MALIBU COMICS: Nightman

MALIBU COMIC IN THE MEDIA

Night Man is an American action/adventure/sci-fi series that aired in syndication from September 15, 1997 to May 17, 1999. The series is loosely based on a comic book published by Malibu Comics and was created by Steve Englehart (the original comic title was The Night Man) and developed for television by Glen A. Larson.

It stars Matt McColm as the title character, a superhero whose real name was Johnny Domino, a saxophonist. Englehart would write three episodes of the series. Night Man is also one of the few series to cross over with characters from Larson's previous series: in the episode "Manimal", Johnny allies with Professor Jonathan Chase, the star of the short-lived 1980s' series Manimal.

BIO:
Johnny Domino is a well-known San Franciscan jazz musician who is accidentally struck by a lightning bolt in a freak cable-car accident. The strike allows him to telepathically recognize evil but robs him of the ability to sleep. Although Night Man has no other superhuman powers of his own, he owns a special bulletproof bodysuit that gives him several abilities, including flight, holographic camouflage-style invisibility and advanced sight functions through the round red lens over his left eye including the ability to see in the dark and fire a laser beam. Although he often fights new enemies in each episode as the series progresses, his nemesis is computer technologies billionaire Kieran Keyes (Kim Coates), who would slay Johnny's father, Frank Domino, in the premiere of the second and final season.

EPISODES:
^ The episode "Hitchhiker" S1 E19 was adapted from the TV series "The Highwayman", from the episode "The Hitchhiker". Most of the original footage from that episode was reused for this one.

MANIMAL:
Manimal is an American action–adventure series that ran from September 30 to December 17, 1983 on NBC. The show centers on the character Dr. Jonathan Chase (Simon MacCorkindale), a shape-shifting man who possessed the ability to turn himself into any animal he chose. He used this ability to help the police solve crimes. ^ In this episode (Breath of Dragon) Walter Nebicher from Automan can be seen walking outside a Chinese restaurant. Both Manimal and Automan were filmed back-to-back with the same scene, at a different angle, appearing in an episode of Automan.

AUTOMAN:
Automan (the "Automatic Man") follows the adventures of a police officer and computer programmer named Walter Nebicher (Desi Arnaz, Jr.), who had created an artificially intelligent crime fighting program that generated a hologram (Chuck Wagner) able to leave the computer world at night and fight crime.

While in the real world, Automan posed as a government agent by the name of "Otto J. Mann." This was a secret to all except Walter's close associate, Roxanne Caldwell (Heather McNair).

Nebicher could merge with Automan to become one being, sharing consciousness and skills, while retaining Automan's invulnerability.

Cursor was his sidekick, a floating, shifting polyhedron which could "draw" and generate physical objects as needed. The most common forms taken were a car (the Auto Car), an airplane, and a helicopter, all of which could defy the laws of physics.

The show also starred Robert Lansing as Lieutenant Jack Curtis and Gerald S. O'Loughlin as Captain of Detectives E. G. Boyd, both Walter's superiors. Both believed Automan was a friend of Walter's from the FBI. Captain Boyd, a technophobe who had no use for computers, often held up Lieutenant Curtis as the kind of cop he was convinced was the ideal for police – an ideal to which he believed Walter could never rise.

HIGHWAYMAN:
The Highwayman is an American action-adventure themed television series starring Sam J. Jones, set in "the  near future." It was created by Glen A. Larson and Douglas Heyes. The pilot aired in September 1987, and was followed by a short-lived series of nine episodes, with significant changes to the cast and format, that ran from March until May 1988. It was summed up by many reviewers as a cross between Mad Max and Knight Rider. ^ The episode "Hitchhiker" S1 E19 was adapted from the TV series "The Highwayman", from the episode "The Hitchhiker". Most of the original footage from that episode was reused for this one.