Tired, cranky, and on-deadline with an empty thought balloon hovering over my head. But I have these questions that are keeping me up nights, questions that must be answered. For example:
1)Who’s got Who?
IDW’s Doctor Who ends at the Christmas special. They bid on renewal of the license, unsuccessfully. Others bid as well. Somebody got it, and, as of this writing, nobody knows who. Or Who. Whom? Anyway, conventional wisdom says it’s Titan Comics out in the U of K. Some think it might be the BBC itself. I think Panini might have taken a shot at it – they’ve been publishing Doctor Who Magazine for quite some time.
But for some amusing reason, the BBC is keeping quiet about it. And while they’re not known for being the most enthusiastic business people in the neighborhood, on the occasion of the Doctor’s 50th anniversary they ain’t leaving nobody’s money on the table.
2) Exiles from the DC Nation?
So everybody was running around counter-clockwise in tiny concentric circles wondering who was not going to be offered a ride to Los Angeles when DC Comics’ New York facility goes west in 2015. That loud sigh of relief you heard Monday was from the New York staffers after honcho Diane Nelson said nobody was getting fired because of the move, that everybody would keep their jobs if they so desired.
Yes, indeed. However, they have all of 2014 to thin the herd if they so desire. And offering you a west coast job without fully covering moving costs is another way to thin the herd. Of course, some DC staffers own houses, condos, or co-ops, but they’ve got a year to sell them. And then learn how to drive a car – not all New Yorkers know how to do that.
3) Hourman? Really?
Evidently, The CW (in which Warner Bros. has a strong minority ownership position) has an Hourman teevee show in development. They’re not saying which version of the character they’re working on – is there even a viable Hourman in The New 52? – but if Arrow is any indication, they’ll pick what they want from most of them. In case you came in late, Hourman is about this dude who invented a pill that he thinks gives him superpowers for… an hour. Most latter versions featured people who were related to the original.
This is not a great idea for a teevee show. Hell, you can’t even show a bad guy smoking a cigarette on-screen. The good guy dropping a tab and flying around seems even more problematical. And when he crashes to Earth at Minute 61, they will be ripping off The Greatest American Hero.
You remember The Greatest American Hero, don’t you? DC unsuccessfully sued the producers, claiming it was a rip-off of Superman. Hey, that’s how irony works.
4) Are you Thor about this?
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will be picking up the leftover plot strings from Thor: The Dark World. That’s pretty cool. But we’ve been warned not to expect any of the major stars to show up on the “small” screen.
I dunno about that. Maybe. But after Samuel L. Jackson showed up at the end of the pilot episode, I think everything is up for grabs.
Sauntering through Digitalville, sipping news and trivia like a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower, looking for nothing in particular, except maybe an idea for something to write about. Anything in the comic book line?
Ah. Here’s a news item (if you can call this kind of stuff “news”) informing us that in the coming season of The CW’s Arrow, there will be more superpowers, including a three-episode arc featuring The Flash, who is certainly one of DC Comics’ mightier superguys – not as powerful as big daddy Superman, but way above, say, The Atom. And there will also be more costumed characters. Will these be equal to The Flash, or closer to the series’ title character, whom I’ve always considered a human-scaled guy, as opposed to a demigod? (And if you want to lose the “demi” how can I stop you?) Or maybe they’ll up Green Arrow’s power quotient – have him stand near a chemical explosion, maybe, and then…I don’t know – use his bow to shatter Jupiter?
And yeah, yeah, I know I referred to the character as Green Arrow instead of the name the video folk prefer, just plain “Arrow.” Well, hey, I knew him when.
I guess I’ll be parking myself in front of the screen on Wednesday nights at eight and watch the questions asked above get answered over the next several months. I may not like the answers, but if I did, the storytellers might not be doing their jobs, which involve engaging a certain demographic, My children are just barely young enough to be part of said demographic. I am way north of it. I am not (Green) Arrow’s audience and so my preferences and quibbles are relevant only to me, and maybe long-suffering Marifran, who has to listen to me express them.
The Arrow story was what I found in Digitalville this morning. This afternoon, it got ugly. Another comic book-related story, the kind we’d rather not see.
