From the CNN.com



RINGO STARR , SUPERHERO


LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- Faster than a speeding snare roll: It's Ringo Starr, superhero.

The former Beatles drummer has undertaken a joint venture with Stan Lee's POW! Entertainment to develop a multimedia franchise in which Starr will play a superpowered animated version of himself.

The Starr-Lee project initially will be launched as a 60- or 90-minute DVD, but POW! and Starr's entertainment company, Rocca Bella, plan to explore TV, feature film and other avenues.

Starr will voice his own character. Remarkably, this will mark the first significant animated appearance by Starr as Starr. In ABC's 1965-67 cartoon series "The Beatles," he was voiced by Lance Percival; Paul Angelis portrayed Ringo in the animated 1968 feature "Yellow Submarine"; and Starr appeared as himself on a 1991 episode of "The Simpsons." Starr also served as a narrator on the British kids TV series "Thomas the Tank Engine."

The musician also will contribute original songs and incidental music.

"I've been making a CD, so I have lots of ideas," Starr said. Referring to his '90s touring group, he added, "(The action) will be set around a band. They'll be their own characters. It'll be a very strange All-Starr Band."

Starr called Lee "a great creator. (This project) wasn't anything I was looking for. But he had this idea of a musical superhero -- what I like to think of as a reluctant superhero. . . . I'll zoom in to save the world, or a damsel in distress, or a small village. Who knows where he'll go?"

Lee -- originator of such comic book icons (and big-screen franchises) as Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four, said of Starr: "He's a great, great guy to work with. He's a real guy, and he's imaginative, and we seem to be on the same wavelength."

The collaboration came together after POW! chief operating officer Gill Champion and Rocca Bella head Marjorie Bach, both equestrians, met during a ride and began discussing the possibility of a collaboration.