Superman & Lois 1.1 (pilot)

I’m not planning to blog about the CW’s new Superman & Lois because our schedule is packed enough right now, and also because I found the experience of blogging about a current series, Batwoman, to be remarkably unsatisfying and frustrating. Seriously, we quit watching the show because we liked the hero and were sick of the villain, so what did they do? Lost the hero and kept the villain. Honestly.

But as longtime readers know, I really enjoy Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as Clark and Lois and am glad they have their own show. Timelines got scrambled during 2019’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event, and now they have two teenage sons, played by Jordan Elsass and Alex Garfin. Confusingly, the actor named Jordan does not play the character named Jordan. Tonight we sat down to watch the pilot and I enjoyed it very much, even if reactions on the rest of the sofa were a little muted. We might cycle back to it in the summer when our Friday evenings are free again. (You may have deduced that I’m not posting on Fridays because we’re watching Marvel shows on Disney+ that night.)

If you didn’t catch the publicity, the premise here is that after what must be twenty-odd years of superheroing, Lois and Clark’s lives get upended when Clark gets fired and Ma Kent dies the same morning. Back home in Smallville, Lana Lang has married a deeply resentful fire chief who’s watched his town fall apart from meth and poverty and people going away to college and never coming back, and carries a grudge for Clark being one of those people, and also being Facebook friends with his wife. (Clark, dude, do not befriend old exes on Facebook.) Son Jonathan was looking forward to starting at QB on the varsity team, and son Jordan doesn’t like anybody, and at least one of them is starting to show evidence of powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. The same creep who bought the Daily Planet has been buying up family farms in Kansas and making things far worse there – and he probably runs Intergang as well, but that’s just me speculating – and while Lois smells a story and Superman’s got a new enemy in a combat suit who speaks Kryptonian, they’ve really got to do something to keep this family together and that seems to be moving back to the old farm.

I thought this was a fine pilot, if a little humorless, and I was distracted by the middle third of the story having the dialogue out of sync on the CW’s stream, but the cinematography and the effects were wonderful and as I’ve said in this spot before, I really do like the actors. I wish the show huge success and visits from all the rogues gallery they can wrangle, and that we quickly get an answer about what links Jon Cryer’s recurring role in Supergirl with this dude in the Mechwarrior suit. Time travel? Infinite Earths? Something weirder? I look forward to seeing more in a few months.

Crisis on Infinite Earths (parts four and five)

I had originally planned to watch the final two parts of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” – presented as Arrow 8.8 and Legends of Tomorrow 5.0 – over two nights, but part four was so lousy and uninspired that I decided to stampede to the end, and I’m really glad that I did, because part five was downright fun.

So the big changes to the Arrowverse are that the Superpeoples’ Earth was merged with the Arrow/Flash/Batwoman/Legends Earth and Black Lightning’s Earth, and now Supergirl’s National City is on the other side of the river from Flash’s Central City. Atop that, Diggle’s daughter is alive again, Superman and Lois have two kids, Lex Luthor has been a good guy who’s just won the Nobel Prize, and Lynda Carter’s no longer the president. A bunch of other DC shows now have their own Earths, and at the end of the story, seven of the heroes (Barry, Kara, Sara, Kate, Clark, J’onn, and Jefferson) get together to hang out in the Hall of Justice (the building was introduced in the 2016 crossover), where there’s a monkey named Gleek running around and the old Super Friends theme plays. Best ending possible, I’d say.

Otherwise, part four was a last roundup for Stephen Amell to have yet another death scene and to marvel at how months apparently passed at the Vanishing Point but Kate kept her hair perfect. Part five was what I understand is the usual Legends of Tomorrow mayhem, with enough violence and superhero action to keep our son completely riveted and enough romance novels and fifty-foot teddy bears to keep the grownups baffled. Lots of the usual Arrowverse talk about how tough it is being a hero as well, but balanced with the show’s playful and silly spirit.

So I reckon they’ve left the big impacts on the Batwoman storyline for us to learn about in a few days, so stay tuned for that. Hopefully the next time we see the Hall of Justice, Barry will have cleaned the place up. And if any of you readers happen to see any fan art with our new seven Super Friends drawn in the classic style of the Alex Toth originals, won’t you please drop me a line? I’d love to see this cover below done with the TV gang. (Bonus points if they have somebody redraw Tyler Hoechlin’s face in a Curt Swan style.)

