Who would you put on your updated League?

A friend brought up this question at dinner the other night, so I figured it’d be fun to toss the idea out here.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the book, not the piece of shit movie) was a great idea, mixing together a bunch of classic Victorian era characters together into one team. So, if evil were to rear it’s ugly head today, and you were able to put together a team of five of today’s pop-culture characters together to be heroes, who would you choose? My picks:

Indiana Jones: Skilled with a whip and a pistol and possessing an incredible amount of knowledge of the occult, this archeology professor would be a great addition and wonderful leader, in my mind. Sure, he may be getting along in years, but with all his odd adventures, I’m sure some explaination could be created to help keep him faily young for a modern day adventure (he is kinda immortal, right?). Even so, Quartermain was an old fart when he joined the team, and he proved himself well…the two are essentially different sides of the same coin, so it’s only fitting.

Ash: Sure, he’s a dumbass, but he’s one of my favorite characters, and face it…the bastard’s invincible! Okay, not really, but how many times should this guy have died and yet walked away? He’s one tough cookie, and seeing as how it seems he finally got over the whole “everybody but me tends to die” syndrome he suffered from the first two Evil Dead movies, I’m sure he’d fit in nicely.

The Million Dollar Man: Well, every team needs a power hitter for the occassional impromtue escape hatch threw a brick wall, and although I’m sure his implants are in serious need of an update by now, I’m sure he’s still as strong as ever.

Willow: There needs to be at least one woman on the team, and what better place to find one than from Buffy? Still, we’ve got enough people that can just beat the shit out of the enemy, so who needs a slayer? A witch, on the other hand, would prove to be rather useful.

James Bond: He’s the world’s greatest secret agent, and has defeated pretty much every kind of crazed, world hungry madman out there, so where would a team designed to fight evil be without him? Of course, this is all assuming that Q is still going to be on hand to dish out the lovely little toys (Cpt. Nemo had all his engineers, I don’t see why not). Still, if for some reason the two don’t come as a packaged deal, I’d pick Q then. There are plenty of people who can use his gadgets, so sacrificing one more for the actual inventor would be a much better trade in my mind. Still, it wouldn’t be so bad to have his good buddy along with him, knowwhatImean.

Good choices, but I’m not sure how effective The Six Million Dollar Man is going to be if they repo-ed five million in enhancements.

Add Duncan McCloud to the list. He is close to immortal and good with a sword. He also has a lot of experience to fall back on.

The team needs a cosmopolitan touch- maybe an urban hero.

Shaft?

Good question. Here’s my team:

Captain Kirk: 3 words: Flying leg kicks. He’s the leader.
Jack Ryan: The guy from the Tom Clancy novels. I would assume the government would want an operative involved to keep things on the up and up. He’s the brains of the operation. Lots of contacts, and access to technology.
Spider-man: Because he can do whatever a spider can.
RoboCop: He and Spiderman would be sort of a yin-yang of violence thing.
Trinity: The token girl should kick ass. Trinity does so.

Do I need to mention Batman? Originated as a Pulpish character, to boot.

Oh, I know:

That kid in the 2nd X-Men movie who could change the channels on a TV set by blinking his eyes. What villain could possibly stand against him?

Hey, good challenge. I’m going to limit myself to movie/tv characters, from movies set in the present day (or thereabouts). And I’m going to avoid any previous choices, cool though they are.

Buckaroo Banzai. Because he’s cool. Crimefighter, neurosurgeon, musician. The leader.

John McClane. Functionally invulnerable badass cop. Every team needs a brick.

Dangit, Hugh Jass, you stole James Tiberius Kirk. Okay, I’ll take Mr. (not Dr.) Spock. Smartest guy in StarFleet. Minor mental powers, too. This is the early uniformed version, not the later robe-wearing ancient one. And yes, I am cheating on “present day” but they did come back to this time period in one movie. So there.

Egg Shen, from Big Trouble in Little China. When the bad stuff goes down, you want a sorceror on your side.

El Mariachi. When the bad stuff goes down, you also want a guy with a bag full of guns.

Carmen and Juni Cortez. Somebody has to bring the gadgets.

Stretching the concept slightly - a couple of these are fairly venerable, but even they’ve had newish stories done more recently than Indy, and are as legendary, if not with the same set, so I feel justified - I’ve got a set that could include Indy at his prime. (Which is also stretching the concept a bit, too, I guess. Heh.)

The Spirit (by Will Eisner)
The Shadow
The Phantom (The Ghost Who Walks, not …Of the Opera.)
Indy
As the Token Girl AND the Mechanist: Audrey Ramirez (from Disney’s Atlantis)

No one’s mentioned Superman yet? Come on, folks. :rolleyes:

I’d add Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern.

Heck, the Justice League of America is really all you need to fill the bill.

Duncan McLeod is a good choice. He could be on my team anytime! :smiley:

Alucard from the anime Hellsing.

Hurry, hurry, HURRY!!!

I would select Celine Dion, primarily in the hopes that she would be killed in action, but also because she’d be able to take a few of the bad guys with her by using her lethal singing voice.

Hey! You! Get off of McLeod!

Shhhh! Do you want to start another war with Canada?

