Carmine Infantino: The TV History
While he's a legend in the comics industry, artist and editor Carmine Infantino, who passed away [...]
While he's a legend in the comics industry, artist and editor Carmine Infantino, who passed away on Thursday, has actually had a number of his characters break through to the mainstream world of television and film. Infantino, who co-created a number of characters over time (including some that were really just re-envisionings of existing DC properties but which are so different from the original iterations that they're widely accepted as new creations), was key in helping make Superman: The Movie a reality in the late '70s, but what of his own creations? What did Infantino bring to life, only to see it head to the screen years later?
The Flash Also featured in Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, obviously, The Flash has appeared in any number of DC-themed animated series (Super Friends, among others) and movies (Justice League: The New Frontier is my favorite, with Neil Patrick Harris playing Barry Allen), The Flash's biggest claim to small-screen fame is a short-lived but fan-favorite 1990 live-action series starring John Wesley Shipp in the title role. That version was arguably the inspiration for things like Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, taking super-powered villains and placing them in a context that's more like what you would see in the comics. We also got a version of the Flash in a 1997 Justice League of America pilot. It was...terrible. The Barbara Gordon Batgirl
Human Target There have been a couple of attempts to make Human Target into a TV series, actually, most recently one that ran for two seasons on Fox earlier in the decade (pictured at right). But back in 1990, pop star Rick Springfield played the role in a TV pilot. That version, while not well-regarded, actually featured a story in which Christopher Chance would do what he did in the comics--impersonate the target of a threat or assassination attempt in order to smoke out the potential killer. The Fox series did away with that and made him someone who assumes any cover identity in the target's life. Deadman Okay--so this one isn't yet a done deal, but it's been optioned and could be going into production if Warners ever gets their act together. Currently in development (and if the show doesn't happen, the character seems like a good candidate for del Toro's Dark Universe), a Deadman TV series seems like a sure thing in the vein of Quantum Leap; the character finds himself shunted into an unfamiliar situation where they have to "help" someone else by becoming them. Black Canary His first DC work as an artist saw Infantino be the first to draw Black Canary, the superheroine whose secret identity currently appears on the hit CW series Arrow as a supporting player. While Infantino's version is the mother of the more popular version of the character, we've seen both Laurel and her mother on the series, so we're going to allow it.