But fun aside, did it work? Well, I honestly don’t know that they did everything that they could or should have done. The spit-n-cough cameos from Ashley Scott, Burt Ward, and Robert Wuhl were cute, but the actors could have been given more substantial roles to play somewhere in the narrative, couldn’t they? There’s a brief bit in part four where “our” Flash meets the Flash played by Ezra Miller in the current movies, which was nice. I suppose Zachary Levi or Gal Gadot or Margot Robbie are outside the TV shows’ budget, so it was nice to see somebody from the big screen show up on TV, where I think DC’s superhero stories are told better.

But speaking of Levi and Gadot, this really was a fine opportunity to introduce DC’s other big hero names into the Arrowverse, and I think I’m disappointed that they didn’t give us the chance to meet Shazam, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. Some footage which may have been from the Ryan Reynolds GL film is in the “new worlds” montage at least, but there should be a Green Lantern on the new combined Earth, not on his own world, because that’s precisely the problem that this story solved. And TV is long overdue a Wonder Woman. I hope some of the big names start appearing as guests on the Arrowverse shows in the future.

Anyway, wonder what they’re going to do for the November 2020 crossover? Hopefully something a shade smaller…?

Super Friends cover credit: Pencil Ink Blog

The Flash 6.9 – Crisis on Infinite Earths (part three)

First things first: our son was furious about the month-long wait before the next episode. A whole month! I’d make a crack about the age of instant gratification, but then again, when Disney+ launched, at least three people I follow on Twitter whined about having to wait a week between episodes of The Mandalorian.

Anyway, much like episode two, this part was agonizing talk-talk-talk while all two hundred actors with speaking parts got their names onscreen, and then it got entertaining. We got a far shorter cameo from one member of the cast of Birds of Prey than I expected, and an incredibly surprising appearance by Tom Ellis from the Fox/Netflix series Lucifer. He and John Constantine share some dialogue that’s certain to please anybody familiar with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic.

John Wesley Shipp also shows up as the Flash from his 1990-91 series, and not only gets that great theme song, but an actual clip from his series. Cress Williams gets to cross over from Black Lightning, because it was about time he met the rest of these characters. The most dramatic moment in the story comes when Supergirl is about to do something very dangerous and stupid with the Book of Destiny and Batwoman stares her down.

So it cruises to a cliffhanger that was pretty much in line with what I was expecting, but there’s a downright brilliant twist right before we were set to go to the credits. Jon Cryer may have just overtaken John Shea as my favorite Lex Luthor, put it that way.

So since we’re pausing this story for a month, I guess my only real complaint is that they missed a serious trick in identifying the seven essential “paragon” characters. Five of them are from the regular casts of these shows. We see these characters every week. Instead of just giving playful winks with cameo appearances from Burt Ward and Ashley Scott and Tom Welling, it would have been smashing to have them play substantial parts as the paragons (maybe adding Teri Hatcher and Lynda Carter?) and let the regular cast members be tasked with protecting them. It just seems like a missed opportunity, but it’s pretty fun anyway.

Batwoman 1.9 – Crisis on Infinite Earths (part two)

The second episode of this crossover was much, much better than the first… eventually. It starts with an endless all-talk opening about the new goal to track down seven “paragons” who will save the day in the end, but things get a lot better. I particularly enjoyed how the stakes kept getting higher with each cut to what the heroes on their missions were doing. The structure was very similar to the time-heist second hour of Avengers: Endgame.

Anyway, this time we got to catch up with Tom Welling, from Smallville, as he stares down Jon Cryer’s Lex Luthor. Brandon Routh gets to play Superman again, but this time his Superman has gone down the same path as the Superman in the popular comic series Kingdom Come. There was a fine fight between the Routh and Hoechlin Supermen, and a subplot involving John Constantine (played by Matt Ryan) leading some of the other heroes to a life-restoring Lazarus Pit.

But the meat of the story came with Kate and Supergirl tracking down the Bruce Wayne of one of the Infinite Earths, finding him visually similar to the Batman from Kingdom Come who wore a steel rod exoskeleton to make up for all the bones in his body being broken in combat. But this isn’t Kingdom‘s honorable Bruce, it’s one of those gone-crazy Batmen from comics that invariably have to kill Superman with kryptonite. This Bruce is played by Kevin Conroy, who’s been the voice of Batman in hundreds of cartoons, and his appearance left me hoping that when Batwoman finally introduces us to the sane Bruce of Kate Kane’s world, they invite Conroy to play the part.

It’s mostly splendid and unpredictable and done with a lot of love for the characters, but whoever is in charge of the music is set on stealing the show. This time, we get the themes from the nineties Batman cartoon and John Williams’ legendary music from the Christopher Reeve Superman movies dropped in at key intervals. How could you not smile?

