The Emerald A-Hole Revisited

My regular readers (hi mom!) might remember that just over a year ago, I wrote a review of the pilot to the CW's Arrow, an adaptation of the DC Comics superhero Green Arrow. I was critical of it (with good reason), but to be fair, no show, no matter how good or bad it is, should be judged on its first episode alone. This past week, I watched the first season of Arrow on Netflix and, to be perfectly honest, it does improve as the show moves forward. Our hero's practice of killing bad guys is called into question, his one-man crusade becomes a team effort, and there's some compelling human drama to be found in Oliver Queen's supporting cast, specifically in how his life of crime-fighting affects them.

I say all this so you understand that while it has its ups, this show, at it's very core, is DUUUUUUUUUUUUUMB.

I think the issue comes down to one of tone. The CW is trying to have it's cake and it eat it too: it wants a slick, edgy, sexy action show, but it's about a superhero, an idea which is silly and childish from the get go. Everyone on Team Arrow standing around home base and making their most super-serious face comes off as laughable when the work our main character is so super-serious about is cosplaying as Robin Hood and yelling at rich people, fighting with a stick and a string from the Paleolithic Era and acting like he's the personification of Occupy Wall Street. It just feels like the show is actively denying that it's fun. I mean, come on, crack a smile once in a while for God's sake.

Tone is the umbrella under which most of the problems fall under, but there's a bit more to it than that. So here I am, to list my grievances in the hopes that you all can laugh with me at this silly little program.

The Costume
Honestly, this one doesn't bother me as much as you might think. Yeah, it's a boring costume for a superhero, but at least it translates well to TV. Arrow goes less with an Errol Flynn Robin Hood look and more of a...well, hood. And it works; it's evocative of fantasy iconography and it does a decent job of hiding the hero's identity. Part of me has to question how much his peripheral vision is shot by having that thing on his head, but overall, it looks intimidating and iconic and it works.

Less-so is the mask part of it, or lack thereof. See, Green Arrow is traditionally shown wearing a diamond mask to hide his identity, which, in real life, wouldn't do much to that effect. The show, therefore, replaces the mask with green make-up around his eyes. The results are dumb.

Superhero costumes have sometimes irked me because in a situation a hero is needed and our main character is in his/her civilian guise, they have to duck into some secluded place, change into their costume, stash their clothes, go fight the bad guy or save the people or whatever, return to the secluded spot, change back, and go about their day. It just doesn't seem feasible that a costume change has to delay an emergency rescue all the time, y'know? So, say, in episode three of Arrow when Oliver Queen is at a party that gets assaulted by a sniper and ducks away to don his vigilante duds, part of me has to laugh at the mental image of the good guy stopping at a bathroom mirror to delicately and expertly apply his face paint before fighting the shooter. It just seems silly, doesn't it?

The Island

As previously established, Oliver Queen's backstory involves him being shipwrecked on a deserted island, where he learns to survive and become a fighter so that five years later he can return to Starling City (yeah, it's Starling City, not Star City like in the comics. Why that change?) and become a hero. Flashbacks throughout the first season detail exactly what happened on the island, with Ollie making an enemy of mercenary Eddie Fyers and allies of political prisoner Yao Fei, his daughter Shado, and other mercenary Slade Wilson. Ollie and Slade particularly team up in their efforts to stop Fyers evil plan and escape from the island.

While it's sort of interesting to see how our hero goes from wimp to badass, plus my personal adulation at seeing Yao Fei onscreen and knowing that someone besides me remembers the Chinese superhero team the Great Ten (even if Yao has almost nothing in common with his print counterpart, the aptly named Accomplished Perfect Physician), I can't help but not give a damn about the island flashbacks because, well, we know how the story ends. Every escape attempt by Ollie and Slade is rendered meaningless because the audience knows that's not how the story goes. A story can make up for that by giving the story meaning beyond "here's some stuff that happened", but it's all as lifeless as the rest the present story. It's just not engaging at all, which is unfortunate since it takes up a good chunk of the season.

Adapting Characters

I suppose this is the real meat of what makes Arrow not work. See, the show has created an environment where superhero elements and iconography are frowned upon, and therefore comic book characters steeped in that lore are distilled to their dullest, most uninteresting, and in some cases, most laughably bad forms. Who makes the worst transitions? Well, let's take a look.

Deadshot - When you look at it all lined-up, Floyd Lawton, a.k.a. Deadshot, has had an interesting career trajectory. He started out as a vigilante rival to Batman, a pistol-wielding foil to the gun-free Dark Knight. He then moved on to straight up villain for hire before what he's probably best known for, joining the Suicide Squad (think The Dirty Dozen with supervillains). What makes Deadshot interesting, besides the "never misses" marksman angle and that badass costume, is his personality; Deadshot is an unflappable professional in the field, which strangely works with his devil-may-care attitude, but he hides a sense of self-hatred and a wish to die in a spectacular fashion, which is partly informs why he does what he does. Arrow's version of the character doesn't really go into all of that, which is understandable since he's a villain-of-the-week. What's less understandable is that stuff they added to him.

Because an assassin with perfect aim and a robot eye apparently isn't enough, TV Deadshot has two stupid traits added to make him more "interesting": the first is that he laces his bullets with a deadly poison, which, if you're the world's best marksman, seems like the literal definition of overkill. The second is that Deadshot tattoos the names of his victims on his body. This irks me because Deadshot (the one from the comics, at least) doesn't put this much thought into his work. He doesn't care about the people he kills enough to "immortalize" them with body art. Taking trophies like this seems less like an assassin and more like a serial killer. I get trying to make your villain more intimidating, but this just seems unnecessary and contrived.

Roy Harper - Oh goody, someone to really hate on.

Roy Harper is one of my favorite characters in DC, if only because his character has gone through so many changes over the years. He started out as Speedy, the Robin to Green Arrow's Batman, a teen sidekick to appeal to the kids in the audience. In the early 70's, however, writing duties on Green Arrow fell to Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, who wanted to inject more social commentary and adult themes into their books. One of the results of their efforts was "Snowbirds Don't Fly", a two-part story arc in Green Lantern/Green Arrow which saw Roy become a heroin addict. Ollie fires him from the team and afterwards, Roy kicks the habit and goes on to a career in solo-heroism. He also has an affair with the supervillain Cheshire, the result of which is a daughter, Lian Harper. Having a superhero who's also a single dad is a rare and interesting idea, which is why it's so frustrating that DC killer her off in Cry for Justice, I mean seriously, WTF you ass-clowns.

Point is, Roy's an interesting character in the comics, a sort-of everyman in an extraordinary world. In Arrow, he's just an utter douche.

TV Roy is introduced to his future love interest Thea Queen by way of purse-snatching. Thea considers pressing charges, but reconsiders when she hears Roy's most likely BS sob story and also she thinks he's cute. She decides to try and help the kid, but Roy is poor and therefore reflexively hates the upper class, which doesn't stop him from dating Thea an episode later. At one point, Thea gets him a job at her brother's night club, which he doesn't show up for because he "doesn't want anyone's charity" (because apparently, if someone gives you the opportunity to earn money rather than just give it to you, it's charity). Nothing Roy does makes sense, and here's a writing tip for you kids out there: If the audience doesn't understand a character's actions, we don't like the character.

