Smallville Finale review Part 4 - OK, I'm done now

Just a couple of final images to leave you on.

Smallville Finale review Part 3 - Observations

Just a few things that bear further consideration:





1) With The Cape, No Ordinary Family, Heroes, etc all cast to the wind, seems like there's going to be a niche to be filled for superhero genre TV. It'll will be interesting to see what springs up there. The fact that Smallville had the longest lifespan of any superhero genre TV says something about the market for the Superman Icongraphy.

2) In fact, if you lump in cartoons, Superman has spent a lot of time on TV the last quarter century:

Superman (Animated Series, 1988)

Superboy (TV series, 1988-1992)

Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997)
Superman: the Animated Series (1996-2000) which lead into the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited Animated Series (2000-2006).

Superman and the Legion of Superheroes (2006-2008)

Smallville (2001-2011)


While Batman's probably going to edge him out (strictly in animation though), that's a long time for any franchise to consistently be on TV that isn't Law & Order.

3) One of the things I'm glad that most modern retellings of the Superman Mythos is doing away with is the idea of the Superman/Lois/Clark false triangle thing. It's probably one of the biggest holdbacks of the franchise, as seen in things like Superman Returns. Maybe it's time to face the fact that while a secret identity can work for Superman, the idea that he hides it from the person he cares about most is far less palatable to the general audience. It'll be interesting to see if this lesson is incorporated into any other Superman projects.

Smallville Finale review Part 2 - Fandom Clash

Perhaps the most interesting thing I've found about the Smallville finale is the reactions I've seen online, and the intersection and interactions between comics fandom and Smallville fandom.


Comics fandom, in general, was pretty dismissive of the finale, and Smallville in general. While neither the worst nor best of these types of fan reactions, I think the Smallvillains series by Chris Sims and David Uzumeri is a pretty typical benchmark for these types of things. And I have a couple things to say about what I saw both in the review and the comments.

First, a few commenters responded to reviews with "Well, you should review past seasons to get the whole context."

Where have we heard that before?

Congrats "Smallville" fans - you are now using a long-held fan-complaint normally used by science fiction, comic and fantasy fans.

And to Comics fans - do you see how poorly that argument works when you're the ones judging it? Think about that for a while.

And from comic fans, the complaint is some variation of "It's sad that Smallville is what people are going to think think of when they think of Superman in a modern context."

Do yourself a quick favor, do a google image search on "Crying Superman" see roughly what percentage of those image are from the era of 2001-2011.

Yeah.

The modern era of Superman comics (All-Star Superman notwithstanding) has been extremely uneven at best, and prone to many of the same problems comics fans complain about the show for.

So, currently, we've got Chris Roberson working incredibly hard to redeem J. Michael Stracyznski's "Grounded" story arc. He's doing a decent job, but he's also filling it to the brim with in-jokes and nods to a lot of heavy continuity to get that geek buzz going. Paul Cornell is fairing slightly better, if for no other reason he's mostly sticking to his own story, not filling in on someone else's notes. However, the accessibility problem is much the same, particularly if you don't care about who Vandal Savage and Secret Six and other "guest stars" are. But at least it's adaptable to other media.

Before this, there was "New Krypton", which will probably go down as the Superman equivalent of "the Clone Saga" in terms of creative failure. I found it funny at the time, because this was taking place at roughly the same time as Smallville Season 9 was also dealing with Kandorians on Earth. I feel confident in my opinion that Smallville did a better job.

Before that you had Johns on Action Comics, doing a bunch of "cinematic" story arcs, with Brainiac, the Legion of Superheroes, etc. These were entertaining comics, and probably some of the best (and most restrained) work Johns has ever done, but hardly world breaking. Pleasantly competent. And again, I have a hard time imagining most of Johns' work adapting to other media (Brainiac, perhaps, or the Legion as an animated DVD). On the other side, you had Kurt Busiek's aborted run. I'm actually not going to judge that too harshly, because you can tell that Kurt Busiek was gearing up for a multi-year long series of arcs, and we only ever really saw the first act of it. It might have even been great, but unfortunately, someone at DC Editorial felt otherwise. Busiek and Johns got things off to a really good start with the "One Year Later" story they did together - that was surprisingly competent and accessible.


Which they kind of had to do given the long brutal slog of terrible, godawful Superman comics that came out during the years leading up to "Infinite Crisis". Anyone remember Ruin? The Brian Azzarello/Jim Lee arc? Chuck Austen? Seagle's story arc in Superman? Outside of Gail Simone, it was a dark, dark time.