Supergirl 5.9 – Crisis on Infinite Earths (part one)

Many years ago, an acquaintance was telling a pal of mine about the great folly that was the comic book Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC Comics dotted every I and crossed every T and believed that every possible continuity “problem” within their funnybooks had been resolved by this great big cosmic reset. The whole editorial office relaxed and stretched and closed their eyes and suddenly realized, as one, that they had wiped out Superboy from their backstory and forgot about his quarter-century of appearances with the Legion of Super-Heroes. So two years later, they had to fix that. And then they were fixing something else. The fans seem to love it all, but I’ve always felt the cures are worse than the disease.

But the Crisis has been a fan favorite for decades, and its television adaptation was promised six years ago in the first episode of The Flash, so expectations for this five-part story have been pretty high. I’ve got mixed feelings about it so far. This time out, not a lot happens while pieces are put into place, but – if I counted right – eight heroes are tasked with defending a “Quantum Tower” in National City from shadow demons while the planet is evacuated. It’s Superman, Supergirl, the Flash, Green Arrow and his daughter, Batwoman, the Atom, and White Canary, and before the hour is finished, one of these heroes will be dead.

Granted, this is an episode of Supergirl, set on hers and Superman’s Earth – not the same dimension as the other Arrowverse programs – but I really wasn’t interested in all the material with the DEO and Lena Luthor from this series. On the other hand, there’s a great opening montage, which checked in on Robert Wuhl, from the 1989 Batman movie, and Burt Ward, from the 1966-68 Batman TV series, and Hawk and Robin from what I guess was the current Titans streaming series.

Several more of these winks, apparently with much more substance, are coming in the next few episodes. Other than these, the most interesting scene featured Superman and Lois, living without super powers on a distant planet, having to launch their infant son to Earth in a pod. It all turned out okay – the tyke got detoured to the year 2046 on Earth-16 and one of the cosmic gamesmasters moved our heroes before the planet blew up – but I liked how our son could spot the deliberate reminder of baby Kal-El being sent here from Krypton. A lot more of this playful levity, and a lot less of the Monitor and the Pariah and the Harbinger being portentous and melodramatic, will improve this story.

Supergirl 4.9 – Elseworlds (part three)

Just as part two of the crossover showed us the Batwoman show that we might get, part three showed us the Superman show that we never will. I enjoyed Tyler Hoechlin as Superman the couple of times I’ve seen him. Here, he gets to play two Men of Steel, as Dr. Destiny rewrites reality once again to give himself Superman’s powers, and a spiffy black costume.

Hoechlin has a fabulous and believable chemistry with Elizabeth Tulloch’s Lois Lane, and I was absolutely loving their too-short time together. It won’t be continued onscreen in Supergirl any time soon, because Lois and Clark are actually leaving Earth to get married and live in the alien world of Argo City! Here’s to the show we didn’t get, because there was a decade of adventures behind them that must have been fun to see. There’ll never be a Lois as terrific as Teri Hatcher, I say, but Tulloch was wonderful, and I hope she gets the chance to play Lois again one day.

As for the rest of the story, my son and I both feel that they really led with their strongest hand. Part one of the story was by far the wildest and weirdest. By the end, the alternate reality business had lost almost all of its charm for me, though our kid certainly liked the scrap between the two Supermen, and he marveled aloud that Superman and Lois are getting married.

I’m most disappointed that John Wesley Shipp’s Flash from his old CBS show had such a minimal part in the adventure. They tossed him out of the narrative in part two and never resolved it. The Monitor wrecked his world, for some reason, and left behind the corpses of a lot of costumed heroes, for some reason, but did that mean an entire reality was wiped out, or just that planet’s Justice League? If we’re honest, the Monitor didn’t make any sense at all anyway… not that he ever did in the funnybooks in the first place. “Crisis on Infinite Earths” was a dopey and unnecessary story in 1986. I can’t swear that I’m looking forward to the TV version next year all that much.

Arrow 7.9 – Elseworlds (part two)

Had some maddening issues getting to watch part two of this story. The Flash played just fine in Google Chrome, but Arrow insisted that I had an ad blocker active when I didn’t, so I had to play it in Internet Explorer, which wouldn’t let me skip ahead afterward to get a screencap or two… maybe I can just get an old-fashioned VHS screener or something. Those never gave me problems…

Anyway, the second part of this story principally serves as an introduction to Kate Kane, who’s not-so-secretly Batwoman, and who is played by Ruby Rose. I wish Rose and the producers the best of luck in launching this show, but I am a little disappointed by the visual choices they’ve made for Gotham City. Our heroes learn that Gotham’s basically a complete hole of a town, and that there used to be an urban legend called Batman keeping the streets safe-ish, but the Batman vanished three years ago, around the same time that billionaire super-industrialist Bruce Wayne went missing.