Season 2 seems to be setting up Roy's position as Ollie's sidekick, and I sincerely hope it gets him to grow out of his immaturity and chronic douchiness, but I doubt it.

Firefly - Garfield Lynns, a.k.a. Firefly, is traditionally a Batman villain, but shows up here anyway. I don't mind because Green Arrow has so few villains of his own, he might as well borrow some from other heroes. The problem is that this is Arrow, and what was a potentially interesting character is now just a name attached to a boring villain.

Firefly isn't deep or well-developed, and you'd be forgiven for assuming he's a character reverse-engineered from a good-sounding name. "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's make a Batman villain named 'Firefly'!" "Great! What does he do?" "He flies and he shoots fire!" "Brilliant!" But at the very least, Firefly is a visually interesting villain with access to equipment that can do a lot of damage and give a superhero some trouble. None of that is present in Arrow.

TV Firefly is a former fireman, believed to have died on the job, who is now bumping off his old colleagues who failed to save him. Rather than the cool suit and jet pack, Lynns dresses in a standard fireman's uniform, goes into burning buildings, sprays the firefighters with gasoline, and then watches them burn. Also, he's got scars under his mask. That's just...boring. Really, really boring. I know he's a one-off villain, but if you're gonna have a character known for the jet-pack and flamethrower and strip him of those things, then why bother using him at all?

Huntress - This one actually stays mostly intact from her comic book counterpart, she's just badly acted and calls out one of the major flaws of the show.

Helena Bartinelli is the daughter of a mafioso who is disgusted by her father's activities and takes up a life of vigilantism to stop him. She's often someone who will use murder as a tactic, which of course prompts other heroes to remind her that killing is bad and wrong. Her adapted version keeps pretty much all of that intact - it even goes so far as to give her a costume, complete with domino mask and minature crossbow as a primary weapon. The problem with Huntress isn't really Huntress herself, it's that Oliver Queen comes off as a complete hypocrite when trying to explain to her that she shouldn't kill bad guys, even though that's his bread and butter. I'm guessing Huntress was included to show someone who's worse than our questionable hero, much like the service Todd Packer provided Michael Scott in The Office, but here it doesn't make our hero look better, it makes him look worse. Also Huntress is badly acted and a straight-up villain rather than an anti-hero, but whatever. 

The Count - The Count may be my favorite villain on the show, if only because everything about him is wrong in such a way that it turns the whole character into a complete failure of ideas. He is terrible and I love him for it.

The Count is a loose, LOOSE interpretation of classic Green Arrow baddie Count Vertigo, the monarch of an Eastern-European nation whose motivation ranges from trying to Game-of-Thrones his way to power, to world domination, to helping the U.S. government for kicks. I'm not going to say he's the most well-developed villain in comics, but he does have one thing going for him: his powers. Count Vertigo has the ability to induce vertigo in others, which means the good guys fighting him can't maintain their balance or sense of direction and must therefore find a way to beat him that isn't "punch him in the face". With that, you could make an interesting bad guy that isn't easily overcome, forcing our heroes to think outside the box to stop him. Arrow does nothing with any of that, and the results are hilariously bad. So just what's wrong with the Count? Shall I count the ways?

1) The name. It sounds dumb, and since his real name is never given, it's all anyone ever calls him.

2) The character. The Count of Arrow is a crazy, off-balance (heh) drug manufacturer whose signature product is called Vertigo. The character himself acts like a bargain-basement Joker, a grinning, unpredictable criminal who's just as likely to compliment you as he is to kill you. At least, that's what I think he's supposed to be, but the half-assed writing and bad acting just make him seem like a weirdo that people are inexplicably afraid of. I'm sure Seth Gabel is trying to make this guy interesting, but he just really isn't, at least not for the reasons the writers want him to be.

3) The name. He's called the Count because early test subjects for his drugs were found with two syringe marks in their necks, giving the image that they were bitten by a vampire. Yes, they expect us to take this seriously.

4) The costume. The Count's eccentricity may be better highlighted if he dressed the part. Instead, he's in a long coat and wearing all black, which makes him look less like a threat and more like a contemporary for Gary King from The World's End. The outfit makes him seem like a thirty-year-old goth who happened to have eaten too many pixie-sticks that day. Not intimidating, just weird.

5) THE NAME. I'm sorry, I can't get over this. When I think of a title like "the Count", I don't think of a drug dealer who looks like David Tennant's lame cousin, I think of this guy:

When Oliver goes to meet him, I half expected the guy to say, "I will sell you...three drugs! One, two, three! Three drugs! Ah ah ah ah ah!" I actually wish he did, that'd be hilarious.

So that's my venting for the series Arrow. It's dumb and misguided, but that's not gonna stop me from watching it. Hell, season two opens with Oliver deciding that killing is bad and wrong and aspiring to do good in his city instead of just hunting down the evil 1%, so it seems like our superhero show may actually star a superhero. Plus, the Flash is going to be introduced this season, which should at least be an interesting change of pace since he's going to be an actual super-powered character, something this show hasn't tackled yet. So if you want a below-average action show to pass the time with, you can do worse than Arrow.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time!

Top 5 Superhero Cartoons of Today

Y'know, I think this piece won't get as many views as some of the others because I'm one of the few people I know who puts this much thought into this sort of thing. And to that I say: Whatever. I write this blog for me more than anyone else. Anyway...

We live in a Golden Age of superhero media, where fans and comic writers are running the adaptations of their favorite medias. Of course, writing isn't a surefire process, and some shows will inevitably be better than others. I'm here to tell you which one goes where. Here's the Top 5 Superhero Cartoons of Today (I'm not doing "of all time" because you don't need another nerd on the internet telling you Batman: The Animated Series was awesome). Enjoy:

5) Teen Titans Go!

TIME FOR HISTORY!!!

From 2003-06, Cartoon Network broadcast Teen Titans, a cartoon which, by all accounts, should not have lasted the five seasons it did. It was an adaptation of a team who hadn't been popular in comics for over a decade, with characters who (aside from Robin the Boy Wonder) hadn't made a splash outside the geek community, in a distinctly anime-esque style at a time when Bruce Timm's all-American aesthetic was dominating TV with Justice League. And yet, against all odds, it worked. Thanks to some great character writing and acting, a diverse pantheon of villains, decent comedy, and just all-around fun, Teen Titans turned Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy into characters that every kid worth their cartoon cred knew. The show was taken off the air in 2006, despite the fact that producer Glen Murakami had plans for a sixth season, but lived on in the hearts of its loyal fans.

Our story continues in 2012, when Cartoon Network began airing DC Nation Shorts, a series of animated shorts starring lesser-known DC characters or reinterpretations of more famous heroes. These included the return of the Teen Titans to television, in sixty-second comedy bits airing between commercial breaks, and you know what? They were pretty decent. No, they weren't the funniest thing on TV, but I got a laugh out of them and it was nice to hear the old cast doing the voices again. The shorts did, however, prove popular enough to greenlight Teen Titans Go!, a funnier, more lighthearted interpretation of the characters, playing up the comedy that was already in the old show.