It apparently originated at New York City’s CBS outlet, and reported a comic book artist’s loss of 30 years’ work. The artist is my old colleague, Neal Adams. Though I’m not clear on details, it seems that Neal lost the art in a taxicab. I can’t begin to estimate the financial loss Neal has incurred, and bad as that is, the psychological loss might be greater. All those hours of thought and effort and inspiration, hunched over a drawing board, and the sense of achievement and satisfaction manifest in the work…
There is hope. The loss is recent and in the video clip that communicated the story Neal hopes that his portfolios will be returned. So do I.
A few weeks back, an esteemed colleague of mine (oddly enough this time, not Mike Gold…) pitched a debate for my podcast: “Have nerds won? And if they have… is it a good thing?” Well, it was a great idea, and the debate on my show was fairly one sided. Now, after plenty of time to steep on the topic, I can plainly state my opinion; we have, and it is.
For Christmas this year one of the books I got was The Dresden Files graphic novel, Welcome to the Jungle. By that point, I’d read all of the novels; but what got me into them was actually the TV show.
When the show came out back in 2007, I remember hearing vaguely about it via a friend’s blog or two, but I never actually saw it. Thanks to the wonder of Netflix, though, a couple of years ago I discovered and watched it on streaming video, and enjoyed it enough to want to see more – but sadly, it only ran for one short season of 12 episodes. Thus I went back to acquire and read all of the books as well; and now, of course, I want more.
The TV show adaptation wasn’t perfect, but it had a lot of positives, the first three being Paul Blackthorne as Harry, Valerie Cruz as Murphy, and Terrence Mann as Bob. All three actors did very well with the material they were given, and just as important, had excellent character chemistry with each other. Their acting made the friendships (and possibly more, in the case of Harry and Murphy) feel natural, and anchored the crazy storylines happening all around them.
Another thing it had going for it was that Paul Blackthorne has the acting chops to carry a humorous narrative voice-over without it getting tedious (and I am behind on the current episodes, but for an example of When Voice-overs Get Tedious, the first several episodes of Arrow unfortunately come to mind). Blackthorne (who is also on Arrow, funnily enough) kept the energy of the show going with his engaging portrayal of Harry Dresden, much of which felt like it came straight from the books. The writing was also fast-paced and fun.
One area where the show went wrong, I think (or, more accurately, didn’t go right far enough) was in whatever concessions it made to watering down the lore of the books for primetime. Granted, it seems that genre shows and movies have gained more mainstream acceptance in recent years (comic book movies and shows like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, True Blood, etc.), and in 2007 maybe a genre show was a harder network sell and required some compromise (I don’t know), but I firmly believe that any time you tell a story well, and can draw the viewer in, the viewer will be able to handle and possibly embrace the complexity. And despite my dislike of some of Harry’s tiresome views on women, and the blatant male gaze readers are forced to sit through on occasion (particularly in the early books), The Dresden Files books are good, smart, complex stories, and should be adapted as such.
As I said, the TV show only lasted one season – and whether it was from creative choice or Firefly Syndrome (network meddling), it didn’t delve into or only briefly touched on a lot of the cool things that anchor and drive the direction of the books, like Harry’s past and progression in magic, or his place on the Council of wizards, or just how good he really is at magic and how that looks to outsiders.
I think one reason it just slightly missed sometimes was in this “not going far enough,” so to speak – because, for example, part of the charm of Harry is that he’s humble enough to know there are more powerful things than him out there and to be properly frightened of them 90% of the time; but whenever we see him through others’ eyes or whenever he really gets going with his magic…we the viewers get a glimpse of the discrepancy between Harry’s inner uncertainties and his bombastic power. And that can be a lot of fun, but was only shown rarely in the show.
For much the same reason that I enjoy, e.g. an episode of Supernatural where the FBI agent hunting the Winchesters because he thinks they’re nuts finally discovers that, in fact, demons and all manner of other creepy creatures are real, I enjoy stories that switch up characters’ points of view and give us different takes on the same situation, and particularly stories that shake up our, or a character’s, inaccurate assumptions. Reading about Harry dealing with Murph and trying to pay the bills and inner monologuing about how he’s not sure how he’ll make some spell work and all, and then e.g., going out and burning a house party full of vampires like it was no big thing, is that sort of story.
