Tagged: Felicity Smoak

Dennis O’Neil: Happy Endings

For a while, my favorite way of paying the bills was by writing Batman stories for DC Comics. But that was over. I’d accepted a job with Marvel, DC’s arch rival, and so the story I was working on would be my final visit to the Batcave. Well, no  problem.  I was a pro and a pro, I probably thought,  keeps emotions away from the workdesk.

As the splendid Alfred Bester said, “Among professionals the job is boss.”  But still…farewell to Batman? Forever? So I wrote a final panel with a final caption that could have ended the Batman saga, which had been going on for decades.  I knew that it wouldn’t, of course.  Editor Julius Schwartz would  employ another writer and Batman would continue with nary a beat missed. But I would know that my Batman, the only one that counted, would have ended his career with that closing caption.

I wonder how Arthur Conan Doyle felt when he sent Sherlock Holmes over Reichenbach Falls to what he apparently believed would be the great detective’s final exit.

Holmes didn’t stay dead and after some seven years at Marvel, neither did my own private Batman. I returned to DC and, power-mad ogre that I am, assumed editorship of the Batman franchise, which at the time consisted of two comic books. No hardcover novels, no megamovies, just two flimsy comic books. (Plus a number of non-bat related titles, but never mind them.)

And why, you might well inquire, if you are still with me, am I blathering on about such ancient (ancientish) history now?

Cast your mind back to last week’s televised Arrow, which you must have watched, the season’s last episode  and what could have been the finale for the whole series. Arrow, whose birth name is Oliver Queen, has just vanquished his supreme enemy and restored peace and tranquility to his city. He has assembled his cadre of  assistants (disciples?) and proclaimed them his successors. His task is done and they are more than capable of dealing with future tasks. We next see him cruising along an open highway in an open-top convertible, the lovely Felicity Smoak by his side, vanishing into what will surely be the happiest of happy endings.

Except that the series has been renewed and will rise again come fall. So what will Oliver (and let’s not forget the lissome Felicity) be up to in the chilly months while their cohorts kick ass and take villainous names? To just have them leave the series forever would be gutsy, but maybe not commercially prudent. Or maybe they can be more or less absent for a bit – we could look in on them occasionally – and eventually find a reason to return to the fray.  Or maybe they’ll never reach their happy-ever-after destination because of an unforeseen crisis that demands their attention.  (Are they carrying cell phones?)

Or maybe – here’s hoping! – those clever scribes in tv land will devise something breathtakingly original  that will leave me sprawled on  the couch, awed.

I’ve got a whole summer to hope that’s what happens.

 

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #355: ARROW’S FIGHTING A CUSTODY BATTLE

See, now this is when you need a good lawyer.

For the first half of the third season in the CW series Arrow, the good guys were doing what they were supposed to do; catching bad guys in Starling City http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Starling_City and turning them over to the police for trial As this column’s about Arrow, the good guys in question are Oliver Queen, John Diggle, Felicity Smoak, and Roy Harper. Or, if you prefer, Arrow, yada, yada, and Arsenal.

(By the way, what kind of name is Starling City? God knows what bullies like Metropolis or Gotham City are doing to it, because with a wimpy name like Starling even Smallville’s giving it a wedgie.)

Now, you might think what I was talking about, when I said someone needed a good lawyer were those aforementioned bad guys. After all captured bad guys who are awaiting trial would need a good lawyer. But, no, that’s not what I was talking about.

And before we get to what I am talking about, I should probably talk about my

SPOILER WARNING!

All of the episodes of Arrow to be discussed today aired months ago. But if you’re the type of person who doesn’t watch the show live and waits to binge it after the DVD or Blu-rays come out, you might want to stop reading and go binge watch the second season of Arrow, because certain reveals from the third season of Arrow are about to be revealed.

Anyway, the good guys kept on catching the bad guys right up until the winter hiatus. Then Ollie died at the hands of Ra’s Al Ghul. (Later he got better). As the good guys hadn’t taken Laurel Lance’s Black Canary under their wings yet, their ranks were reduced to yada, yada, and Arsenal. The good guys continued to fight the good fight. Just not as well. But they still caught some of the bad guys and gave them to the police for trial.

That’s when Danny “Brick” Brickwell appeared. Brick wasn’t the third season’s Big Bad. That would be Ra’s Al Ghul. Brick was just the main antagonist for a three-episode arc in the middle of the season. Call him a Medium Bad. I’d call him a Little Bad, but Brick was played by former British Footballer (ie., Soccer player) Vinnie Jones, who’s 6’2” and once played the Juggernaut in X-Men: The Last Stand. So, he’s hardly little.

