Cover Story - Top 12 John Constantine Covers

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This is actually an article I was planning to do last October but that turned out to be a busy month.  That’s sort of the thing about Legends of Tomorrow, it’s a delight of a show with a ton of deep cut geeky heroes but it can be hard to keep up with how often they feature characters that could demand a whole number of articles, reviews, and lists.  Today we gather to celebrate John Constantine, everyone’s favorite blonde cockney street wizard and trench coat wearer.  

I joke but John is among a handful of mystical and urban fantasy characters at DC, and their adjacent imprint Vertigo Comics, who call themselves The Trench Coat Brigade, so just know that’s where we’re starting from with this dive into the top 12 Constantine comic covers.  I’ll be drawing from John’s first solo comic entitled Hellblazer, which began life as part of DC’s mature readers imprint Vertigo Comics and ended after 300 issues when they decided to import John to the main DC universe.  That’s a lot of titles to get through so let’s get down to it and get the cover story on the top 12 John Constantine comic covers.

Cover Story - Top 12 Lex Luthor Covers

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Lex Luthor.  It’s a name that wrings loudly through the halls of supervillain infamy alongside such titans as Dr. Doom, the Joker, Loki, and Thanos.  Created in 1940, Lex Luthor is one of the oldest and most well known super villains of all time.  He’s appeared in almost every Superman-centric piece of media we’ve had, played by countless actors and enjoyed numerous solo comic appearances as a protagonist in his own right.  

His obsessive dedication to destroying the man of steel has shaped up to be one of pop culture’s greatest David vs. Goliath stories running across decades and multiple iterations of the character: he’s been a rogue scientist, a business guru, President, and a superhero in his own right.  This Sunday will mark Luthor’s first live-action appearance on the CW show Supergirl, played by Jon Cryer, and while that’s not quite as momentous as it might’ve been given we live in the Superhero Age I’ve still decided to mark the occasion with a deep dive into the top 12 Lex Luthor comic covers.

 

Cover Story - Top 10 Black Lightning Covers

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Another week another CW show to pay close attention to.  Seriously, as much as I love the expanding CWniverse I’m going to have start dedicating this entire blog to following their vast exploits now they’ve added a 5^th show to the lineup.  If you’re unfamiliar with the new series it’s called Black Lightning and revolves around Jefferson Pierce, a teacher, and father with electrical powers and a tendency to take on the establishment.  

Jefferson’s had a long and storied carrier in the comics from early solo comics to being a core part of the Batman team The Outsiders to his role as Secretary of Education for President Luthor all the way to being a member of the Justice League of America.  Given that lengthy time I’ve decided to celebrate his new series with a bit of a cross-section of Black Lightning’s work with a look back at the top 10 comic covers, he’s starred in.

Chantal Thuy Cast as Grace Choi

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As we continue the slow crawl toward Black Lightning, we’ve started to get a trickle of information about the additional superheroes that will pepper the show.  That’s basically just par for the course of CW superhero shows at this point- single hero shows are out the window and everything now will have a rotating cast of supporting heroes.  Now I'm in favor of this practice, it helps keep things interesting and at an appreciably grand level now that single hero stories have become the bread and butter of the Hollywood hit machine.  

In an age of The Avenger and Justice League selling a whole superhero show on 1 masked crime fighter has become kind of passe.   In the case of Black Lightning, the show already had 2 additional superheroes at the starting track in the form of Black Lightning’s daughters Thunder and Lightning.  Now, the show has reached out to add its first additional hero outside of that immediate family unit with Grace Choi, who will be played by Chantal Thuy. 

Amy Jackson cast as Saturn Girl on Supergirl

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One of the big additions to season 2 of Supergirl was Mon-El, a similarly powerful being to Kara that crash-landed on Earth from the planet Daxam, which neighbored Krypton.  Mon-El ultimately ended up eating up a bit too much of the show’s screen time for a lot of fans but his presence since left a lingering question over Supergirl: what about the Legion of Superheroes?  The Legion of Superheroes are a group of teenage superheroes from the 31^st century that were basically the X-Men before the X-Men. 