Kate’s got an explanation, or as much as one as she’s willing to give to the infamous vigilante Green Arrow before telling him to get lost: after Batman left, the city fell further and further apart, and Bruce lost his will to keep fighting to make the city better. Interestingly, Kara lets slip that there’s a Bruce Wayne on her Earth as well, sort of best frenemies with her cousin.

But things sadly move to Arkham Asylum, and it’s so unoriginal and uninventive. Granted, the front atrium of the building becomes the center stage for Diggle (David Ramsey) to have a simply amazing brawl with about a dozen Arkham inmates. But the asylum is the same, dreary, dilapidated, moldy, bare-mattress building that comics and video games have been crapping into existence for three decades and just once I’d like somebody to depict it as a state-of-the-art facility based on an actual 21st Century psychiatric institution. Maybe Bruce Wayne could have spent some of his trillions fixing the Arkham plumbing and its decades-old flickering fluorescent bulbs instead of on more Bat-toys if he really wanted to do something to help the city.

There’s a nice wink at the ’60s Batman in the form of a Shakespeare bust in Kate Kane’s office. I wish the Batwoman show well, and I hope it doesn’t suffer too long from the Dark Knight-shaped hole in its floor.

Photo credit: The Hollywood Reporter

The Flash 5.9 – Elseworlds (part one)

We watched Avengers: Age of Ultron on Sunday, but as much as our son and I enjoyed the movie, I found myself uninspired to say anything about it. I’ve got something now: our kid thought that Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s brief turn as the speedster Quicksilver was fun, but the character was overshadowed by all the other mayhem in the movie.

But the Flash is a whole ‘nuther story. Earlier this evening, we watched part one of the annual Arrowverse crossover and this blasted kid has burned off a good four thousand calories crashing around the house trying to run as fast as the Flash. At one point, we heard the unmistakable sound of decorative wooden shoes clattering across hardwood floors and into bookshelves as he super-speed slid past the Christmas tree and tripped. The kid now has to sit still and console himself by moving his hands so fast that he can phase through solid objects, just like Barry Allen, and, tonight, Oliver Queen.

This year’s crossover is called “Elseworlds” and the two principal heroes of Earth-1, Flash and Green Arrow, wake up in each other’s bodies. The body-swap seems to be the first strike against reality by a classic DC Comics villain, Dr. Destiny, abetted by another figure called the Monitor, who seems to have a beef against all these parallel universes. While a couple of their superpowered allies try fighting a new menace, the star players figure their friend Supergirl, over on Earth-38, might be able to help.

So the Arrowverse really kind of left me behind – I genuinely enjoyed the first season of Supergirl, but all the changes they made when they moved production to Vancouver were a drag, and I never forgave The Flash for all the cast acting so unbelievably gullible and stupid in season two’s Zoom story – but I saw news blurbs and this sounded fun. As the story goes on over three nights, we’re apparently going to have a pile of Easter eggs and winks to the audience who knows older superhero shows. This story actually opens on Earth-90, where John Wesley Shipp has apparently been playing the Flash ever since his old show on CBS got cancelled twenty-seven years ago, and we learn that the Kent family farm on Earth-38 is in fact the same Kent family farm of Smallville, theme song and everything.

I really enjoyed the farm scenes. Kara is visiting Clark, who is played by occasional guest star Tyler Hoechlin and who is terrific as Superman, and this episode introduces Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane, who’s certainly been mentioned on Supergirl a time or ten, but never seen before. There’s a great callback to a memorable moment in season one of The Flash involving remotely-triggered crossbows, but it’s the fight that blew our kid’s adrenaline through the roof. It is kind of joyous watching Superman, Supergirl, Flash, and Green Arrow take down the robot Amazo, looking nowhere as goofy as it did in the funnybooks.

So yes, our son was in heaven, and the episode ended with a clue that Dr. Destiny and the Monitor are hanging out in Gotham City. This is the home of the red-haired Batwoman, who also has a show in development on the CW. I’ve never read any comics with the character before, and nor am I certain whether The Flash and Arrow have ever acknowledged Gotham City before, so I’m really curious what will happen next. More tomorrow night!