I was actually sorta jazzed about TTG. The old cast was back, the animation looked decent, and there was the fact that there was potential for comedy. The Teen Titans are set-up like a family, so there's grounds for a sitcom-style presentation of the characters, plus there's humor to be wrung out of the fact that being superheroes is basically their day job and nobody in Jump City seems to give a damn about them. The stars seemed to be aligning. The only thing TTG needed to do was be funny and it'd be golden.

...

*cough*

...

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah, that didn't end up happening.

Teen Titans Go! subscribes to the theory of comedy that if you yell funny words a lot with little or no context, you will get laughs every time. What's worse is the fact that the character writing that made the original series so memorable is all but gone, leaving our protagonists as either contemptible or forgetful. Robin, once the driven and noble leader, is now alternatively a workaholic, a creepy hormonal teenager, an insecure douche, a petty whiner, or anything else the script needs him to be. Beast Boy, once the team's joker who would step up and get serious when needed, is now a lazy, responsibility-dodging slacker, making me question why he still elects to be part of the team. Cyborg, once a hardworking teammate whose energy and bravado covered up his insecurities about being more machine than man, now seemingly has two modes of behavior: speaking at a reasonable volume, and not doing that. Starfire, once the sweet and innocent girl who was still had much to learn about Earth culture but was fiercely loyal to her friends regardless of their differences, is relatively unchanged; the series just seems to have no interest in doing anything with her except say funny-sounding alien words.

The only character whose transitioned seamlessly and is still funny (far and away the funniest character on the show) is Raven, who is delegated to the role of straight-man, acting as a voice of reason in a world that otherwise seems completely insane. This is compounded by the fact that Raven has absolutely zero fucks to give about anything going on around her, and her detachment from the rest of the world usually gets a laugh out of me.

Without being compared to it's fore-bearer, TTG may have just been an unfunny comedy, bad enough on its own, but standing alongside Teen Titans, it's a confusing, disheartening mess of a show.

4) Avengers Assemble

With the film version of the Avengers making all of the money in the world, you can bet your ass Marvel made a cartoon about them, even going so far as to use the film's roster as the stars (plus the Falcon, adding a necessary element of diversity to a lineup whose only person of color is green). In addition, it has the same or similar continuity to other Marvel shows like Ultimate Spider-Man and Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. So why isn't it as good as them?

Let's start at the start: after an unseen period of time when the Avengers broke up (subtly attributed to Tony Stark being a dick), Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Falcon join forces to fight the Red Skull and his ever-growing Cabal of one-note supervillains, while also trying to live together under the same roof and tolerate each others' explosive personalities.

Assemble's major flaw is simple: it's a poorly written show. The pacing of each episode is off, devoting more time to the fight scenes than to the witty banter that is neither witty nor advances the characters beyond their single, most recognizable characteristic: Iron Man is an asshole, Hawkeye is snarky, Falcon is a newbie, etc. The most annoying of these is the treatment of Hulk, who is essentially there to punch things and yell the word "SMASH!" at least once per episode, which wears thin pretty quickly.

In addition, the shows fails the Bechdel Test harder than anything I've ever seen. For the uninitiated, the Bechdel test for representation of women in media was created by Liz Wallace and popularized by her friend, cartoonist Allison Bechdel, and is as follows: a film passes the Bechdel test if it a, features more than one named female character; b, has these two (or more) female characters have a conversation with each other; and c, has the subject of their conversation not be a man. Assemble doesn't even get past stage one, with the only female character being Black Widow, and she doesn't even show up for about half the episodes. This may be for the best, however, since her character is STUNNINGLY BORING.

There are some bright spots, of course. The animation is nice and the choice of villains is at least diverse, even if most of them are shallow and underwritten. And of our protagonists, the consistently best of them is Captain America, whose old-school morality and complete nonchalance towards the strangeness of 21st-century life are both likeable and actually funny some of the time. However, it's not enough to save this underwritten, overexcited, mess of a superhero show.

3) Ultimate Spider-Man

I had some degree of difficulty deciding which was better between this and Avengers Assemble. In the end, USM won out by sheer factor of having more ambition than "let's put Joss Whedon's Avengers in a cartoon". Unfortunately, the harder you try, the harder you fall, and Ultimate Spider-Man is nothing if not an ongoing series of small hits and big misses.

The conceit of USM is actually not that bad a starting point: Spider-Man, a.k.a. high school student Peter Parker, is recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D. by Director Nick Fury (following through on the promise made in the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book that, once Peter turned 18, he'd pretty much become government property). He is equipped with fancy new accessories (available at a store near you) and even given his own team of superheroes, posing as fellow high school students: Iron Fist, Power Man, White Tiger, and Nova. Together, the new Spider-Team fights whatever forces plague New York that the Avengers can't deal with because they don't have their own show yet.

The tone of USM is what turns a lot of people off of it; it is AGGRESSIVELY kid-friendly, with every character a joker or just a joke. Spidey gets the worst of it, as he copes with the strangeness of his life through asides to the audience and exaggerated fantasies that go on long enough to pass the point of "not funny" and cross into the territory of "do shut up now, TV". The show often feels like "Baby's First Family Guy", and not in a good way.

However, while the worst of it is the humor (which makes up a lot of it), there's also stuff to like. The animation and character designs are nice and the side characters actually come across as likeable sometimes. Particular points go to White Tiger and Iron Fist, the designated mature ones of the team - Tiger because of her nature as type-A overachiever, and Fist because of his mellow disposition and his habit of spouting pseudo-profound phrases that the writers presumably copied from a series of fortune cookies. There's also the fact that, unlike The Spectacular Spider-Man (the previous Spider-Man cartoon, which was produced by Sony), USM can have our intrepid teenage heroes fight bad guys from all over the Marvel universe without having to worry about rights. This is, of course, the ONLY quality USM has over Spectacular, as Spectacular was a golden gift from the Lord himself, sent through his vassals Greg Weisman and Brandon Cook, delivered by the CW and OH MY GOD IT WAS SO GOOD WHY WASN'T THERE MORE OF IT WHYYYYYYYYYYY

Sorry, got a little depressed there. Anyway, USM has faults...many, many faults...but it's more bearable than Assemble and at least it does a better job introducing kids to the Marvel universe. But it's still not that good of a cartoon, and definitely isn't Spectacular.

2) Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.

Well this took me off guard.

As I mentioned above, I rather disliked the presentation of the Hulk in USM and Assemble. The moral complexity of the character was gone, as was (and still is) any mention of Bruce Banner, and instead we got the "fun" Hulk, who acts like a nine-foot-tall second-grader. He was grating, he was dull, and he got his own spin-off. And against all odds, it works. Mostly.

In the show, the Hulk has apparently relocated from Manhattan, center of all supervillain activity in the world, to Vista Verde, Nevada, in a super-secret base with a jet. Where'd he get this super-secret base and jet? Who cares! Maybe he got them from a toy store near you. Anyway, Hulk is joined by his best/only friend and number one fan, Rick Jones, who has been blogging and vlogging about the Hulk to try and prove that he isn't a monster, because that's what the young people do, yo. In the course of the pilot, Rick gets his own gamma powers and becomes A-Bomb, while Hulk recruits other gamma-irradiated heroes to help, including the gung-ho military man Red Hulk, the stable, down-to-Earth pilot She-Hulk, and the savage, simple-in-mind-but-noble-in-heart Skaar. Together, this unlikely group of heroes fight bad guys while also learning lessons about friendship and togetherness. Think of it as "My Little Hulks: Friendship is Smashing".

