Showing posts with label Superman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Superman. Show all posts
My Brain in Wayne
A recent dream that found me in the heart of lovely Wayne, PA, where I resided for a couple of years much longer ago than it seems, reminded me that I’d jotted down another one set there several months back.
The newer one: I’m walking on a side road that feeds into Main Street when I hear Dido singing “Thank You” during an outdoor photoshoot. I approach her because she’s an old friend and we catch up a little but she’s busy working — so after confirming that she still lives nearby I tell her that Em and I have a place in Manayunk now and we should meet for lunch.
Zero idea who Em’s supposed to be.
The older dream: I’ve gone to Minella’s Diner with someone whom, per my notes, I couldn’t place upon waking and in hindsight I would very much like to believe was the mysterious Em. Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band, and their entire touring entourage are there and have taken up several tables. I hear another patron tell his server that any drinks they order under $55 are on him and, dear reader, I’m at least as curious about how my subconscious came up with that cutoff point as you are. Once my friend and I have been seated, Lex Luthor turns around from the next booth to speak to us — not a generic version, but Lex Luthor as voiced by Clancy Brown in the DCAU Superman and Justice League animated series, fleshed out in real life and threatening us with something I can’t recall.
Related: Of Was and When • REM Brands • HIVE Minded • Fight and Flight
Arch-Ray Vision
With an infinite multiverse I guess it’d be inevitable that somewhere out there (Earth-F, perhaps?) Quentin Tarantino is Superman.
Superman Down
I’m among those who saw the early trailer for and the new extended look at James Gunn’s upcoming Superman and wondered just why so much time was spent on a bloodied, battered Man of Steel.
Of course, I thrilled at the brief glimpses of him being heroic — flying with purpose
and protecting a child. And I get wanting to showcase Krypto; I do have concerns about the film, but not that shaggy fella beyond my perennial problem buying even the most impressive CGI.
Gloom and Doomsday
This post is currently down for maintenance but I’ll point you to the roundtable discussion at Forces of Geek in which I participated and from which it draws.
Who’s Zoomin’ Who
The Flash: Can he outrun Superman — or Supergirl? We may get an answer in
the Mar. 28th episode of the latter’s CBS series.
Super Peek
We got a new trailer for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice last month to coincide with the sprawling media crush of San Diego’s Comic-Con International.
I’ll admit that the movie looks impressive on its own terms. While Man of Steel had potential as a riff on the superhero genre with a heavy sci-fi bent, however, it was a terribly misguided Superman film. Based on the footage and conversations regarding its sequel, Zack Snyder continues to be at least as far off target in translating DC’s oldest, greatest icons from page to screen as he was in adapting Watchmen a half-dozen years back. (Read my non-spoiler post or my longer review of Man of Steel, and my detailed review of Watchmen, for more.)
Snyder et al. have jumped right to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight — a possible future extrapolating from the comics of the time in which a weathered Batman comes out of retirement and tangles with a godlike Superman whom he views as too powerful and too simplistic in the embrace of justice and the American Way — by setting up that dichotomy in the characters’ first meeting absent the weight of their history together. Huh?
Worlds Enough and Time
At this week’s TV “upfronts” we got trailers for CBS’ new Supergirl, to air Mondays at
8 p.m. ET come November, and the CW Arrow/Flash spinoff DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, which bows at midseason. [bad links]
Ra's al Ghul is practically a millennial next to the immortal Vandal Savage, who’s mentioned in the latter. I’d love to find out that he or some continuity-altering character from the comics (say, Glorith or the Time Trapper) has prevented Kal-El from becoming Superman on the current “Earth-CW”. Perhaps once Rip Hunter’s motley crew properly resets history the Arrow/Flash universe could merge with that of Supergirl or otherwise establish Superman and Batman as existing in that universe — and Man of Steel as but a glimpse into a sad, twisted parallel reality.
Promo image © 2015 Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Related: Kind of Blue • When Barry Met Ollie • Live-Action Comics
Panel to Frame
My reviews of Fox’s Gotham and The CW’s newly expanding Arrow/Flash
universe would be up by now had I not started tinkering with images to accompany them. Which is how these happened.
Superman
Inset: Detail of cover to Action Comics #1 © 1938 DC Comics.
Photo: Still from Superman Returns © 2006 Warner Bros. Entertainment.
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Live-Action Comics
I’ve been trying for a while to finish a big piece on the recent flood of comics
being adapted for television and film. One problem has been that I keep writing too much about a specific movie or show and then spinning that material off into its own review. The silver lining is that the flood is only picking up pace — so even as I constantly kick the metaphorical can down the road there’ll be no shortage of hooks
to keep the subject current.
Supermannus Horribilis
Man of Steel was released on home video a couple of weeks ago, which makes this
as good a time as any to finally post my full-on spoiler thoughts on the film.
This post is currently down for maintenance but I’ll point you to the roundtable discussion at Forces of Geek in which I participated and from which it draws.
Hope of Good Capes
I saw the latest Marvel flick this weekend and got into a new version of an old
debate: Thor vs. Superman.
Superhero films during the first three decades of my life were essentially limited
to Superman and then to Batman. A Thor movie, let alone more than one, was all but unthinkable. In my 30s it was pretty much just the Marvel stable and Batman’s resurgence, as Fox launched its X-Men dynasty, Columbia teed up a Spider-Man franchise, and even lesser Marvel-inspired films put DC, sister company to and/or division of Warner years before Marvel was purchased by Disney, in quite the awkward position regarding the dichotomy between its library of legendary characters and lack of live-action achievement.
Ante Heroes
I didn’t create this Man of Steel / Dark Knight mashup, but when I shared it from
a friend’s page on Facebook I did come up with some dialogue for the scene.
Joker: “You wanna know how I got these scars?”
El on Earth
How did I like Man of Steel?
That’s... a good question. I’ll be taking part in a roundtable discussion at Forces
of Geek soon, helping me further hone my thoughts for a proper review. What follows below is bereft of spoilers.
Man of Steel image © 2013 Warner Bros. Entertainment. Superman ® DC Comics.
I went into the 12:01 a.m. screening last Thursday night with hope and tempered excitement.
Supermanniversary
Panel of Lois Lane meeting Superman from Action Comics #1 © 1938 DC Comics.
Script: Jerry Siegel. Pencils, Inks, Letters: Joe Shuster. Colors: Unknown.
This post is currently down for maintenance.
Up in the Sky
A home movie of the Superman balloon’s first appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1940 was uploaded to YouTube in November of last year, but I got word of it too late to post it in time for the holiday then. My thanks to Rodrigo Baeza, who blogs occasionally at Comics Commentary, for sharing the link on the Grand Comics Database chat list. [1:14]
[Note: The original link went bad and has been replaced with another to a far more interesting video, with footage shot by Jerry Siegel himself; I’ll write more about it in a new post.]
Mxy Business
After this preamble comes another batch of my Twitter postlets. [see below]
They’re very possibly the last batch for a little while. I’ve decided to step away from
that game and reassess, because it’s just too much of a time suck. Nice as it was to dip further back into the crazy, crowded, colorful pool that is the comics world in all of its increasingly splintered splendor, I spent far more energy and hours following conversations and links and stuff than I should have given that my real aim was to get back in touch with a bunch of folks; Twitter was supposed to be merely one means to that end, and instead it greatly curtailed the pursuit of other means.