Hey, kids! Guess what? DC is revamping their line again, for what seems like the 1,000th time since Crisis On Infinite Earths. What a shock! How original!
O.K. Here’s the poop. DC honchos Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, both exceptionally talented comics creators, are going to make “bombshell announcements about the future of Superman and the entire DC Universe” on Saturday, June 11th at the Hero Complex Film Festival. Maybe this time they’ll stick to it: if Geoff and Jim are behind it, there’s some cause for hope. If they stick to it.
Even though control of DC Comics has passed through several hands since the first Crisis, perhaps the concept of leaving well enough alone will grab somebody this time. The DC Universe has gone through so many needlessly confusing transformations a roadmap to the place would give M.C.. Escher vertigo. With a small “v.”
Good grief, I’m getting tired of writing this story. I’m going to link to the Los Angeles Times so you can get what’s passing for news here.
Good news, everyone: If you’re reading this, it’s just passed midnight in American Samoa, so it’s no longer May 21st anywhere on the planet– which means that the Rapture didn’t happen (yet), society hasn’t crumbled (yet), and there’s still a readership for comic books (for now).
That said, as far as ends of the world go, the Rapture lacks a certain panache. Comic book readers have been used to the idea of worlds ending in cataclysm for a long time. Over a near-infinite number of crises, comic books have always made sure it ends with all bang, no whimper – even if, sometimes, that bang is more figurative than literal. Here’s a look at six of the best ends-of-the-world that comics has yet come up with.
Krypton
The birth of superhero comics started with the death of a planet. We’re willing to wager it’s the best-known origin story in all of comics: desperate scientist Jor-El and wife Lara shoot their only son Kal-El away from the doomed planet Krypton towards Earth, where he’s adopted by the kindly Kent family. And in most versions of the Superman story, what took out Krypton? A nuclear chain reaction triggered by a loss of stability Krypton’s radioactive core, which also creates the only element that can kill the most powerful man on Earth.
We’ve received all the covers for DC Comics August solicitations, and Flashpoint promises that worlds will live, worlds will die, and the DC Universe will never be the sa– oh, sorry, that was the tagline for Crisis On Infinite Earths, back when I worked at Flashpoint. I’m so confused…
My favorite item for the month is pictured above, the Sergio Aragones version of Batman from Batman: Black & White. But there are some absolute art gems here, including Darwyn Cooke’s JSA cover, and Frank Quitely’s redoing of Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson’s cover for [[[Green Lantern]]] #52.
As for the rest of the books, take a look… as usual, spoilers ahead:
I’ve checked with my cadre of DC contributors, staffers and fans current and past. While it’s impossible to decide on an exact number, the consensus is that in the past ten years the teevee series Smallville painstakingly built a cohesive and linear universe of DC characters while, at the same time, DC Comics reinvented itself in whole or in substance approximately 14 thousand times. Guess which was more entertaining.
And now Smallville’s gone. Pushed out of the way for still another Superman movie that, like the comic books, gets to ignore everything that has gone before it. That’s not entirely bad: Superman Returns was so awful I was thinking of getting rid of the memories by electroshock therapy.
Instead, I watched Smallville. At first I was there out of professional and fanboy curiosity. It was good but not great, and I stuck with it because my wife enjoyed the show. In time, Michael Rosenbaum’s performance as Lex Luthor grabbed me, and when they introduced John Glover as his eviler father, the tension between the two was riveting. When they brought Green Arrow in (using the Grell costume) and started really building their version of the DC universe, I got absorbed.
Then they brought in Erica Durance as Lois Lane. I enjoyed her performance and her character so much I felt like I was betraying my own childhood. More DC characters were introduced, heroes and villains alike. As they moved away from the Kryptonite-villain of the week and developed Zod, Darkseid, and the first interesting Toyman ever, Smallville moved towards the top of my TiVo must-record list. After ten seasons the show had more storylines going on than Soap – but by the time that final episode aired last night, they had resolved or at least tied-up just about everything. It was remarkable; the fact that so many of the actors from earlier seasons returned was even more remarkable.
