DC's Legends of Tomorrow

DC Comics continues their domination of prime time with another show on the CW (from the same team that brought you Arrow and The Flash): DC's Legends of Tomorrow. In a nutshell: a group of B-side characters from other shows are brought together by a time-traveler from the future to defeat the Big Bad Guy who is bent on world domination. Does the show hold together? Guest-blogger, Karen, has the answer. --Maggie Cats 

I sat down to watch the newest foray into the DC-verse with a little trepidation...I'm WAY behind on both Arrow and The Flash. Will I be able to keep up with who is who? Will it make sense? Will I be hopelessly lost? (SPOILER...maybe).

During the first episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, I was bombarded with characters, back stories, and information. Of course, every time Arthur Darvill, from Doctor Who, is on screen I squeal with fan girlish delight. I love the fact he has stepped up to captain his own TARDIS...er, Waverider. But sadly, I could not keep all the other characters straight in this first hour of the pilot. Some I know from previous exposure, but many just sort of fade into their archetypical obscurity.

Umm...that's a lot of legends. 

Here's what I actually got:

White Canary - Tortured, sad assassin, previously dead, needs a good mission give her life meaning.

Bad guy thieves (who are quite entertaining but thus far sadly nameless for me) - want to steal antiquities and are easy to catch.

Weird, merged fire hero - old guy + young guy = fiery hero? Old guy wants to have adventures, young guy really liked when he was, thank-you-very-much.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl - Reincarnated lovers who fight Vandal Savage, the Big Bad, again and again. Hawkman is way more up to speed, with his past lives, though meeting her son apparently jolts some of Hawkgirl's memories. Apparently they had a son in a past life. Wonder how many children they left behind, lifetime after lifetime of battles and deaths?

The Atom - It's Ant Man! Only it's not. And he's really smart! But nobody takes him seriously. He's kind of a big kid needing affection and attention. Well, this is going to end badly.

Rip Hunter - It's Doctor Rory! Man, I love Arrthur Darvill. He plays tormented but good intentioned so well!
Vandal Savage - The bad guy. Who we are TOLD is awful and terrible and we even see him DO awful things but he....falls terribly flat. Where's the menace? Where's the savagery? He seems so calm and not scary. Maybe I've been spoiled, but I want some terror with my eternal evil menace. Maybe he needs some good theme music, like Darth Vader.

Watch out! HE HAS A BIG STICK! And a sweet beard.

In the first hour we meet our hero team and have our first trip through time! In which we go to the 1970s. Woo. Big whoop. The team finds the man who can track Vandal Savage, who we learn is in fact Hawkgirl and Hawkman's son from their previous lifetime! And we learn some of their backstory. (Not enough, alas, to make them three dimensional characters yet.)

Meanwhile, we learn that JUST LIKE THE DOCTOR, this time traveler ALSO stole his ship!! Only instead of just sort of shaking their heads and collectively deciding "Time Lords will be Time Lords", his bosses send Boba Fett...er...Chronos to stop him. Chronos manages to hurt the ship and fatally wound Dr. Hawkson...surprise! You cannot change the past that easily, Hawkcouple. The trusty team ends up stuck in the time vortex or whatever they're calling it on this show while Rip makes repairs.

We also discover, along with the team, that Rip tricked them all into this gig because Savage savagely murdered his wife and son (at the beginning of the show) and none of them, not one, are legends....at least not yet. Instead, Rip plucked them from a place of relative obscurity in history as their absence (meaning, in case they die horribly) would not disrupt the timeline. Way harsh, Rip.

Legends, ASSEMBLE. Oh, wait....

I enjoyed this hour of television, but I can't say I'm enamored with Legends of Tomorrow. At least not yet. I'll give it 3 more episodes to really hook me. There are so many characters, I feel I need more time to get to know them. And the time travel better get more exotic, pronto! Because 1970s? Really?!

3.5/5 stars

DC's Legends of Tomorrow airs Thursday nights at 8:00 on the CW. You can catch the two-part pilot on CW's website.

Jessica Jones Never Says "I Love You"

So, I had three shows that I binged over the holidays with a mind to write posts about all three of them. Those three were The Man in the High Castle, Making a Murderer, and Jessica Jones. All of which your TV Sluts have just covered. Sigh. I present, with apologies, my take on Jessica Jones anyway with the promise to get on my game for my next post and make it on something that we haven't already run our collective mouths about.

Cards on the table: While I’ve largely liked and enjoyed (nearly) all of Marvel’s combined movies (that would be the Iron Man/Captain America/Avengers oeuvre that regularly dominates the world’s box offices), I’ve never loved any of them. They’re too slick, too formulaic, too safe. They’re solid entertainment, surely, but there’s never any thought that they’re anything other than animated picture books with no real stakes or consequences for any of the characters. Marvel’s TV shows have done a better job at building actual characters, but I’ve still been hard-pressed to watch any of them and really commit.