The thing that makes this series work? What makes it not only bearable, but compelling? The Hulk himself. Gone is the big angry stupid troll who compulsively tackles his teammates as well as his enemies. Instead, Hulk is...intelligent. He's regretful about his past as a mindless brute, eager to change his image to the public, aware of teammates flaws and wants to fix them, and, in a shocking but welcome addition, still loves being a superhero. THIS is what Marvel does best: balance the compelling character drama with the excitement and fun of fighting bad guys. It really is Hulk, the writers, and voice actor Fred Tatasciore (who's been voicing the Hulk since 2006 and whose last name is pronounced "Tah-tah-shorr") who brings this show home.

The supporting characters are also well cast and enjoyable. Eliza Dushku makes She-Hulk grounded but fun and engaging; Clancy Brown as Red Hulk is...guys, it's Clancy Brown, he can do no wrong; and Seth Green is perfect as the excitable fanboy Rick Jones, bringing with him the ability to make even the dumbest line sound charming.

It's not perfect, of course. The villains are still one note, the jokes are still aimed at five-year-olds, and most of the supporting characters aren't given much to do so far, beyond Rick making jokes and Hulk and Red Hulk arguing with each other in the most manly-sounding conversation your ears might ever hear. Still, when you compare it to it's contemporaries, S.M.A.S.H. is a diamond among coals, and even without those, it's a good bit of fun for the kid in all of us.

1) Beware the Batman

Yep. Leave it to Batman to be the best.

Developed by DC Animation veterans Glen Murakami, Sam Register, Butch Lukic, and Mitch Watson, Beware the Batman puts the Caped Crusader back to his roots as an up-and-coming vigilante in Gotham City. The hook of Beware is that rather than give us the familiar cast of supporting characters and villains like Robin, the Joker, the Riddler, etc., it opts to shake up the formula with new characters and even uses some of the old ones in new and interesting ways. For starters, rather than introduce Dick Grayson version one-billion, it gives Batman a new partner: Katana, a.k.a. Tatsu Yamashiro, former CIA agent turned bodyguard to Bruce Wayne turned partner-in-crimefighting. This actually brings a different dynamic to the table, as rather than fight alongside a kid, Batman is teaching and training someone who's an adult, with years of dangerous fieldwork already under her belt. Their partnership is new at this point in the series, but I'm very eager to see it develop.

In addition, we've got new villains to fight. Professor Pyg and Mister Toad, Magpie, Anarky, Doodlebug, Junkyard Dog, and Lady Shiva all make their animated debuts in Beware as Batman's developing rogues gallery. But while it's definitely interesting to see new faces on the board, I can't help but feel that some of them feel like stand-ins for the more familiar faces we've come to expect. No matter how crazy you make her, Magpie's just gonna end up seeming like Catwoman in an even more revealing outfit (seriously, I feel sorry for this girl having to run around at night), while the presentation of Anarky just makes him seem like the Joker cosplaying as Moon Knight. Plus, a lot of these villains come from creepier, more grown-up Batman stories, so seeing someone as entertainingly twisted as Professor Pyg reduced to a well-mannered animal rights activist (rather than a demented surgeon who at one point does a strip-tease in front of a bound and gagged Robin, I am not making this up, it's Grant fucking Morrison we're talking about) just feels off.

Still, Beware has a whole lot going for it. While elements like a more action-oriented Alfred Pennyworth and the strange new CGI animation take some getting used to, once you let them, you really start to like them. Beware isn't the freshest take on the character of Batman himself, but it's a new look into his strange, strange world, and I for one am loving the ride.

Honorable Mention: The Awesomes

No, it's not based on a comic, but I feel The Awesomes deserves a mention here, because I really like it.

After Mr. Awesome, leader of the world's greatest superhero team the Awesomes, announces his retirement, the rest of his team goes their separate ways; all except his son, Professor Doctor Awesome, and his best friend and teammate Muscleman. Together, the two set out to form a new team of Awesomes and keep Prock's dream of being a superhero alive, rounding up the most powerful and least mentally stable heroes they could find in order to save the world, all while the "reformed" supervillain Dr. Malocchio manufactures his latest scheme for world conquest.

Now, I'm someone who not only loves superheroes, but I also love myself a good parody. Rarely do these two things intersect successfully. The greatest of these is, far and away, the short-lived but well-remembered Marvel series Nextwave (or Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. if you wanna be all technical about it). The Awesomes reminds me quite a bit of Nextwave, and while it doesn't reach that book's level of out-there scifi or spot-on send-up of Marvel comics lore, it does aim for the same point Nextwave did: A person can't be involved in the hero/villain game if they are mentally regular. You'd have to be an idiot, or insane, or both, to think that the best way to solve a problem is to put on colorful tights and punch things.

Unlike USM, which too often feels like a comedy that just happens to have superheroes in it, The Awesomes is, at its core, a superhero show that's trying to be funny, and for the most part, it succeeds, thanks to solid character writing and a cast mostly made up of Saturday Night Live veterans like Bill Hader, Kenan Thompson, Taran Killam, and series co-creator Seth Meyers.

The Awesomes is a very pleasant surprise. The first season is currently available at Hulu.com and, if you can stomach the ads for Jack Link's Beef Jerky at the end of every episode (because in the words of Kevin Smith, "Somebody gotta pay fucking the bills around here."), I definitely recommend it.

So that's my list of the best superhero cartoons today. Now I know what you're thinking, because I've secretly got psychic powers: you're wondering why I didn't include other superhero shows of the day like Axe Cop and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Well don't you worry, I'll get to those soon enough. For now, I'll just say watch them both. Axe Cop is available on Hulu, while TMNT is a bit harder to find because Nickelodeon makes there stuff harder to get find, but it's still good.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time!

DC Movies Special: The Road So Far, the Path Ahead

(Yes, this shot is a background joke from I Am Legend. It's sort-of relevant here. Just go with it)

Warner Bros. has made me cynical about movies based on DC Comics. There is a Superman/Batman film coming soon, followed by the Flash, and then Justice League, and I'm not wetting myself with fanboyish glee, because their track record is so spotty. God damn you, Warner Bros., for making that happen.

Honestly, I feel like they're embarrassed by their superheroes. Like, they look at people with costumes and powers and feel they have to apologize for it, that they have to bend over backwards to make their characters seem 'acceptable' and 'mature'. Meanwhile, Marvel's putting together a space opera starring a green woman, a living tree, and talking raccoon whose first name is Rocket. I'm jazzed for Guardians of the Galaxy; it's weird and out there, but dammit, it's gonna be FUN. Warner Bros. seems scared of fun, like it's a dirty word. So let's take a look ahead at the upcoming DC projects and make our predictions, but first, let's look back at where DC has been in the modern era of superheroes and see just what made me into the cynic you read before you.

