Saturday, June 26, 2010

THE KAPITAN AKSIYON COVER GALLERY

Kapitan Aksiyon was the flagship character of Super Action Pocketkomiks, which was first published in 1985. The weekly magazine's pocket-sized format proved so popular at the time that it spawned several spin-offs and imitations, such as Ninja Pocketkomiks, Speed and Pilipino Superheroes.
Super Action was eventually upgraded to a full-sized comic book starting with its 102nd issue (July 28, 1987).
A short-lived Super Action revival ran monthly from 1998-99, but Kapitan Aksiyon himself did not reappear until its 8th issue. No longer the book's main attraction, he alternated with its new star, no less than the premier Filipina superheroine herself, Darna.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

KAPITAN AKSIYON'S FRIENDS AND FOES

After getting acquainted with reporter Gabriel De Dios a.k.a. Kapitan Aksiyon, let's meet the rest of the cast of characters.
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SUPPORTING CAST:
DR. DE DIOS A brilliant scientist and loving father, his lifelong dream of turning man into superman has been fulfilled in the person of his own son. He uses his scientific knowledge to assist Gabriel in his mission when needed. MR. R.S.
Editor and publisher of Morning Star Publications, naturally he wants to get the exclusive scoop on Kapitan Aksiyon. Eventually, he starts to suspect that his star reporter Gabriel may in fact be the mysterious superhero himself.
LANI TURDA
The token love interest. Gabriel's girlfriend and fellow reporter at Morning Star Publications. Determined to figure out Kapitan Aksiyon's secret identity, she doesn't realize (until much later) that she'd already been dating him.
As one might expect, Kap and Lani (hmm...) would have a romantic "can you read my mind" moment of their own.
It's just too bad some big black bird had to go spoil it.
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As it turns out, though, it wasn't just some ordinary big black bird. Which brings us to the first member of Kapitan Aksiyon's rogues' gallery...
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ENEMIES:
BLACK DRAGON
Also known as the Super-Magician, this supernatural Chinese hitman was hired by the city's top crime bosses to eliminate Kapitan Aksiyon. He is a highly-skilled martial artist, but his main power is the ability to assume any form, from man to animal.
Interestingly, not once does Black Dragon ever face Kapitan Aksiyon in human form. In their first encounter (the ruined date with Lani mentioned earlier), he engages Kap in the shape of a huge black eagle...
... and a blazing meteor.
In their second run-in, which also involved Kap's evil alien duplicate (more on him shortly), he appears as a giant mosquito.
Afterwards, he is never seen again. Those gangsters who hired him probably want their money back.
DUPLIKADO (THE DUPLICATE)
Every superhero needs to have an evil doppelganger, and Kapitan Aksiyon's turns out to be his most resilient foe ever.
Following his first skirmish with a super-powered villain (Black Dragon), Gabriel starts to wonder if he might actually have a weak spot. To find out, he sets off into deep space, testing the limits of his powers by slamming himself into planets, asteroids and even the very heart of the sun itself.
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Suddenly, a strong magnetic force pulls him to a strange planet, where he is captured by a race of ant-like aliens...
... who then produce an evil shape-shifting duplicate which they send to Earth in his place. The Duplicate goes on a path of wanton violence and destruction, effectively destroying Kap's good name in the process.
He also goes on a horrific sexual rampage, impregnating women with alien eggs that grow and burst out of their wombs in mere minutes! (And yes, this was a mainstream superhero comic. But don't worry; most of the, uh, more explicit acts pretty much happened off-panel.) The perverse alien impostor then collects the massive eggs, keeping them at the bottom of a swimming pool while waiting for them to finally hatch. .
"I am the Eggman!"
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Eventually, the real Kapitan Aksiyon is able to free himself from his alien captors. Making his way back to Earth, he gets to go one-on-one with his evil twin (with commentary from giant mosquito Black Dragon).
Unfortunately, the Duplicate escapes to fight another day, Black Dragon escapes-- probably to hide from the guys he owes money to, and Kapitan Aksiyon realizes just how badly the Duplicate's reign of terror has ruined his reputation.
Meanwhile, the Duplicate's eggs finally hatch, but the Earth's atmosphere causes the alien hatchlings that emerge to mutate into giant monsters. As the Duplicate commands his children to lay waste to everything in sight, Kapitan Aksiyon tries to stop them. But the creatures emit powerful soundwaves that prevent him from getting close to them.