All that said, I frickin’ love Jessica Jones. I’m not sure how they pulled it off, but the show’s creators came up with a series that fleshes out the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a believable and interesting way while subverting that universe at the same time. And it’s incredible to watch.

Break out your Veronica Mars references. They're all accurate.

Before I say more, here’s the requisite backstory you need if you’re not steeped in these characters: Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is a sorta superhero who tried to make a go of being heroic at one time and it just never really worked out for her. She now uses her smarts, considerable strength, and not-at-all mastered ability of flight (she calls it “more like controlled falling”) as a private eye, albeit one who has yet to make too much of an impact. As such, she is outside the superhero game. She has no costume, no fancy globe-trotting adventure fighting large Evil Empires. What she does have is an enemy in the form of Kilgrave (David Tennant) who can compel anyone listening to his voice to do whatever he tells them to do. Jessica herself is a former victim of Kilgrave’s, having been compelled to be his companion before breaking free.

And right there you have the seeds of what makes Jessica Jones so interesting to watch. This is a show about a hero who has PTSD and has turned into her own best self-destruction machine trying to deal with it, hiding her damage in violence, cynicism, detachment, and literally gallons of hard alcohol. And while both the noir and superhero genres have their fair share of heroes with a dark past, Jessica Jones elevates both by calling out the horrors of her past more than is typically done. She’s a rape survivor, the only member of her family to make it out of a fatal accident, and a manipulator who veers closely to doing to others what was done to her.

Actual excerpt from the comic detailing Jessica and Kilgrave's interactions. Archie, it ain't.

Jessica as a character fits nicely into the anti-hero trope, but the show consistently moves her beyond a caricature and into someone who feels real. Her rape is a great example; writers often make the mistake of using a female character’s rape as a way of depowering her to exploit her vulnerability. In a lot of writer’s minds, rape = Strong Female Character. Jessica Jones avoids this by exploring how affected Jessica as a person is by her captivity, particularly given that it was a captivity that invaded her mind first and foremost. Her physical and mental rape isn’t something that motivates her; if anything she’s running from it. Which is to say, she’s behaving like a real human person and not a convenient backstory generator.

A show anchored by a fully-fleshed out female character is, by itself, almost unseen even in our supposedly enlightened times. Now consider that the other lead characters in this show are a black man (Luke Cage, a perfectly cast Mike Colter), a second white woman (Trish Walker played by Rachel Taylor), a lesbian woman (Carrie-Anne Moss), and another black man (Eka Darville) with a primary assist from a Latina woman (Rosario Dawson, reprising her Daredevil role) and you’ve got a cast not normally assembled. Only one main character is a white man with one other white man in a supporting role. For the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has too often veered into looking like it was filmed in the same New York that was occupied by the cast of Friends, this is remarkable. And like Jessica, the other characters more often than not defy the traditional ways that they are represented, allowing them to have their own stories.

Consider this: the show has a woman and a black man, two populations that are traditionally expected to be docile and unobtrusive in “polite” society, to actually get violently angry. Jessica doesn’t just fight to protect herself; sometimes she does it simply because she’s pissed and needs to hit someone. Her on-again, off-again love interest Luke’s anger is portrayed more righteously, but just the image of a large, intimidating black man being mad is itself subversive given that it’s shown to a presumably majority white audience. (It’s worth noting that this same construction was illustrated even more explicitly this fall in DC’s Supergirl in what was probably one of the best scenes that show has put out yet.)

That sound you're hearing is Donald Trump supporters freaking out over this.

The feminist interpretations of this show are clearly everywhere. The motif of Kilgrave’s commands to Jessica that she smile more will on their own launch a thousand women’s studies theses. What really made me fall for the show though had to do with how they integrated this punky little story into the larger MCU narrative. I said earlier that the show both made the Marvel universe bigger while subtly smacking it across the face at the same time. It accomplished this by allowing consequences to actions that actually raise the stakes of the story and establish tension. Unlike the big movies, you can watch Jessica Jones and not be sure what’s going to happen to the characters. Survival isn’t an assured outcome and even if a character lives, he or she may not be able to overcome what has happened. Jessica and her compatriots are underdogs in the truest sense. They’re the characters literally crushed by their big screen counterpart’s actions, as several characters make clear when they outline the people they lost in the Avengers’ destruct-a-thon battle for New York in their movie. The show is an antidote to the high-contrast, fluffy spectacle of the movies.  If the Marvel movies feel like they’re written by comic book writers, Jessica Jones feels like it’s written by the staff of Orphan Black. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s also worth mentioning that this is the first, yes first, of all of Marvel’s productions to feature a female lead character. Scarlet Johannsen’s Black Widow hasn’t even managed to get her own movie yet.