Batman and Robin (1997): No, it's not part of the modern era of superhero movies, but this movie is necessary in understanding the mindset of Warner Bros. They came out with a campy, over-the-top superhero flick and while it made money, it was positively eviscerated by critics and fans for being so campy and over-the-top. Now B&R is by no means a good movie, and is in fact quite a bad movie, but not as bad as it's been made up to be and not bad because of it's camp. Still, Warner Bros. took this as a sign that the superhero movie game was done - it was time to put away their toys and focus on something else, like Harry Potter. But then Marvel (or rather Fox and Sony) hit the world with their one-two-three punch of Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man, and BOOM! Comic book movies are back in a big bad way! So Warner Bros., owning the rights to DC Comics, put a few flicks into production. The first to come out was actually a story they had been sitting on for a while and the results...well...

Catwoman (2004): I think internet producer Lindsay "Nostalgia Chick" Ellis put it best when she said that this movie "constantly assaults you with how awful it is". Originally intended as a spin-off from 1992's Batman Returns, the misguided, idiotic mess that is Catwoman ends up being its own animal...its own insultingly bad, atrociously ugly animal. I'd call it out for not being a good representation of female characters, but none of the characters work in any capacity, so...points there I guess. Whatever, Catwoman failed and the Warners wisely swept it under the rug to make way for something that wasn't a failure.

Batman Begins (2005): The goal of Begins was to put Batman - the character Warner Bros. was least ashamed of and easiest to fit into their "mature" and "cool" vision - back on the map and make him their poster boy again. It worked pretty well. Snark and cynicism aside, this is actually my favorite of the Dark Knight Trilogy. It's a very cool movie that laughs at Batman when appropriate but still sells the tragedy of his character and the gravitas that goes along with putting on a silly outfit and punching bad guys. Begins works and I still really like it, so good on ya, everyone who was involved in that picture.

Superman Returns (2006): This one does not work so much, but again, I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. Yes, there's a lack of visceral action and yes, it's weird that the Man of Tomorrow is made into a deadbeat dad. But y'know what it does have? A love for Superman and his world that shines onscreen. Lex Luthor is a big goofy mad scientist bad guy, but he works there. Lois being a jaded cynic in Superman's absence...makes no fucking sense, I can't defend that. And Superman himself? Well, he's...god, the more I think about it, the less I like it. Still, I admire the film for its optimism and hope. If this movie came out after Man of Steel, people would eat it up like candy. And that...kinda saddens me again.

The Dark Knight (2008): Ah, the Batman movie people needed but not the one they deserved. In all honesty, I can't fault Dark Knight too much because it's actually a good film. What I will fault it for is setting the tone for all DC movies to follow, because all DC movies now have to be as dark and grim and un-fun as Batman is. But I can't really blame the movie proper for that one, I'll instead blame Warner Bros., I guess. Or the fans that insisted it was the second coming (my 18-year-old self included). Or the movie proper anyway. Or no one, just chalk it up to bad luck. I don't know, I'm writing this while on little sleep. Get off my back!

Watchmen (2009): The 1987 comic of the same name that set the bar for what can be accomplished in graphic novels was designed by its writer - Alan Moore, the Great Bearded Wizard of Northampton - to be unfilmable. So, it wasn't. Instead, an adaptation that cut various details and changed some plot points from the original story was filmed and released and y'know what? It's pretty damn good. Unfortunately, Watchmen seemed to weird or out there for modern audiences, leading to a significantly lower box office than the Warners were hoping for. This may have effectively halted the production of movies of weirder, lesser-known comic books, but we'll wait and see.

Jonah Hex (2010): This is one of two DC movies that mystifies me. See, Jonah Hex is a character with a weird history, but if you're going off his modern incarnation, then it's not a hard translation to figure out: a grim, gritty, violent spaghetti western. Modern Hex is basically Clint Eastwood, plus the Warners love the dark and tortured heroes, PLUS you could make a decent western on a slim budget, so you'd think his movie would be a somber, down-to-earth, angry revenge story, right? WRONG! Screenwriters Neveldine/Taylor, the duo behind the Crank movies and Gamer, and director Jimmy Hayward turn in a loud, overdone, stupid action-adventure flick that barely has anything to do with DC's scarred cowboy. Audiences were turned off by Hex using Gatling guns attached to a horse and fans were confused as to why a western hero suddenly had the power to talk to the dead (seriously, why is that there?), and Hex became the biggest box-office bomb of 2010. Hopefully, somewhere down the line, someone good will take the reigns on Hex and make a film worthy of the character.

Green Lantern (2011): This is the other mystifying film for me. See, a lot of complaints about comic book movies (and adaptations in general) is that it doesn't have enough to do with the source material. Green Lantern is a fairly accurate translation of the legitimately good story arc Secret Origin by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis, with similar beats, plot elements, and character arcs...and it still sucked. It all comes off as half-assed and derivative, as well as having some of the worst effects I've ever seen in a blockbuster. GL barely made its budget back and despite the hopes that it might make continuity for a Justice League picture, the Warners have, again, swept it under the rug. I doubt a sequel is in the works for this one.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012): The word I keep coming back in this movie is flawed. Aesthetically, it's outstanding; it looks great, it sounds great, and the actors are game for whatever the script throws at them. However, that script is so full of holes that it makes my head spin. Why does Batman take the blame for Harvey Dent's murders when they could just as easily blame them on the Joker? How can Bruce Wayne recover from a broken back by have a loose vertebrae pushed back into place? How did Bruce get from the Middle East to Gotham City (a city on lockdown by a terrorist group and the American military, mind you) with no money and no passport? It just...ugh. I'm glad Nolan's Batman movies are over, at least we won't have to hear that stupid growly Christian Bale voice anymore.

Man of Steel (2013): I gave my opinions on MoS in a previous blog post. Suffice it to say, my opinion on it has worsened over time. As a movie on its own, it's decent enough - it looks interesting, there's some good action, the acting is pretty spot on. But as a Superman movie, it fails to really capture Big Blue's warmth and humanity. The flick is cold and sterile and just doesn't feel like a Superman movie. Superman Returns felt more like a Superman movie. Hell, if you combine the best aspects of Returns (It's shameless optimism and reverence, plus the fact that Superman actually spends time SAVING PEOPLE FROM THE DISASTERS) with the best aspects of Man of Steel (its visual effects and fight scenes), you could have a pretty decent picture on your hands.

So that's where we've been. Now let's look down the road and see where we're headed, starting with...

Superman/Batman: I refuse to call it Superman vs. Batman since we don't even know if that'll be the plot yet (though it probably will). Honestly, it feels like Warner Bros's. laziest answer to "How do you solve a problem like Superman?" I can't wait to see the two of them brood at each other for two and a half hours! Ugh. Again putting aside my cynicism and snark, I can't really say much about this until we know who's playing Batman or who the villain's gonna be (though it's gotta be Luthor, right?) or what the plot looks like or even who's writing and directing it. It's just a promise on the horizon, a distant dream that may one day come to fruition, for better or for worse.

