Tagged: Agents of SHIELD

Marc Alan Fishman: To Every Season, Turn, Turn, Turn

As we wind things down on the current season of TV, I’m of two different minds on two shows I’d long held in similar regard. Agents of SHIELD (no, I don’t want to add all those extraneous periods. You know what I mean, right?) and The Flash. Both turned in seasons that were rife in comic references. AOS gave us Ghost Rider, LMDs, Madame Hydra, and a dash of the non-Marvel-sanctioned Matrix. The adventures of Team Flash gave us… Flashpoint. I am nothing if not full of opinions on both.

Let’s start with the good, shall we? For the first time in the history of the show, Agents of Shield dug its heels in deep with reverence to the pulpy source material. Because of this, the normally cinema-by-way-of-a-limited-budget show felt larger than ever. With pronounced arcs carrying through a disjointed season, we finally got a TV show with the pacing and payoff akin, truly, to actual printed comics. We had a genuine drive from the beginning to end – allowing the final beats of the season to encompass literally everything that came before it. The means justified the ends, and by the time the stinger for the 2018 season drops, we’re exhausted in the best way.

Beyond the prowess of the prose, where AOS shined brightest came collectively in character development. Over the course of this season, nearly each member of the team was given an arc to follow. And while perennial favorite Phil Coulson was left with the least to improve upon, even he was given a few badass moments to chew the scenery on. With Phil mostly on the dramatic sidelines this time around, the MVP of the season falls solely on Iain De Caestecker’s Leo Fitz.

Where he and co-science-bro (by-way-of-Sam-and-Diane) Jemma Simmons were once the bright-eyed innocents of the team, Fitz was saddled with the most growing up to do over the lengthy season. Shouldering the moral arguments of science-over-dogma, followed by a What If conceit Stan Lee himself would have been proud to take credit for, left our Scotsman bereft of any remaining innocence by season’s end. That the writers of AOS make the gravitas of Fitz’s arc feel deserved stands out as the season highlight for me.

You’ll note we’re three paragraphs in, and I’ve not had a single good thing to say about The Flash. Sadly, much like my thoughts around the literary basis of the arc, Flashpoint does for the TV show the same as it did for the comic and animated feature: drag the whole series down into the muck and mire that plagues DC all too often these days.

Simply put, The Flash’s best moments all contained themselves in the singular episode that largely snuck away from the timeline-altering plot that drove the entirety of the season. The Supergirl crossover episode that showcased Grant Gustin’s singing chops, Duet, stood alone as the single point of light in a dreary season.

As with the source material, The Flash saw Barry Allen time-travel to the past to save his mother from her timely demise. By doing so, we entered an Elseworld tale that spins out like so many would-be DCU alternate timelines. Things are darker, grittier, sadder, and devoid of the humor and spritely spirit that has long been the calling card for the show’s continued success. And by doing so, and pitting Barry Allen against yet another Speed-Based-Villain for the series… we are treated to yet-another-plot wherein Barry must. Run. Faster. Except this time, he merely gets by with a little help from his friends.

Speaking of… Not to continuously drop elbows on a dead Beta Rey Bill here (sorry, I know I’m crossing the streams, but I don’t know any more famous comic book horsies), but Team Flash is as much to blame over the dead-in-the-water season as any linger ties to Flashpoint itself. Whereas AOS took time to build, and rebuild their continuously expanding team – taking time to really allow the audience to get into the heads of Mack, Yo-Yo, and even The Patriot – The Flash seemed content to heap team member after team member into Star Labs without ever expanding each character beyond one or two notes they began with. Be it Wally West, that one scientist who HR Wells loved, or Malfoy CSI (I think his name is Julian, but he’s not worth the Googling), basically every Flash-bro walked into Star Labs, delivered or received a litany of pep-talks about their value to the team, and then sat back to let Barry run and mope. By the season’s end, I felt a connection to every Agent of Shield. I left The Flash wishing I had any feelings whatsoever.

At the end of the day, we know both shows will return for another season. My hope is that Barry and his team will return to the real roots of the character – the fun, and hope – and largely forget as much of the Savitar saga as metahumanly possible. As for Agents… Heh. Well, let’s just say Coulson did his job; I can’t wait to see where they go from here.