In the comics, Brick is a crime boss with red skin that’s as tough as bricks. It gives him meta-human strength and invulnerability. He’s kind of like the Thing but with a sunburn. In the TV show, Brick is just a crime boss. Not a meta-human. Still, he’s 6’2”, a former Footballer, and was once the Juggernaut, so he’s still rather formidable.

Brick had an interesting plan for recruiting members to his gang. He broke into the warehouse where the police stored its evidence on active cases and stole the evidence. Yada, yada, and Arsenal tried to stop him. But let’s face it, without Arrow, they were a whole yada nothing. So Brick got away. With the evidence.

After that, all of the bad guys awaiting trial in the cases where Brick stole the evidence were released. Without any evidence, the DA’s office couldn’t make their cases against these people and the charges against them were dropped.

Now you would think that this is where the people needed a good lawyer. Someone to file the motions to dismiss the cases. But no. Someone – probably Brick – made sure the theft of the evidence was made public. Once that happened, the DA’s office had no choice but to drop the charges, because it no longer had the evidence it needed to make its cases. So the bad guys didn’t need a good lawyer. Even a bad lawyer would have sufficed. In fact, it was so easy, all that motion practice happened off-camera.

Brick gathered all of the bad guys he had gotten sprung and announced to them that they were his new gang. He told them he was the reason their cases were dropped and they were no longer in jail. He said they should join him out of gratitude. Then he also told them that if any of them refused to join his gang, he would send a “gift-wrapped” package of evidence back to the DA, so the dissenters could be prosecuted again. All the bad guys all agreed to be part of Brick’s gang rather than have the evidence against them returned to the DA.

Okay, we’ve reached it. Now is the time that the bad guys need a good lawyer.

Or a half-decent lawyer. Hell, even a jailhouse lawyer would have served. Just as long as it was someone who understood the concept of chain of custody http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/chain+of+custody.

Chain of custody is one of those simple concepts of which the law has so few. Basically, it means that in order to establish that any evidence being offered actually proves what it purports to prove, the people offering the evidence has to be able to prove that it wasn’t tampered with. The chain of custody is the paper trail that tracks the evidence step-by-step and person-by-person from the moment it was first collected by the police until the moment it was introduced in court. It establishes the evidence’s provenance .

Say a gun with the murderer’s fingerprints is found next to the body at the murder scene. The chain of custody would have to show what police officer picked it up at the scene of the crime, what the officer did with it, and who accessed it after that. The lab technician who took it to dust it for fingerprints would have to sign it out of storage then sign it back in when finished with it. Same for the ballistics expert. Finally, the police officer who brought it into court would also bring with it the documentation which established the chain of custody. This is supposed to establish that the gun is the same gun found at the scene of the crime and was never swapped out for another gun in an effort to frame the defendant.

Chain of custody is a little bit more complex than that, but not much. Now what happens if a person or persons unknown handled the evidence between the time the police collected it and it was introduced into court? The chain has been broken. When the chain of custody is broken, then the defendant can move that the evidence be excluded, because the court can no longer count on the evidence proving what it was supposed to prove.

Say some evidence – like that nice murder scene firearm covered with the defendant’s fingerprints – disappeared from the evidence locker before it was tested and then reappeared in it later. As no one could be sure that someone didn’t plant the defendant’s fingerprints on the gun after the police found it to frame him, the defendant could argue the gun should be excluded, because the chain of custody had been broken.

Now let’s think bigger. Say you have a whole warehouse full of evidence which was stolen. Then some of it was returned to the DA’s office by parcel post with no return address. Imagine how big a chain of custody break that would be. When the DA tried to prosecute the defendant could argue, “Brick stole it to try to blackmail me into working with him. When I refused, he sent you back falsified evidence to frame me as punishment for refusing to work with him.”

And that’s why the bad guys needed a lawyer. So they could all tell Brick, your threats and blackmail have no power over us. You broke the chain of custody in our cases. Go ahead and give it back to the DA. The evidence can’t be used against us anyway.

If they wanted to say that, that is.

I doubt any of them would have done this. They are bad guys, after all. Bad guys on a TV show. Working for the Big Bad, or even the Medium Bad, is what they do.

