Tala Ashe to play Isis on Legends of Tomorrow S3

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Of all the CW superheroes shows I’d count Legends of Tomorrow as one of the most impressive through its dedication to keeping a rotating cast from season-to-season.  It’s a bold approach but one that has worked well for the show as it’s turned in two very enjoyable seasons.  I’d actually count it as the best Star Trek show on the air right now, though we’ll see how Discovery turns out later this year.  Season 3’s upcoming cast rotation sees Rip Hunter exiting the main character ranks for a more antagonistic role while Citizen Steel and Vixen will be returning to the crew of the Waverider.   The newest member of the team comes to us from a relatively new direction for the series- the world of magic, although the ties to Ancient Egypt put her at least in tune with Hawkman and Hawkgirl from back in season 1.  The latest Legend to join the team is Isis- to be played by Tala Ashe. 

Panel Vision - Invasion!

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The week I’m writing this marks a significant milestone for the shared television universe of DC Comics.  The CWniverse, as I call it, started out in 2012 with the show Arrow, a Green Arrow adaptation that leaned way too heavily on Batman for its identity.  

However, when they introduced Flash as a spin-off series in 2014 things started to improve, even if the first half of Flash season 1 was pretty weak.  The real turning point, for this entire endeavor, was the 2014 Flash/Arrow crossover, a blockbuster event that finally managed to inject light, fun, and weirdness into the CWniverse. 

It also brought in some serious ratings as ever since then crossovers and multi-hero universes.  All of that now culminates in an epic 4-night crossover between Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow adapting the 1989 event comic Invasion.  In honor of the occasion, I’m looking back on the original Invasion! Comics, which is nice because they’re also one of my favorite event comics of all time. 

Panel Vision - Justice Riders

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ne of the more surprising trends of the 2010s is that the Western is back from extinction.  This is mainly due to Tarantino re-introducing us to the versatility of the genre in 2012 with Django Unchained but it’s spread well beyond that.  There were more Westerns than superheroes movies in 2015 and now we’re gearing up for a double dose of the old west with the twin remakes of Magnificent Seven and West World.  This is hardly the first time Westerns have impacted the cultural landscape but the revival and the genre versatility it’s brought with it have certainly cast a new light on an old style. 

Even though this current crop of films are set in the Old West and feature cowboys and gun fights they all come with additional genre elements like Bone Tomahawk’s position as a horror movie, Hateful Eight is an Agatha Christie mystery, Ridiculous 6 was a comedy (hey I’m just talking about Westerns, not GOOD Westerns.)  All this genre crossover reminded me of my favorite Western comic book courtesy of DC Comics- the late ‘90s oddity that was The Justice Riders. 

1st Details on Flash/Arrow/Supergirl/Legends of Tomorrow Crossover

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This fall marks one of the largest media endeavors we’ve seen on TV since the heyday of Star Trek in the ‘90s.  CW, the kings of television superheroes, will be launching 4 individual series this fall, each one interconnected with the other 3 and all building towards a massive 4 crossover that will add up to a week long event.  This is the culmination of years of work and building, starting with Arrow in 2012, building into The Flash in 2014, launching Legends of Tomorrow in 2016 and now taking on CBS’ Supergirl show.  This will be the third such crossover for CW and, in the tradition of these multi-show team-ups, it’s aiming to handle a pretty hefty task. 

The first CW crossover between The Flash and Arrow in 2014 took on the job of more or less completely redirecting CW’s style of superhero production, making it more light and fun rather than drab and dreary.  The 2015 crossover between the two shows acted as a prequel episode to Legends of Tomorrow, setting up team members Hawkman and Hawkgirl as well as series villain Vandal Savage.  Now, this new crossover takes on the new big issue facing CW’s superhero universe: how do you solve a problem like Supergirl?

Justice League Action Character Roster Revealed

Edited by Robert Beach 

By now, you might’ve heard there’s a new Justice League animated series in the works called Justice League Action. Even though there hasn’t been an official Justice League show since the end of Justice League Unlimited, the team has been represented in subsequent media like The Batman, Batman: Brave and the Bold, and Young Justice.  

This new show will, apparently, be taking the team in a new direction, looking to bridge the gap between Justice League Unlimited and Batman: Brave and the Bold’s emphasis on obscure characters and the more cartoony and wacky animation styles of current superhero hit Teen Titans Go. Not much is known about the show, but we seem to have a tentative character line-up in the form of a character sheet leaked from the folks working on the series.