I say all of this to come back to the fact that last week I finally read Welcome to the Jungle, which is a visual adaptation that does well in this regard, and it reminded me of the times the show got it right, and of how much I’d really like to see more of The Dresden Files on television, or if not on TV, then in more graphic novels. Jim Butcher has said himself that he’s always imagined the series in graphic form. Despite the fact that I loved Blackthorne as Harry, I doubt a network would try to revive the old show. However, I could easily see a new adaptation being done; and I think if it, from the beginning, didn’t shy away from the more complex stuff, and embraced the big special effects as well as the small, it would be a truly awesome thing. I know that a new show is probably not likely to happen…but hey, a girl can dream, eh? So this is me, just dreaming a little dream at y’all. Anyone else think a new Dresden Files TV show would be cool?
Tell me if you do, and until next time, Servo Lectio!
Entertainment Weekly reports that Alex Kingston (ER, Doctor Who) will be joining the cast of The CW series Arrow, based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow. Kingston will join the cast as Dinah Lance, mother to Laurel (Oliver Queen’s girlfriend) and her late sister Sarah, as well as ex-wife to Detective Quentin Lance.
Kingston joins a growing list of actors on the show who have also appeared on Doctor Who. Kingston plays the enigmatic River Song, a woman with a very convoluted history and lineage. John Barrowman joined the cast some weeks back as billionaire Malcolm Merlyn; and Colin Salmon, playing Moira Queen’s new husband Walter Steele, played Doctor Moon in the Two-parter Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, the story that introduced River Song. Ben Browder, star of both Farscape and Stargate-SG1, and played Isaac in A Town called Mercy will appear next week as Ted Gaynor, an employee of Blackhawk, a security concern.
Many characters from DC Comics have appeared in the series, though most have been adapted without their superhero monikers. In the comics, Dinah Drake Lance is the original Black Canary, and her daughter Dinah Laurel Lance is the modern-day version. The aforementioned Merlyn is a professional assassin who uses a bow and arrow as well, while the TV version has only recently shown his proficiency with the weapon. Helena Bertinelli has been introduced into the series, and while she wears a version of the comics’ Huntress costume, has yet to use the name.
Arrow can be seen Wednesdays at 8PM on your local CW affiliate. More information and complete episodes can be seen at the show’s website.
As of today, it is officially 2013; and there’s nothing we can do about that, so we may as well enjoy it!
There’s nothing like a song to ring in the new year, and nothing like some resolutions (that may or may not be kept) to start that year off right. So join me, won’t you, in singing the geekiest song of New Year’s Resolutions that ever you will see, i.e. My Twelve Vows of New Year’s. I think you all know the tune. It’s similar to that silly old thing about the partridge and the pear and the damsels in distress or whatever.
Ready? Here we go!
My Twelve Vows of New Year’s
On the first day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
To book my flight for SDCC! Fn1
On the second day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
sell on Etsy, Fn2
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the third day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
Watch Arrow, Fn3
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the fourth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
sort my Deadpool, Fn4
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the fifth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
Beat Fallout 3, Fn5
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the sixth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
get my subscriptions, Fn6
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the seventh day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
write a new webcomic, Fn7
get my subscriptions,
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the eighth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
launch our Kickstarter, Fn8
write a new webcomic,
get my subscriptions,
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the ninth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
make my next costume, Fn9
launch our Kickstarter,
write a new webcomic,
get my subscriptions,
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the tenth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
don’t buy more variants, Fn10
make my next costume,
launch our Kickstarter,
write a new webcomic,
get my subscriptions,
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the eleventh day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be: postaseriouscolumn, Fn11
don’t buy more variants,
make my next costume,
launch our Kickstarter,
write a new webcomic,
get my subscriptions,
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy,
And to book my flight for SDCC!
On the twelfth day of this year,
my New Year’s vow will be:
read my new comics, Fn12
post a serious column,
don’t buy more variants,
make my next costume,
launch our Kickstarter,
write a new webcomic,
get my subscriptions,
Beat Fallout 3,
sort my Deadpool,
Watch Arrow,
sell on Etsy, And to book my flight for SDCC!!!
Thanks for singing along! Wishing everyone the very happiest and geekiest of new years; and until next time: Servo Lectio!
