Panel Vision - 2001: A Space Odyssey

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Today marks the 50^th anniversary of the premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the pinnacles of weird speculative sci-fi films of the late ‘60s alongside the likes of Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green.  The film actually wasn’t a huge success immediately upon release but slowly became a cult classic, allegedly because audiences of stoners would enjoy tripping out to the psychedelic images on display.  

The film proved popular enough to warrant getting a comic book adaptation by the king of comics himself: Jack Kirby.  Kirby liked doing the comic so much and it did so well for Marvel that this led into a new ongoing comic by Kirby exploring his own interpretation of the Monolith and the attendant 2001: A Space Odyssey mythos, which is what I’ll be looking at today. 

Justice League Trailer & News Update

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There’s no more beleaguered a film coming out this year than WB’s long-suffering Justice League film.  The production on this movie has been such a complete mess it’s like something out of a soap opera.  There’s been talk of a bloated production, constant re-edits after test screenings, executive panic and that’s not even touching on stuff we know like Joss Whedon coming in to relieve Zack Snyder after the tragic loss of his daughter.  

Hell, even that particular revelation couldn’t go by without its OWN revelation as Whedon entered a very public scandal of his own in the latter half of the year.  Mark my words, there will be large volumes written about how Justice League came to be.  I say all this now because of the fact that this latest trailer feels like something different yet also quite familiar feels intrinsically tied to the recent avalanche of lurid coverage.  In short, I think Justice League is finally finding itself in the editing and post-production and I actually think it looks…pretty good.

Adrian Pasdar Joins Supergirl as Morgan Edge

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Probably one of the strangest after effects of the 2016 election has been the direction taken by CW’s Supergirl.  While the show had previously had a political subtext as a series about immigration, refugees, illegal aliens, and government operations must, season 2 became infinitely more overtly a political allegory.  Even though the show never bothered adding a direct Trump allegory it very much became a show about confronting the ugly and bigoted attitudes that’ve come to infect American life in the late 2010s. 

So far it’s been unclear if the new season will walk a similar path and while I’m sure they’ll dial things back a bit as they refocus on a new bad guy I also don’t think they can really un-ring that bell.  For better or worse Supergirl IS the superhero politics show now the same way Captain America is the superhero politics movie franchise.  Now, as the new season looms, the shape of that new era seems to be forming as season 3 adds a new villain in the form of Morgan Edge, played by Adrian Pasdar.

Justice League Trailer Breakdown

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I don’t think there’s a more inexplicable upcoming blockbuster than Justice League.  Built atop the critically charred bones of the Batman v. Superman, the superhero team-up film looks to be the latest in a long line of brand new starts for the DC entertainment universe, except it’s not even that because that’s Wonder Woman’s job.  The movie seriously seems to have no actual reason to exist.  Maybe a few years ago right Avengers proved that superhero team movies with ensemble casts could be a huge hit, but now it just seems like a late visitor from a bygone age. 

We’ve already seen so many failed attempts to launch the DCEU the entire shared universe concept is tanked, Wonder Woman looks like an infinitely more interesting and thoughtful attempt to course correct the franchise, Zack Snyder’s vision for this property has been consistently underwhelming, and we’ve already seen a slew of garbage superhero team-up movies.  Justice League only seems to be in production because the studio owns some superhero properties and they’ve run out of Lord of the Rings movies to fill the void.  By all accounts, this film should be a rolling dumpster fire…so why does it look kind of fun? 

Will Luthor Join the Justice League?

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Recently, it’s been announced that in addition to the 7 Leaguers and the villain Steppenwolf, 2017’s Justice League film will feature Lex Luthor.  That actually makes a lot of sense, even if the idea never really occurred to anyone before the announcement.  Technically speaking Justice League will form the third leg of Zack Snyder’s DC trilogy so it makes sense he’d bring back Luthor from Dawn of Justice to really close things off.  What’s more, Luthor’s vague connection to the New Gods in that film, as suggested by his closing monolog, means he’s the only human currently on Earth with any knowledge of the infinitely powerful celestial beings.  

I’m not sure if he’ll end up in his classic green and purple power armor or if he’ll just be on hand for information but outwardly there’s enough there to justify this choice.  However, things are a little strange with Lex Luthor, especially lately and especially in the comics.  There’s been a trend with him recently towards heroism that has me wondering: will Lex Luthor join the Justice League? 

7 Cameos to Expect in Wonder Woman

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So far, the DCEU has been pretty terrible.  Even if you liked Man of Steel or Suicide Squad for some ungodly reason, there’s no denying that WB has had a serious problem tapping into the same level of mass popularity Marvel has mustered.  By the same token, the DCEU has come off a lot more scattershot than the competition, with the slow march towards Justice League hampered by the producers regularly hitting the restart button on what the big story should be.  

That means that Wonder Woman will have yet another thankless task in addition to being the first woman-led superhero film of the modern era and needing to turn around the DCEU trend of making terrible movies.  Now, Wonder Woman will also have to be setting pieces in motion for future films like Shazam, Justice League, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman 2.  Given that, I’ve come up with a list of 7 character cameos that I think we can expect from Wonder Woman. 

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.

Film Land - The Future of DC Films

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Edited by Robert Beach

There’s no denying that the comic book superhero is the dominant culture myth of the 2010s.  Ever since the double-barreled blast of greatness that 2008’s Iron Man and Dark Knight the genre has risen to greater and greater heights, dominating the foreign and domestic box office, making a massive mark on the national psyche, and making name heroes out of obscurities like Ant-Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy.  All of this makes it even more bizarre that WB, the people who own DC Comics and thus half of the entire collection of viable superhero properties, have had such a difficult time turning their huge library of IP into quality films or solvent blockbusters. 

