Superheroes!

[Timsup2nothin]

I actually think the FF would fit well with the MCU. I want to see the MCU expand, and the FF would bring a lot of characters who could intermingle, if they decide to do that. Marvel Team-Up seems like a no-brainer for the Disney+ streaming service, especially since anthology series seem to be in vogue these days, with things like American Horror Story and True Detective doing well.

There are other ways to expand, and I think their lane is too crowded in the MCU.

Scene, in Tony's lab in Stark Tower:

Pepper: Cap called. He says thanks for handling that last threat to the entire world down the coast, he and the Avengers were busy handling a threat to the entire world over in Asia. You know, one day you are going to run into each other. Maybe you should...

<dialog interrupted by building shaking and sounds of massive explosions, Stark runs for his armor>

Pepper continues: That's just Galactus again, I saw it on the news.

Stark: Oh, okay. Dinner later?

<cut to outside, where Fantastic Four is, for reasons totally beyond explanation, battling Galactus by themselves>

 

[EgonSpengler]

It's been cancelled.

Oh. Well, there you go. I'd stopped watching it anyway.

 

[EgonSpengler]

There are other ways to expand, and I think their lane is too crowded in the MCU.

Scene, in Tony's lab in Stark Tower:

Pepper: Cap called. He says thanks for handling that last threat to the entire world down the coast, he and the Avengers were busy handling a threat to the entire world over in Asia. You know, one day you are going to run into each other. Maybe you should...

<dialog interrupted by building shaking and sounds of massive explosions, Stark runs for his armor>

Pepper continues: That's just Galactus again, I saw it on the news.

Stark: Oh, okay. Dinner later?

<cut to outside, where Fantastic Four is, for reasons totally beyond explanation, battling Galactus by themselves>

On the one hand, I think there's plenty of room for these characters to coexist, but otoh, if they're never going to interact with each other, what's the point? A Galactus storyline would have to be updated somehow, now that they've done Thanos. If Galactus simply landed in New York and said "I'm hungry", everybody would roll their eyes and it wouldn't only be because the Avengers and Doctor Strange are oddly absent*. For one thing, I'd move the FF out of New York, which is already too crowded in the MCU. Maybe Chicago, Toronto, or Los Angeles.


* In John Byrne's 80s run of The Fantastic Four, there was a great big fight with Galactus in Manhattan when the Avengers and Doctor Strange did show up to help. There was one short bit where Spider-Man and Daredevil are watching the fight from a nearby rooftop, because a battle like that was just beyond their abilities and they'd have only gotten in the way of the big hitters.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

They would play well in LA.

 

[Cutlass]

The problem with combining them now is that there are too many NYC players absent from the Battle of New York. You have to invent some reason why that would have been true. Because with all that going down, everyone who could have would have shown up.

Which begs the question of why Captain Marvel has been sitting it all out up until now.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The problem with combining them now is that there are too many NYC players absent from the Battle of New York. You have to invent some reason why that would have been true. Because with all that going down, everyone who could have would have shown up.

Which begs the question of why Captain Marvel has been sitting it all out up until now.

Well, you could always shift the timing of the origin story for the Fantastic Four to after the Battle of New York. That doesn't work for some "born heroes" but it would for them. Combine that with Egon's moving them to LA and you might have a solid working plan. But integrating the world of the X-Men into it is a whole different thing. I could concede on the F4, but not that.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Well, you could always shift the timing of the origin story for the Fantastic Four to after the Battle of New York. That doesn't work for some "born heroes" but it would for them. Combine that with Egon's moving them to LA and you might have a solid working plan. But integrating the world of the X-Men into it is a whole different thing. I could concede on the F4, but not that.

Right, the entire world the X-Men exist in is different. It isn't about whether the characters are compatible. McAvoy's point about the huge population of mutants in the X-Men stories is a valid one, and one that I hadn't considered yet, but what's more important to me is that the X-Men stories start with a very cynical view, not of people with super-powers, but of everybody else. The X-Men live in a world where the fascists are ascendant*. In the Avengers mythology, people who are different can be judged heroes, sometimes even if they don't want to be. In the X-Men mythology, people who are different are labeled terrorists and hounded, hunted, exiled, and murdered en masse. Even the ones who have literally saved the world. Sliding the X-Men into the existing MCU implies and/or requires that the world of the MCU slide downhill and get a great deal worse, for everybody (e.g. the Sokovia Accords and the existence of The Raft are only the tip of the iceberg, only the beginning of the rise of a racist, totalitarian state in which people with superpowers are "either with us or against us"). Alternatively, if the X-Men exist in a world that accepts mutants for who they are and judges them by their actions, they're not really the X-Men anymore, they're just another team of superheroes who happened to be born with their powers.