And before that, you had the era of Jeph Loeb; master of the dumb but occasionally fun story. His books didn't make a lot of sense, but they were popcorn when they wanted to be.

In conclusion, if comic fans want good Superman stories, maybe we should all focus on making sure there are good ones in the comics worth adapting? Just a thought.

Smallville Finale review Part 1 - In short

Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this, it's been a long time coming, but Real Life concerns took me away from serious blogging. Also, I wanted to make quite a few posters, and to break up my commentary, so expect more in the coming days.

And away we go.

(NOTE: I apologize but several of the videos I could not embed, so you will have to click on the links).

My thoughts in brief on the finale: While not nearly as awesome as this

It's not nearly as bad as THIS

So overall, it's about the same as THIS. Which is to say, the bog standard for Superman TV. Which was about what I was expecting, and what just about anyone should have expected out of this franchise.

More on this next post

Smallville - Oy

OK, so before Smallville starts up again for the last time, I think it's only fair that I put up some posters and beat "Smallvillians" to the punch on these jokes: Yeah, not that introducing the glasses is a bad idea, it's just that it should have been done about, oh, 5 years earlier. It's also going to require some effort to distinguish between the two identities, which quite frankly, may be well beyond Welling's range here.

I utterly despise this jacket. Nevermind that I have no idea where the blue blazes Clark got it from (or he put it together himself...somehow), but it looks ...well, silly. How silly? I think the Black get-up is better.

OK, this? This actually looks like a really faithful version of Booster Gold's costume, and actually manages to highlight what makes the character unique.

I just think this is a funny punchline. Sue me.

Not that I don't think you can come up with a good Blue Beetle costume, but I don't think you can do it on Smallville's budget. I submit this evidence as proof.

You know I speak the truth here.

Smallville makes me sad sometimes

You know, I never thought the superhero genre would reach the point where the classic cape/tights with the underwear on the outside would be the LEAST ridiculous costume option.

And yet, here we are.

Smallville Season 10 Thoughts

If it were up to me, this is how it would go;

A 22-episode Superman movie.

Yes. Like that. Start with the cape and tights in the first episode. Pull no punches.

Maybe bring back Millar and Gough with the stated objective of making Christopher Nolan weep with envy.

Back up a dumptruck full of money to Michael Rosenbaum's house to get him to shave his head and give us back the best live-action Lex Luthor of all (sorry Mr. Spacey).

Make it a 22 hour sweeping epic that's everything Superman should be with the effects and drama that Smallville has shown it can actually do when they are really trying.

I know that's not going to happen.

But it's nice to think about it.

Gamer Week Day 5

Heroes vs. Smallville - FIGHT!

Haven't talked about either of these in a good long time (and as you can see by my recycling the Sylar poster below, I don't have much left in the way of Heroes-based posters) so I'm going to just ramble on for a bit.

So, who here figured it would come down to this after 5 years? That Heroes is barely clinging to life, with a very mixed season at best, and a lot of moves that come off more as desperate grabs for attention, is a surprise in and of itself. However, coupled with Smallville, which just seems to keep going and going despite having long since snapped the cables on the suspension bridge of disbelief, is astounding. As you can guess, I have a few thoughts about why this has happened, and what it says about each show.

Now, the first thing we have to note is the rather large difference in approach. Smallville follows the traditional format of a genre show - a series of episodic adventures with a few sub-plot arcs that transition to the main story over time, while Heroes follows the currently popular method best known on Lost of Mega-arcs that play out over long timescales, with very little in the way of status quo. This difference manifests itself in pacing: Smallville gets away with little beats in every single episode (i.e. there's one story beat about Lois and Clark, one about Clark and Chloe, one with Green Arrow and another character, one about Clark coming to terms with what he has to do, a beat resolving the villain of the espisode). Heroes? Has maybe three beats total per episode, if that. So while you might, might get the long term payoff in Heroes if you stick around long enough, you get lots of little payoffs in an episode of Smallville - more bang per hour of watching, if you'll buy that metaphor.

