...from my new comics/media.

• Lex can accidentally develop a virus that gives people temporary random superpowers, but ONLY affects humans?
• While the Joker can, during his downtime, develop a version of Joker venom that affects Superman and Wonder Woman and Flash, all of whose physiologies regularly reject such things?
• And makes them -- with bizarre specificity -- feel like attacking Batman?
• While growing a new face and moonlighting as an orderly without Batman recognizing him?
• And, meanwhile, Lex can't even cure his sister's paralysis?
• Am I the only person who thinks that the next time we see the Penguin in comics he just be an older version of the one from Gotham, who's been world's more successful in capturing the public's imagination than any version since Burgess Meredith's?
• Hey, Wonder Woman; how bad is it when AQUAMAN tells you you're too prone to throwing a punch?
• Is it really that hard to write Wonder Woman by just asking yourself "Would Lynda Carter do this?" every time you write a scene?
• Anyone else confused as to why Swamp Thing would be even be a suspect?
• Or how the League can't tell that WATER wiped out a village, particularly since there's a broken dam nearby?
• Or why the scene at the dam felt like I was flashbacking on Avatar?
• Wouldn't YOU have moved the statue-that-used-to-be-your-mother into a safer place? Is there no U-Store-It on Paradise Island?
• If for no other reason than... aren't there any BIRDS on Paradise Island?
• Does Harlan Ellison not like Robin, given how incompetent he made him in Batman '66?
• Is there anything more disturbing than the Penguin taking DEEP whiffs of your underwear?
• Shouldn't Harvey Dent be handsomer than that?
• Cisco Ramon, are there no barbers in Central City?!
• What kind of jerk DOES buy a yellow humvee, anyway?
• Would Eddie Thawne be that *ahem* 'sexy' if they let him wear clothes that fit?
• Have you EVER wanted to see anyone successfully hit a little girl in the face more?! I mean, OTHER than "Cat" on Gotham?
• P.S. Your friends do not call you "Cat"; you call you  "Cat". Do you even have any friends?
• Why do half the characters in Central City talk with NYC accents?
• Except for Iris, who's from the Valley?
• You wanted to see Barry drop Iris off the roof, too, didn't you?
• And then travel back in time to do the same thing to Barbara Keane in Gotham?
• So, Det. Eddie Thawne is substantially less bright than a kid wearing earbuds?
• Why did Barry sit up just to deliver one line, only to lie back down immediately?
• Since child-Barry says "gawt" and adult-Barry says "gaht'h" are we just not supposed to notice they have completely different accents, or does lightning give you abs AND a NYC accent?
• Exactly WHY is it so important that no one in Central City know that their town is now crawling with metahuman villains?  
• And isn't it awfully conveniently that every single one of them waited until Barry came out of his nine-month coma to start using their powers?
• I wasn't surprised they altered Girder's origin, were you?
• Were there an awful lot of people doing improbable things are the same moment the particular accelerator blew up?
• If you were the Flash, entering a dark place, wouldn't you take four seconds to set up about a thousand flash-lights?
• Was there some reason Flash didn't just hit Girder by THROWING something at him at Mach 1.3? Because you can throw something a LOT faster than you can run, you know.
• Or just... dropping him in the very nearby river?  Because turning to steel doesn't really help you there.
• Oh, yeah, dude; revealing your secret identity to a deadly superfoe who you now have to keep in solitary confinement for the rest of his life was... totally worth the incredible risk to you and everyone you know...?!
• Was anyone else TERRIFIED by the end of The Flash?

I have heard some complaints about the Robin Lord Taylor version of the Penguin  on the television show "Gotham" as being insufficiently canonical.

For example...

Kind of skinny, isn't he?



But then again...


so was Burgess Meredith, the man who defined the Penguin for at least one generation.



Killing someone for a sandwich?  How could the Penguin be so vicious!




However, the Penguin is probably...



more cold-blooded than you remember.


He's rather fey, isn't it?  Hardly seems appropriate.



Then again....


the Penguin was never what you'd call "macho".



He's so ...pathetic.  He hardly seems threatening at all!


Then again.



that was part of made him originally so successful.