"We're both multi-faceted adults with independent stories. So, should we talk about a man right now or...?"

To be sure, Jessica Jones has its flaws. The story takes off like a rocket and finishes like an explosion, but unfortunately there’s a little sputtering in the middle when the show seems to circle itself needlessly. A few storylines never quite take off; Kilgrave wants photos of Jessica enough that he manipulates the people around her to provide him with them covertly but once he’s found out the reason for this is never really allowed to breathe. Likewise, some of Jessica’s neighbors seem tossed in more to provide things for the show to do rather than actually serve the narrative. In general, the pacing of the show can become uneven at times. For what the show manages to pull off, however, it’s kind of brilliant.

So far, Marvel/Netflix have been mum on whether or not they’ll green light a second season for the show. Netflix is notorious for keeping its ratings close to its chest, so it’s hard to get a sense of how well the show performed in the traditional sense, although critical response has been largely very positive and the fan response was equally upbeat. What it will likely come down to is the extent to which Marvel is willing to deviate from its established schedule of shows with Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and Daredevil’s second season already in the pipeline. And while Jessica has been intended to play a role in the upcoming The Defenders series, it’s still unclear of the next time we’ll see her or get more from her story. 

I’m Back (Part II): Comics Are Coming

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!

I’m Back! And Still Talking About Comics

Hello, Readers!  Apologies for the long delay since the last time I’ve written (Cancer sucks; let’s just leave it at that), but I’m back with a few more thoughts on comic books and the glut of comic book properties we saw on TV this past year.  Let’s run through them, shall we?

For the record, I’m mostly ignoring comic book properties of the non-heroic variety here. My reasoning is that “comic book character” as a genre is largely associated with capes and tights, as opposed to the wealth of incredible graphic novels out there that are also being given the live action treatment.  The Walking Dead is probably the most famous comic book-based TV show, but a glut of upcoming properties like Sex Criminals, Preacher, and my personal favorite The Wicked + The Divine are on the horizon.

"Sistahhhhs...are doing it for themselvessss.."

Agent Carter

Let’s start with the good. Agent Carter was a miniseries designed to give us more about the life of Peggy Carter, Captain America’s one-time love interest from before he got all frozen at the end of the World War II. Introduced in the movie Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy Carter finally gets to be the hero that her fans know she is in this short-run series. Hayley Atwell reprises the character from the movies and presents Peggy as a secret agent working for the precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. after the events of the first Captain America movie.  Peggy balances her life as a single woman in the 1940s with all the assumptions about her skills that era had with her actual ability to be a bad ass while hunting down an arms dealer. This show was beloved, not only for its obvious girl-power bona fides but for the fact that the sexism that Peggy faces is presented realistically. The men in her office who barely see her as more than a secretary are less two-dimensional stereotypes and more obvious signs of a world that is slouching toward change.  There’s a ton that you can say about the pretty incredible writing here, but I think of a friend of mine summed it up best when she said watching Agent Carter was the first time she felt like someone in Hollywood made a comic book superhero story for her.

Status: renewed for season 2, to air early 2016

"Wait, are we all still on this show?"

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Now maybe with the less good. Look, I know fans of this show love it. The thing I hear most frequently about it is, “but you’ve got to start watching, it’s gotten SO GOOD!” I’m glad for you and I’m glad for the show, but it lost me after the plodding first season full of characters I don’t care about. Of all the highly successful Marvel properties, this one to me illustrates most the danger of trying to run an integrated universe across multiple entertainment platforms. The show suffered because of revelations in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and while that’s unfortunate, it’s also not reason enough for me to come back to it.

Status: renewed for season 3, to air fall 2015

"Ours is a determined walk."

Arrow

Arrow had what should have been a big year that unfortunately got overshadowed by a flashier (heh) kid brother and some wandering in the woods on the part of the writers. As The Flash went full bore with establishing a world full of powers and magic, Arrow struggled to keep up. The introduction of Ras al-Ghul should have been a game changer and instead fans felt mistreated by the relative little screen time of the character and him once again being whitewashed. A creative change is in the air for next year, and it’s looking like we’ll finally see Ollie officially become Green Arrow and start to move away from the angst of the past two years. For the first time, all the characters are aware of each other’s secrets and finally working together. And no matter what anyone says, I’m enjoying Katie Cassidy’s Black Canary. The character is one of my favorites and Cassidy has done a good job of showing the damage that Black Canary carries with her without letting it destroy her.