One of the story beats in particular is essential (in my opinion at least) to a superhero story regardless of medium is crime-fighting and saving lives. Smallville has radically improved in this regard over the last couple years with depictions of Clark regularly saving people other than his supporting cast (Lois, Chloe, etc.) and starting to deal with criminals who aren't just the bad guys of the individual story arc. Contrasted with Heroes, which usually offers a total of one "Big Bad" villain per arc, and usually 2 or 3 flunky villains tops for a whole 10-20 episodes. Also, outside of Hiro performing a random rescue or two and Peter Petrelli's stint this season as Super-Paramedic, you don't see a lot of these so-called "Heroes" helping people who aren't integral to the plot. Chew on that for a bit and see how it affects the message of the show.

Now, let's talk about the big moves both shows have made, whether out of a genuine desire to shake things up, or a last mad dash to avoid cancellation. With Heroes, several prominent cast members have been jettisoned (or had their character arcs reduced to virtually nothing), and a major revelation has changed their world forever. In addition to this, the audience is now being asked to suspend disbelief enough to buy Sylar's attempt at redemption. Now, I can't fault the Heroes writers for this; Zachary Quinto is arguably the biggest draw of the cast, and they need a reason to keep him around that doesn't make other characters look even more pathetic for not dispatching the show's biggest villain for the past four years. But it is a big stretch to buy for a series that tries very hard to want to take the idea of superheroes in a real-world context seriously.

Smallville, on the other hand, has ditched reality to embrace the fantasy of the DCU, integrating more and more of the spectacle that the 70+ years of DCU publishing history has to offer, and the results have been a mix of great (Zatanna) and laugh-out-loud silly (Hawkman's cosutme is just terrible, and Stargirl's is worse). One imagines that the writers just decided that there was no way to make this realistic without making it drab (or being accused of stealing ideas from Heroes) and just decided to take full advantage of the cameo opportunities.

So, when we contrast Heroes, with it's long-game plan, and dedication to trying to keep to realistic ramifications, and Smallville's episodic comic-bookiness, where do you stand? For me, as bad as some of the elements can be (Clark - just put on the tights already) I have to stand with Smallville on this one.

Pick the best caption!

WE ARE LEGION

OK, so posting unfortunately is going to be very irregular for the next few months, but I'll hope you can bear with me.

So, in honour of their upcoming appearance of Smallville, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the Legion of Superheroes.

Truth to tell, the only reason I care about the Legion at all? Because Chris Bird taught me to care. DC, if you would like cash money from me, pay Chris Bird to write the Legion of Superheroes.

Now that said, I don't know, understand, or pretend to care about Legion continuity, or what kind of a mess it is. I simply see flying superheroes in the future and punching spaceships and I'm happy. I'm simple like that.

Now, that said, there's something about the Legion I just find baffling, and maybe one of you wise people would like to explain it to me.

Alright, let's say you're walking around downtown, and you happen to see a bank robbery become a hostage situation. The cop cars roll in, as does the SWAT van. And when the SWAT van opens up, you see a bunch of US Civil War re-enacters pour it out in period uniforms, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, rockets, grenade launchers, and shotguns. They have badges. And not one of them is over 20 years old.

What would scare you more:

A) That they exist?

B) That they are more effective than the 'regular' SWAT team?

Because, really, that's how I see the Legion. They are a group of really, really enthusiastic young people whom have patterned themselves off a bygone era, and practice the methods of that era in the modern day. And they have the authority to go pretty much wherever they want and do as they please for the most part. And they're teenagers. Oh, and occasionally they travel through time, doing whatever they please, and they regularly bring back major historic figures to show them their clubhouse and collection of memorabilia.

That is both fundamentally awesome and crazy.

That's why I like the Legion.

A Tribute to Romance (Sorta)

True Fact: In my original draft of this post, nearly all the posters involved Storm. But that's primarily because of Marvel Adventures: Avengers, in which she really does seem to have all the boys on a tight leash (Hawkeye, Thor, Black Panther....)

Friday Night Physics

You know, it's almost pain ful to discuss this one. But I'll do my best.

SPACE STATIONS

The Picture above, here's why it wouldn't work, in short:

1) Fire consumes oxygen. Being in space, there isn't much of that to go around, unless you have some way of renewing it really really fast. Also, space stations tend to be a bit rich in oxygen, so fire would spread rapidly, destroying your space station and everything on it; including you.
2) Where does the smoke go? I mean, venting it into space means that you'd be exposing the fire to vaacuum, so it would extinguish, so that can't work. The only way this could work is if you had a separate "Smoke Storage" container that would occasionally open to space, creating a barrier between the fire and space.