Mindy Newell: Maybe You Haven’t Been Keeping Up, But…”

Bill Maher may be claiming that he’s responsible for kicking Milo Yiannopoulos off of Breitbart and out of the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) convention – or whatever the hell their annual party is called – but the truth is I did it. Yep, those words I “uttered” last week did it. Di pen shist erger fun a fayl, which is the Yiddish way of saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. Okay, for you purists out there, the actual translation is The pen stings worse than an arrow.

Well, Milo might be gone – and don’t let the door hit you on the ass your way out, luzer (Yiddish for “loser) – but the hate just keeps on coming. In a bar in Kansas, a piece of drek (Yiddish for “shit,” and I promise to stop with the Yiddish already) who had been asked to leave for using racial slurs came back with a gun, shouted, “Get the hell out of my country,” and then shot two men, both from India. One was killed, the other wounded.

Anti-Semitism is clearly on the uptick, with – you’re not going to believe this – 19,253 tweets against Jewish journalists since you-know-who started his campaign, over 70 bomb threats made over the phone to Jewish community centers in the two months since the election, and the desecration of Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia and the St. Louis areas. Attacks against Muslims are spiking, too; in my own city a jerk named Jonathan Hussey was arrested by the police for writing “Fuck Muslims,” “Fuck Allah,” “Fuck Arabs” and “Donald Trump” on the recently opened Muslim Community Center. In Queens, New York a Moroccan Uber driver caught the driver of an SUV on film yelling “Trump is president, asshole, so you can kiss your fuckin’ visa goodbye, scumbag, we’ll deport you soon, don’t worry, you fuckin’ terrorist” at him. Mosques have been vandalized and set on fire.

Overall the Southern Poverty Law Center has been kept busy since President Trump – I still shiver whenever I put those two words together – was inaugurated, tracking 700 incidents like the above, not only against Jews and Muslims, but also against Latino, immigrants, African-Americans, and the LGBTQ community. He took office on January 22. Today is February 27. That’s one month and six days.

“Oh, dear Lord Jesus, this ain’t happening, man…This can’t be happening, man! This isn’t happening!”

Private Hudson uttered those words in Aliens; the man who played him, Bill Paxton, 61, died on Saturday (February 25) from, according to his family, “surgical complications.”

I loved Bill Paxton. I loved him in Aliens, I loved him in Titanic, in Twister, and Apollo 13, on Big Love on HBO and on the 2014 season of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., in which he played S.H.I.E.L.D. agent John Garret, a Hydra mole.

His other credits – over 80 of them – include Weird Science, Tombstone, Predator 2 and the History Channel’s “Hatfields & McCoys” mini-series, for which he won an Emmy for his Randolph McCoy. There was something so personable and real about Paxton’s acting – like every great character actor, he was able to project the “average Joe” as a doppelganger for us, the audience. C’mon, wouldn’t you have reacted like Private Hudson if you were trapped on a planet where the mission turned sour?

I’ll leave you with one more quote from Bill Paxton as Private Hudson in Aliens:

“Is he fuckin’ crazy?”

Yes, he is. At least you won’t have to suffer the indignities of the coming years.

Our headline atop this week’s column is a quote from Bill Paxton as Private Hudson in Aliens (1986).

Rest in peace, Mr. Paxton.

The staff of ComicMix offers our most heartfelt condolences to Mindy on the loss of her father, WWII fighter pilot Meyer Newell. Mindy often spoke of him here in this space, and our respect, admiration and gratitude knows no bounds.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Commissioner Gordon, Here And There

jim-gordon-commissioner-gordon-sprang

The new television season has begun. (Goody goody gumdrops?) With only two superhero shows displaying their wares, it’s a bit early to comment on innovations, trends and outrages, whatever causes to hurl an anvil at the screen or curl up next to it and purr.

Of the two returnees, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD seems to be serving more of the same. It’s kind of interesting that some comic book stuff is being repeated in the electronic media. A complaint I used to hear about Marvel’s comics is that the storylines were difficult to follow, especially for newcomers. I have a similar complaint about SHIELD, but maybe I’m just dumb. Well, maybe, but if that’s true I’m not the only one. Last week I was talking comics with an Ivy League professor and this certifiably intelligent and erudite intellectual admitted that he, too, had trouble following SHIELD’s plots.

Not a problem with the other early returnee, Gotham. Though the stories are reasonably dense, there’s never any difficulty knowing who’s doing what to whom and why, and I remain firm in my belief that clear storytelling is a virtue. The show has given us a plot alteration, however: James Gordon, heretofore known as the straightest officer in town, has quit the force and is working as a bounty hunter which, as far as I’m concerned, is the same thing as a private eye.