* Logan, possibly one of the most depressing movies I've ever seen, put the period on the end of the sentence: The violent, totalitarian conformists have won a complete victory. The Martin Luther King Jr. figure ends up buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in the vast forests of North America. The heroes who saved mankind again and again are dead, and their children can only flee for their lives. Go live in Canada, you commie, atheist hippies.

 

[Cutlass]

Any of you follow the Batman and related graphic novels? I've been working my way through the ones the local libraries have. Which is both incomplete, and in no particular order. I've hit Catwoman #3, and they leave a half dozen story lines incomplete, and then go in a totally different direction. Do the stories cross with things printed in different comics?

 

[EgonSpengler]

The AV Club published an essay about Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which mostly sums up my feelings about the movie.

DC’s choice of Snyder to direct Man Of Steel, the Superman reboot that became the company’s first real answer to Marvel’s suddenly dominant cinematic universe, was almost willfully perverse. Snyder was never going to be interested in the traditional pop-art Superman. Everyone involved had to know that from the jump.

I only sort of blame Snyder for Man of Steel, because, as the article notes, he actually did a pretty decent job of making the Superman movie he wanted to make. There are some pacing issues with the climactic fight, and Amy Adams was mis-cast, but overall, if you buy into his vision for the character, I think it works pretty well. And I do think that works of art should be judged by their own apparent intentions (accordingly, a work of art can also be judged on its ability to convey its intentions - which might include deliberate opacity or confusion, in something like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive). So my grievance with Man of Steel lies partly with Snyder, but also partly with the people who decided to give him the property.

Any of you follow the Batman and related graphic novels? I've been working my way through the ones the local libraries have. Which is both incomplete, and in no particular order. I've hit Catwoman #3, and they leave a half dozen story lines incomplete, and then go in a totally different direction. Do the stories cross with things printed in different comics?

Not for about 20 years, back when Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale were doing The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, etc. Did they do a Catwoman story too? I think I read one, but it was so long ago I don't really remember it very well. I think she was in Europe?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The AV Club published an essay about Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which mostly sums up my feelings about the movie.

I only sort of blame Snyder for Man of Steel, because, as the article notes, he actually did a pretty decent job of making the Superman movie he wanted to make. There are some pacing issues with the climactic fight, and Amy Adams was mis-cast, but overall, if you buy into his vision for the character, I think it works pretty well. And I do think that works of art should be judged by their own apparent intentions (accordingly, a work of art can also be judged on its ability to convey its intentions - which might include deliberate opacity or confusion, in something like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive). So my grievance with Man of Steel lies partly with Snyder, but also partly with the people who decided to give him the property.

Zack Snyder isn't the problem, Superman is the problem. Always has been.

Superman kills Zod, not without anguish (heavy handedly portrayed, certainly a valid complaint) but without long term remorse, because what else can you do with a sociopathic Kryptonian? Sure, Superman has always been presented as the guy who saves the bystanders and gets a cat out of a tree while he takes the villain down onto a pile of pillows. Because that's the only challenge he has. Superman is just unbearably overpowered, and that has always made it nearly impossible to tell an interesting story with him in it. Man of Steel used the only possible challenge to Superman outside the mind bendingly trite Kryptonite gimmick; more Kryptonians.

 

[Cutlass]

The AV Club published an essay about Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which mostly sums up my feelings about the movie.

I only sort of blame Snyder for Man of Steel, because, as the article notes, he actually did a pretty decent job of making the Superman movie he wanted to make. There are some pacing issues with the climactic fight, and Amy Adams was mis-cast, but overall, if you buy into his vision for the character, I think it works pretty well. And I do think that works of art should be judged by their own apparent intentions (accordingly, a work of art can also be judged on its ability to convey its intentions - which might include deliberate opacity or confusion, in something like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive). So my grievance with Man of Steel lies partly with Snyder, but also partly with the people who decided to give him the property.