They’re a big part of the Superman mythos and their strongest has traditionally been Mon-El.  His presence on Supergirl season 2 combined with a cameo by a Legion flight ring on both The Flash and Supergirl has made it seem like CW has plans for the Legion at some point down the line.  Now, an additional piece has fallen into place with the revelation Saturn Girl will be joining the cast of Supergirl season 3, played by Amy Jackson. 

CW Announces Crisis on Earth-X Crossover

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I don’t think we really appreciate how genuinely good the CWniverse has actually turned out to be.  For a collection of series dramas with wildly variant budgets cooked up by the network that gave us One Tree Hill and 90210, the CWniverse is a staggeringly excellent achievement that I think will be looked back on the same way we remember Adam West’s Batman or Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman.  

It’s a great collection of adaptation that really understands that it’s the characterization and drama that have made superheroes so compelling for 80 years and counting, so it’s only fitting that they would do a wedding episode. 

Yes, this year’s crossover event between The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow has been revealed as a wedding story about the marriage of Barry Allen and Iris West, the central romance on The Flash.  However, in the grand tradition of comic book weddings, this particular matrimony is to be interrupted by unwelcome visitors from the multiverse/CW Seed in the form of the Ray.  

Making his jump from animation to live action the Ray, CW’s first gay character, is set to appear in the wedding episode, hotly pursued by villain’s from Earth-X, a world where the Nazis won WW2 and Supergirl, Flash, and Green Arrow are all Nazi Supermen.  Let’s talk Crisis on Earth-X.

Static Thoughts - Beauty and the Beast (2012)

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Back in March, I took a look back at the 1987 Beauty and the Beast live action TV show.  If you need a refresher on that I said that it had some charming elements but was ultimately too much of a product of its time.  At the end of that article, I mentioned that there was a reboot of the show in 2012.  Well, now seems about the right time to tackle that particular piece of bizarre TV ephemera, especially given it’s the anniversary of the release of the animated Beauty and the Beast adaptation. 

However, the show itself has left me a little stymied.  It’s not exactly a bad series it’s just not interesting enough on its own to actually discuss so this will be less of a review than the previous article.  Instead, think of this as a retrospective as I think the way Beauty and the Beast (2012) actually happened is way more interesting than the show itself.  It’s a strange one-shot of a series that embodies the last moment in time when its various trends could come together in this way. 

The Flash S4 adds Hartley Sawyer as Elongated Man

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One of the best things about CW’s stable of superhero shows is their willingness to add swaths of additional superheroes to their single hero programs.  The name of the show might be Arrow or The Flash but both series also feature a rotating cast of supporting superheroes that help the world feel larger and more engaging.  It’s an approach that took Smallville years to stumble on but now they’re doing right out of the gate, like with Martian Manhunter appearing as a supporting character for Supergirl season 1.  And they aren’t slowing down, either, with new heroes joining the shows all the time and now we’ve got another name to add to that list.  The most recently announced new hero joining the CWnivere is Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man, who will appear in The Flash season 4 and be portrayed by Hartley Sawyer. 

Neil Sandilands cast as The Thinker in Flash S4

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After three seasons I think it’s fair to say that The Flash may have done all it can do with evil speedsters.  That’s not a slam against the show by any means- Reverse Flash was a really fun season 1 antagonists buoyed by the incomparable Tom Cavanagh, Zoom was a cool and menacing super speed Bane for S2’s Knightfall riff, and Savitar worked well as a super speed Apocalypse for S3’s X-Men riff.  

So it makes sense that season 4 would adopt a non-super speed bad guy as the new series antagonist, though it raises some interesting questions about who that will be.  A lot of Flash’s biggest antagonists are already on the show in more relegated roles like the Top, Captain Cold, and even Gorilla Grodd.  That doesn’t leave a terribly deep bench to draw from but The Flash season 4 has dug deep into the Flash’s history and pulled out a whopper of a bad guy- The Thinker, played by Neil Sandilands. 

1st Black Lightning Trailer

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So, CW’s 5^th superhero series, Black Lightning, finally has a trailer.  If you haven’t been following this latest entry into the CW shared universe, Black Lightning seems to be intended to fill the space that Legends of Tomorrow was initially built around.  