Martha Thomases: Superhero Salespeople

Girls like superheroes. I can prove it, because a major media division has done the market research for me.

You can learn a lot about what people think of you by what they try to sell you. I don’t mean this personally. It’s not like some guy you meet at a conference who sizes you up and either offers you one of his room keys or life insurance, depending on his evaluation of your sex appeal.

No, I mean this on a more macro level. I mean the multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to discovering what you like and using that data to sell you crap.

For example, when I watch the network news in the evenings, I see a lot of ads for prescription medicines for diabetes, arthritis, and erectile dysfunction. From this, I understand that the advertisers think the people who watch the news are old, infirm, or both.

This is in stark contrast to the ads on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where the ads are all new movies, new video games, beer and Doritos. This is where Millennials get their news.

If I have Maury Povich on while I do my morning chores, I see ads for payday loans, attorneys who specialize in personal injury lawsuits, and for-profit colleges that offer two-year (or less) degrees. From this, I understand that the advertisers think I am an unemployed idiot.

When we get into prime-time television on the major networks, the stakes are higher. The audiences are larger, and the advertising rates more expensive. The networks don’t compete to attract fringe audiences. They want the mainstream.

Not just mainstream, but young, unattached, 18 – 29 mainstream. People who are just starting their independent lives … and forming their brand allegiances.

And to television networks, mainstream means both men and women. Some shows may skew more male or more female, and we can tell which is which by the advertising on the program. We see beer and Doritos when the target is the bros. We see make-up and fashion when the target is female.

When I watch the current crop of shows based on superhero comics – Arrow, The Flash, Gotham, Constantine, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – I see a lot of Revlon commercials.

Doesn’t the conventional wisdom maintain that women don’t like superheroes? Why are women watching these shows?

I have theories, none of which I can prove without procuring the services of expensive market research firms. However, in the absence of evidence, here is what I think:

  • These shows feature a variety of attractive young people, many of whom are in great shape but none of whom are so over-endowed that we wonder how they can stand up. I mean that for the actors as well as the actresses. They are better-looking versions of people the audience might know in their real lives.
  • A substantial number of the writing teams include women. I don’t have the percentages, but, while I would guess it to be less than half, I think it’s more than a third. This means that there are women creating dialogue that, to them, sounds like something a woman would say if she found herself in a situation with, maybe, Valkyries.
  • The emphasis is on action, not violence. This might seem like hair-splitting (but watch long enough and there will be a commercial for a shampoo that will fix that), but there is surprisingly little gore on most of these shows. There are fights, but they aren’t bloody. Major characters rarely get killed, and not for the sole purpose of motivating the male hero. There aren’t a lot of women in refrigerators.
  • The female cast members often have their own storylines that are not dependent on the male cast members to be interesting. This is most true on S.H.I.E.L.D. and absolutely true on the spin-off mini-series, Agent Carter, least true of Constantine (at least so far), but even then it is more true than it is in the current version of the comic on which it is based.

None of these traits seems to be turning off male viewers. If it does, the advertisers have decided that the women in the audience will spend enough money to be worth the loss.

I hope that the success of these shows encourages editors to hire more women to create mainstream comics. I hope the success of these shows encourages publishers to offer comics that will appeal more to female readers.

But mostly, I want to see a Felicity Smoak / Melinda May team-up.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

Well, I guess I was wrong and I guess I’ll take whatever heat there is, unless I can think of somebody else to blame. We refer to last week’s column in which I predicted that the CW televised enterprises, Flash and Arrow, were about to commit Crossover: that is, begin a story in one show and end it in the other. I jumped to a conclusion. What the programs in question really committed was Guest Star; each hero appeared in the other’s venue but the problems to be solved and the adventures to be had and the bad guys to be vanquished were unrelated.

And while we’re on the subject of bad guys… unless I suffered a fairly significant mental glitch somewhere between eight and nine last Tuesday, the Flash and company perpetrated a melodramatist’s sin by catching the villain off-stage and thus depriving we eager onlookers of what would naturally be the story’s (exciting) climax. We hear that the evil dude is at large and then there’s a brief scene in which he’s behind bars and then on to other concerns. I’ve been guilty of giving the antagonist short shrift in a story or two, mainly because I was more interested in other elements of the narrative so, being guilty of the same sin myself, I am throwing no stones. But this sort of thing is questionable technique and maybe we should all avoid it in the future.

