'Captain Alpha Male' Debuts, Peppered Beards Rejoice

Captain Alpha Male premieres today and I haven’t seen a middle-aged man with these kind of cat-like reflexes since Patrick Roy. But woe be the peppered beards of the world without a such an icon still in the game. But at least they have this guy.

Captain Alpha Male (Jay Lutsky) is stuck in middle management at a superhero bureaucracy dubbed The Agency, full of one-off heros of dubious powers. There’s a nod to Watchmen in this series, hinting at better days for the Agency back when good was good and so forth. The aging CEO, The Lord of All Good, is plotting his retirement and grooming his successor.

Captain is a throwback, trapped in the belief that his hegemonic masculinity makes him the obvious and only choice to replace Lord of All Good as top dog the Agency. When the position seems to be going to a striking (and younger) female hero, Super Sugar, it’s the setup for a steamy rivalry of potential subordinates.

In the the first episode, the office of superheroes under the Captain aren’t too keen on his new management policies. The first episode introduces a few of these unlikely avengers like hygienically deficient Nitgrogen Man and old man Cyclone, who’s ability to replicate any object is pretty rad.

The web series was created by Lutsky, Ric Serena and Dan Greenberger, who developed the scripted web series after a number of short vlog-style videos found love on Revver. The 36 low-fi videos (The Hero Chronicles) had Lutsky in character as Captain Alpha Male ranting about his latest assignment or gripe du jour. You can still watch them, and I have to say the Iron Man one is a must. Lutsky says he is still posting new mini-episodes like these including the latest one, The Mime Fiasco, as a bonus between the longer narrative episodes.

In our interview last month with Lutsky, he mentioned that the series is firmly an indie and like many web series, looking for a sponsor or distributor to keep it going.

We, the cast and crew have full time jobs so it was truly a labor of love. Everyone worked for deferred payments on nights and weekends and some day, night or weekend we really, really hope to pay everyone! We are looking for sponsors to keep the series going. But right now the show is self financed by Dan and I so it is also a labor of debt. (Jay Lutsky)

There’s a pretty sparse web site up so far, thought that may change as the series evolves. The full first season will feature six episodes, each about six minutes long. According to Lutsky, they are planning on releasing episodes 2 and 3 later today. There’s currently no embeddable versions available (don’t get me started), so head to the site to watch them. UPDATE: First episode is now on YouTube.

Disclosure: Sightgag Studios is promoting the series through a Spotlight Ad on the Tubefilter News site. There is no other relationship between Tubefilter and Sightgag, although we do hear they are coming to the Web TV Meetup tonight.