The Flash: For some, this is a headscratcher: Why make a movie about the guy who runs fast? Why does he get a two hour story to himself? To me it actually makes sense, and here's why: the Warners want their own Avengers, and y'know what? That's reasonable. It's reasonable to want to make a Justice League movie in a time when superhero movies own the box office. But you can't make a Justice League with just Supes and Bats, so you need to fill out the roster. Green Lantern already fell on his emerald ass, so what's the next logical option from DC's big seven Leaguers? The Flash! So, yeah, it makes sense that he'd be next on the roster. What I'm interested to know is how they're gonna do it. See, the Flash is a character who sort of defined the Silver Age of comics, one of the weirdest ages for superhero comics. He revels in weird science ideas like the time-traveling device called the Cosmic Treadmill (which is exactly what it sounds like) and loves to fight gimmicky villains like Captain Cold, Mirror Master, and Weather Wizard (who are exactly what they sound like, except about a hundred times more badass) (seriously, go pick up anything Geoff Johns has written and stars the Rogues, these dudes are awesome). So how are ideas like that going to come to life onscreen under the direction of cool, mature Warner Bros? Come 2016, we'll find out.

Justice League: Nothing to see here, nothing to say here.

Wonder Woman: Oh wait, there is no Wonder Woman movie because its apparently impossible to put out a superhero movie with a female protagonist. Seriously, it's not this hard to crack the code on the Amazon Princess, comic writers have been doing it for years. Hell, Wonder Woman appeared in her own animated feature and it was flippin' amazing. In fact most of the animated DC pictures are pretty great. Sod the live-action stuff, stick with the cartoons, you'll have more fun.

So that's my prediction for the future...well not quite a prediction, more of a general mess of my thoughts on upcoming pictures. Still, I felt good writing it, and I hope you felt...something reading it. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time!

Kingdom Hearts has the dumbest internal mythology in video games

As the child of a lawyer, I feel an innate need to put up some disclaimers about the video game series about to be mocked and derided by me (hereafter referred to as "the game"):

1) I love the Kingdom Hearts series. I really do. The basic idea is out there, but they make it work well. The combat is pretty fun and intuitive and every game does its best to spice things up and add something new to the gameplay, which is something a lot of developers wouldn't bother with. The characters are, for the most part, memorable (if not particularly unique) and the tone is upbeat and energetic in a way most modern games aren't. It's a great series and it makes sense that it has maintained its popularity for eleven years.
2) I understand that there's bound to be some peculiarities in the series. The games are developed by a Japanese company and imported to the West, so there are probably some culture or linguistic standards that I'm just not familiar with. Also, it's a series aimed at a younger audience, which means it goes to weirder territory. This has good and bad results.
3) I haven't actually played the first two games in years, so my memory of them may be a little fuzzy. I'm writing this because I've started playing Dream Drop Distance on the 3DS (get it?) and am reminded of how dumb this series can be.
4) This is probably not the literal dumbest internal mythology. Nor can I compare it to every video game ever made. It's hyperbole. Deal with it.

Having said all that, Kingdom Hearts has the dumbest internal mythology in video games.

For those of you out of the loop, let me explain: Kingdom Hearts is a video game series developed by Square Enix, the leading name in Japanese RPGs, makers of the ever-popular Final Fantasy franchise. The first game in the series was released in 2002, an action RPG with an impossibly brilliant hook: our main characters would travel to different worlds based on animated Disney films and team up with the various characters therein. It's honestly just absolute genius. However, KH also has to make a narrative around that, since the Disney worlds (heh) are just a part of the gameplay and story. The result is a confusing, needlessly convoluted mess that just stuns me with its inanity.

Lets start at the start and go over the relatively simple (and I use the term loosely) plot of the first game. Ahem: three teenagers are living on the idyllic but lonely Destiny Islands: Sora the energetic youth full of wide-eyed wonder, Riku the snarky bastard, and Kairi the innocent flower. Their home is overtaken by monsters called "heartless", corrupted hearts which have left their bodies and set out to consume other hearts. This is where the game intially fucks up its story: it never explains what exactly they mean by "heart". We can't really assume it's literal, meaning the organ that pumps blood to the body, but rather metaphorical, with heart by synonymous with what we consider "soul". At least that's what I'm going with.

So it turns out the heartless not only want to consume the hearts of living beings, but also the hearts of worlds, because apparently worlds are now living beings too, because why not. The only thing that can defeat heartless is a keyblade, an oversized/sword that can also do magic and lock away the hearts of worlds, protecting them from darkness. Only a few people can wield keyblades, and lo and behold, one of them is Sora. With his new weapon at hand and party members Donald Duck and Goofy at his side (no, really), the intrepid trio set out to rescue Riku, Kairi, and Donald and Goofy's king, Mickey Mouse, who can also wield a keyblade. With me so far?

Anyway, the Sora and company jump from world to world, teaming up with the likes of Aladdin, Tarzan, and Hercules, and fighting against the Queen of Hearts, Monstro the Whale, and Captain Hook, as well as more heartless. All while this is going on, Riku is being seduced to the dark side of the force - I mean, heart - by Maleficent, Queen of the Disney Villains, while Sora learns more about the heartless's origins and their ties a mysterious scientist (Thought not a "scientist" scientist, the kind of scientist who researches the "power of the heart" scientist), Ansem the Wise. We eventually learn that there are seven princesses of heart, nearly all of whom are kidnapped Disney princesses, who, when brought together by bad guys, can open up the gateway to the titular Kingdom Hearts (though later games disprove that). And just what is Kingdom Hearts? A source of unlimited knowledge and power? The brightest light in the universe? A big fat MacGuffin? You decide!

Plot twist? Riku's gone evil and Kairi's a princess of heart. Additional plot twist? Kairi's heart has been inside Sora the whole time, because apparently that can happen. Sora solves this by stabbing himself with the keyblade, releasing both his and Kairi's hearts. Kairi gets her heart back and Sora gets dead, I think, but then Kairi brings him back to "life" because she can do that. Whatever. Sora and company then go and find Ansem, who was a ghost but now he's not, and defeat him and find King Mickey, who gets locked away in Kingdom Hearts along with Riku for reasons I don't remember because I never actually beat Ansem. He was a tough final boss and I was an impatient teenager.

So that's KH1. It's confusing and a little dumb, but it's not too bad. Plus, it's foreign and a game by Disney, so you can't expect too terribly much from it.

Then Kingdom Hearts 2 rolls around and turns the whole thing around into a great big pot of what-the-fuck stew.

Okay, so heartless are made when a heart (soul) is separated from the body and corrupted and turned evil, yeah? Well what happens to the body? Well, it survives, become a husk called a "nobody", with the strongest ones able to maintain their original forms and knowledge. So to reiterate, there exist in this continuity beings that define themselves by not have hearts, AND beings called "heartless", and they're two different things. What.

Second off is the delicate subject of Ansem. Turns out the guy the fought who was a ghost but then wasn't a ghost but now he's dead and his name was Ansem? Yeah, he's not Ansem. Turns out he's an imposter, the heartless of one of Ansem's followers named Xehanort ('zay-ah-nort'). And the villain of KH2, Xemnas, is Xehanort's nobody. So the series has three villains, and they're all the same guy. What.