Not for about 20 years, back when Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale were doing The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, etc. Did they do a Catwoman story too? I think I read one, but it was so long ago I don't really remember it very well. I think she was in Europe?

Problem I'm running into, of course it's DC, so there's half a dozen incompatible story lines. But also there's a lot of crossover with the same characters under other titles. So for me to backtrack and get a full story line, when it wasn't republished in a single volume, is that I don't even know where to look for it. A number of the Batman graphic novels I've been going through were originally published serially is the comic books. And since I'm mainly picking them up, in no particular order, based on what is available in local libraries, it's mostly disconnected stories. Mostly each of the graphic novels follows one storyline from the comics reproduced together. This one isn't true of that. And apparently crosses with the Batman 'Warzone' story line. Which I haven't yet been able to find. So this graphic novel is an incomplete story. And it sort of abandons the story in the middle, with me not really knowing what I need to find to pick it up again.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I suspect a search string of "batman graphic novels order" will hook you up. Pick a list and find the one you are reading and see what's next.

 

[EgonSpengler]

So... yeah... Supergirl openly throws the secret identity thing in its viewers' faces. I thought the recent plot twist would mean that Supergirl had to avoid Alex, because obviously she'd recognize Kara the instant she got a good look at her. And yet, she's standing right in front of her, from 5 feet away, on a sunny day, and doesn't know who she is? *groan*

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So... yeah... Supergirl openly throws the secret identity thing in its viewers' faces. I thought the recent plot twist would mean that Supergirl had to avoid Alex, because obviously she'd recognize Kara the instant she got a good look at her. And yet, she's standing right in front of her, from 5 feet away, on a sunny day, and doesn't know who she is? *groan*

The whole "maskless secret identity" is just so stupid that you either have to suspend disbelief or you don't. I don't see that as any more outrageous than DC normal, from movies, TV, or back to the books themselves. The only times I've ever seen DC handle the secret identity thing well is when The Flash uses high speed vidrations to disguise his face and voice, even though he is better masked than most DC characters, and in the otherwise mostly awful movie when Carol Ferris tells Green Lanters "What do you mean? I've known you my whole life! I've seen you naked! You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?" which I took as a well deserved slam on the entire DC lineup.

 

[Cutlass]

A lot of the masks are no better than just bareface. Robin, Nightwing, Green Lantern, many others, the mask is so abbreviated that there's no point to it at all.

 

[EgonSpengler]

The whole "maskless secret identity" is just so stupid that you either have to suspend disbelief or you don't. I don't see that as any more outrageous than DC normal, from movies, TV, or back to the books themselves. The only times I've ever seen DC handle the secret identity thing well is when The Flash uses high speed vidrations to disguise his face and voice, even though he is better masked than most DC characters, and in the otherwise mostly awful movie when Carol Ferris tells Green Lanters "What do you mean? I've known you my whole life! I've seen you naked! You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?" which I took as a well deserved slam on the entire DC lineup.

Yeah, but suspension of disbelief needs to be helped along by the writing, acting and direction (and artwork, in the case of a comic). It isn't an expectation that the reader or viewer will just swallow anything. This scene between Alex and Kara crossed the line, for me. The series has a few times acknowledged the feebleness of Kara's dual identities: Most of the people close to her know; John/J'onn used his shape-shifting powers to impersonate her at least once, maybe twice; Cat Grant figured it out, but kept quiet; and most recently, the whole memory-wipe plotline was all about the fact that Supergirl's secret was as thin as ricepaper. I anticipated a series of slapstick close-calls with Supergirl trying to help Alex while avoiding a close-up encounter with her - "Keep your distance. But don't look like you're trying to keep your distance. I don't know, just... fly casual." And of course Alex would have figured it out within a few episodes anyway, and then the Super Friends would have to find out a new way to deal with Colonel Jackboot and President Heel. (Naturally, right when Col. Jackboot is again on the verge of exposing Kara, Red Daughter would finally show up in National City and impersonate Supergirl while Kara Danvers is standing right next to Col. Jackboot, inadvertently "proving" that Kara and Supergirl are two different people. I know, I'm a hack. This is why I don't write these shows, and just play Monday Morning Quarterback. )

 

[EgonSpengler]

Browsing the news this morning, I see that (a) The CW renewed basically everything on it schedule for another season, including all of the Berlantiverse shows, and (b) The CW's President was at the TCAs yesterday spoke very briefly about Crisis on Infinite Earths (from TVLine).