At its best, Smallville has been about the human drama, and its science-fiction environment rarely mitigated this. It is in this spirit that the two-hour finale was produced. Some might find this to be overbearing; respectfully, I think those people have missed the point. If you take this element out of the story, all you have left is a comic book – in the most clichéd and repellant sense of the term.
The production team also avoided the trap of giving each character their moment to shine. Whereas most had sufficient screen time, this last episode was all about Clark Kent, as it was, by and large, from the very beginning of the series.
This is not to say that there isn’t a kick-ass story here. Two of them, in fact, with enough villains to fill the Justice League’s dance card. Darkseid, Granny Goodness, Lionel Luthor, and of course, his son Lex.
The finale was not flawless. For one thing, everybody showed a lack of respect for how gravity works, not to mention security on Air Force One. The big scene between Lex and Clark was pretty much lifted from The Dark Knight; thankfully, both the characters and the performers make it their own. Technically, this show was at least as proficient as teevee gets. If it were a theatrical movie, it would have been in 3-D, and that would have screwed the pooch.
Teevee is teevee. It’s not comics, and shows come and go all the time. Smallville’s decade was a remarkable achievement, and it set the high-water mark for superhero television.
At the end of the ten-year day, you will believe a man should fly.
The ABC Family TV series The Nine Lives of Chloe King has a website up. We’ll be having an interview with the author o the original book series, as soon as we can figure out what to call her.
Happy birthday to Ty Templeton! Even at your advanced age, there are still pretty girls lusting after you… don’t worry, I won’t tell the wife. (Yours, I mean. Mine is one of the lusters.)
And finally: New Video and Photos of Filming of The Amazing Spider-Man in New York. I gotta tell you, the costume changes are still bugging me much more than usual and I don’t know why– unless it’s because we’ve already seen that the original costume worked fine on screen. And golden slippers? Really?
Hanna-Barbera ruled Saturday morning television in the 1960s, cannily finding trends and adapting them to their pint-sized audience. Working in tandem with CBS Saturday morning chief Fred Silverman, they spotted a fad and capitalized on it. As the lids were galvanized by the super-hero trend which led to ABC’s surprise smash success with Batman in January 1966, it is little surprise that the fall 1966 cartoon season was festooned with colorful heroic figures. Among the dozen new series to debut that September there was Filmation’s earliest offerings: The Lone Ranger and The New Adventures of Superman, plus H-B’s Space Ghost and Dino Boy, The Super Six, and, notably, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles. The latter series was split evenly between the two properties, each offering something for its viewers. The former show was about boy genius Buzz Conray (Dick Beals), who constructed the thirty-foot tall robot improbably dubbed Frankenstein Jr. Buzz’s scientist dad (John Stephenson) was perfectly okay with the pair heading out to tackle the colorfully-clad criminals that plagued Civic City with regularity.
The second half was an odd blend of rock & roll, secret agents, and super-heroics, the three leading fads of the decade. The Impossible were Multi Man, Fluid Man, and Coil Man (Don Messick, Paul Frees, Hall Smith), secret agents posing as rock stars to disguise their heroic deeds. Regardless of venue, their performances were invariably interrupted by an even more rainbow-hued assortment of evil-doers. The bubblegum music and pop art color scheme were indicative of the pop culture that was filtering down to the kids.
Until recently, fans could only enjoy a sampling on Warner Home Video’s 1960s cartoon collection but now, all eighteen episodes have now been collected by their Warner Archive division. For those of us who love tripping down memory lane, rewatching these episodes is an instant reminder of what it was like crowding around the television, surrounded by cereal bowls and siblings, to watch the silliness unfold.