Gordon has done some impressive evolving since he first appeared 77 years ago in Detective Comics #27, He began as a softish, elderly functionary who was never seen doing any hands-on law enforcing; he had Batman for that. He was a bit of a blank slate, our Jim, with no private life, hobbies, quirks, just duties to perform, which he did perfunctorily. Not an impressive dude.

But, like flesh-and-blood people, he changed. Got himself a wife and kid (though not in the television version). Became somewhat bitter – for a cop in Gotham City, that was natural – and maybe got chummy with people he should have avoided. He has just acquired a new girlfriend but, uh oh, his ex is back in town and is probably heading his way and that can’t be good. (But we’re happy to see Lee Tompkins again.) He’s still a credit to his kind, but he’s no longer a Goody-Two Shoes; if the rules need breaking, he breaks them.

Gordon is, in short, the kind of hero who began to be popular after World War I. He knows that the system is broken and that no authority figure should be trusted, including police. So he lives by a personal code and brings justice to places even good cops might not care to reach. He’s brave and tough. Though he’s basically a loner, he often has a sidekick and here, too, TV’s Gordon fits the archetype; Sergeant Bullock, who was a slob in the comics, is a groomed and decent man who has Gordon’s back.

I wonder if there’s a John Watson somewhere in Bullock’s family tree.

Stay tuned for more excitement!

(Editor’s Note: We included the shot of J K Simmons in the art because he’s the next guy to play the role of Commissioner Gordon – in the upcoming Justice League movie – and because the editor likes J K Simmons and it’s his computer.)

John Ostrander: Back to the Future Tense

Legends of Tomorrow

There’s a lot of time travel going on in pop culture these days. The CW has DC’s Legends of Tomorrow where a rag-tag group of misfits travel around with Doctor Who, excuse me, Rip Hunter Time Master, as he tries to stop the immortal villain, Vandal Savage, from killing his family. Oh, and to prevent Savage from really messing up the world… but mostly to save his own family.

In general, I like time travel stories and have ever since I saw The Time Machine (the 1960 one with Rod Taylor, not the 2002 version with Guy Pearce). A great variation on the H.G. Wells story was Time After Time, where H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) comes to (then) modern day San Francisco chasing Jack the Ripper (David Warner) and encounters the ever adorable Mary Steenburgen.

I like time travel stories in movies, books, comics, and so on. One of the best – and funniest – time travel comics I read was an eight pager by Alan Moore in 2000 AD. Witty and brilliant. Time travel stories can be difficult to pull off well, however. They need to be internally consistent and should jibe not only with the facts but the tone of the time era. That’s easier when the setting is the future or when the story has future travelers coming into our present.

The Back To The Future movie trilogy did this pretty well. The first and third movies were great; the middle one – meh. I don’t dislike it as much as some people do but it’s not quite at the same level. However, it does have a classic time travel conundrum when our hero, Marty McFly (played by the ever adorable Michael J. Fox), has to go back to the same era he was in during the first film and not meet himself. It’s done cleverly and is internally consistent.

One of the tropes in a lot of modern time travel tales appears to be the traveler is coming back in time to undo something to save the future times. That’s the basis of the Terminator movies, Twelve Monkeys, the aforementioned DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and others. It reflects one of the age-old questions of time travel – if you could travel back in time, would you kill Adolph Hitler before he really got going. (One of my favorite episodes of my favorite time travel series of all, Doctor Who, is called “Let’s Kill Hitler.”)

There’s lots of reasons as to why a given time traveler can’t or won’t kill Hitler – it would result in someone even worse or that time is like a stream and if you attempt to divert it it will find it’s way back to what was changed. One theory of time (and why you can’t change the past) was explained on a recent episode of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. One of the group’s scientists explains that time is like a block of Jell-O; it’s homogeneous in that it actually is all happening at the same time and it is only our perception of time being linear that separates one second from another.

I wonder if the prevalence of this “going back in time to save the world” is part of our current zeitgeist. Maybe we sense or feel that something is going badly wrong and the future is coming back to our present to keep a very dystopian future from happening. The event may vary according to your own beliefs and perceptions. Maybe they’re here to stop Trump from being elected or maybe it’s Hillary. (My money’s on Trump, but that’s me.) Maybe it’s George W. Bush and the Iraq War; maybe it’s Ralph Nader because he enabled the election of Bush. Maybe it’s to stop the effects of climate change before it’s too late.  Your versions may vary; these are mine.