Fn 1: Seriously, I am finally going to go this year, I swear. I’m so excited!
Fn 2: I want to open a store in which I sell tiny, adorkable, possibly wearable geekery made of clay.
Fn 3: I always seem to be one episode behind. How does this keep happening?? I blame Deathstroke.
Fn 4: How did everything get all out of order and stuff?? I swear I used to have the whole collection arranged by date!
Fn 5: Seriously, I have owned this game for how long now and never played it? It came out in 2008! What is wrong with me??
Fn 6: My poor local comics shop owner recently mailed me a stack of my subscription comics because it takes me so long to get around to visiting the store. It’s not that I don’t want them right away. But I don’t have a car and the store’s a 20 minute walk from the Metro!! That’s like it being in the middle of the ocean or something.
Fn 7: Probably while on the Metro. That’s where I write most of my webcomic scripts.
Fn 8: For the new comic Ben Fisher and I are writing! It’s going to be amazing! And full of hamsters. Sooooo many hamsters.
Fn 9: I have an idea for DragonCon that is going take forever. But it will be magical.
Fn 10: I can’t help myself – the Deadpool Does Memes variant covers are Just. So. Great. Gangnam Styyyyyle!!
Fn 11: But really. This was fun too, right? Just you wait; next time I’ll do iambic pentameter.
Fn 12: The pile, it is large. So very, very large.
Art Sippo wasn’t able to join The Book Cave this week due to work obligations. Rumor has it that his experiment escaped and the villagers were approaching with torches and pitchforks. Joining the podcast this week as a new member of the Book Cave crew is Bruce Rosenberger. Bruce is the host of his own podcast, KomicsKast, the show where Ric first learned what a podcast was and became hooked. In this episode, Bruce and Book Cave host Ric Croxton talk about the popular new TV series, Arrow. They cover the character of Oliver Queen from his beginning to the present. Plus, hear who Ric and many others think Queen is representing as a character on TV.
Well! They are certainly biting the dust, aren’t they, these “heroes”? A few weeks ago, I lamented the steroid-fueled fall from grace of that bicycling phenom, Lance Armstrong. And for quite a while we’ve been learning about perverse clergymen who can’t keep their cassocks buttoned and their hands to themselves. Now, we have the sorry spectacle of two of our nation’s high-profile warriors behaving like eighth graders enthralled by their female classmates’ sudden bumpiness. Could they be taking their cues from a rather impressive list of horny congressmen? Don’t know. Is this a matter of national security? Shrug. Are they dumb asses? Well, I have no rocks to throw when it comes to asinine concupiscence, so let us hurry past this and ask the big question: Are they heroes, these horn dogs?
Okay, what’s a “hero,” anyway? The answer, if you don’t mind regressing past a lot of centuries, is that a hero is something pretty close to a god. Heroes first presented themselves in mythology, and often, maybe most of the time, they were half-deity themselves: Gilgamesh and Hercules and that crowd. We worship gods; we venerate heroes. And the need to perform these acts of worship and veneration seems to be pretty deep within us. Our genes seem to like them; every culture seems to have its pantheon of über-beings. Might have some survival value – uniting folks unrelated by blood into a social unit, the better to grow crops and defend against enemies and invent video games.
And here’s where it gets vexing for those of us in the hero business: maybe the time for heroes is almost past. Not just any one hero, or group of heroes, or class of heroes – the very concept of hero. Going, going, gone. Because it’s hard to venerate something you know, in your synapses, does not exist – not just on Olympus, or heaven, but nowhere at all. Which is what contemporary experience is telling us: no Santa Claus, no Easter bunny, no heroes. Now move along…
Oh, there are still plenty of extraordinary feats to admire. Physicists and mathematicians and delving into realities that their forebears didn’t know existed and if you doubt that athletes are amazing, just check out any random season of a major sport or watch the next Olympics. But the “hero” idea has accumulated a lot of baggage over the millennia: our heroes should be noble and honest and honorable and self-sacrificing and, as the Greeks had it, should “serve and protect.” They aren’t any of that – not the ones that exist outside make-believe.
Still, we go to the movies and watch the television and get entertained by heroic figures, so, bottom line, whatever prompts us to hero worship is still with us. And if our heroes are a bit more smudged than those our fathers and grandfathers favored…hey, our air isn’t as clean as theirs, either, and we’re still breathing, at least for a while.
