hello and welcome to comic drake where i
talk about comic books and my name is
drake
there's a really good chance that if
you're already famous you can just move
to any other medium outside of the one
that made you famous in the first place
and you can get relative success off of
your name alone so it's no real surprise
with comic books being this big huge
industry that some people outside of the
comic industry have tried to come in and
make a name for themselves to
various degrees of success so today i
wanted to give you guys a little bit of
an insight into some of the mainstream
celebrities that have come into the
world of comic books and tried to have
some footing in there it's interesting
and there's even some surprising ones so
let's take a look
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cm punk is best known for being a
two-time wwe champion and for his stint
in the ufc but did you know that he
actually has a few noteworthy comic
publications
well he started off with a short and
comedic story at the end of the thor
volume 4 annual in 2014 but that flew
under the radar a year later he hopped
over to dc comics under their vertigo
imprint in order to write another short
story for their strange sports series
but that too went pretty unnoticed it
wouldn't be until another year later
that cm punk would go back to marvel and
be handed the reins of a solo title of
his very own with drax
see the guardians of the galaxy were
pretty obscure until they hit it big in
the marvel cinematic universe and to hop
on this newfound success marvel gave
every single member of the main crew
their own solo title
the 2016 drax series would be the first
time the character has headlined a book
in 11 years and would try to better
match the tone of the books with that of
the movies the end result was
actually pretty good it was a
light-hearted adventure that was pretty
fun to read despite not having any real
lasting impact on the character
i legitimately think that with some time
and experience cm punk turned into a
solid writer and i am seriously stoked
to see what he puts out next
growing up the goosebumps series was
insanely popular around school and i'll
admit that i got into them quite a bit
series creator r.l stein had a couple of
small comic releases under his belt but
nothing too notable that is until march
2017 when stein came over to marvel
comics to bring back one of their
classic horror series the man thing
i typically try to pick up physical
issues of new number ones as soon as
they come out but when stein's man thing
hit store shelves i actually had a hard
time finding it with both of my local
comic shops selling out rather quickly
i totally get it for many people
goosebumps is synonymous with childhood
nostalgia there's just one problem
though
have you actually tried going back and
reading any of those books these days
the writing is terrible and man thing
was sadly no different i suffered
through the five issue miniseries and
what i found was an awkwardly paced and
incoherent mess of a book that wasn't
even so bad it's good in ironic hipster
fashion
seriously the only thing the book had
going for was the quote-unquote star
power from the writer and i'd be
completely okay
with never reading another stein
creation ever again
speaking of childhood i was a big fan of
my chemical romance back in middle
school and by that i mean that i pretty
much
only listened to the black parade album
on repeat
well believe it or not the mcr front man
gerard way is a massive fan of comics
and he even had a two-issue mini-series
of his own called on raven's wings which
was released by the indie publication
boneyard press in 1994 when he was only
15 years old
since then way has created the cult
classic umbrella academy series over at
dark horse comics which actually won the
prestigious eisner award that is no
small feat and is highly respected in
the industry
with that on his resume it's no surprise
that these days way spends most of his
time as a major player in the comic
industry as the head of his own imprint
under dc comics called young animal as
the imprint's main man wei actually gets
involved pretty heavily in the creative
process and writes two series doom
patrol which is one of dc's oldest
properties and is even where we
originally got beast boy and cave carson
has a cybernetic eye which is a revival
of a classic dc adventurer series
young animal has seen great success
supplying readers with unique types of
stories that we usually don't see in the
mainstream space and it is highly
reminiscent of the golden days of dc's
vertigo imprint i'm extremely impressed
and i hope that gerard will continue to
lead the way for new reading experiences
okay this should come as no real
surprise so i'll try to not spend too
long on the subject kevin smith is a
comic book junkie and regardless of if
you love him or hate him i honestly
think that smith has pretty much as much
push in the comic industry as he does in
film
kevin smith has written some great
stories both marvel and dc including one
of my all-time favorite runs in all of
daredevil's history but i'm legitimately
curious as to why both of his passions
haven't converged more frequently i mean
yeah he's directed an episode of the
flash and one of supergirl but the dude
has written for big characters like
