Hello again! Welcome back to Part II of my television
comic book round up. Last time, we went
through all the comic book properties that aired on television during the
2014-2015 television season. This time, let’s take a look at the shows that are
scheduled to air in 2015-2016. You’ll find some spin-offs of current shows,
some new entries into larger universes, and one that’s just…weird.
As with before, this is only meant to encapsulate comic
book properties that are based on the “superhero” idea, as opposed to the
myriad of other comic book-based stories that occupy different worlds and tell
different kinds of stories, such as The
Walking Dead.
Superhero detective agency? Why not.
Jessica Jones
Remember Daredevil?
You didn’t really think Marvel/Disney was going to let that be the only show
they released through Netflix, did you? Jessica
Jones is the next scheduled Marvel hero to get her own series and, like Daredevil, it will be part of the larger
Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, three of Marvel’s new television series
will follow this format and are schedule to converge, along with Daredevil, into a fourth new series, The Defenders. Jessica Jones is a former superhero who is
recently retired after a brief career wearing the spandex tights and now runs
her own detective agency that caters particularly to a superhero clientele. The
show is already filming with Krystin Ritter as the title character and Mike
Colter playing former “hero-for-hire” Luke Cage. Comic fans know there’s quite
a bit of history between Jessica and Luke, so you can bet the hype for the two
of them together on screen will be significant.
Airing:
Scheduled for fall 2015, but possibly delayed until spring 2016 on Netflix
Well done, casting agents.
Luke Cage
Hey, he sounds familiar! Luke Cage will pick up directly where Jessica Jones leaves off (wherever that may be) to continue the
story that Marvel has begun back in Daredevil.
Similar to the two previous entries in this series, Luke Cage is expected to follow a grittier, more adult look at the
Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a character, Luke Cage traces his roots to the
1970s Blaxploitation era that recall a grungier, dirtier New York City. The
character himself has transitioned beyond those roots to become a member of the
Avengers for a while. He’s super strong and highly resistant to injury. As in Jessica Jones, the character will be
portrayed by Mike Colter. (Bonus fact: A young actor named Nicolas Coppola used
the character’s name to avoid the appearance of nepotism with his more famous
uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, when he was getting started in Hollywood. And
that’s how we have Nicolas Cage, people.)
Airing: Likely
2016, following Jessica Jones on
Netflix
No word on human casting yet, but I hear the dragon from Mulan is being considered for a role...
Iron Fist
And we’re not done yet! Following Jessica Jones and Luke Cage
will be Iron Fist, which will focus
on a character frequently portrayed in the books alongside the previous two
characters. Iron Fist is the furthest
from development of the three, so Marvel has thus far not released any
information about casting or a confirmed release date. Nonetheless, he
continues the trend established with Luke
Cage of mining characters with 70s-era bent, this time for martial arts
stories. Iron Fist is a hero who is a martial artist and the wielder of a
mystical force that allows him to summon and control his chi.
Airing:
Unknown, but after Luke Cage and Jessica Jones on Netflix
Hail, hail, the gang's...well, half-way here.
The Defenders
Daredevil, Jessica
Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist
will culminate in The Defenders, a
miniseries that joins the four heroes into their own super team. In the Comics,
the Defenders were a group of “non-team” outsiders, not ready for the Avengers,
not family enough for The Fantastic Four, and not mutant-y enough for the
X-Men. Various Marvel super heroes have been members of the Defenders,
including Luke Cage. Details on this show are extremely lax, so it’s very
possible this won’t even air until 2017, but I’m including it here for
continuity’s sake.
Airing:
Sometime this decade?
Action! Adventure! Splody things!
Legends of
Tomorrow
Moving on the world of DC Comics, the big event is Legends of Tomorrow. Unlike most comic
book properties that are based on a series, this is a new bird. It is a
spin-off of Arrow and The Flash and came about once executives
realized that they had populated this world with enough interesting
super-powered characters that they could become their own super team. In other
words, it’s a Justice League that’s not the Justice League. As such, Legends of Tomorrow isn’t based on any
one comic book in particular, but will star the characters already introduced
in Arrow and The Flash, including The Atom (Brandon Routh), Captain Cold
(Wentworth Miller), Firestorm (Victor Garber), and fan-favorite Sara Lance, the
White Canary (Caity Lotz). The heroes, brought together by Rip Hunter (Doctor Who’s Arthur Darvill), will be
pitted against time-traveling baddie Vandal Savage. Exactly how all these
characters come together, particularly the White Canary who is severely dead at
this point on Arrow, has yet to be
revealed but early teaser clips show a lot of big-budget action, something that
the show creators have cut their teeth well on in their previous shows. The
show is also designed to be something of an anthology where the cast of
characters can rotate somewhat for each new season.
Airing:
Scheduled for mid-season, 2016
This is literally the only production photo I can find for this show so far.
Krypton
Gotham seems to
be working out okay for Batman, right? Let’s do the same for Superman! Of all
the shows on the DC slate, this is the farthest out in terms of development,
such that it may not appear until next year. Details are slim, but we know that
it will be the story of Superman’s home world, Krypton, prior to its
destruction. In the best care scenario, we could get a show like Rome, which effectively showed a
decadent society that was about to fall apart. We could be in for some
interesting alien politics and cool sci-fi. Of course, the alternate is also
true and we could have to listen to uninteresting droning about the end of the
world. Personally, I’m hoping for something more like the criminally
under-appreciated Caprica series.
(Seriously – check it out and leave your BSG doubts at the door when you do.)
Airing: Unknown
Girl's got that hero pose thing down...