Before I go…did I tell you that I’ve finally seen the new Arrow TV series and…
RECOMMENDED READING: Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Never let it be said that I won’t change my mind if circumstances change. In that vein, I’m starting today’s column with a little addition to last week’s thoughts on Arrow.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
After writing about how things in the first two episodes seemed too crowded and rushed, and how I wish they’d slow down a bit and also give Arrow a few challenges to the thus-far routine of “Ollie targets bad guy, Ollie triumphs over bad guy,” Arrow turned around and gave me exactly what I was asking for. Sure, I still wish they’d taken more time to mine the experience of the first few days/weeks of his return from nowhere (sort of like how Elementary managed not to pile on every revelation about Holmes’s and Watson’s pasts and presents right up front, as I mention in my Elementary review here). And I still think the voiceovers are overly melodramatic, and in fact may be the thing that’s jarred me out of enjoying the show the most so far; but it feels like with episode three, the show is now hitting its stride.
For one thing, they actually gave Arrow an adversary worth a few minutes time, i.e. Deadshot, who throws Ollie off his game and wings his bodyguard, Dig. True, Ollie gets the easy upper hand by using his standing as, apparently, a captain in the Russian mob (eh??) to find Deadshot, and then takes him down reasonably quickly – but at least it wasn’t all smooth sailing this week. For another, they introduced a new step in Ollie’s playboy disguise – opening a nightclub to cover his secret base – without resolving it magically in one episode (I was half expecting the final scene to be opening night at the club or something). And finally, they’ve slowed their roll on the character drama to what feels like a more manageable and real life pace, focusing mostly this episode on Arrow beginning to build a bond of trust with Detective Lance (woo!) and Thea being a willful teen headache to everyone around her. Plus there was a bar fight that involved Laurel beating the crap out of a dude, which was killer and by far my favorite scene of the episode.
Happily, it looks like they may also be giving themselves an in to address the voiceover issue, by giving Arrow a confidante in the wounded Dig (and just in time too, as my friends and I were beginning to suggest other possible solutions, such as Arrow getting a new sidekick, Quiver. He would look like this). I hope so, as that could introduce more humor or banter into the show. I’d like to see the grimness tempered with an occasional sense of adventure and fun, as well as more of an open emotional connection to someone from Ollie, and maybe with Dig knowing his secret, that will come to pass.
Until then, I’ll keep watching, and amusing myself by trying to spot the new extreme form of exercise Ollie does each episode (this time, it was lifting a ridiculous amount of weight via a pulley system-thing). I’m hoping they’ll keep including those, so I can turn them into a game like spot-the-pineapple in Psych. I’m also hoping the next Easter egg for comics fans is a character named O’Neil (or possibly Denny?) after ComicMix’s very own Dennis O’Neil. C’mon, writers! I’m sure an absent-minded Perfesser character would come in handy for exposition and the like. Do it!
(End of spoilers!)
In other news, Halloween is just around the corner, which brings me great joy and the usual expectation of going to parties where no one recognizes my costume. Just kidding! I guess I’m still slightly bitter about the time I went out in Georgetown as Black Canary and exactly zero people got it (although there were three votes for Lady Gaga since I wasn’t wearing pants. Sigh.) I can’t complain too much about that, though, because I had fun with it, and it did inspire this awesome sketch by amazing comics artist John K. Snyder III. Yay!
Despite the Philistine-like character of some mundanes in DC, as an adult and convention costumer I love that Halloween provides an opportunity for all the local geeks to strut their stuff without (much) comment from everyone else. Sure, when I go out tomorrow night, I expect the usual round of gangsters, zombies, “sexy” whatevers, and that guy who always shows up dressed as himself with a nametag. But Friday night on the Metro I ran into a matched pair of Trekkies, and they were swiftly followed by a full-grown Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. And nobody in this usually stuffy town blinked an eye – or at least, if they did, you could tell by the look in said eye that they were admiring the costumes, not sneering at them.
