Back in the day I owned the role playing game Marvel Super Heroes. Granted, my friends and I didn’t play it exactly by the rules. The rule book and judge’s book were like novels and we just didn’t have time to waste on all the reading. We used some of the rules and created the rest on the fly. We had a lot of fun and more than a few smackdowns which live on in legend. I still have the game, and I recently dug it out of storage, prompted by a new show obsession.
DC Universe All Star Games began airing this past February in weekly installments. It’s a simple set-up: celebrities (Freddie Prinze, Jr., Sam Witwer, Clare Grant, Xavier Woods, and Vanessa Marshall) play DC Heroes, a role playing game from the 1980s. It doesn’t sound like much, or that the show should really be worth watching, but I was hooked from the get-go.
The first season’s adventure is titled The Breakfast League and is an open homage to the John Hughes classic The Breakfast Club. With Sam Witwer as the Game Master and the others filling out the roles of nerd, jock, popular girl, and rebel, the scenario begins in detention and branches out wildly, and creatively, from there. All of the characters, naturally, are more than they admit to being which lends the series another edge of curiosity.
I didn’t expect to like this show, especially not to like it as much as I do. I finally had a chance to finish watching the inaugural season (all six episodes stream on DC Universe) and I really wish there were more. It could be the nostalgia factor that sunk its hooks in me, but the show has more to offer than the instant recall of sweet memories. It truly is entertaining and funny.
I don’t know if the show is enough for you to subscribe to the DC Universe streaming service, but it’s enough to get your money’s worth for the free trial.
Curio Macabre 