Panel Vision - V for Vendetta, book vs film

So, it’s November 5^th, Guy Fawkes day, in which we Americans celebrate this holiday we’ve generally never heard of and don’t grasp the actual meaning behind by wearing a mask we saw in a movie adapted from a comic in 2006.  All of which is my very round about way of saying that I’m going to be talking about V for Vendetta today, specifically looking at the movie adaptation compared to the Alan Moore comic book that inspired it.  These two works loom large in popular and comic book culture as landmarks of the superhero genre and with good reason as they’re both very well made and enjoyable works.  

The graphic novel comes to us from comics’ legend Alan Moore as a sort of follow-up to the mass success he’d enjoyed with Watchmen a few years prior.  Meanwhile, the film adaptation comes to us from a screenplay by the excellent Wachowskis and starred Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving.  Both works are of excellent caliber even though their actual importance and deeper themes tend to be misinterpreted by their very large fan bases, a fact that’s actually quite impressive given how monumentally different both stories actually are.

Static Thoughts - DCAU Crossovers

So, this past Wednesday CW’s Arrow featured a one-off crossover with the cancelled Matt Ryan Constantine show in an episode called Haunted.  The episode was decent enough with most of the fun coming from just how gung-ho Matt Ryan was to both play John Constantine again and get to do all kinds of wizard shenanigans that he never got to sink his teeth into enough on his own show.  However, the episode got me thinking about the idea of crossovers in general, with a specific lens for the superhero genre.  Crossovers in superhero stories are as old as the genre itself mainly because “superhero” as a genre is so vague and open that it tends to absorb a ton of broader genres such as fantasy, adventure, sci-fi, and horror into it.  At the same time, crossovers have always been a great way for superhero TV to expand its world and test more obscure and bizarre characters who might not have found an audience otherwise.  The best example of this is from the DC Animated Universe that started with Batman: The Animated Series and concluded with the massive Justice League Unlimited, which included almost every DC hero imaginable (even Aztek got in there.)  I’m ranking the individual crossovers from the Batman and Superman shows. 

Questions About The New Star Trek Show

In case you hadn’t heard, CBS has finally pulled the trigger on a new Star Trek TV show with a premiere date slotted for 2017.  It’s a pretty major deal as this will be the first Star Trek show on the air in over 10 years since the end of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.  This also means the show will have to contend with the very odd place Star Trek has come to hold in the pop cultural pantheon after nearly a decade of disappointments like Enterprise and Nemesis before J.J. Abrams films slouched into a position of mild popularity.  

Personally I’m pretty excited, I’m a pretty huge Star Trek fan so the prospect of being able to watch new Star Trek in my life time is incredibly exciting and after CBS’ recent excellent handling of Supergirl my faith in that network has gone way, way up.  What’s more, now is the time for a new Star Trek show.  Star Trek was one of the first and most influential blendings of speculative fiction and space opera that embodied an incredibly pro-tech futurism and an infectious optimism that has been in far too short supply lately.  However, the announcement, which was basically just “we’re making a new Trek show,” has left everyone with a lot of questions that I’m going to go over here.

Comics Rainbow - Nick Fury

So, this Friday marks the return of James Bond to cinemas everywhere.  It’s probably going to be a big deal as director Sam Mendes, the man who brought back widespread audience interest in the Bond franchise.  Additionally it’s starting to look more and more likely that Daniel Craig won’t be sticking with the franchise for much longer so this will probably be the last chances audiences get to see a Bond who can actually do his own stunts.  

Add on top of all that the increasing return to golden age Bond formula with the reemergence of Spectre as villains and Christoph Waltz playing some kind of Bloefeld esc villain and it’s promising to be a memorable blockbuster, especially after Skyfall gripped the world in Bond-mania and made more than double the box office take as its predecessor.  With all that considered I was going to do a Comics Rainbow about James Bond but James Bond doesn’t really have a comic book presence. 

For most of his career the adaptation rights have flittered from one limbo to another while his more adult nature as a character has kept his adventures out of the standard comic book audience.  Remember, for most of the medium’s history comics were made for kids.  However, I’m still getting in on the Bond fun with the next best character: Nick Fury.  Though he debuted in a brief lived Marvel war comic in 1963, Nick Fury didn’t find a mainstream audience till 1965, when he was resurrected as a James Bond/Man from U.N.C.L.E. esc cold war spy.  This was right around the time spies were catching on as a major popular trend so it makes sense Marvel would want to ride that cultural phenomenon.  Since then the Marvel universe super spy has been through a plethora of reimaginings and revitalizations and this is your full spectrum look at all of them; shades, shames, successes and all. 

Panel Vision - Supergirl (1984)

So, it seems that CBS’ Supergirl has been a pretty major hit, scoring nearly 13 million viewers with its pilot episode making it the most watched superhero premiere of the modern era.  More than that the show has found a major following, gaining almost universally positive reviews from critics and a blossoming online fan base.  None of this is really shocking but it’s certainly a nice precedent to have and flies in the face of all conventional wisdom surrounding the superhero genre, the Superman franchise, and Supergirl in particular.  