batman spider-man daredevil and green
arrow i'm honestly just surprised
regardless smith's heavy involvement in
the comic scene is one of the biggest
that we've seen from celebrities and
he's at least worth giving a bit of
recognition in this video alright so
this might surprise you but samuel l
jackson is really into comics and in
fact it's his regular reading that led
him to discover his likeness being used
for ultimate nick fury back in 2002
which ultimately landed him the role of
nick fury in the marvel cinematic
universe
in fact we did an entire video talking
about the before and after of that
encounter so
i guess you should go watch that
shameless self-promotion aside jackson
co-wrote a comic series in 2010 for boom
studios titled cold space alongside eric
cauldron whom jackson worked with on the
apro samurai movies cold space isn't a
bad book but it's just an uninspired
four issue sci-fi story the main
character mulberry is very clearly
just samuel l jackson in space
who boils down to a lot of the galactic
badass based criminal tropes that we
have seen time and time again the title
looks and reads like it is seriously
just trying to get adapted into a movie
or a tv show but hey at least jackson
was actually trying to present an
original story instead of just cashing
in on his personal brand alone it's like
a lot of celebrities will do
endorsements just to try to get popular
but another good example of someone with
an original story was actually mark
hamill it's nothing new for the comic
industry but some people will actually
write comics to be strictly sold as
screenplays in fact mark hamill got on
this by co-writing a comic that was
originally being pitched around as a
screenplay that he was wanting to direct
called the black pearl
honestly i haven't read this book
because no matter where i've looked i
simply cannot find a copy at any of my
local comic shops it looks like the
publisher dark horse hasn't re-released
black pearl in a good while or even made
it available digitally
from what i've read online the black
pearl starts a character named luther
drake no relation who is a vigilante
that gains some sort of media exposure
after stopping a kidnapping
hamill wanted the series to focus less
on superhero antics and more on quote
sensationalism tabloid journalism and
all the things that thrillers come from
i'd seriously be interested in giving
the series a read if i ever stumble
across a copy in the wild but by no
means am i making it a must find from my
collection because i heard it's frankly
not that great
maybe someday mark hamill will finally
lock down funding to get his pet project
off the ground but after several
attempts it's not looking likely finally
let's move from star wars to star trek
that's right william shatner tried so
hard to be a multimedia icon that not
only did he have that cringe-worthy
music career but he also tried his hand
at being a novelist
here's the thing though shatner's books
weren't even written by him and were
instead created by ghost writers that's
writers not writers
which does actually bring to mind that
it would be interesting for william
shatner to play ghost writer
but i digress the sci-fi novel series
tech war written by shatner was adapted
into tv movies a video game a tv show
and of course comics
now if that wasn't interesting enough
because frankly it really isn't another
one of his books man-o-war was adapted
into a digital comic series after an
indiegogo campaign in 2015. this whole
thing is super baffling so let me just
walk you through it the man of war brand
was licensed by shatner to a company
called lnl partners for a quote
cinematic graphic novel to be read on an
app called panel fly the website of
which is no longer active now get this
the book actually surpassed its campaign
goal of five thousand dollars with 37
backers and it's worth noting that
nearly half of the funding actually came
from a single anonymous backer who
pledged 2
500
to be included as a character in the
book
the videos featured in the campaign were
hosted by a youtube channel that has
deleted its account since and they're no
longer available but here's a snippet of
one that i was able to find
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honestly it just blows my mind that this
project was even made in the first place
and i'm just really fascinated by the
journey that this 1996 book that shatner
had made and i'm just really glad that i
could share this interesting and strange
bit of trivia with you in my experience
most of the celebrities that come in and
try to make comics typically don't do a
very good job but every swampton you do
get one or two that really are
surprising it makes some pretty
interesting books so hopefully this was
educational and hopefully you learned a
little something new in terms of comic
book trivia but of course these videos
would not be possible without all of our
amazing supporters over on patreon
badasses like taylor adams yosh flores
bonnie davies ashley donson billy lewis
and sebastian walker you can see even
more names of our supporters down there
in the description below but if you like
this video then why not consider
subscribing or watching another one you
can learn even more trivia and fun facts
here on the channel and hopefully i'll
see you next time