Thirdly, remember how Sora's heart was separated from him when he stabbed himself? Well, that became a heartless, which was restored to human form by Kairi, because she can fucking do that. But when a heartless is created, a nobody must also come into being, so Sora's body takes on a life of his own and becomes Roxas, the thirteenth member of Xemnas's bad guy team, Organization XIII. Roxas dies (but not "dies" dies, more like "Disney" dies) pretty early on in KH2, but does some deus ex bullshit by the end. He has a backstory in the tie-in game Kingdom Hearts 358 Days/2 (three-five-eight days over two). It's not interesting or relevant and his game has a dumb title.

There's a bunch of other stuff involving the real Ansem the Wise traveling in secret under the guise of DiZ, plus his assistant Namine who is Kairi's nobody and is also not interesting and barely relevant, and other characters from Organization XIII who don't do much but are popular for some reason.

Do you see why this shit is dumb?

But wait, there's more! Because KH loves itself some tie-in games! First is Chain of Memories, which takes place between KH1 and 2, where Sora and company are apparently in a coma because of reasons and need to fight more Disney villains in their dreams to recover their memories. During this time, there's also the aforementioned 358 Days/2, which details the backstory of Roxas's time with Organization XIII and his friendship with Xion, another Organization member who's a thing that's different, I don't remember what she is and Wiki won't tell me and I don't care to look it up anywhere else and I never beat the game anyway. Birth By Sleep introduces us to three new main characters, none of whom make it to any other game I think, and also shows us some of the backstory of Xehanort (spoiler alert! He was always evil). And now I'm playing Dream Drop Distance, which shows Sora and Riku now trying to "awaken" worlds, since the worlds Sora saved from darkness are all asleep and dreaming themselves into existence, because GAAAAAAAGH!!!!

I give up! I give up on you, Kingdom Hearts! Your gameplay is fun but your story is a mess! The parts that are original are confusing and inane and the parts that aren't original are rehashes of Disney movies I've already seen! And why do characters from Final Fantasy and The World Ends with You show up? And why is Traverse Town the most boring level ever conceived? And why does Ariel go through the plot of The Little Mermaid, like, three times without realizing she shouldn't listen to the Sea Witch? And why does Axel from Organization XIII have fangirls? Why, Kingdom Hearts? WHY?!

Oy, I need a break. Maybe I'll play some video games.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time!

The Last Son of Krypton, the Man of Tomorrow

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. YE HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Two weeks ago saw Superman, arguably DC comics' most famous hero, return to cinema in Man of Steel, written by David Goyer based on a story by Goyer and Christopher Nolan and directed by Zack Snyder. I won't go too deep into my thoughts on the film; suffice it to say, it's deeply flawed but a solid blockbuster. The script is in dire need of an edit and the whole thing feels morose and depressing, but the cast is solid and the action is visceral and entertaining. There are some who liked it more than I did, and a vocal group who liked it far less, particularly the controversial ending of the story. Well, I've thought on it, and I'll give it my two cents. Be warned (again), there's spoilers for the flick here. Ahem...

After Superman and apparently the only three members of the Air Force stop General Zod's entourage from terraforming Earth and turning it into a New Krypton (a process which results in hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to Metropolis and killing about 100,000+ people), all that's left is Zod himself. Zod, angry at the loss of his people and the fact that he has no purpose left in life, decides to take his frustration out on the human race. Superman does not agree with that. They fight, in a pretty spectacular brawl that levels even more of Metropolis and probably kills a few more people, culminating in Zod aiming his heat vision at a family of four with Superman trying to stop him from delivering the killing blow. Supes asks what will get Zod to stop, to which Zod replies "Kill me." And Superman obliges, snapping the villain's neck and letting out a cry of anguish, not just for taking a life or becoming the very thing his adoptive father feared he would become, but for annihilating the last living, tangible connection he had to his homeworld.

It's not hard to see why this ending is controversial. Superheroes, as a general rule, don't kill. This is because it would make stories too easy or so that popular villains can keep recurring, but mostly because it's just the morally right thing to do: to not kill. Superman, being the vanguard of righteousness and the best humanity has to offer, especially shouldn't take a life. And yet the 21st century's Superman ends his movie by doing just that. A lot of people don't like it, some people are defending it, but me, I'm of two minds of it, and they are as follows:

1) It makes sense, in this situation, for Superman to kill Zod. It just does. Normally, yes, Superman wouldn't kill anyone with a sliver of humanity, someone whom he thinks can be redeemed. Lex Luthor may be the worst our planet has to offer, but Superman would never kill him because he's still human and could still do good in the world. And Zod, while being a kryptonian, has humanity to him. He has an ethos, a morality, he has beliefs, he has love for his people and for his homeworld. Normally, Superman would work his ass off trying to pull the guy from the brink, to teach him the same lessons Supes himself learned from growing up with the Kents. But these aren't normal circumstances because Superman has no way to contain Zod. There's no Phantom Zone projector, there's no bottled city of Kandor, there's no kryptonite; there's no way to stop this guy. And if Zod's going to keep putting people in danger, the only thing for Superman to do, sadly, is to end him. One to save millions, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, etc. So yes, I believe, in this set of circumstances, it's feasible for Superman to take the life of his enemy. HOWEVER...

2) I don't like that these were the circumstances the writers chose to show. I kinda hate it when people say stuff like this, but I can't think of any other way to describe it: this doesn't feel much like a Superman story. Superman, to me and many others, is supposed to be a beacon of hope and an icon of the human spirit. It's tough to relate to a character with seemingly no flaws, but I've read and seen Superman stories that are relateable, optimistic, brimming with charm and imagination, and don't end with a leveled city, a six-figure death toll, and our protagonist snapping a person's neck. It is possible to do that, Warner Bros.

Perfect example: All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (quite frankly), widely considered one of the best Superman stories of all time and highly recommended reading from this writer. All-Star opens with the Man of Tomorrow saving the first manned mission to the sun. However, being that close to the source of his superhuman abilities has unintended consequences. Superman's powers get cranked up to eleven, but his cells can't contain that much raw energy and he learns that he's going to die soon. The rest of the series is essentially Superman checking off items on his bucket list while still maintaining his cover as Clark Kent, helping the people, and saving the world.

Issue ten of this 12-issue miniseries highlights this balance. Here, Superman is doing his normal world-saving shtick, like fighting a giant robot or stopping a runaway train, as well as checking off his bucket list by writing his last will and testament and curing cancer. And between all of this larger-than-life stuff, Superman has to divert his attention to stopping a suicidal young woman from jumping off of a building. Because he's Superman, and because saving the life and restoring the hope of this woman means as much to him as fighting Lex Luthor and protecting the globe from an alien invasion. And that is so beautifully human that I tear up just thinking about it.