Status: renewed for season 4, to air fall 2015

"Ahh, bugger."

Constantine

This is probably the show that I wanted to work out the most. After a lackluster movie, I really wanted Constantine as a character to have his due. I wrote before about how it’s essentially an American Doctor Who, although clearly the longevity is not the same. The show saw John Constantine battling the Rising Darkness with his trademark punk wit and whimsy. The show touches into the area of DC comics that I find the most fun – the area of magic and the occult. The show, unfortunately, failed to find an audience, however it may not be completely out for the count: there’s a chance the character could find his way to Arrow since they technically occupy the same world. Additionally, the upcoming Lucifer is based on a character from the same source.

Status: cancelled

So much blood, you guys. Seriously, so much blood.

Daredevil

Remember how I said my friend referred to Agent Carter as the comic book show that she finally felt like Hollywood had made for her? Well, the other half of that sentence was that she felt like Daredevil was the one they made in disregard of her. Daredevil is Marvel’s first foray into Netflix’s original series. For those unfamiliar, it’s the story of Matt Murdock, who lost his eyesight at a young age and now fights crime using his heightened senses. The fact that some weird super chemical is responsible for the loss of his sight is also what explains how UTTERLY heightened his senses have become. The show is by far the entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the one that includes The Avengers, etc.) that is the farthest removed from Marvel’s “house style” of high contrast shots, bright colors, easy humor, and breezy attitude. Daredevil is filmed in murky blacks, greens, and yellows and plays up the idea that Daredevil is Marvel’s Batman.  It’s also somewhat predicated on the idea that all that damage and destruction to New York from the first Avengers movie maybe had a consequence. The show veers more toward the violent and the gritty, which is a big factor in my friend’s less-than-enthusiastic endorsement. Nonetheless, it scored well with critics and with lots of fans.

Status: renewed for season 2, to air on Netflix in 2016

"Just try and catch me, bad ratings."

The Flash

Along with Agent Carter, The Flash is the best comic book property that this year’s television season brought us. In the same joined universe as Arrow, the show is a fast-paced (I’m never going to stop with these speed puns) take on a classic superhero. By embracing the elements of the character that made The Flash a touchstone in the world of comics, the show has reaped a lot of dividends. The trend in a lot of superhero stories is to get away from the more ludicrous story elements of the comic books. The Flash took that notion and ran away from it. It managed to make Gorilla Grodd an effective character, for God’s sake. What’s more, the series was immensely popular, outperforming Arrow and forcing that show to rethink how it would conduct its next season. DC Comics has taken heat for how it plans to manage all its properties, from the upcoming shared universe movies like Batman vs. Superman to Arrow and The Flash, but this show may hold the method to their madness. Season one ended with an acknowledgement that the multiverse is real, opening up the possibility that all of the DC properties are, in fact, connected even if they seem contradictory. The Flash plans on delving even deeper into the multiverse next year when it returns.

Status: renewed for season 2, to air this fall

So much rain, you guys. Seriously, so much rain."

Gotham

Oh, Gotham. Where do I begin with you? You know I’m a huge Batman fan, so you’ve pretty much got my attention from the start. I’ll never quit you. That said, let’s tighten things up a bit in season two, mmkay? Gotham made strides in its first season by establishing a very lived-in Gotham City. The show was stylized and beautiful to look at. And what they got right, they nailed: Carmen Bicondova’s Selina Kyle is precisely how Selina should be played as a young teenager. Donal Logue is Harvey Bullock and Robin Lord Taylor has earned the praise he’s gotten for his portrayal of the Penguin. Now the show needs to focus on fixing its two weakest links: Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne, ostensibly the heroes of the show. Gotham was predicated on the notion that the show was going to be more about the development of Batman’s villains than on him. In that sense, the show has succeeded because the “evil” characters are by far more interesting to watch. The problem is that we still need to feel like we’re on the side of Gordon and Bruce Wayne, even if Bruce is still only a child. Creating compelling, layered bad guys is important for good storytelling, but as long as the narrative focus is always returning to Jim and Bruce the show will have a hard time capitalizing on its biggest assets.