I think what it reflects is that we all sense that something is wrong even if we can’t agree on what it is. As usual, our pop culture speaks to that underlying fear, picks up on our gestalt, our group subconscious, and tries to give it form. Art can do that. It can give a physical form to what we feel, to what we can’t elucidate, and shows it to us.

Shakespeare, of course, said it better:

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

  • Midsummer’s Night Dream. Act V, Scene 1

That’s also a form of time travel; words from hundreds of years ago still resonate and his voice still lives and speaks to us.

Or, as Doc says to Marty and his girlfriend at the end of Back To The Future III: “… your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one, both of you.”

Make it a good one, all of you.

Marc Alan Fishman: Marvel – Make Em’ Laugh. Make Em’ Laugh!

Ant-Man

Howdy ya’ll. I’m back from Nashville. And you know what they say about Music City: What happens in Music City, stays in Music Ci… wait, no, they don’t say that. Feh!

It was a day-job convention. It was exhausting. It was very much not about comics, pop culture, or anything fun. But since ya’ll wanted to know, I saw Barbara Mandrell’s mansion and it was everything I expected it to be. Isn’t this cool, kiddos? I’m not even one paragraph in, and I already need to utter ComicMix’s favorite catchphrase, stolen directly from Peter David… But I digress.

So this past weekend I was able to enjoy Marvel’s latest movie, Ant-Man. And I emphasize how much I enjoyed it. Amidst a well-balanced story that juggled the motifs of loss, fathers and daughters, mentorship, and morality, there was an underlying current of pure joy that rooted the near-two hour run time with positivity. This spat in the face of the pre-movie trailer roll, which included Fantastic Four, as well as both the teaser and full trailer Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice: Brow Furrowing: I Hope You Bleed: Don’t You See How Much I Care? It leaves me dumbfounded and baffled to ask this – have Warner Bros and Fox simply not paid any attention to Marvel Studios for the past seven years?

Ant-Man, much akin to nearly every other movie in the Marvel Movieverse, ensured that laughter permeated the periphery of nearly every scene. When wonderful things happened, a quip wasn’t far behind. When things got awkward, Paul Rudd’s Paul-Ruddyness broke the tension. And when the world needed to be saved, grimaces were grimaced, long enough to solve the problem. And then, on with the yuck-yucks. This is as it was in Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Avengers (1 more than 2). By the time Thomas the Tank Engine was ramrodding YellowJacket in the mush, I’d realized I’d not frowned once. My usual resting bitch face ached from the corners of an upturned mouth – a feat only last realized when Captain America: Winter Soldier was on free cable while I was in Nashville.

It begs me to ask: who here caught themselves smiling during Man of Steel? Who caught those sneak peaks of Batman v. Superman or Suicide Squad, and rocked back and forth in their chair with glee (save perhaps for our own John Ostrander, who is given a pass while The Wall is given quality screen time and played by a wonderful actress)? The only time we may have had the slightest guffaw might have been when Lex “Not the Facebook Guy” Luthor cackled that “the red capes are coming.” Suicide Squad‘s trailer did elicit a chuckle from me – but only when I was snarkily grimmacing at Will Smith’s Men In Wild Wild West Robot Independence Day impression of himself. And the less I say about the dark nightmare that Fantastic Four is to be the better.

In all of these cases I simply can’t understand the logic, or the lack there of. Marvel has been killing the box office with each outing. Paired with a ton of licensing deals for merch, streaming contracts, and cable air-play, it’s literally the cash cow they can’t stop milking. Every new movie could spin-off a trilogy. And with Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter making dub-smash videos showcasing that even on TV Marvel can’t stop having fun… it’s starting to become ludicrous to me that the others in the same space seem to think that the polar opposite must be the key to hidden treasure.

Forgive me if I get a bit philosophical before I wrap this up. More often than not, we turned to the funny books with the capes and cowls because they were fun. And while the industry at large grew darker over time – at the core, the fun remained.

And now, even amidst massive hits like the Walking Dead or Crossed (which is about as bleak as they can get), you can’t shake a stick without hitting brilliant explorations of innocence and joy. Beneath any layers of dread, angst, or fear, our pulp roots cling hard to the light in the world. Superman is, was, and will always be a symbol of hope. To yoke that with the sadness and pain of reality – and then double down with a dour and fighty Batman – is to celebrate those things that simply get in the way of how we want to feel when our heroes are given the opportunity to become that much more real.