Ugh, the Penguin as some low-level mob flunky? How undignified!



Then again....



being an apparent pushover not taken by seriously by "real" gangster is part of his origin.


Why is he cooperating with the police? That's completely un-Penguin-like!



Except,of course,


for every time it suits his purpose.


No, "Gotham"'s version of Penguin is just fine, thank you.

...on my television this week.

Yup; that's Central City and Keystone!

• Really, Iris? You didn't back up your dissertation to the cloud? Come on, now.
• Huh, Thawne looks like Barry, except with different hair color. Whaddaya know.
• "Can I have part of your cookie?"
• Apparently Barry Allen went to the Peter Parker School of Solving Your Parent' Murder Through Collage.
• WHOA. You say "a little snug" as if that's a BAD thing...?!
• Fish Mooney has been sleeping with Michelangelo Milano instead of Mario D'Leon? What a moron.
• BRIGHTLY COLORED CHEMICALS IN OPEN CONTAINERS!  That's comics.
• Defibrillating a guy who just got struck by lightning? That's TV.
• "She's talks a LOT." ha!
• Balloonman.  I honestly don't care what you think.  Balloonman was awesome.  Absurd? Of course. That's the point. We are watching Gotham slowly go round the bend.
• "Cool."
• And we never even saw what happened to guy Oswald wanted to ransom.  Because we didn't need to.
• Wait, did Jason Schwartzmann just steal your laptop...?
• Gotham sure isn't shying away from the "vigilanteism" issue, is it?
• No, Tom, I don't know why you took your glasses off, either.
• "What part of 'irreversibly evil' do you not understand...?!"
• Barry went from 'what's wrong with me?' to "Awesome!" in nothing flat.
• Well, at least her dog lived.
• "More or less."  Heh. Reason enough.
• Oh.  I finally watched "The Spirit". But the only thing about that that made me happy was that it ended.
• Well, no, Barry didn't wear a bow tie.  But he wore a plaid untucked shirt covered by a too-tight sweater, which is the modern equivalent, I suppose.
• I was TERRIFIED, knowing that the Penguin was behind that door.  They've made the Penguin terrify me.
• Vibe. Or at least Vibe-to-be.  
• Huh; it appears someone at CW has seen "The Gondoliers".
• Gods need neither bank robberies nor starships.
• Well, all existing problems for the Awesomes have been solved!  Yep.  All existing problems.
• ALL of the 312 DCU shout-outs. But particularly Jitters.
• Hm,  no, actually, you already had abs when they wheeled you in. I checked.
• John Wesley Schipp. Love that guy.
• Scarlett Johannsen managed to still find work after "The Spirit". Good for her.
• Grodd. Heh.
• Oh, so THAT's the connection between her and her?! Yeah, I did NOT expect them to go THERE. But they DOVE there.
• Speaking of going there....we all knew that they WOULD with Harrison. But not in the first episode!!!
• Gambi. Heh heh.
• "Flash" had me sold the second that the opening flyover of Central City and Keystone looked EXACTLY as it should. Oh, and I WANT THAT MAP.
• "So it's not boring." Heh, Reason enough.
• The need for the mobs to stop Arkham from opening being both strategic and symbolic.
• Yeah; I cried.

I just learned something:

The Red Bee is in the public domain.

This character:

Opened fire with WHAT?  It looks like a martial aid.  Must be a sex pistol.

believe it or not, belongs to all of us, belongs to the WORLD.

And yet there is no Red Bee film in development.  No Red Bee The Animated Series.  No Red Bee comics.  In fact, I can't even find Red Bee fan fic.  Meanwhile, there's a Ant-Man movie being planned.  

This shows what happens when you don't have an agent (or anyone who owns you as intellectual property).  All those of you so ardent for preventing copyright law extensions on such characters, let the fate of the Red Bee warn you all!

Thus, the legacy of the Red Bee languishes.  Truly, the state of the Red Bee is a tragedy much like global warming, is which something for which everyone is responsible is something for which no one feels sufficient responsibility.  

As do your descendants, Rick.  I mean your spiritual descendants, of course.