Status: renewed for season 2, to air this fall

Undeath is no excuse for an unrefined palate. 

iZombie

Last but not least, the little zombie show that could. As a comic book property, iZombie is perennially overshadowed by its bigger siblings, the superheroes and that other zombie show that people are losing their heads over. That positioning is unfortunate, because iZombie is delightful. It’s the story of Liv Moore (yes, that’s on the nose), a medical resident who is bit by a zombie at “the world’s worst boat party” and awakes to find herself desiring brains. Unable to connect with her old life, Liv becomes a medical examiner and discovers that if she eats the brains of bodies brought in, she can take on flashes of their memories and personality which, natch, she does to help solve crimes. So long as she regularly eats, Liv seems to be a normal, if pale, girl, so much so that her family and friends hardly notice that anything has happened other than assuming her new more lethargic personality is the result of the trauma of the “boating accident” she was involved in. The show plays with melodrama and humor masterfully, which is to be expected given that the show was developed by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright, the creators of Veronica Mars. As such, the show contains some of the same DNA as their previous creation. Liv is, essentially, Veronica if she had moved to Seattle, become a zombie, and grew up in a slightly less paranoid home. The same noir-tinged voiceovers and wit that made Veronica Mars memorable to fans is on display here. The show was praised by critics and fans, although some fans were displeased by the in some cases significant departures that the show makes from the comic book.  iZombie was probably the biggest surprise of this season and season two looks to continue the trend.

Status: renewed for season 2, to air this fall

So, winners and losers of the 2014-2015 comic book television season? The Flash and Agent Carter are comfortably sitting on top, followed closely by iZombie. All three had positive fan and critical reactions and all three are coming back for their second season. Daredevil and Arrow occupy the middle ground; both were solid entries into the genre, however both darker and both shows that took themselves far too seriously at times. Gotham and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. come next; both shows are very high concept and will have hardcore fans loving what they’re doing. They both have the backing of their parent companies probably more than either one deserve, but that alone should keep them chugging along for at least a while. Constantine, the only show not to be renewed, is sadly the biggest loser. Fans of the character know, however, that John Constantine usually finds a way to show up in places where he wasn’t supposed to be, so we’ll see how long it will be before he’s mucking things up for everyone again.

But wait! There’s more! This post gives you a sense of the current slate of comic book shows, but next season is going to nearly double the number of properties on your television. For a full run-down of the new comic book characters about to grace your screen this coming year, check back soon.

Constantine is the American Doctor Who

I know, I know.   A bold statement.  Especially given the number of other shows that could equally make the case that they are, in fact, as close as those of us in “The Colonies” will ever get to our own mad cap Gallifreyan adventurer (The Middleman certainly had a strong case to make).  But here’s the thing: all the main Doctor Who tropes are present in the new NBC show.  Wise but possibly ambivalent hero fighting dark enemies?  Check.   Companion who is mostly a rube but potentially possessing a vital power or skill that the hero will need?  Yup.  It’s-Bigger-On-The-Inside base of operations?  But of course.

All of which is not to suggest that Constantine is just some rip off.  If anything, having watched the first six episodes, I would argue that the show is trying to establish itself as something wholly independent of the rest of the comic book properties out there.  The mad Englishman with a special larger-than-it-seems home base and a crazy encyclopedic knowledge of terrifying things coupled with a potentially troublesome disregard for the people around him may echo our favorite fantasy adventurer, but this is a TARDIS of a different shape.

A flame-ier, angrier TARDIS...

The Comic Book

Wait, what?  “Clovis,” I hear you say, “Is this yet another comic book TV show that you can’t seem to stay away from?”  Of course it is.  Constantine is based on the DC Comics book Hellblazer about John Constantine, a 35-year-old con man, supernatural detective, and “petty dabbler of the dark arts” based in London.  But in order to understand this character and where he fits in with all those flying cape-wearers who are always saving the planet from alien invasions or some such, I’m going to have to take you through a couple of very brief points of fact about the DC Universe.

As always, those wishing to avoid the nerdy comic book talk can skip ahead.  I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back and hear just about the TV show.

The thing about DC Comics that separates it from the other big comic book company, Marvel, is that DC has for years made a big show about all its characters existing in a multiverse.  (Marvel has a multiverse of its own, but a much more consistent effort is put into place with their books to streamline the characters and give them a common space to exist in.)  This is the narrative device that allows DC Comics to keep cannon a lot of completely out of date stories.  It’s what explains, for example, how it is that Wonder Woman can exist in our modern age and yet still have fought Nazis during World War II. The Nazi-fighting version was a different reality Wonder Woman from a different dimension in the multiverse.  Comics, everybody!

I could keep explaining, but it's just going to make you want to do a lot of this. 

In 1993, DC Comics created Vertigo, a specialty imprint that would produce comics that were more adult; more like literature than the flashy superhero adventures the company was primarily known for. Vertigo was the home to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and V for Vendetta, among lots of other riskier and, frankly, weirder stories.  Hellblazer was born into this world and while John Constantine would sometimes still find ways to interact with the occasional Superman or Batman, he mostly occupied a different reality in the multiverse.