See, back before Legends of Tomorrow morphed into its own unique thing it was conceived of as a team-up for all the various heroes that had been introduced in The Flash and Arrow, including the title characters.  It was going to be a shortened mini-series running during the off-season breaks in the winter and summer. 

Obviously, that plan changed, most likely due to CW being unable to get Grant Gustin and Stephen Amell’s schedules to click together for that much filming, and Legends of Tomorrow became the weird superhero Star Trek TOS meets Doctor Who series it is today.  

Still, superhero shows are solid business for CW and they’ve been eager to find something new to fill that slot, hence why they’re also still experimenting with animated shows online like Vixen and The Ray.  Black Lightning is slotted to be their new answer as to what will air during the mid-season breaks, the story of a retired superhero dad putting the mask back on to battle his old enemy anew and now it finally has a trailer. 

Panel Vision - Black Lightning Casting Breakdown

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At time of writing the first details and overall structure of CW’s Black Lightning series have finally come to light.  We’ve now got a stronger idea of what the driving impetus of the show will be as well as the names of 4 most important super-cast members.  I’m specifically talking here about the superheroes and villains in the cast rather than folks like Black Lightning’s ex-wife or the prime police officer of the show.  With all this info to throw around, I thought I’d breakdown who the primary cast members of the show are as characters and in the comics as well as looking at the plot synopsis released by CW. 

Cover Story - Top 10 Green Arrow Covers

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Another year and another season of Arrow dear readers, almost like clockwork.  This year, to celebrate the CW superhero show that started it all I’ve elected to bite the bullet and finally dig into the best covers Green Arrow ever appeared in the DCU.  For the sake of context I’m mostly going to be drawing from what’s known as “the Long Bow” era from the 1980s as I really like the visual design of it and don’t care for the New 52 or Silver Age Green Arrow stuff quite as much, though I reserve the right to return to this particular subject matter should those other eras produce something worth digging into in greater detail.  With that said, let’s take a look at everyone’s favorite emerald-clad Batman knock-off (that’s literally his origin) with the top 10 Green Arrow comic covers.

Static Thoughts - 4 Questions About Supergirl S2B

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Supergirl season 1 was a fun but mixed bag of episodes that did a lot to set the tone of the series.  Its biggest job was planting the show’s flag on exactly what kind of adaptation of Supergirl it wanted to be.  I’ve been over this before, but Supergirl has had a ton of different iterations that the show could’ve chosen and it really didn’t go with any of them.  Instead, they opted for primarily a gender-swapped version of the Superman animated series, making the cornerstone adventures of the Superman mythos about Kara instead of her cousin.  

Now, season 2 has taken that starting point and turned in a knock-out series about the journey of the immigrant in America that could not be more prescient to our current political climate.  All of that is where the series comes from, but I want to talk about where it’s going, which leads me to my 4 questions about Supergirl Season 2B: Spoilers to Follow. 

Panel Vision - 8 Speedsters to Expect on The Flash

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One thing that’s become apparent after 3 ½ seasons of CW’s The Flash is that the show probably isn’t going to stop introducing speedsters anytime soon.  That’s a little disappointing but also fairly understandable.  Super speed special FX are actually relatively easy to realize nowadays, and the fact they have to make them anyway means making additional ones for the bad guys that much easier.  

At the same time, The Flash has also managed to avoid the trap of just making evil versions of its hero, with villains like Reverse Flash and Savitar working as unique entities while fellow heroes like Jay Garrick and Kid Flash working as real standouts.  Given that speedster obsession along with the new frontiers the show’s opened up with time travel to the future and accessing the Multiverse, I’ve compiled a list of 8 speedsters we could expect to see next on The Flash. 

1st Look at Arrow Season 5's New Heroes

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As Arrow barrels towards both us and what might well be its final season, the pressure is mounting for CW’s original superhero show to deliver something truly new and dynamic for its fifth season.  That pressure has been there for Arrow pretty much ever since its spin-off The Flash started pulling in a larger audience and revamped the entire superhero television tone in late 2014 but Arrow is really feeling the burn this year.  

