind the scenes of that world. Batman behind the scenes. Superman behind the scenes. Everything is not normal.”
Sandeep talked about his character, “Merman is the aquatic hero. He has very specific powers that are only useful when the ocean is involved. There’s not a lot of crime that goes on in the ocean. What Ben and did with the character, rather than make him this useless merman, we decided he would be the leader of this team. He believes in the team, he believes in what we stand for, and yes he is not always in the limelight, not well used, but he uses his mental abilities to do the paperwork and the taxes.” Mickey added (Wonder Man style), “Yeah, but isn’t that what Quickens for? You were really helpful with the BP oil leak. You were the one who said put golf balls down there.” Sandeep replied, “Golf balls were Meman’s idea. They’re filling up the ponds at a golf resort.”
Max discussed why viewers would like the show, “It’s a really funny show and there’s hot girls.” He’s corrected by Mandell and adds, “One hot girl wearing virtually nothing and one hot guy (pointing to himself)-“ and he’s cut off by Mickey who remarks, “One hot guy?” Max continued, “It’s funny, it has sex and violence, I don’t think it has any deep philosophy or meaning, it’s just fun. It’s just sex and violence and funny. That’s awesome.” Sandeep finished the interview by explaining why viewers should watch “Save the Supers”; “The real reason you should watch; you love super heroes and you love comedy. This is a great show that has both of those things in it. It also has Seth Green in it and really that’s it. So all that other stuff is just bs.” Here’s a vote on this election day to Save the Supers for another season.