With the OP’s permission, a few ground rules ought to be established, to bring the exercise more in line with the source material. For starters, an updated League needs to consist of members who are supposed to be alive today, plus or minus a decade or so for artistic liscense. Captain Kirk is ineligible, because he’s not going to be born for another three or four centuries. Secondly, they need to come from stories that are ostensibly set in the “real” world. So Superman is out, because he comes from a world where people with superpowers and tacky spandex costumes are commonplace. But, one could argue for the inclusion of the original '30s Superman, who was a unique entity in an otherwise normal world, and mostly fought gangsters and bank robbers. This also helps distinguish the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen from the Justice League, or the X-Men, or any other standard superhero team-up.

So, here are my suggestions:

The Reverend Jesse Custer, from the Preacher comic books. He no longer has the Word of God, but he is still the toughest, orneriest sumbitch this side of the Rio Grande. If you include the ghost of John Wayne, he counts as a twofer.

Indiana Jones, as previously mentioned. He would be very elderly by now: after all, he was a college professor in the '30s. (Remember, all three movies take place before WWII: he must be almost a hundred by 2004.) Never the less, he is still surprisingly spry, thanks to that gulp he took from the Holy Grail. Besides, he’s in the team because of his extensive experience with paranormal archaeology, not for his skills with a bullwhip. He’d be the brains of the new League. Or, at least, the Giles.

Fox Mulder, ex-FBI, now involved in yet another shadowy conspiracy. A talented investigator, a natural lateral thinker, knowledgable about both the supernatural and extraterrestrials, and who has numerous connections in American law enforcement. In a pinch, Dana Sculley would be a workable substitute.

Hagbard Celine, from The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Because it wouldn’t be the League without a rogue submarine commander.

Herbert West: Reanimator. The League’s medical specialist. Also, the character who’s clearly too dangerously insane to be in a group like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which, properly, should be at least half the members of the League, but he’s the best I can come up with on short notice) To be clear, I’m refering to the movie West, who would still be reasonably young, and not the West from Lovecraft’s story, who would be older than Indiana Jones.

The Punisher. Technically a super"hero" and part of the Marvel universe continuity, and as such a violation of my second rule, but the character himself is just a extremely talented psychotic ex-marine with a lot of guns. All the crossover stuff with Spiderman and Daredevil and Archie could be effectively ignored in this incarnation. Plus, he helps bring up the teams “dangerous lunatic” quotient.

That’s all I can think of right now. Ought to have somebody in there with magical experience, but I can’t think of anyone cooler than Willow, and I don’t want to repeat too many of the OP’s picks.

  1. Indiana Jones. the first person named and absolutely the greatest hero in movie history. He’s tough, he’d educated, he thinks on his feet, and he’s capable of being the Leading Man. Sign him up.

  2. Shaft. Steelerphan, you are so right. Gives the team some soul AND some sex appeal. Can you dig it?

  3. Jackie Chan. (I don’t remember any of his character’s names but they’re all JAckie Chan anyway.) You need some martial arts wizardry, and he brings the comic relief, too (which is why he nosed out Bruce Lee.) Jackie Chan can kick a lot of ass AND make the audience laugh.

  4. MacGyver. C’mon, you need a tech geek, a team sapper, doncha?

  5. Trinity. You betcha. Sex appeal, can kick ass, but also has tech skillz.

Honorable Mention: Lt. Ellen Ripley, who kicked so much ass in “Aliens,” the movie industry had to import extra asses from overseas to make up for the shortage in asses after she’d kicked them all. But I already have Trinity.

Honorable Mention #2: The sword-wielding chicks from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

Or, we could do what I did, and shift the time period away from today and just make sure all the members would be contemporaries, or at least could be, if you assumed they lived a reasonably long life.

That said, you put Herbert West in my mind, and I think he’d fit better in my set than Indy. Spirit more or less fills the role Indy would, and, although Dr Jones has some specialised knowledge the others wouldn’t, they could go elsewhere for it. Hell, Milo probably owes Audrey some favours.

Avoiding anyone with super-powers (so no Matrix characters either)…

Jack Bauer from 24, for strategy, experience, and cold-blooded badassery.
Buckaroo Banzai, definitely for a well-rounded, well-respected leader.
Vic Mackey from The Shield, as the loose cannon who gets results, although he has an agenda of his own.
Tyler Durden for resourcefulness, recruiting, and demolitions… and he probably has an agenda of his own too.
The Bride from Kill Bill, for sheer intensity and prowess in swordfighting and martial arts .
Indiana Jones, the “go-to” guy who is good at everything, from deciphering ancient languages to cracking skulls.
Ash, for extreme acts of violence against the forces of evil, a nearly-superhuman healing factor, and catch-phrases galore.

OK, I’ll play by these rules. How about

Mr. Wolf, the take-no-shit, calm-under-pressure fixer from Pulp Fiction.

Lara Croft, for the guns, a bit of familiarity with the occult and because every team should have a Brit.

David Dunn, the strong, nearly indestructible character played by Bruce Willis in Unbreakable.

Darkman, for his scientific know-how and mastery of disguise

Blade, because black half-vampire swordsmen are cool.

Carrie. Unstable telekinetic prom queens add ooomph to any party!

I could go on and on, but I think that team would be a good size with a good mix of brains, brawn, magic and mojo.

Already happened.