If DC (and Fox) can’t see the forest for the trees… all they have to do is lighten up. Forgive me: Someone get those Pepsi-drinkers a god-damned Coke, and let them really taste the difference. There’s a reason why 7-Up ain’t even in third place, kiddos.

 

Marc Alan Fishman: Not So Super, Girl

As we are assuredly living in the golden age of superhero TV, it was a clean jab to the jaw to watch the trailer for the forthcoming CBS Supergirl show. In only six and one-half minutes, my optimism – once high and mighty – was sucker-punched and left waning in the gutter.

Flash and Arrow are running at a breakneck pace, unyielding in showcasing how comic book shows can be both inspiring and hopeful, as well as dark and gritty whilst still being network-appropriate. Gotham, while no means as good as its CW counterparts, had flashes of brilliance in between the scenery chewing and trope-filled set-pieces. Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter both delivered period-appropriate ass-kickery, and more than one jaw-dropping moment. And while I’m not much on the whole zombie thing, iZombie and Walking Dead have both popped up in my Facebook feed as being well-produced and good fun for the fans. While nary a single one of these shows appeared to be as brilliant as they actually turned out to be, there was always enough there to see the greatness to come.

In contrast, Supergirl not only showed me nothing to be excited about, it made me worry for what will make it to screen, come the fall.

After a decent setup on Krypton, we’re whisked away to Metropolis by way of Devil Wears Prada. The prototypical rom-com workplace is our setting du jour. Really? Cat Grant, once a dirt-digging reporter and gossip columnist is now a low-rent she-devil running her own tabloid. While I might dig the girl-power aspect of giving Grant the power of the rich and famous, her screen time is given only to insult her employees and undercut women by celebrating girls. And she also calls herself hot, which I think must be a given – as her face looks to be comprised mostly of space-age polymers. But I digress.

Our titular Kryptonian is shown as a dichotomously dipsy dolt one minute, and a boy-golly-gosh-gee-howdy hero the next. It’s Super then it’s it’s Syewpah. Kara’s rocket ride through the cosmos apparently crash landed her on the set of Leave It To Beaver, and frankly it’s a shame. In the wake of Arrow and Flash, we’ve seen how our silver age heroes can exist in the modern era without being overtly cheesy. As presented, our heroine only seems to act appropriately when there’s actual trouble afoot.

And what of that trouble? By the trailer’s end, we’re introduced to the super serious black guy who informs us that all sorts of bad guys are just pilfering and plundering all over the planet. Luckily, I guess, Kara is here now to fight one each week.

It’s not that I don’t understand and accept the procedural portions of our pulpy wares when translated to serialized television. It’s just that based on what it set to tease us for the coming season, we’ll be whisked away to a doppelgänger universe where morts-of-the-week will be presented for super-punching. Given how closely Arrow and Flash run their shows – with home bases chock full of wonderful technology, and happy-to-help friends with no personal lives – it’s hard to find excitement in another retread of the same ground. Even if it’s on another network. And even if our protagonist wears a skirt.

But let me clear: I still hold out hope for the better. The half a dozen episodes of Birds of Prey I once watched prove my mettle. In between the quirky-peppy-girl-next-doorness of Supergirl, there were hints of something better. While my eyes are already set to roll every time we get this close to seeing He Who Shall Not Get A Credit, I will celebrate the fact that this show shouldn’t need him if it can match wits with the scarlet speedster and liberal archery master. And while it would be too much to hope they would eventually share the same universe, no doubt those counting the ad buy-ins would sooner spin-off something else to create a multiverse of superhero television empires.

Ultimately, Supergirl must be far more than the sum of the parts put together for the up-fronts. When the fans clamor for heroines that need not always be saved by the boys, Kara may be only a tiara behind Wonder Woman in terms of being the most widely recognized lady of comics. With the world ablaze in Avengers fever, and TV viewers DVR’ing anything that even sounds vaguely metahuman, Supergirl has the potential to be that bridge-gap nay-sayers need to come join the rank-and-file of the nerdy.

But if instead of a leading lady who shows that heroism is gender neutral, we get a dork who only gets hot when she’s showing off some CGI super powers… I’ll gladly continue to hold my breath for Agent Carter‘s second season instead.