Given that when I’m on my home turf my life is caught up in my full-time professional job, my professional commitments, and more, I don’t get to do as many local geek things as I’d like – and a lot of my genre friends are folks I’ve met at cons, and live far away. So it’s nice to have the reminder that actually, there are a lot of locals who love the same things I do (and to maybe meet some of them as we’re making the rounds, nerd flags flying high). It makes my geeky little soul happy to be out and about in the neighborhood, shining that geek light with costumes I made for conventions, even if most of the people out there don’t know who I’m supposed to be because it’s a comic book character don’t any of you people at this dance club read comics geeeeez.
Therefore, I plan to keep on representin’ for us comics fans at Halloween this year with the Arkham City Harley Quinn costume I described the construction process for in an earlier column and made for Dragon*Con, which turned out like this, in case anyone was wondering (with bonus Lego Poison Ivy!). And happily, my friend actually discovered that the club we’re planning to go to has the perfect theme – Haunted Mental Ward – so for tomorrow night, I went the extra mile (okay, inch) and also made this. I’m hoping that this year, at least a few people get my costume; but the funny thing is that, if they don’t, I kind of don’t care. Because Halloween is a fun time to go out wearing whatever the hell you want and have some fun with it, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.
What about the rest of you? Any exciting Halloween plans? Great costumes? Feel free to share in the comments (with pictures! Pictures are great!) and I hope that everyone has a fun, and safe, and slightly spoooooky Halloween!
And until next time, Servooooooo Lectiooooooo!
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis Pontificates
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold Hands Out Marching Orders
I love TV shows, but sometimes I’m terrible at keeping up with them. As with comics, I tend to skip a few weeks and then mainline three or four episodes in a row, mostly because I hate getting just a tiny bit of story and character interaction and then waiting a whole week for more. Impatience is one of my little flaws, and the mandatory waiting is made more bearable if I get a miniseries collection of stories first.
However, given that it’s often harder (or more inconvenient) to find and watch back episodes of current shows, this fall I did take note of two shows I was excited about and wanted to actually try to keep up with, one of which is Arrow, the new CW show about Green Arrow. So far, I’m succeeding. Go me!
I always try to give a new show at least two episodes to decide what I think of it. Sure, a pilot is supposed to grab you and draw you in, but sometimes it takes even a potentially good show a couple of tries to establish a balance (and sometimes it takes half of a season and by the time they’ve worked out the kinks the show’s canceled. I’m looking at you, Dresden Files). For instance, during the first episode of Dexter I was unsure of whether my long-time friend had been insulting my character or serious when he’d said “Oh, you’d love Dexter. It’s about a serial killer!” but by episode two I’d realized that he was absolutely right and I wanted to see more. We’ve had two episodes of Arrow so far, so I feel like I’ve given it a fair shot and it’s time for a frank assessment. So here we go!
(Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
The storyline is centered around Oliver Queen immediately after his return from a yacht wreck and five years marooned on The Island that Makes a Man Out of Him – or a Future Vigilante, whatever. He returns to Star(ling) City to discover that his mom has married the CEO of his dad’s company, his sister Thea’s a recreational drug user, and his best friend Tommy Merlyn’s a slightly smarmy partier – which apparently means he’s the one person who hasn’t changed at all in five years. Ollie’s ex-girlfriend, now-lawyer (Dinah) Laurel Lance, is mad he’s not dead because her sister Sarah died on the yacht because Ollie was cheating on Laurel with her. Classy!
Pretty much from the first moment Ollie arrives back in the city, he begins his purposeful transformation to (Green) Arrow with his stated (literally stated, in an Intense Voiceover) mission being to take down a list of corrupt people his dad told him about who have ruined the city.
Even in the comics, Green Arrow bears a lot of superficial similarities to Batman; but in this show, it’s obvious that they’re actually trying to channel Christopher Nolan’s Batman in particular. Ollie hides behind a more shallow “playboy” persona that he switches on in public so people won’t suspect his vigilante skills and activities; he’s most genuinely affectionate towards the household staff (which plays weirdly here, since it doesn’t seem like either his mother or sister are heinous people at this point); and he magically sets up a fully stocked and wired Arrow-cave with what are apparently two Bags of Holding containing computers, lights, weaponry, and an entire exercise setup.