What would you do to bring back the Rick Raleigh version of the Red Bee? Would you give mutant bee-controlling powers, like Yellowjacket?  Would you include his much-maligned, but incomprehensibly well-trained, sidekick, Michael?  With his outré couture and poofy diaphanous sleeves would he be a would-be fashion designer out for justice? Given the fact that, in 24 issues, he was hit on the head and knocked-unconscious 14 times, would you make him a sidekick for Hal Jordan (truly, the Red Bee put the "hit' in Hit Comics)?  Or for Green Arrow, considering how ridiculous he is?  Would you sign your masterpiece "B.H. (for Bee hive, one assumes) Apiary", out of shame?  Is he really any more ridiculous than, say, the Green Hornet? Would you have him fight all the sort of crime Golden Age heroes used to tackle that's no longer on the radar of big-time Justice Leaguers, such as milk racketeering, jilted lovers, and medical supply-jackers?

I believe something wonderful can be done with this character (again).  I'm a Red Bee-liever.

Prove me right!

The only thing happened  when I watched Gotham that I wasn't really expecting.

I REALLY liked it.

Was it subtle? No.  But then again.... that's never been what comics books have been about, has it?

Ben McKenzie's quiet charisma is enormous.  The moral dilemmas, while a bit conveniently stark, are real and sophisticated. Once I find myself understanding--agreeing with--Carmine Falcome, I"m impressed.

Pictured: quiet charisma.

Sure, they took too many liberties in tying together closely all manner of terribly disparate and unrelated pieces of the Gothamverse.  Selina Kyle witnesses the murder of the Waynes, for which Poison Ivy's dad is framed (contrary to evidence found by forensic expert Edward Nigma) by the boss of the Penguin who is crippled for betrayal possibly in front of the Joker?  Really, was Harvey Dent sick that day?

But that kind of need to "tie everything altogether" is very typical of the small screen where they don't have the luxury of 70 years of monthly issues to spin our thousands of various yarns.  They need it all wrapped up in tidy tee-vee-sized ball.  And, as myth-making goes, the pilot does a good job, particularly with an actual, interesting origin for the Penguin.

It will probably become too crowded too fast, and, like Smallville, will become too penned in by the 'real myth. But for now, I am definitely on board.

You know what the most fun comic book you're not reading now is?

I do, and I know why.  It's "The Awesomes" and you're not reading it because no one is writing or publishing it.

For those not already familiar with it, The Awesomes is a Hulu animated television series that's a comedic take on superhero teams.  That description make its sound like rather a played out concept, and that was my first impression before I finally broke down and watched a few episodes, which amused and entertained me greatly.  My fondness for the show has only grown as I have started sharing it with others (many of whom, like me, were at first skeptical).  



The show oozes with comedic talent; it is almost completely performed by alums of SNL (like Seth Meyers) or MadTV (like Ike Barinholtz), even the bit parts, walk-ons, and one-liners.  The unctuous villain Dr Malocchio, as played by Bill Hader, is a treat in every frame he's in.  

Unlike many such parodies, The Awesomes isn't derisive or demeaning toward the superhero/villain concept.  It's clearly affectionate and informed joking and most of the characters are very likeable (even the villains are -- to some degree-- likeable or at least, we understand why they do what they do even if we don't approve). 

That's not to say the show's not without bite. There's some wicked satire going on, and the show's by no means G-rated. But at its core, it's warm-hearted, respectful of the heroic ideal, and has a great mix of lively characters, whose interactions are comedy gold.  My favorite is Gadget Girl (an expy of Merry the Girl of a 1000 Gimmicks), who's a rejuvenated sassy-talking 1940s hero with a zest for adventure and a lack of delicacy that enlivens any scene she's in:



Not even halfway into its second season, The Awesomes has generated enough characters and throwaway concepts to fuel a comic book for years.  I hope that Hulu and Seth Meyers, the brain behind it all (and the voice of the Awesomes' leader, the perennially injured supergenius Jeremy "Prock" Awesome), takes the step of licensing it out, but I would read the CRAP of an Awesomes comic book.

As much as I love the Shield and Dusty....




there are some things that even I don't want to think about.

Labels: The Shield