The Straight 2 Video Chronicles

Comic Book: The Movie

Cast: Mark Hamill, Billy West and Jess Harnell. Special guest appearances are by Bruce Campbell, Stan Lee, Hugh Hefner and Kevin Smith. Hamill wrote and directed the film and designed some of the comic book props and costumes.

Tagline: Hollywood invaded the Comic Book World … Now the real Comic Book Heroes are striking back! Hey, Luke Skywalker, let’s make a pun on the name of one of the Star Wars movies. That’ll make your audience love you, adore you and lavish you with a twenty that could have been spent on anything else.

Plot: Hamill hasn’t found much success outside of Star Wars. But apparently he thinks people want to see him as a flaky, pseudo-gay high school teacher on a mission to save a comic hero from the traps of Hollywood. Big time Tinsel Town producers enlist Don Swan (Hamill) as a creative consultant who doesn’t like the hero’s revamp. Through most of the film, he is followed by a documentary crew at the San Diego Comic Convention while trying to change the studio’s mind.

Obligatory Cheese Scene: At the film’s climax, Hamill dons the foam “Commander Courage” suit and attempts to stop the studio announcing the new project. God help us.

The real moral of this story: It’s not hard to understand why Comic Book went straight to video when you look at all the bonus material — there are two discs filled with extras and a 90-minute feature. The deleted scenes are better than the ones left in the film because almost none of them star Hamill.