Of course, when you’re eight, as I was, this was serious entertainment. The show was never one of my all-time favorites but seeing these again, I’m reminded of the goofy fun. The “Frankie” stories are incredibly formulaic and the villains are more dumb than evil. It’s also hard to take foes with names like Junk Man, the Mad Inventor, Mister Menace, or Dr. Hook (without the Medicine Show) very seriously.
Still things moved along at a clip and with a sparkle of youthful enthusiasm, especially as Buzz shouted “Allakazoom” as they launched into the sky.
The pop trio was given their assignments from Big D, via a mini-screen embedded in the guitar, and then they shouted a rousing “Rally-ho!” and donned their outfits. They took on similarly silly threats from the Fiendish Fiddler, the Terrible Twister or the Diabolic Dauber.
At the time, my untrained ears had yet to recognize the limited voice cast that H-B tended to use on all their shows. Now, though, Ted Cassidy, Messick, Frees, and the uncredited Paul Winchell come through clearly.
Interestingly, this relatively tame series was one of the first to be attacked at being too violent for children, which is one reason it was canceled after running on CBS for two seasons. Uncut, though, it was resurrected on NBC a decade later, running from November 1976 until September 1977. It’s certainly one reason the 1960s collection ran a warning the cartoons were “intended for the Adult Collector and is Not Suitable for Children”. Thankfully no such warning appears here.
There is no restoration nor are there any extras, but the quality is good enough for those of us wishing to relive our youth in high-definition.
I lost track of all the things that got mashed into this one, from Thor, Captain America, and Superman to Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Doctor Who, The Big Bang Theory, and Leia’s slave girl outfit, all to an Enrique Iglesias tune.
If we could find a way to jam Donald Trump, William, Kate and Pippa in there, it would create a black hole of search engine optimization…
If you love DC UNIVERSE ONLINE, Marvel‘s new MMO is set to blow your mind, plus we take a few minutes to talk to RULES OF ENGAGEMENT‘s darling SARA RUE.
There’s more on Dylan Dog as we talk with director Kevin Munroe and stars Brandon Routh and Sam Huntington about all things scary including their own fears, plus [[[Smallville]]] fans get ready to sell a kidney!
Do you think [[[Dylan Dog]]] can take this weekend’s Box Office? Drop us a comment below!
By now, you’ve probably heard about the controversy– ZOMG SUPERMAN RENOUNCES AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP!!! A lot of people are taking this panel at right from Action Comics #900 out of context.
For me, I always thought that “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” was a bit redundant. At least, I hoped that it was, because that implied that the American Way didn’t actually include truth and justice. As it turns out, the phrase wasn’t even original to the character. Remember the introduction to the Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 40s?
Heard it? Never-ending Battle for Truth and Justice… but no American Way. Same with The Adventures Of Superman radio show, which started with:
Look! Up in the sky!
It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
It’s Superman!
“Yes, it’s Superman–strange visitor from the planet Krypton who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound, race a speeding bullet to its target, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great Metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice.”
And this was during World War II, not exactly a time short on American patriotism.
It wasn’t until 1952 that the TV series gave us:
Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! (“Look! Up in the sky!” “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s Superman!”)… Yes, it’s Superman … strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman … who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way! And now, another exciting episode, in The Adventures of Superman!
Why was “the American Way” phrase added? Probably for the same reason that the words “under God” started showing up in the Pledge of Allegiance around the same time– it was supposed to help fight communism.
Considering this issue shipped the same day Barack Obama had to take extraordinary steps to prove that he was born in this country to the same sort of people who are now braying that Superman has betrayed them, I cannot help but be a bit confused. The fictional character is a real American citizen, and the President of the United States isn’t?
Of course, Superman really wasn’t born in the United States. (He really wasn’t born at all, but play along with me here.) If you asked Superman to produce a birth certificate, he couldn’t– hell, the Kents lied to get Clark one.
Now, whether DC made a good storytelling choice here– that’s for the next article.
Hey, kids! Guess what? DC is revamping their line again, for what seems like the 1,000th time since Crisis On Infinite Earths. What a shock! How original!
