With his musical drama series Viva Laughlin going great guns on CBS, it appears that Hugh Jackman is preparing to conquer yet another medium: comic books (or, as Grandma Smith used to call ’em, “Illustrated Prurience”). And if you’re thinking he already left his mighty mushroom bruise on those colorful, corrupting tomes with his indelible portrayal of Wolverine in the X-Men movies, well, this just confirms my suspicion that you’re don’t know shit about shit.
While I’m sure Jackman really loves graphic novels and has dreamt of creating his very own superhero since he was a kid memorizing the Peter Allen songbook… the premise of Nowhere Man, which he’ll flesh out with Flash scribe Marc Guggenheim, sounds awfully uninspired. According to Variety, “the concept is a futuristic world where mankind has traded privacy for safety, freedom for servitude and Chris Paul for the Memphis Grizzlies’ 2019 first round draft pick.” Where the hell did that fence board come from, and why did it just hit me in the ass?
If Nowhere Man sounds derivative, that’s because it is: Jackman’s production partner, John Palermo, claims their protagonist will be very similar to Will Smith’s character in I Am Legend (I don’t recall the right to privacy factoring into that film’s narrative, but whatever). Of course, the creation of Nowhere Man is but prelude to the inevitable big-screen adaptation, which, I’m guessing, probably won’t require Jackman to smoke cheap cigars for months and grow his hair all funny (though he’s just got to belt out “I Go to Rio” at least once).
Nowhere Man will be published by Virgin Comics.