The problem with all this, though, is that it’s done so quickly. In the Batman movies there’s a clear progression and motivation behind everything Bruce Wayne does to make himself into Batman, and we get to savor the transformation of an ordinary man into a superhero. In this show, it’s like they’re rushing to get the setup out of the way and don’t bother to appreciate what’s so cool about a superhero’s origin, or to go through the reasoning for his behavior. Which is puzzling, because if you’re going to have ridiculously dramatic voiceovers in your show, what better way to use them than to say things like, “I had to pretend to be something I’m not – a shallow, callous party boy – so people wouldn’t suspect the truth.” I can just hear Stephen Amell intoning that now. (Although hopefully he’d stop short of saying, “I also had to don a green hood of vigilante-ism. Because I cannot complete my mission as Oliver Queen. But as a symbol…as a symbol I can be incorruptible; everlasting…”)
Okay, I’m making a big deal about the Nolan parallels; and it could be argued that those movies redefined certain types of superhero cinema, and naturally a serious superhero show might resemble them. But there are actual shots in Arrow that are so cinematically similar to those movies that I can’t think it’s remotely a coincidence, and they’re a little too on-the-mark to be enjoyed as homages.
For instance, in the pilot we get a scene with the head bad guy sitting in a car looking scared as Arrow takes out his men just outside – a la Carmine Falcone at the docks in Batman Begins. And in episode two we get the previous part of that same Batman scene, when a different head bad guy looks around in fright as an unseen person starts taking out his men around him with projectiles in a warehouse-like area (a la the Batarang striking the light bulb and the ensuing mayhem in the movie). And that’s just a couple of examples. Let’s not even get started on things like Tommy driving Ollie into the bad part of the city (does that make Tommy Rachel Dawes?) and the dedication of an applied sciences building in episode two.
I’m not saying that stealing a few pages from Nolan’s playbook is a bad idea; in fact, I think it could be really enjoyable to watch. But as I said, here…everything is so rushed. It’s like they were in this huge hurry to slot every family member, friend, and piece of Arrow’s persona into place so they could get down to the nitty-gritty plot of the show. Which would be okay, except that so far, the plot isn’t a plot, it’s a…routine? I’m not sure what else to call it. Other than all of the establishing information (including the shipwreck and island flashbacks), if I had to sum up what has happened in real time so far, it would be: Queen goes after someone on his Bad Guy list and makes them pay somehow that involves trick arrows; Laurel is involved because she’s a lawyer who fights against the Bad Guys in court; and Detective Harry-Dresden Lance gets involved either because of his daughter or Arrow or both, which makes me happy because so far, he’s my favorite part of the show. (Seriously, I love Paul Blackthorne as Detective Lance so far, and I really loved him as Harry Dresden. Can you tell?)
And… that’s it. Sure, there’s ongoing character drama – sister Thea is alternately begging Ollie to let her in and angry at him for judging her, and the interactions between the two, while not always logical, are pretty well done. Mommy Queen is now married to his dad’s old friend, and is apparently in the midst of Evil Doings but still loves her son… maybe. Ollie and Laurel are back-and-forth about where their relationship is (and their interactions are probably the best part of the show so far, because actress Katie Cassidy, whom I last saw as Ruby in Supernatural, is killing it as Laurel). Meanwhile, there’s some undefined nonsense going on with Laurel and Merlyn; and Laurel and her dad have fights about The Right Way to Do Right. It’s all potentially interesting, but somehow the interesting moments are so disconnected that they turn into background noise for Ollie’s quest; and so far, Ollie’s quest is boring.
To compare: while Smallville, the last CW show to feature Green Arrow, was often goofy and sometimes entered downright “WTF?” territory, the same zaniness that allowed for total mis-steps like “Lana becomes a vampire for an episode” also allowed for stuff like Red-K Clark partying and knocking over banks in Metropolis, and Ollie leading a young Justice League into Lex Luthor’s evil labs and blowing them up; and seriously? That was kind of awesome. There were some really fun plots that only happened because the fictional world was wide open to stuff like Lois & Clark somehow getting sucked into the Phantom Zone via both simultaneously touching Clark’s Fortress crystal which had just been anonymously mailed to him. All in a day at the Kent farm, as it were.