 

Marc Alan Fishman: Agents of Angst

A caveat before I dig in: I’ve not seen this week’s episode of Agents of SHIELD (and screw typing all those periods!). That being said, I doubt the snark I’m about to wield will be undone over one episode. In fact, I bet my beard on it. But I digress.

With the ending of the limited run on Agent Carter, we’ve returned to the inhumanly angsty agents under Phil Coulson. And it didn’t take long into their mighty return for me to wind up longing for Manhattan in 1946 again. Funnier still to me is the fact that when Peggy was to replace Phil on the squawk box, I lamented even programming the DVR. SHIELD boasted new technology, a major Hydra conspiracy, ties to the modern day Marvel Movieverse™, and plenty of butt-kickery to enjoy. Peggy and pals could only promise pugilists and palookas, gender inequality, and light British tomfoolery. Oh how wrong I was!

What Agents of SHIELD brought back to the forefront when it returned to air, was the considerable yoke of backstory weighing heavily around its neck. And while serial dramas bank on intricate relationships, lofty past adventures, and plenty of narrative short hands, after the breath of fresh air Agent Carter offered up, it became plainly obvious how some of those crutches are useless to stand on with fresh legs ready to run again.

The intricate relationships between Coulson’s team – between Mack and Fitz, Coulson and Skye, May and Coulson, Skye and May, Bobbi and British Guy, Mack and Bobbi, and Simmons and Fitz – all flooded back without any real reintroduction. Because the show stopped at a mid-season finale, it was evidently pressured to return us only seconds after we’d originally left. It removed any chance for us to reacclimate to the beats of the show. It was jarring. It was slow. It was angsty as a high schooler being dumped at the prom. Without any runway to travel down, everything felt superficial – as if all the character-driven moments of the episode were just boxes left to be checked, not moments to be lived in.

While I know the past of the show enough to appreciate Agent Simmons’ new-found power-xenophobia, it simply read as the plot device it clearly is. Agent Coulson bounced between guttural barking and sappy moping. Mockingbird and her beau (whose name I still fail to recall) remain jovial… using their verbal foreplay to remind us that we truly know nothing about them outside what little we’ve been shown. Mack continues to just be a collection of ticks and tallies instead of a human being. Fitz now fully embraces his less-smart-but-still-as-smart-as-the-plot-demands device. Skye, crying through literally every scene she was in, reminds us that with great powers come great big cow eyes. And by the end of the episode – where the team sat together to have a last laugh and tribute to their fallen compatriot – the moment we should feel reconnected to the team hit me as cold and lifeless. They’re telling me how to feel. I could hear it being whispered through the end credits. Why?

Because over the course of all the episodes involving the fallen Agent Triplett, he served more as an expository device than a character. Triplett enjoyed being tied to Ward and Crazy Bill Pulman when he debuted. And shortly after a cocktease of is he actually bad or can we trust him, he was reduced to the black guy until Mack showed up. Then he become the black guy who knew a lot about the Howling Commandos. A soldier, made hero, all to serve as the unifying agent to reset the season. But his death was in vein. He was a sacrifice to the gods of smaller casts, or at very least to the only one black guy on a team initiative. His loss was there more to fluster Skye then make us care. And coming out of a Whedon-led writers room? That’s quite the sin.

The evidence that Agents of SHIELD needs to take a step back and find the wonder and joy it once had comes when we look to the contrasts between our potent proxies.

Over eight episodes, Peggy Carter came to life. More than a sweet red hat and some fine hosiery, she was built as a smart, tough, world-weary spy worthy of a position of power. We got to enjoy this through the contrast of the world built around her. And over those eight episodes, Peggy was able to prove to everyone else what she knew all along. It was fun, fitting, and fast without being frenetic.

In contrast we have Skye. Or Daisy. Whatever. Once our proxy as the savvy hacker fighting against the man, over thirty-two episodes she has forgotten that life altogether. Instead, her toughness is gifted to her via montages with Ward and May. Her smarts, written in pseudo-cyber speak when the plot demands it. And now, she’ll have some emotionally driven superpowers to round off any edges that formerly existed to her character. What was once a woman is now just a sum of plot parts. She is without joy and wonder. She strives for nothing more than the show demands of her week to week.