“That is the intent, to take some big swings,” Pedowitz affirmed for TVLine. “Can’t tell you if it’ll follow the comic book version, but it’ll take some big swings.”

As for Legends of Tomorrow possibly returning to the crossover mix after sitting out “Elseworlds,” Pedowitz said he didn’t know the plan yet, but “I hope so.”

“We’re talking about a number of different ways to go,” he added. “It is ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths,’ and if you know the history, things collapse.”

So it sounds like the writers are still working, probably because they don't yet know the exact state of each individual show. I imagine there's a lot of coordination between all of the writing teams.

I haven't been watching all of the shows regularly, but I read somewhere recently that something in an episode of Black Lightning hinted that show's potential involvement in Crisis: The semi-evil scientist working with Jefferson's wife is the same woman who, in the comics, worked for the Markovian royal family and gave Geo-Force his powers.

Here's me speculating now:

• Barry Allen will disappear during Crisis, as in the comic, but not for as long.
  
• Keynan Lonsdale (Wally West), Willa Holland (Thea Queen) and Colton Haynes (Roy Harper) will all return for Crisis.
  
• We'll see Jessie Quick and Gypsy, Citizen Cold and The Ray again, but only briefly, just to show that the Crisis is happening on every Earth.
  
• Lonsdale will stick around for the post-Crisis "What happened to Barry?" story arc, then leave again.
  
• Clark and Kara will swap places, and it will be Superman who gets killed.
• Every show will see at least one character killed, maybe multiple characters, but probably not any of the stars. Nate in Legends; Ralph in The Flash; any number of people from Arrow; ancillary characters, such as the aforementioned Jessie Quick and Gypsy, and people who have basically left their shows already anyway, like Thea Queen.
  
• There's a possibility that Crisis could be a series conclusion of Arrow and kill off Oliver, but the timing seems off somehow. If they renewed Arrow for only a half-season, then maybe, but I think they would have to announce the short season length well in advance.
  
• Superman will be reborn in a Berlantiverse riff on "Reign of the Supermen" (we've already seen Cyborg Superman in the Berlantiverse, but not Steel or Superboy).
  
• For better or worse, I don't think John Diggle will be revealed to be John Stewart and become a Green Lantern, unless it's only to have him get killed in Crisis. I don't think The CW has a budget for Green Lantern, and I don't think David Ramsey could carry his own show.
  
• Batwoman, Black Lightning, and Thunder & Lightning will form The Outsiders with Geo-Force in the next, post-Crisis Berlantiverse crossover event.
  
• Future CW series, as the current shows wind down: The Outsiders, featuring Thunder & Lightning and Geo-Force (Batwoman and Black Lightning go back to their own shows); and whichever of Superboy or Steel gets the most positive feedback.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Candidate for killing off...Lena Luthor's juiced up version of The Guardian.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Candidate for killing off...Lena Luthor's juiced up version of The Guardian.

Is that a prediction or just a hope? Yeah, James could be a good choice. As of now, he doesn't seem to have much of a role. I was thinking that Lena herself could be a candidate for the guillotine, but I feel like there's more story potential for her; a straightforward heel-turn might be too trite, but something.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Is that a prediction or just a hope? Yeah, James could be a good choice. As of now, he doesn't seem to have much of a role. I was thinking that Lena herself could be a candidate for the guillotine, but I feel like there's more story potential for her; a straightforward heel-turn might be too trite, but something.

Well, a bit of both. I think the writers have pretty much expended all there is to get out of the character, and they are writing themselves into a corner with this "give the humans super-powers" bit. If they do give him powers, what do they do with him?

On the other hand, a heroic death that comes available because he has powers is a good end. It also produces a 'repentant and grieving Lena Luthor' storyline to further develop...as if they hadn't already played that card, but driven by dead James it has a new tone.