Constantine as a character was known for being rough around the edges, unrelentingly cynical, and deadpan but also remarkably cunning and capable of getting out of the toughest scrapes, a key skill when the majority of your enemies are demons great and small, including the biggest baddie of them all, The First of the Fallen.  (Read: The Devil.  Sorta.)   Writers at various times have portrayed him as the ultimate pragmatist, willing to take anyone down if the ends justified the means, but also as someone who is essentially motivated by a desire to be a good person and make the world a better place.  Of course, the world isn’t often saved by people who are being nice guys.  You can’t make an omelet, etc. etc.

This actually qualifies as a light-hearted moment for most of Constantine's life. 

The TV Show

Okay comic-phobes, you can come back!  The good news for traditionalist is that the TV series did a phenomenal job casting John Constantine.  Seriously, you guys.  Matt Ryan looks exactly like how his character is supposed to.  I know that may seem like a small thing, but in this age of whitewashing and making changes because somehow the source material isn’t “relatable”, seeing Matt Ryan in his Constantine trench coat and loosened tie for the first time made a lot of folk feel like this show was on target.  

Seriously, you guys.  Nerd-squee. 

And then there was Liv…

The first episode serves up similar story notes from the comic books.  Constantine has voluntarily confined himself to an English psychiatric hospital after botching an exorcism that resulted in a young girl, Astra, being dragged into Hell. His rest cure fails to work, however, when a cadre of supernatural forces warn John that Liv Aberdine, an American woman who is also the daughter of one of John’s old magic partners, is in danger.  John manages to exorcise the demon that is chasing down Liv, but the experience is too much for her and she flees his company after providing him a scrying map showing John other locations throughout the country where something evil is afoot. 

And therein was the first problem for the new series.  Simply put, Liv shouldn’t have.  The part didn’t mesh with the story; there wasn’t a lot of there there and the actress was replaced with a new character, Zed who shares some of Liv’s psychic abilities but is a bit more world-weary.  Fans worried that the abrupt change in lead casting was a bad portent for the show.  Personally, I think John and Zed make a better pairing precisely because Zed has her share of secrets she’s keeping from John.  Plus it underlines a very major point in the comics: John isn’t a good person to be around.  He’s trouble and he’s not afraid to put you in between himself and it.  John acknowledges this to his only other compatriot, Chas, a man who is loyal to John but has the mysterious ability to survive being killed making him one of the only people who can probably stand to be around John for long.  Add to that the host of angels who are rapidly losing patience with John and not so squeamish about maybe handing him over to the demons who would love to have his head and Constantine's got a lot of motivation for screwing over otherwise fine people. 

Pictured (l to r): Angel, Hero Jerk Face, Woman of Mystery, Undead Cab Driver (really). 

Aside from the casting drama, there’s a lot to find in Constantine for folks looking for some light horror.  Storylines are taken from the comics, so fans will find plenty to wink at. (See below for more on that.)  At the same time, the show manages to keep exactly the right tone in relation to the demons and ghosts that make their way into Constantine’s life.  He’s not afraid of them, exactly; but he does take them seriously.  His deadpan humor is fully imported from the comics, but Matt Ryan gives his lines a gravity that shows just how unsure of himself Constantine is in the wake of that failed exorcism.  Most importantly, the show has been very careful about keeping the sanctity (pun not intended) of their main character in tact: John’s defining character trait in the comics is that he smokes.  This is a problem for network TV where characters aren’t allowed to smoke given network standards and practices.  As such, we’re given just enough subtle clues to suggest that John has just put out a cigarette that observers will understand how much this is a part of his character.  Likewise, the punk-rock sensibility from the comics is still on display.  In a scene where John must fight a demon without listening to its voice, he blasts The Clash on his iPod to drown out the sounds.

As a side note, between this and their other horror show, the incredible Hannibal, NBC seems to be interested in carving out a horror niche that I’m very much in favor of.  Both shows take significant risks for network television and it’s exciting to see these stories being played out.  Unless you’re Maggie Cats, after all, you can only watch so much Law & Order before you need something else on TV.

The Easter Eggs

As with Gotham and The Flash, DC Entertainment has again dropped a number of Easter Eggs for fans.  Many of them are more overt than other DC shows; John openly talks about Mucus Membrane, his former punk band.  In the pilot, Liv picks up a golden helmet before John warns her to put it back down, saying more than likely it will wear her before she could wear it.  The helmet is an exact copy of that worn by the character Dr. Fate.  In episode five, John and Zed work with New Orleans cop Jim Corrigan.  Near the end of the episode, Zed has a disturbing vision of Corrigan dead and bleeding but with a green light emanating from him.  Savvy viewers will know that Corrigan will eventually die and become The Spectre, a character who is the spirit of vengeance.