And it’s on her shoulders that Agents of SHIELD is failing to grab me back from the nostalgic clutches of Agent Carter. Here’s hoping a wormhole is open soon, so Peggy can knock some sense in her future fem fatale.

 

Tweeks: Experience The Marvel Experience

TweeksMEXthumbnailLast week, we went to The Marvel Experience during its stop in San Diego.  Taking place in seven large domes, visitors become S.H.I.E.L.D recruits who undergo training in order to fight alongside the Avengers against Hydra in a final showdown. It reminded us of a Marvel themed amusement park, but is it worth the ticket price (ranging from $24.50 to $34.50) when it comes your city?  Watch our review to find out.

Mike Gold: Who Needs Comic Books?

disney-marvel-mickeyAre you reading more comics now but enjoying them less? Worse still – if you happen to be a comics publisher – are you reading fewer comics now and still enjoying them less?

If the Internet is any indication, plenty of people are cutting back, bailing out, and getting highly more selective about their purchases. I realize the Internet has but three purposes: 1) as a medium for obtaining free porn, 2) as a platform for spirited anonymous bitching, and 3) to prove to the world that your cat is cuter than everybody else’s. Only #2 is relevant here, but you can’t use the Internet’s bitchy overtones to dismiss everything you don’t like. I think there’s a real problem here.

Part of this response is due to the fact that Marvel and DC have been making it exceptionally easy to rocket out of their universes by rebooting, refurbishing, and retconning their family jewels. Good lord, if you’ve been reading any of their major product lines for more than a decade and you know what’s going on and what was going on and look forward to what will be going on – those are three separate things – then William Shatner was correct: get a life.

Donate some of the money you’re spending on comics you don’t like to the CBLDF.

I think there’s another contributing factor, a big one. Forget about the plethora of superhero movies; your “television entertainment media” systems have been invaded by latex costumed nano-bedbugs. Right now, this week, there are at least five original broadcast series based upon Marvel and DC superheroes, six if you think Agent Carter is a separate program. In two months we’ll be getting another show, this time on Netflix, and they’ve got at least four more in active production. Powers, published but not owned by Marvel, will be appearing on Sony’s entertainment network pretty soon. And next season, which is only about seven months away, we may see several more as the broadcast nets are churning out superhero pilots as if they have no other ideas with commercial potential.

Here’s the rub. Of the five weekly series currently on broadcast teevee, people seem to like at least four of them. Constantine may or may not make it. I’ll bet, based on 100% presumption, that those who do like it include a hell of a lot of comics readers.

So, let me ask you this: how much time do you have to spend on spandex adventurers? Teevee, movies, comic books, e-books, trade paperbacks… the whole enchilada. Personally, I enjoy Arrow, Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD, Constantine, The Flash, and Gotham and I’m looking forward to Daredevil. Add four superhero movies this year and I’d be spending at least 120 hours in the next twelve months watching comic books. Is it any wonder why I bought a new TiVo?

Comic book teevee shows used to be pretty stupid, shallower than the pretty stupid shows that surrounded them. A great many baby boomers were greatly embarrassed by the 1960s Batman show. I know one major comics writer/editor/producer who wanted to kill Lorenzo Semple Junior, who developed and wrote or story edited the show. I don’t quite share that feeling: Semple also wrote The Parallax View and Papillon.

But I digress (hi, Peter!). Today’s superhero shows are much, much better. Not Citizen Kane better, but they’re entertaining and they don’t condescend.

In a good year comics do not make enough money to impress the stockholders of Time Warner and Disney. Comic book movies make those same stockholders giggle like piggies (hi, George!).

So, I ask you: who needs superhero comic books? Well, honestly, not the conglomerates who own DC Comics and Marvel.

 

Tweeks: ABC’s New Musical Mini Galavant & Marvel’s Agent Carter

tumblr_n5ayj43UhU1r4bvu5o1_1399631441_coverThough we still haven’t forgiven ABC for canceling Selfie, we are very encouraged by the shows filling in for Once Upon A Time (8pm, Sundays) and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (9pm, Tuesdays) during their winter breaks.  This week we review Galavant, a comedy/musical fairytale series that reminds us a lot of Monty Python’s Spamalot and talk about how super cool it is for Marvel’s Agent Carter to be about a female hero.  And of course, Maddy goes on a rant about there not being a Black Widow movie —- because come on, all the boy superheroes seem to need special powers, but girls like Peggy Carter and Natasha Romanoff are just as awesome without them!

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