While we may appear as one mind (“siamese twins, joined at the brain,” as we used to say, back when that phrase was still considered socially acceptable), there are points where Mowrer’s and my tastes diverge, where one of us will consume any and every piece of culture pertaining to a particular topic, while the other, not so much.

Mowrer’s love of “Finema” has been well-documented, as has his love of classic-monster deconstructionism. And it’s not that I dislike those things in any way – I’ll evangelize Deep Blue Sea as the ultimate shark movie till the day I die – but just as Swamp Thing will never mean as much to Mowrer as it does to me, I grant that he appreciates Nicolas Cage on a much deeper level than I do.

Mowrer is a man who, left to his own devices, will happily watch Next, Knowing, and both Ghost Rider movies in a single sitting, and who longs for a third National Treasure the way some people keep the flame for Ghostbusters III.

(which gives me an idea: Cage as Ivo Shandor. Dan Aykroyd, take heed)

And while I’m not the Cage-o-phile Mowrer might be, I respect any actor who has a deal, as in “what’s his deal”; at the comparatively tender age of 50, Cage joins such august company as Christopher Walken, William Shatner, and the great Kirk Douglas – a unique style of acting, of speaking, of being, that every would-be impressionist tries, but few can successfully pull off. Nicolas Cage isn’t an actor, he’s a genre.



More to the point, given some of the roles he’s known for – a biker with a flaming skull for a head, a clairvoyant with limited abilities, his own fictitious twin brother – why the hell shouldn’t he play, say, a marine biologist with an addiction to painkillers following a shark attack, who is the only one who can stop the Evil Future Sharks?

(Oh yeah, we came up with a whole elevator pitch for this thing as part of the writing of panel 2. The only reason I’m not recounting the whole plot here is because I still hold a distant hope that we can somehow get this thing made, and if that happens I don’t want to spoil the whole thing)

There are a number of reasons, both legal and narrative, why I shouldn’t get my hopes up for a crossover between, say, Superman and Star Blazers, or WKRP In Cincinnati and Howard The Duck. But Nicolas Cage and sharks? That’s just magic waiting to happen.