Other references are far more subtle.  In John’s Bigger-On-The-Inside base camp filled with magical items, you can see Pandora’s Box in one glass case.  Not far from it, there’s backwards writing on a chalkboard, a clear reference to the comic book character Zatanna who recites phrases backwards in order to cast magic spells.  One of John’s former associates now works at Ivy University, a school often referenced in DC Comics and home to several other superheroes.  A close-up shot of Constantine’s business card gives an Atlanta-area phone number.  Call that number and you’ll get a recording of Matt Ryan as Constantine referencing someone named Alec Holland. 

The Bottom Line

You know what I’m going to say here – watch this damn show.  Yes, that’s because it’s a comic book character and I’m firmly in the camp of believing that if comic book properties continue to be successful, they’ll stop becoming a special niche and will instead become a genre.  We’ve made great strides on this so far – Constantine stands on its own as a horror show; Gotham is doing a capable job as a police procedural; Agents of SHIELD, despite the slow start, has been doing reasonably well as a spy drama; the success of the Marvel cinematic universe all together has show that comic book characters don’t just have to be caped adventure stories with one-note plots.  Progress is being made.

As of now, Constantine is slated to run for 13 episodes in its first season.  It hasn’t been called up for more episodes or for a second season, though NBC and DC have both indicated that doesn’t mean the show will be cancelled.  For my money, the risks taken on bringing a show like this to television alone are worthy of supporting it, but I honestly think new viewers will be intrigued by the complexity of the characters and the gradual deepening of the storylines. 

Also, repeat after me: the movie never happened.  The movie. NEVER. HAPPENED.

Oh go be sad about it in a park, Keanu. 

Making a Run (heh) at The Flash

My name is Clovis and I’m the fastest blogger alive.

Okay, so that’s clearly not true given how long it’s been since I’ve published a post, but I couldn’t resist the into when talking about yet another of the pantheon of new comic book properties that are showing up on our airwaves. I speak of The Flash, of course; The CW’s Arrow spinoff chronicling the story of Barry Allen, the Fastest Man Alive.

No.  The other fastest man alive.  The white hipster-y one.

Like Arrow before it and Gotham alongside it, The Flash is another of DC Comics’ superhero stories.  Barry Allen is a forensic scientist working in Central City when he is working one night in his lab and is struck by a stray lightning bolt and falls into a wall of chemicals.  When he comes to, he finds himself with the ability to move at super speed and quickly becomes a crime fighter facing off against other oddly-powered individuals.  As with my Gotham review, this one is going to get nerdy, folks.  If you’d prefer to skip all the comic book talk and jump straight to the TV show, you can jump ahead.

Wow, what a flashy character!

The Comic Book

So here’s the fast and dirty (get used to it guys, the puns are irresistible on a topic like this) on The Flash:  Barry has super speed.  He can run faster than anything else on the planet, fast enough to run on water and generally muck about with physics in all sorts of fun ways.  He can vibrate his atoms to allow him to do things like pass through walls.  He can also, on rare occasions, transcend and travel through time due half to Einsteinian physics and half to comic book hand-wavium.  He is motivated by an almost naive desire to do good partially stemming from seeing his mother murdered mysteriously as a boy.  He is also always, ironically, late to everything.

The character is actually one of comic books longest-running legacy characters.  It’s also notable for being one of the first comic book characters to introduce the idea that a super hero could age out of his or her role and be replaced.  The character of The Flash originally dates back to 1940, the Golden Age of comic books, and was a college student named Jay Garrick who gained his super speed after inhaling water vapor. (Yes, really.)  In 1956, DC Comics streamlined its storytelling process, the first of MANY times it would do this, and integrated all its separate characters into a shared universe.  In the process, The Flash was given a different identity, costume, and background and was now Barry Allen, forensic scientist who gets his powers through that aforementioned lightning bolt.  Barry Allen would later be replaced by Wally West, the character’s nephew in 1986.  I bring this up because each time The Flash became a different man, the other characters still continued to exist.  This made The Flash as an identity something that could be passed down, a radical concept to comic books.  For a sense of perspective, consider that with a few stunt-stories, Batman has always been Bruce Wayne, Superman has always been Clark Kent, Iron Man has always been Tony Stark, and Peter Parker has always been Spider-Man.

The people who make red spandex are basically kept in business by these guys.