Okay, that’s a quibble and on the bright side, the Flash-Arrow guest stunt put Emily Bett Rickards, who plays Arrow’s the charming and comely Felicity Smoak, on my screen twice in one week and that buys forgiveness (and yes, dammit, I know she’s young enough to be my great-grandchild.)

(Regarding Felicity: If she were canonized, would she be holy Smoak? Something for the show’s writers to consider and then immediately forget about.)

Word is that last night’s “winter finale” Arrow episode will feature a Batman baddie and if true this won’t be the first time Arrow’s people have rummaged in the DC Comics line. Are they trying to build a video franchise, as the company’s long-time arch rival, Marvel, is doing successfully in the world of movies? Motivate us watchers to tune into a DC show and not just another adventure of a super guy? That would be a tricky accomplishment, I think, and they’re probably not attempting it. No, they’re probably doing what the rest of us are doing, using what’s available to them and hoping that it works. Making it up as they go along. Okay by me. That’s what we and our various ancestors have been doing for about five million years and counting and, what the hey, it’s gotten us this far.

Martha Thomases: It’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s A TV Show!

SupergirlSupergirl is one of my favorite characters, so I was delighted to read that there is a Supergirl television show in development.

Supergirl is one of my favorite characters, so I was terrified to read that there is a Supergirl television show in development.

There are several reasons for my conflicted feelings. When I was a girl, Kara Zor-El was my ideal. Not only was she blonde and cute (two adjectives not customarily applied to me), but she had powers, she was unsure of herself, and she was always trying to prove herself, not only to her cousin Superman, but to prospective parents who shopped at her orphanage. I wanted to have a robot double in a tree. I wanted to have a flying horse and a super-powered cat. Sometimes I wanted different parents.

I don’t think there is anything innately “feminine” about wanting super-powers, robots or flying pets. I still want them (and ain’t I a woman?). The difference between the me who liked these things in the first place and the me who likes them now is that I’ve gone through puberty.

And feminism.

This isn’t going to be one of those stereotypical PC rants (which I’ve never actually read, but then, I don’t seek them out) about how women are misrepresented in comics. They are, but I’m not arguing that in terms of politics, but in terms of realistic character development.

In the case of Supergirl, too often, she is written and drawn by men who don’t know anything about what it feels like to be a young adult woman – either teenaged or in her early twenties, as she will be portrayed in the show. If they do any research at all, it reads as if the watched Clueless and Mean Girls and decided that was enough.

Too many Supergirl stories (and movies, like this one) have her worrying whether boys will like her because she’s so powerful, or what is she going to do with all her power, or how does she fit into a world she never made with all this power. It’s all about being a Female With Power, not about being Kara Zor-El… or, in my fond memories, Linda Lee Danvers.

Her origin story has varied over the years. I believe in the New 52, she used to be a baby-sitter to her cousin Kal (now Superman) but, when Krypton exploded, she was sent into space in suspended animation. She crashes into Earth, not knowing the language and suddenly having super powers.

And since then, mostly, she’s been smashing things. No one understands her and she’s angry about it. So angry that, for a while, she was a Red Lantern.

Isn’t she the least bit curious about Earth? And her cousin? Doesn’t she want to know why she ended up here? I mean, if the baby I used to care for suddenly turned up and he was at least ten years older than me, I would want to know what his life was like.

And wham, she has super powers! Kal-El grew into his, but Kara gets hers all at once. Is that confusing? Is it wonderful? Is it awkward? Is it all of these things and more?

If anything gives me any hope at all for the possible television show, it’s that Greg Berlanti, the producer, has an okay track record in the way he deals with female characters on his shows. I really enjoyed Sigourney Weaver and Ellen Burstyn in Political Animals and Emily Bett Rickards plays a well-rounded, believable Felicity Smoak on Arrow. I’m not sure his shows pass the Bechdel test, but I believe it’s possible that they could, that these female characters have conversations about their jobs and their hobbies and their voting patterns when they are off-camera.

It would be worth everyone’s time and effort to involve more fully realized women characters, not just to be Supergirl, but in general. And I mean this in the most crass, materialistic way. Buffy the Vampire Slayer made a lot of money with a lead character who didn’t worry about whether or not boys would like her. She didn’t fret that being powerful would turn them off. At most, she worried it would kill them.

And she’s not the only one.

 

Categories

Archives

Everything you need to make great comics!

comicmix-pro-300x69-2

Nucleus X

Bookshop Zaks