Cover Story - Top 20 Hawkman Covers

There’s really no need for a thesis at this point is there?  We’re in that dull part of the year where there’s not a lot of geek media to talk about and Legends of Tomorrow is still on so that’s what we’re talking about today.  I mean, this is the first time we’ve ever seen a big, live action, multi-hero team show come out of one of the big American comic companies so it’s a pretty major deal this show is still happening.  

Given that, I’m probably going to get around to dedicating a Cover Story to every member of the team and this week the character selection wheel has landed on Hawkman.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 20 Hawkman comic covers. 

Comics Rainbow - All-Star Western

One of the major trends of 2015 was a revival of the long abandoned genre of the American Western.  To a degree this has been building in the background for a while with major hit like Django Unchained, well regarded entries like True Grit, and even notable failures like Jonah Hex or Lone Ranger.  This year marked a full on explosion of the revival however with Revenant, Hateful 8, Ridiculous 6, Slow West, and Bone Tomahawk.  Given that two of those movies just came out and Jane Got A Gun is releasing soon I figured it’d be a good time to look at the Western and cowboy heroes of DC comics. 

DC has pretty much always been more than just its superheroes, mainly thanks to the decade it spent in the ‘50s cranking out war comics, cowboy comics, weird science stories, and horror comics.  Most of those elements were revived in the ‘70s to mass acclaim and their Western heroes were key among them, leading o a mass stable of gunslingers, bounty hunters, and sheriffs all under the DC banner in all their shames, shades, and successes. 

Panel Vision - Legend of the Hawkman

Previously on Panel Vision I discussed the 1989 comic Hawkworld, a dark, gritty reimagining of the Hawkman characters and mythos that was informed by the stylistic trends and affects of Judge Dredd, Bladerunner, and Soylent Green.  However, despite being critically well regarded and establishing a handful of still relevant things Hawkworld really didn’t leave that big a footprint on the comics landscape or Hawkman in particular.  It spawned an ongoing comic that lasted for a few years followed by a new Hawkman comic in 1993, which has been rightfully forgotten by all good and descent comic fans, and then that was it. 

By 1997, when DC made a major shift in writers and series spearheaded by Grant Morrison’s relaunched Justice League of America comic, Hawkman had more or less passed on from continuity and would stay there for about 4 years.  In 2001, Hawkman returned with a back to basics look and a strained attempt to combine all the most popular elements of his mythos at the time.  Though interesting that Hawkman is pretty inhospitable to new comers, which is a shame given how much he incorporated from the Silver Age character while elevating the material through modern writing sensibilities.  Thankfully, in 2000 there was an exceptional mini-series that did just that: Legend of the Hawkman.

Panel Vision - Hawkworld

So, once again Hawkman has come stumbling into the world of DC live action television, this time through the lens of the CWniverse and its lead up to Legends of Tomorrow rather than his previous one-off appearance on Smallville.  Hawkman’s one of those weird comic book characters like the Fantastic Four or Green Lantern in that he’s been around for a long time but every time people try and slot him into a live action context it tends to end in disaster.  

In Hawkman’s case he kind of has a greater excuse than most given that his origin and history don’t even begin to make sense.  Seriously, I initially planned this as a “history of” article but the history of Hawkman is so needlessly convoluted and full of retcons and revisions not even I can really follow it.  Case in point: even though the latest version of the character seen on CW is the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian prince the version I’m spotlighting for this review is an alien police man.

Legends of Tomorrow 2nd Full Trailer

Legends of Tomorrow is the next step in the amazing experiment that is CW’s shared DC Comics TV universe.  This ambitious project had a difficult infancy, struggling through a pretty rocky start with the first couple seasons of Arrow as little more than a Batman knock-off.  Then Flash happened and it was poor to mediocre at first, right up until CW hosted its first crossover episodes and found they could get a winning combination of sitcom antics, melodrama, and comic book action.  Since then both Flash and Arrow have improved immensely, embracing a broader and more accepting view of the DC comic universe where pretty much anything from the comics is free game to adapt to TV. 

So far Flash’s first season and a half alone have featured time travel, psychic apes, the speed force, and parallel realities while Arrow has branched out to include Ras Al Ghul, the Lazarus Pit, and Magic.  Now, with Legends of Tomorrow CW looks to reinvent the superhero wheel once more with their own Justice League.  Now, after a bit of a reshuffle owing to the departure of Robbie Amell’s Firestorm and CW wanting Legends of Tomorrow to run longer than intended, we’ve got our first trailer for DC’s first live action multi-hero team-up and it looks amazing.