Now, looking at the shot below, you see the Justice League deciding to leave bits of Red Tornado floating around in and around their orbiting space station. Aside from being slightly weird, this is also insanely dangerous. In order for something to be in what is called a Geo-Synchronous Orbit (approximatel 22,600 miles above the Earth, which is what the Justice League Satellite is in), means that it has a relative velocity of...about 22,000 mph. This would also be the velocity of Tornado's remains. What this means is that should another satelitte or space vehicle (say, the Space Shuttle) veer too close, it could be hit by, say, a glove, at several times the speed of a rifle bullet. Now, while this doesn't seem like it would be harmful, consider that a paint chip travelling at this velocity has been known to cause serious shuttle damage...and then think about what Red Tornado bits at multiple-Mach Velocity would do to some poor astronauts, and it really makes the Justice League look like complete Assholes.

This has been another proud installment of Friday Night Physics. enjoy and feel free to leave your comments.

Superman has a Message for Peter Petrelli

And that goes double for Clark on "Smallville". If there is anyone left watching that show that seriously believes that the version of Clark Kent on that show can POSSIBLY become any version of Superman that we've seen in any other medium, then god bless you, because I can't see it.

If I might expand my commentary beyond the limited confines of the funnybooks for a moment, can I just say what a shitkicking the very concept of heroism has received in our cynical age? I mean, have we become so debased that we don't even know what it looks like? Heroes and Smallville strike me as two glaring examples of how bad it has gotten; Heroes has exactly one character that I think meets the classical definition of the term: Hiro (yeah, inspired isn't it?). The rest are reluctant type heroes at best, and others are taken to be deluded or self-interested. Even those with generally good intentions (such as Hiro) are treated as being naive, foolish, and idiotic. Meanwhile, Peter Petrelli, whom is supposedly "the best of us" is self-absorbed, emo brat of a human being that I find completely unrelatable in any fashion. Yet, the writers keep trying to simultaneously force the notion that he is "The Hero" of the show will heaping angst on him (Notice now how he's managed to destroy the life of every woman he's involved with? Woot! He's like Spider-Man! Joey Quesada Approves!). And the less said about Smallville, the better.

It just doesn't fit for me. Maybe because in my own life, I've seen and met people who embodied heroic qualities. My family, teachers, people in my community; people who genuinely and unironically stood up for SOMETHING, even with the odds hopelessly stacked against them, but felt that they couldn't back down because they knew that SOMETHING WAS AT STAKE. Their struggles were rarely easy: They had to face mindless bureaucracy, apathetic crowds, and even hostile and powerful people determine to crush them. It wasn't even a question of "winning", it was a matter of principle; to them it was whether they could face their families with the basic human dignity of knowing that they were true to their beliefs and that they could claim honestly and humbly that they fought the good fight. These were people who tried very hard to set an example for others, and they worked selflessly to try and raise the bar for others to aspire to.

Are we so devoid of any kind of genuine empathy for others, or do we simply feel it is too hard to set bars for ourselves, and instead to pick apart the weaknesses (genuine or otherwise) of others? Me, I'd rather spend a lifetime trying to work for the betterment of everyone and live modestly than to attain the highest levels of wealth and power but without any values left to my name. And just once in a while, I would like to see more of that reflected in the fiction in my mediums, and it is becoming increasingly rare. So now and again, when I'll find it (as I have with Geoff Johns' recent Action Comics Arc; hey, this may be the Fan Fiction era of comics as Alan calls it, but every once in a while, there's at least good fanfiction), I'll celebrate it. And I hope you'll join me.

Heroes inspire us

Heroes challenge us to do better

Heroes make us believe

Heroes set the example

Heroes try every day

Heroes may not always win, but they never chose the easy way out.

(Edited to ADD: Sorry, I should probably explain this part a little better for those of you not following Action Comics. The guy on the receiving end of that roundhouse is Earth Man (formerly Absorbancy Lad) whom was a rejected applicant for the Legion of Superheroes. He has the power to copy the abilities of any and every superbeing he comes in contact with. In the course of this story, Earthman here has become a thinly veiled human supermacist whom has terrorized the entire planet and gone after the Legion for his rejection. He spends a lot of time whining about how he didn't get his chance and how he deserved it. I found the whininess combined with his powerset to be very evocative of Peter Petrelli form Heroes, so to me it's a metaphor. Your mileage may vary.)