Kap decides to turn to his father for help, which turns out to be a bad move as the good doctor is just as convinced as everyone else that his son has gone psycho. And it looks like he's about to go psycho himself...
"When good doctors go mad."
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No sooner does Kap knock on their doorstep than he finds himself caged by his own father. Dr. De Dios is just about ready to finish his son off with his new magnetic wave weapon, when Gabriel's girl Lani makes a timely visit, thereby discovering her boyfriend's secret ID. .
Lani is able to prove Gabriel's innocence by showing the doctor a live TV news report of the Duplicate and his monsters leaving a trail of destruction across the city. Freeing his son, Dr. De Dios also fits the earpieces on Kap's cowl with a device that enables him to withstand the monsters' soundwaves.
Kapitan Aksiyon succeeds in destroying the monsters, thus ending their destructive onslaught. The enraged Duplicate reverts to his true form, kidnaps Lani, and lures Kap to a remote island. There, the Duplicate fights Kap by taking the form of a Giant Talking, Flying Wild Boar with Heat Vision!
"When pigs fly. And talk, and grow gigantic, and shoot lasers from their eyes."
The boar appears to perish in a forest fire of his own making, and it seemed that the threat of the Duplicate was finally over. It turns out that the Duplicate had merely assumed another form, that of an enormous man-eating Killer Fog.
The Killer Fog menaces the populace for quite a while, until it is discovered that it can be defeated by bombarding it with water. Once again, it appeared the crisis was over, but the bombardment of water would only instigate another metamorphosis. The creature would soon return, this time as a Big Bloodthirsty Block of Ice!
"wakka-wakka-wakka."
After chomping down on a couple of innocent bystanders, the blood of its victims further transforms the murderous mass of ice into a full-grown Abominable Ice-Man.
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This frigid fiend wreaks quite a bit of havoc until Kapitan Aksiyon finally kicks its ice (ugh, damn you, Batman & Robin) and throws it right into the sun. And this time, there would be no coming back.
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After dealing with that cold-blooded killer, the King of Justice (love that nickname) would contend with an adversary who also happens to be a really hot babe... in every sense of the word.
ELEKTRA
Yet another sexual predator from space, Elektra can be best described as a nympho/pyromaniac; taking psychotic delight, as she does, in making love to men before burning them to a cinder.
Hailing from the planet Fyre, Elektra was once an alien female named Zetra. The women on her homeworld all have green skin, four arms and four breasts (!), but Zetra assumes a more humanoid form upon leaving her planet's atmosphere. On Earth, she appears as a blonde-haired beauty when out seducing men. When in attack mode, she turns into a bald-headed bombshell possessing lightning and fire-based powers. She also seems to have no memory of her previous life.
The memory loss must be contagious, as Kapitan Aksiyon loses his as well after their first fight. Fortunately, he is about to get some help.
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ALLY:
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ZOT
Still suffering from amnesia, Kap flies off into outer space and stops to think at a lonely planetoid. There, he finds a small flickering ball of flame coming towards him.
Surmising that the ball of flame is a sentient being and that it is dying, the amnesiac superhero tries to revive it by blowing super-heated air from his lungs into it. Sure enough, the sputtering fireball comes alive, transfoming into what appears to be a man made entirely out of fire.
The "man of fire" restores Kap's memory in return for saving his life. He introduces himself as Zot, another native of the planet Fyre who has gone into space to search for his missing wife Zetra. On his planet, Zot had green skin, four arms and a third eye on his forehead, but had transmuted into a being of living flame upon exiting Fyre's atmosphere. Kap realizes that Zetra and Elektra may actually be one and the same person. So, after a quick fight with a space creature...
... Kapitan Aksiyon and Zot fly back to Earth to confront Elektra.
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TV ADAPTATION
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Kapitan Aksiyon was never made into a movie, but it was adapted (specifically the Elektra storyline) into an episode of the ABS-CBN television anthology series Komiks. It aired in June 3, 2006 and starred Alfred Vargas as Gabriel/Kapitan Aksiyon, Nikki Gil as Lani, Ronnie Lazaro as Mr. R.S., Juliana Palermo as Elektra, Jhong Hilario as Zot, and Jeffrey Santos as a new shape-shifting villain named Xerox (what is it with Kap and shape-shifters?).
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