This sense of legacy in the comics is what has always given The Flash a certain emotional heft to it.  Barry recognizes Jay as a predecessor, while Wally comes to utterly revere Barry after becoming the Flash himself due to, shall we just say, unfortunate events related to Barry.  As such, The Flash as a character is always imbued with the notion of time being a precious commodity and the idea that we’re all racing toward an ending that’s coming faster than any of us would like it to.  Despite that gloomy notion, The Flash as a character is almost uniformly written as an optimist.  In all iterations, from Jay to Wally (and beyond, but that’s getting more detailed than you want, trust me), The Flash represents the character who, possibly more than almost any other super hero, does what he does because he believes in the best of people and just wants to do the right thing.

Okay, non-comic books fans.  You can come back now.

"Faster than a speeding bul... oh hey wait..."

The TV Show

I’ll say right away, like Maggie Cats said a few weeks ago, The Flash had one of my favorite new pilots this season.  Almost everything about the way the show has presented its key characters and its premise has been on pace right from the start.  Barry (Grant Gustin), initially introduced last year as a guest character in Arrow, is established at the start as a forensic scientist working for the Central City police department.  He’s been drawn to a life in law-enforcement after seeing his mother murdered under HIGHLY mysterious circumstances as a young boy.   With his father convicted of the murder, Barry was raised by family friend and police officer Joe West (played by Jesse L. Martin) who raised Barry as a sorta-sibling to his own daughter, Iris (Candace Patton).  Barry’s father, btw, is played by John Wesley Shipp who played The Flash in the short-lived 1990s era TV version of the same character.  In the pilot episode, Barry is struck by a stray bolt of electricity as the result of a catastrophic accident at STAR Labs, a sort of CERN-esque research facility headed by Dr. Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh).  When Barry awakens six months later, he finds that he has acquired super speed as well as an enhanced physiology that has increased his endurance and his ability to heal.  What is a young man to do in this situation?  Fight crime, naturally.

From there, the show plays out as you’d expect from The CW.  We’ve got your over-arching mystery (what was that strange yellow blur that killed Barry’s mother in their own home all those years ago?), your healthy dose of love-triangle (Barry is, natch, secretly in love with Iris who sees him like a best friend and is herself involved in a secret relationship with her father’s rookie partner at work), an assortment of enemy-of-the-week villains (turns out that stray bolt of electricity didn’t just affect Barry), and a possible twist (the good Dr. Harrison who helps Barry establish his heroic identify may not be all that he seems to be).  The thing that makes all of this work, honestly, is the speed at which this story progresses.  There’s no denying it – The Flash moves quickly.

Pictured: Rush hour in the speed lane.  I'll stop.

Unlike Arrow’s season-long brooding, Barry gets into this hero thing before the end of the first episode. All the major plotlines are introduced, the outlines of each character’s development are laid out, and we’re, well, off and running.  Seriously, more happens in the first thirty minutes of the pilot episode than you see in most seasons of an HBO series.  The show is also undeniably fun.  The Flash as a character is universally depicted in the comic books as someone with a sense of humor.  He’s Peter Parker without all the personal hard luck.  In keeping with that, you’re not going to find much in the way of personal agonizing or tortured development here.  Barry wears bright red and yellow and speeds around at 300mph in the middle of the day.  Unlike Arrow’s Oliver or even any of the numerous iterations of Batman, there’s no need to only operate at night.  In a cameo scene with Oliver Queen, Ollie even calls this out when urging Barry to use his powers to help his city.  “You can inspire people in a way I never could,” he tells Barry.

The Easter Eggs

Of course, in addition to all this actual mainstream drama and adventure, there are TONS of bones thrown for nerds like me.  After the STAR Labs accident, a broken gorilla cage bears the name “Grodd”, implying something has gotten out.  Barry’s first speed tests occur at a Ferris Air testing field.  One of Barry’s superhero support team members is Francisco “Cisco” Ramon.  The other is Caitlin Frost.  Caitlin’s fiancé, tragically killed during the STAR Labs explosion, was Ronnie Raymond.  In the comics, every issue begins with the same phrase: “My name is Barry Allen and I am the Fastest Man Alive.”  Because every episode begins with a brief recap of what’s come before, take one guess what the voiceover begins with?  And at the risk of avoiding spoilers, I won’t even mention several other major plot points and characters introduced in the first few episodes that potentially point to some MAJORLY big (and spoiler-y) things that DC Comics and Warner Brothers appear to be ramping up for all their comic book properties, including a few possible implications for those big movies that you might have heard were recently announced.

Um. Spoilers?

Bottom line? Watch this damn show.  It’s fun, it’s adventurous, it’s breezy, and it’s got some great action with a nice dose of frothy character mush.  Nerds will feel respected, everyone else will just enjoy a good story playing out. 

The Flash airs Tuesday nights at 8/7c on The CW.