For whatever reason, WB has yet to turn out a good superhero film this decade, instead handing in a series of embarrassing failures like Green Lantern, Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, and most recently Batman v. Superman.  Things seem to be changing however as WB has recently released a whole sweep of information about their plans for the rest of the decade.  Could this single an end to years of failure and the beginning of a DC movieverse to rival Marvel?  Let’s see. 

Comics Rainbow - Invasion!

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So, this Friday marks the premiere of Independence Day: Resurgence and the return of the seminal alien invasion film to the big screen.  It’s a pretty major event, both as a major summer blockbuster and as an indicator of the growing force of nostalgia for the ‘90s.  We’ll see if the Independence Day lightning can really strike twice but for right now let’s talk about alien invasions in comics.  

The alien invasion is the perfect set-up for the world of the superhero and while both DC and Marvel have thrown together an impressive array of alien takeovers, today we focus on those from DC comics.  There’s no real reason I’m emphasizing DC, they’re just the company I’m most familiar with.  DC has a vast history of alien invasions, some of them amazing, some mediocre, and some absolutely terrible and today we’re going to get the full spectrum on all of them.

Static Thoughts - 12 Things They Need in Supergirl Season 2

Edited by Robert Beach

Supergirl season 2 has now been officially confirmed, with one significant twist: it will be on CW instead of CBS. At this point, that shake-up makes a lot of sense. Supergirl was a big hit show that never quite had the ratings to sustain its budget with CBS, so farming it out to CW’s legion of superhero shows make a lot of sense. It remains to be seen if Supergirl will in some way immigrate to the main universe of CW shows or if it’ll take place on Earth-4, separate from the adventures of Arrow, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow. However, as we wait for that answer, let’s all climb aboard the Supergirl Season 2 hype train with a list of all the stuff they should include in the next, installment of the girl of steel. 

10 DC Characters Willem Dafoe Could Play in Justice League

Edited by Robert Beach 

We are a year and a few months away from WB/DC’s latest answer to the Avengers: 2017’s Justice League movie. Your level of excitement for that fact may vary based on whether or not you saw the slow-motion train wreck that was Batman v. Superman. Yes, in the wake of WB’s blockbuster debacle, attitudes seem to be shifting around the second biggest superhero team-up ever attempted as Justice League is looking less and less like an assemblage of Earth’s greatest heroes and simply another chance for Zack Snyder and the boneheads at WB and DC entertainment to get everything wrong.

It’s hard to argue against that particular philosophy given we’ve seen this guy’s god awful handiwork twice in a row now, but a year is still a long time with plenty of chances for things to improve.  Case in point, Justice League has now officially cast Oscar-winner Willem Dafoe in a mystery role. Dafoe has stated his role’s a hero, but anything is possible this early on. With that in mind, let’s make some guesses as to who the former Green Goblin might be playing. 

Panel Vision - Legends

In March 1986 DC Comics would change the course of the comic book medium and superhero genre forever in the conclusion to their major event comic Crisis On Infinite Earths.  The conclusion featured the first ever universe reboot and a line wide relaunch, essentially allowing the company to start over from scratch after nearly 20 years of continuity.  It was a risky move in a long history of risky moves DC had been making throughout the late Silver Age such as launching numerous non-superhero comics, selling their merchandising rights to Kenner toys, and launching the Superman movie. 

The revival was a major success but with it came new issues, mainly based around establishing the comic universe’s new status quo and where a lot of characters from the previous era stood now that everything had reverted back to square zero.  So, in November of 1986 DC launched a special 6-issue mini-series entitled Legends written by John Ostrander and Len Wein with artwork by John Byrne, let’s take a look. 

Panel Vision - Blockbusters According to Comics 2015

The end of one year and beginning of a new one is a time of serious duality, a time to look back and reminisce while also dream of the future yet to come.  In that respect I’ve got my own blend of year appraisal and prognostication/wishful thinking for the year to come in the form of “Blockbusters According to Comics.”  This is where I look over some of the biggest hit films, TV, and trends of the past year and try and find the comic book property that could be adapted to fit well into that particular cresting wave.  Currently I’m limiting my suggestions to DC and Marvel properties but we’ll see, in the years to come maybe Image and Darkhorse and friends will have enough properties and clout to consider an adaptation.  Till then, here are the blockbusters according to comics. 

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. 

Static Thoughts - Top 12 Next CW Heroes

Edited by Robert Beach

as the new seasons of CW’s blockbuster superhero shows Arrow and Flash slowly rumble towards us, there have been a lot of casting announcement for new superheroes appearing on both shows.  Arrow will be featuring Mr. Terrific and Anarky in the upcoming season while Flash is being blessed with both Atom Smasher and the original Flash: Jay Garrick. Between all these announcements and the looming Legends of Tomorrow crossover show, it seems a good time to speculate other heroes that could stand to be added to the CW-verse.  With that in mind, here is the top 12.  

 

Panel Vision - 15 Comic/Star Trek Crossovers That Should Happen Next

This week marked the launch of a brand new Star Trek crossover series with Star Trek/Green Lantern – Spectrum War.  The first issue isn’t all that great but if you want more details you’re welcome to read my actual review of it here.  Star Trek actually has a fairly lengthy history of crossover stories in comic book form, previously crossing over with Doctor Who, The Legion of Superheroes, The X-Men, Ghostbusters, Transformers, and The Planet of the Apes.  However this latest crossover has got me thinking about how Star Trek hasn’t actually crossed over with all of the DC or Marvel comic universes, just small aspects of them.  It got me thinking about what other comic properties Star Trek could stand to cross into and I put together a top 15 list, here they are.