After a magic-centric 4^th season didn’t really shake loose any new viewers, this new season features Green Arrow putting together a new team of vigilantes inspired by his deeds to protect Star City.  We’ve been getting the casting news all summer but now, thanks to some behind the scenes pics and a new trailer, we have our first new look at team Arrow 2.0. 

Dichen Lachman Cast as Roulette in Supergirl S2

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One of the interesting things about Supergirl is that they’ve done a good job of introducing villainous super women to compliment all their heroic women.  Woman super villains are actually still a pretty major rarity in the world of superheroes and especially in comic book adaptations.  I mean, across the vast gulf of superhero movies we’ve had since Superman in 1978 there are only about five female villains of note in the entire run.  What's more, a good chunk of those women are henchwomen like Ursa from Superman 2, Faora from Man of Steel, Mystique from X-Men 1 and 2, or Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy. 

Meanwhile, Supergirl featured General Astra as its main antagonist along with classic Superman foes like Livewire and Silver Banshee plus some more obscure woman counterparts to Superman foes like Indigo instead of Brainiac and Bizarro Supergirl.  Now, the show adds another woman villain and one of the truly vile and the villainous master criminals of that niche genre- Roulette, played by Dichen Lachman.

CW Announces Black Lightning Show

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Edited by Robert Beach 
You have to wonder how many superheroes there are to adapt. I mean, I love the genre, and I flatter myself by saying I have a vast and encyclopedic knowledge of both Marvel and DC heroes. At some point, there just aren’t going to be the characters to keep these movie and TV universes going. More than that, the more times the folks behind these adaptations try and repeat their success, the less likely they are to manage it. I mean, WB has been trying to recapture the success of Dark Knight for 8 years, and they haven’t managed it once. Now, over at CW (aka the only good DC production outlet currently working), they’ve recently announced they're launching their 5^th superhero show, starring DC’s first solo black hero Black Lightning. 

Static Thoughts - Is Metamorpho, The Element Man, Coming to The Flash Season 3?

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Edited by Robert Beach

In case you didn’t know, this fall’s new season of The Flash will take place in an alternate timeline from the show’s normal status quo. That probably sounds daunting and complicated if you’re not already a fan of the series, but it is pretty novel and streamlined for a large-scale superhero show that’s become the fulcrum of an expanding superhero universe on TV. The basic idea is that this new present was created when the hero, The Flash, went back in time and saved his mother from getting killed by a super villain. 

That change altered history. Now Flash must deal with the consequences. It’s a neat concept that affords the creators free will to imagine an altered reality similar to the show’s status quo with some key tweaks to play around with. For instance, this new reality will feature the premiere of series regular Wally West as Kid Flash. I speculate that the change will bring another major superhero revelation: the premiere of Metamorpho. 

Joe Dinicol Cast as Ragman in Arrow S5

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As we move into the 4^th year of CW’s superhero dominance a bizarre question has begun to emerge: how do you solve a problem like Arrow?  The Green Arrow show was the first of CW’s new crop of comic book adaptations, premiering in 2012 and setting the tone for 3 years of superhero television and impacting sister shows like Gotham and even Agents of SHIELD.  However, the 2012 was a long time ago and the superhero television landscape has definitely shifted under Arrow’s feet, with the drab and stripped down aesthetic of the first 3 seasons left in the dust by the likes of The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. 

Arrow has just become a lot less relevant to CW’s expansive universe of shows and season 4’s increased focus on magic didn’t really help things.  As such, season 5 has opted to double down on the one thing that worked for season 4: introducing new heroes, with a crop of new characters coming to the upcoming premiere.  I’ve already covered Wild Dog, Vigilante, and Human Target, now meet Ragman, the Tatterdemalion of Justice, played by Joe Dinicol. 

5 O'Clock Shuffle - August 22

This week on the 5 O'Clock Shuffle I look at the major Spider-Man, Flash, and Arrow casting news, Amazon's new Tick TV show, what won at the box office, the major TV coming your way, and of course the comic book forecast