In that universe, which features a different take on Green Arrow’s core personality (and one that I grew to appreciate despite his clunky introductory scenes), somehow Green Arrow targeting Bad Dudes and giving their money to charity managed to be both not boring and not the only thing we were supposed to be invested in. Ollie in Smallville had heart, a certain playfulness despite his tragic past, and, frankly, more firmness of purpose than Clark a lot of the time. Despite the Smallville-ian costume Arrow dons here, however, this character is pretty dour (too much firmness of purpose?), and while I get that he’s supposed to be suppressing his emotions for his mission, I miss the heart that the Smallville character had. Even when he was in pain and being a jackass about it, you felt for him and could understand why his friends would rally together to help him, as they did more than once. I don’t find that here.
I guess I’m having a bit of trouble collating how I feel about Arrow overall, because I’m torn between how much I really wanted to like it (especially given all of the good advance reviews) and my thoughts when watching it. Despite my criticisms above, there are some good pieces to this puzzle; but it seems like all of the pieces I might enjoy are jumbled in with each other in a way that makes it hard to enjoy any of them or put together a coherent picture. The good pieces include the aforementioned interactions between certain characters; Tommy Merlyn as the comic relief; the fun little nerd references to Andy Diggle, Mike Grell, and Deathstroke; Amell, who is gaining traction in a more nuanced portrayal of Oliver by episode two, and is plenty pretty for a CW show (it’s a requirement, dontchya know) and impressively fit (the salmon ladder exercise in the pilot is memorable); the flashbacks to the wreck (and Sarah’s whooshing out to sea, which was very well done); the trick arrows (I like how they’re modernized into technology arrows); and the Lance family (really I’d watch a whole show about the Lance family, as played by Blackthorne and Cassidy, and am thinking right now that maybe the network should have gone with that).
But there are also jarringly bad notes, like the over-the-top (and sometimes unnecessary) voiceovers; some not-stellar dialogue (“What…happened to you on that island?” “A lot.”); and the fact that Oliver Queen, Our Hero, cold killed a dude by straight-up breaking his neck (after presumably killing another dude by putting him in the way of about fifteen bullets to the chest). This happens in the pilot, when Ollie and Tommy are abducted so that some mysterious person (Ollie’s mom, as it turns out) can learn if his dad told him about all the Bad Guys in Star(ling) City. And I get that Ollie is in danger here, since the thugs Ollie’s mom hired are spraying bullets everywhere in a way that would have killed anyone who wasn’t trained to escape them (and since Ollie’s mom doesn’t know about his bad-assedness, that really makes me wonder about her); but still – he kills the guy in cold blood, just because the dude saw him do some sweet parkour and martial arts. I feel like this isn’t very heroic, you know? Also it’s uneven writing, because after that, he purposely doesn’t kill any more bad dudes (even the really bad ones specifically named in his book), instead “bringing them to justice.” Hm.
Taken all together, I would have liked to see a lot more of Ollie progressing from “traumatized guy with a purpose” to “full on superhero,” rather than the rushed bits we get here. Hell, I’d probably watch at least a half-season of just that. Instead of trying to pull every thread of his life together at once, I think if the show had focused in on Ollie, slowly drawing in and examining his interactions with others, I might already have become more invested. I also think that if they threw some challenges in Ollie’s quest path, instead of making it seem like each week he’ll just knock another name off of his list, no problem, I’d be more eager to watch.
As it is, the flashbacks have been interesting, the nerd references are fun, and there have been some snippets of good character interaction. What will keep me watching (for a few more episodes at least) is mainly my appreciation for seeing any adaptation of a superhero to a major network show; my love of the nerdy bits they throw in here and there; my appreciation of The Pretty (hey, Amell’s abs and chiseled looks are impressive); my interest in the Lance family; and my hope that the show is going to jump to a more surprising trajectory than it’s on now, and hopefully get better.
…So I guess I’ll keep watching and see how Arrow does next week, and until then, Servo Lectio!
TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Michael Davis? Really?
WEDNESDAY MORNING: Mike Gold Gets Mad, For A Change
Tired, cranky, and on-deadline with an empty thought balloon hovering over my head. But I have these questions that are keeping me up nights, questions that must be answered. For example:
Kingston joins a growing list of actors on the show who have also appeared on Doctor Who. Kingston plays the enigmatic 
