The Guardian Project

Leave it to the NHL to have a perfectly good product and no idea how to market it, then do everything wrong in the process - from crappy slogans (''The coolest game on ice!'') to expansion in no-win markets to centering all ads and marketing towards Sidney Crosby, the third, fourth or tenth best player in the league, depending on who you ask.

This time, they've taken a lame idea the NFL refused to partake in and cheesed it up even more. The idea? To have a brand-new superhero comics project (in an age where comic readers are veering away from superhero stories) involving ''new'' heroes from each town that has an NHL city, each hero bearing the team's colours and name of team as character name, for example The Penguin in the city where the Pittsburgh Penguins play.

If it was just that, it'd be bad enough.

Unfortunately for all involved, the NHL got the brilliant idea of getting Stan Lee on board - the creator of Spider-Man, the X-Men, Hulk, and nothing new or original since the 1970s. Even his old stuff are pretty much copies of one another: all the good guys having first and last names that start with the same letter, an event that gives them superpowers, and a Life Lesson as obvious as the sun to teach him that ''with great powers come great responsibilities''.

This time around, ol' Stan decided to use Wikipedia to find stuff out about each city and incorporate that into the character (There are French people in Montréal? Really? Let's have The Canadien speak some of it at the end of every third sentence, and let's not bother to check for spelling) and, cheesiest of all, each hero sports an NHL belt and their hometown team's logo on their chest. Yes, I know, the days of a superhero with a logo on his chest have been over since Batman (created in 1939), Superman (created in 1932, first appeared in 1938), Captain America (1941) and The Punisher (1974).

And that's just the beginning. Before any one hero was released. As they were, many comic book fans realized very few of these new superheroes were, indeed, new; they were all rehashes of something that already exists (The Canadien is nothing more than Iron Man with Cobra Commander's helmet) or just plain copies (The Panther is exactly like Marvel Comics' Black Panther, Marvel being the company Stan The Man is CEO of... this website breaks it down very well.

They keep saying hockey fans are ''purists'' who don't like change; this time, they've added that not only do these have nothing to do with hockey, but adults aren't the target audience, ''boys and girls, aged 9 to 14'' are... except none of the heroes appear to be girls, for one, and two, why wouldn't those kids be better off with the actual heroes (Wolverine, Batman, Iron Man, Thing)? And are we trying to make our kids retarded by giving them Stan Lee-type storylines?

I sincerely hope everyone involved loses all their money in this stupid project. If the comics company can go bankrupt and it can reflect on Gary Bettman at the same time, it will have been for the best. Can you believe Bettman, just a few years ago, had Todd McFarlane as part-owner of the Edmonton Oilers... uh, hello? Comics, as an art form, has evolved a lot since the 40s (Stan Lee's time), 60s (Robert Crumb's time), and even 90s (McFarlane's time). One of those three is deceased, one remains relevant today, and the other is a relic that only Kevin Smith still pays attention to - and even that is clearly just out of respect.

To be fair, here is the link to the people in charge of the Guardian Project defending their idea and where it's headed, albeit very poorly.