For years now we’ve heard from the executives at DC and Marvel that people don’t want female superhero properties but now, we have Supergirl.  WB/DC have been shaking in their boots over Superman being too powerful or light to the point that they let Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan turn him into a drab and joyless husk to get beaten down by Batman in between murdering his enemies, but now we have Supergirl, light, super powered, optimistic, massively popular.  For nearly 30 years the very idea of Supergirl was considered to be a tainted and irredeemable brand, now; bigger than ever.  That last one though is a bit of an earned concern because, now having watched 1984’s Supergirl, I can tell you that it’s the worst superhero film ever made. 

Movie Monthly - Robot Jox

Edited by Robert Beach 

Ah, November, the middle child of the holiday seasons. October might be the spookiest month, and December is all Christmas all the time, but November often ends up the month without a theme, mainly because there are like three different celebrations that dot the month. Aside from armistice day next week and Thanksgiving a couple weeks down the line, November is, here in America, a sports month. We just had the final game of the World Series over the weekend, and I’m told by more sports savvy individuals and pop culture at large there’s some kind of football to be enjoyed over the rest of this month.  

This November has an additional dollop of sports obsession added to it with Creed coming out later this month, the thoroughly hyped Rocky sequel/spin-off revolving around rising star Michael B. Jordan as the son of Apollo Creed coming to Rocky for training. In the spirit of all this, I’ve decided to dedicate November to sports movies. Because I remain a massive nerd who doesn’t really like most sports films, I’m adding the wrinkle that they have to be sci-fi sports films. So welcome to Cyber-Sports November with our first film: Robot Jox.

AMC's Preacher Premiere Trailer

Preacher was a Vertigo Comic by acclaimed author Garth Ennis and equally beloved artist Steve Dilon.  Lasting for a total 75 issues it’s considered a major hallmark for comics and is one of the universal counters to the claim that comics sucked in the ‘90s as the series lasted from 1995 to 2000.  Recently, rising star comedian Seth Rogan has set-up about bringing the show to AMC in what, I assume, was an attempt to recreate the monster success the network enjoyed with The Walking Dead.  Against pretty much everyone’s better judgment that adaptation is going forward with a confirmed 10 episodes set for a premiere next year and Dominic Cooper set to play the lead character of Jesse Custer.  Cooper is actually a bit of a get for the series as he’s most well known for playing Howard Stark in Captain America: The First Avenger and Agent Carter making him one of the many Marvel actors crossing the floor to a DC project.  Now, the first full trailer has premiered for the show and surprise; it’s garbage. 

Panel Vision - Lady Cop, Forgotten Feminist Hero

Edited by Robert Beach

Last week, CW’s Arrow had a very special episode premiered directed by Lexi Alexander, one of the most vocal female directors of color in genre fiction. It was a pretty fun episode and a good way to mark Alexander’s return to the realm of comic adaptation after directing Punisher: Warzone 7 years ago; however, what struck me about the episode was the character played by Rutina Wesley, officer Liza Warner, head of the Star City anti-metahuman task force. 

You may have assumed that Liza Warner was just some random character made up for the episode, but no, she’s actually an adaptation of one of the most obscure DC characters I can think of: Lady Cop, a one-off character from the DC anthology comic 1^st Issue Special, one of the greatest comics of the 1970s. Given that I’m a massive ‘70s comic book geek, I’m also a major fan of Lady Cop, mainly because her first appearance is one of the most amazing and bizarre comics ever written.

Suicide Squad Gets Empire Magazine Covers

In case you didn’t know, DC Comics is looking to start up their own shared universe of films and characters to rival that of Marvel studios.  So far this shared universe experiment has been pretty abysmal as the sole entry so far is the terrible Man of Steel and the pretty bad looking upcoming film Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.  However, DC has one other flick waiting in the wings to make a splash in the DC shared universe pool and that flick is Suicide Squad.  Scheduled for release late next summer with David Ayer directing Suicide Squad is an adaptation of the DC universe team of the same name, a government developed squad of villains designed to be sent out on high risks missions with the thinking being that because all the squad members are villains they’re powerful but also expendable. 

The trailer for that film leaked earlier this summer to a lot of praise though none of it was from me because I actually don’t think Suicide Squad looks very good but we’ll get more into that later.  Anyway, DC seems decidedly desperate to remind everyone this shared universe experiment is going to happen so they’ve started actively promoting Suicide Squad with a series of snazzy Empire Magazine covers featuring tactical team leader Deadshot, played by Will Smith, team wildcard the Joker, played by Jared Leto, Harley Quinn, played by Margot Robbie, and, for some reason, Enchantress, played by Cara Delevingne. 

Comics Rainbow - Supergirl

Edited by Robert Beach 

So, Supergirl has premiered, and I loved it. It’s a fun show that absolutely cuts to the heart of what makes Supergirl such a great character and proves how easy it is to actually get the Superman franchise right without descending into the same disappointing well as Smallville, Quest for Peace, Superman Returns, or Man of Steel.  It’s actually a pretty impressive feat given the fact that Supergirl has always had a decidedly checkered history in the comics. 

Like a lot of female heroes that emerged out of the comics code to support superhero families, Supergirl’s design, origin, and backstory have been through a plethora of alterations; none of which was helped by her sidelining in the mid-80s when DC wanted to revert Superman to the last Kryptonian survivor on Earth.  In honor of Supergirl’s triumphant debut on the TV landscape, this is your full spectrum look at Supergirl, all her shades, shames, and successes.