Supergirl
Remember how I said the big event for DC this year is Legends of Tomorrow? I could be lying;
it could be Supergirl. The show is
from the same production team that runs Arrow
and The Flash and while DC has said
not to expect the three shows to overlap with each other, they haven’t put the
kibosh on any future interaction just yet. The biggest barrier to interaction
with the others will be how to explain away Superman. In Supergirl, he’s already a presence, something that would likely
have come to a point of conversation among Barry or Ollie in their shows.
Either way, Supergirl will follow
Kara, Kal-El’s cousin who is also from Krypton and managed to escape before it
was destroyed. The show will follow the modern take on Kara, which is to say
that rather than follow Kal as a baby, Kara will have left Krypton as a young
teenager tasked with caring for her baby cousin and keeping him safe.
Unfortunately, Kara is separated from Kal and by the time she makes it to
Earth, Kal is already on his way to becoming Superman, leaving Kara to play
catch up. This might be the superhero show I’m most excited about this year –
Melissa Benoist seems to “get” Kara and plays her strong and tough but also
with an eagerness to prove herself and with an appreciation of how cool it is
to fly around and have super-strength. To say nothing of the fact that it’s
more than time that superhero show was based around a female character. Don’t
let me down, Supergirl.
Airing:
October, 2015
Avoiding all cat jokes from here on in.
Vixen
Speaking of female superheroes, Vixen is coming to the CW this fall. But this one has a twist –
it’s coming as an animated series that will nonetheless take place in the same
continuity as The Flash and Arrow making it the fourth official show
to occupy that shared universe. Cast from the previous shows will make vocal
appearances on Vixen, but for the
time being it’s not clear if anyone from Vixen
will appear on The Flash or Arrow. Some history: Vixen is Mari Jiwe
McCabe (voiced by Megalyn Echikunwoke), a young woman from the fictional
African country of Zambesi. Mari comes into possession of a totem that can give
her the ability to take an attribute from any member of the animal kingdom and
use it for her needs – flight from a hawk, the running speed of a cheetah, the
ability to breathe under water from a fish, for example. Show creators have
said that they reason the show is animated is due to the production values
needed to accomplish the special effects being much easier in this format. And
while I would love a live-action Vixen
series, here’s why this is such a good idea: by debuting a relatively unknown
character (Vixen is seriously great, but she’s hardly as well-known as Batman
or even Green Lantern) as a low-cost series, DC can introduce a wide variety of
characters to their shared universe and see what sticks before investing in
bigger, more costly live action shows. As such, the success or failure of Vixen is going to be critical for DC
going forward.
Airing: Fall, 2015
on the CW Seed
But wait, where are the giant naked man-eating monsters?
Teen Titans
This is possibly the most nebulous of all the shows I’ve
talked about here, but I’m listing it only because it seems to be chugging
toward reality, if at a slightly slow pace. The Teen Titans are one of DC’s
premier super hero groups, typically made up of all the sidekicks.
Traditionally led by Robin/Nightwing, other regular teammates include Superboy,
Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash. Something like a Junior Justice League, you can see
an excellent interpretation of the same thing in the animated
Young Justice series. Akiva Goldsman
has written the pilot for this series, slated to be released on TNT and it
features Nightwing, Starfire, Raven, Barbara Gordon, Hawk, and Dove. I’m an
unabashed fan of the Teen Titans and would love to see a live-action take on
the characters. Here’s hoping this one comes through.
Airing: Pilot
is scheduled to be shot in 2015.
Handsome devil.
Lucifer
Finally, here’s the weird one.
Lucifer is technically a DC property about the Devil (Marvel fans,
make your jokes here). In DC Comics, the character Lucifer squared off against
Morpheus in Neil Gaiman’s excellent
Sandman
series before decided to abandon Hell all together and move to, where else, Los
Angeles to run a piano bar. The comic’s Lucifer is described as having rebelled
against God three seconds after creation and spent the last 10 billion years
causing mayhem, however he has grown bored of his existence and the various
stereotypes applied to him and seeks a new life. The television series will take this same
approach, only because its Lucifer will now assist police in solving crimes.
Because even the Devil can’t resist a good police procedural. I’m openly
skeptical of this approach because the comic series was so good and the policy
procedural idea is just so pedestrian. That said, Comic-Con fans watching the
first episode came out raving about it, particularly star Tom Ellis’s portrayal
of the character. Plus, since the announcement of the show, One Million Moms
has thoroughly denounced it, claiming the series will “glorify Satan” and
demanding
that Fox cancel the show. Anything One Million Moms opposes is probably
good in my book. My hope is slightly renewed, but I can’t help but feel like
it’s a trap laid by a demon.
Airing: Early
2016, on Fox
So, what to be most excited about? Obviously, that’s in
the eye of the beholder but the ones that have my Spidey-Sense tingling most
are Jessica Jones, Supergirl, Vixen, and Lucifer. Jessica Jones has a lot of potential to
merge the Daredevil and Agent Carter audiences if done well. Supergirl just looks like fun to me and,
hopefully, done in a way that illustrates a good, strong female protagonist
without underlining too much that she happens to be a girl. Vixen is fascinating to me because of
the business behind how superhero stories will get made and told in the future.
Lucifer has, unexpectedly, gotten my
hopes up with its positive reception at Comic-Con. I’m holding back a few
molecules of skepticism to keep myself safe with on this one, but I’d be lying
if I said that my nerdy little heart didn’t beat a little faster at the idea of
the show being well-done.
Bring it on, Fall Schedule!
Supergirl feels like a show from another era. Sure, it's got top notch special effects and aside from an awkward green screen here and there, it looks amazing. And nobody is sporting a beehive or a mullet or feathered bangs. But when I watch Supergirl, I feel like I am watching one of those action adventure shows from when I was a kid. The A-Team, Macgyver, or Star Trek. Oh, and of course you can't forget Wonder Woman in that list.