And that's really my biggest issue with Man of Steel; there's barely any hope or optimism in the whole thing and where there is, it feels feigned and is crushed under the weight of the reality of what's happened. The denouement of the film has Steve Lombard, the Daily Planet's resident pig, asking Lois Lane to go to a ball game with him some undetermined time after the Kryptonians are defeated, as if what they've seen and what's happened to their city is just that easy to get over. Umm...no, movie, it isn't. Metropolis has suffered such catastrophic loss that it'll be at least a year before anything happens in that city. And Superman? Superman let it get to that point. I know he's new to this whole hero business, but could at least start him off with an easier challenge? One that doesn't turn a city into a pancake? And could you at least not have reintroduced the world's greatest hero to a blockbuster-sized audience by having him kill someone?

Think of it this way: DC's grim and gritty hero is Batman, and in all three of his movies, he only killed one guy: Harvey Dent, who was about to shoot an eight-year-old in the head. The rest of his bad guys, not so much. Joker? Sent to Arkham. Scarecrow? In and out of jail for three flicks. Bane? Shot by Catwoman (who Batman told not to kill anyone earlier in the film, mind you). Talia? Car crash. Ra's al-Ghul? He wasn't saved, but he wasn't killed either. Hell, the capstone to Bruce Wayne's tutelage with Ra's was that killing wasn't the way to go. So when bright and sunny Superman is quicker to kill someone than dark and edgy Batman, something's not right here.

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.

Moments of the Week, 6/12/13

Oh crap, it's been a while, hasn't it? Uhh...Moments of the Week! All-indie edition! GO!

Peter Panzerfaust #11
You'll recall a while back a raved about the first issue of Peter Panzerfaust, a World War II story that borrowed iconography and plot elements from J.M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan. I haven't talked much about it since because it hasn't wowed me as much as that first issue did. There's some good moments - I especially liked the introduction of Kapitan Haker, a.k.a. Nazi Captain Hook - but besides that the stories tend to blend together. Part of the problem is the Lost Boys themselves: we're very slowly getting details about them beyond names, but they're the stars of our story. Shouldn't we know more about them by now?

Still, this issue, the start of a new arc, has piqued my interest. See, part of the gimmick of the book is the framing device: a biographer visiting the older Lost Boys and interviewing them about their time in the French resistance with the titular Peter Panzerfaust. And because the story is told from their perspectives, it changes the tones of the events. So far our two narrators Tootles (can't remember his real name, sorry) and Julien have looked fondly on Peter and idolized him. Our new narrator, Felix, seems like the first one who's going to point out that Peter was an impulsive teenager, whose recklessness was likely to get someone killed and probably did. I'll be interested to see some more genuine and tension from a book that's done it pretty well so far.

Six-Gun Gorilla #1
Yep, I bought this one solely because of the title. It did not disappoint.

Set in the future probably, SGG follows Blue-3425, a nameless soldier on the front line of a war between his government and rebel insurgents. Blue Squadron is unique from the other soldiers in that it is entirely expendable; people join up with the expectation of death, so it's made up entirely of the suicidal, the soon-to-be-executed, or the ones that simply have nothing left to live for. Furthermore, Blue soldiers have recording devices installed in their eyes and ears, so that the front line can be streamed live to people's homes to drum up support for the government. In his first mission, 3425, amazingly, doesn't die, but nearly completes his goal before getting captured by the rebels. Then the rebels are killed by a silverback gorilla in a cloak wielding a pair of custom-fit revolvers.

Yeah.

Honestly, I am interested, partially by the world and partially by the characters. 3425 doesn't much going for him so far, but we know he was a librarian, and we know why he joined Blue Squadron: his wife left him, he lost his house, and he really has nothing going for him, except maybe dying and leaving his payday to his close relatives. Also, gorilla with revolvers. Gotta see where they go with that.

SGG is a good example of how to do world-building right. Our next one, not so much.

The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys #1
Alright, bear with me as I attempt to decipher the plot here. Ahem...

It's the future again. There's a city. It's called Battery City. It's one of those huge-ass metropolis's run by corrupt corporations you'd find in any good cyberpunk. Outside of Bat City is the Desert, a lawless frontier where people labeled undesirable by Better Living Industries exist. Some time ago, there was a group of rebels called the Killjoys, who tried to revolt against BLI and all died, except for the Girl, a six-year-old who was expected to do something important someday maybe. Some time later and the Girl is now a teenager and falls in with a new group of rebels, who are less interested in revolution and more interested in protecting themselves from BLI's scarecrows (Don't know what those are), as well as the Draculoids, a roaming group of marauders/cultists who can indoctrinate people into murder frenzies by making them put on creepy masks. There's also a subplot that takes place in the slums of Bat City about a drug-addict lesbian android hooker.

WHAT THE CUSS DID I JUST READ?!

Really, the reason I bought this was that last name at the bottom of the cover. Becky Cloonan is an artist who hasn't worked much in the industry, but when she does, she produces some fantastic work. If you want more proof, go read Batman Annual #1 or Swamp Thing #0. And while I had no idea what was going on in this book, it at least looked really unique and really good. I'll keep following this, mostly to get more Cloonan artwork, and partially to see if I can decipher what the hell is going on here.

**EDIT: I just found out that this series is an apparent follow-up to Danger Days, an album/story by Killjoy's writer, My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way. I did not know this, the comic did not make it clear. Maybe I'll actually listen to it and get the plot. Maybe I'll read the Wikipedia summary instead. Who knows (probably the second one, though).

Thanks for reading everybody and I'll see you next time!

Infinite Raptures

SPOILERS FOR BIOSHOCK 1 AND INFINITE AND MAYBE BIOSHOCK 2 ALSO. YE HAVE BEEN WARNED

A few weeks ago, 2K Games once again showed everyone how it's done with their FPS game Bioshock Infinite. Now I'm of a mind that the original Bioshock has the best story in video games, partially because it was a fascinating exploration of a philosophical ideal made flesh via a new and unique setting and partially because it uses the medium it's in to move the story forward (seriously, the second act plot twist of Bioshock could ONLY be as effective as it was in a video game). Infinite doesn't quite come eye-to-eye with its predecessor, but it makes a very noble effort of it and still comes out with a great story and characters while maintaining solid FPS gameplay and making sure the floating city of Columbia was just as interesting and frightening as the underwater city of Rapture.

Infinite's ending has received a lot of attention. I've come across several articles and videos explaining how the timeline balances out, how Booker and Comstock and Anna and Elizabeth and the Luteces all fit in with one another in this crazy time-travel/alternate reality narrative. This article will not be one of those; you can find rundowns of the ending on YouTube or most gaming websites and you can just go ahead and watch the ending here:

No, rather this article will be about a few thoughts I've had on Infinite, about its ending, the story as a whole, and how it relates to the other games (though mostly just the first one since it's apparently general policy to pretend Bioshock 2 never happened). With all that said, lets get to my opinions, because they matter, apparently.

1) This cover art is bullshit.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying this is bad cover art. It looks quite nice and epic, showing off our hero, Booker DeWitt, being all badass and whatnot. The artist who put this together should feel very proud of themselves. But do you notice something missing from the artwork? Some person that should be there but isn't for reasons that are deeply depressing?

WHERE. IS. ELIZABETH?

You may not know it by looking, but Elizabeth is the focus of the entire game (except maybe in the last ten minutes, but that's just cause her character arc is complete and she is now acting as a guide to Booker so he can have a last-minute arc). Her attempted exodus from Columbia is the point of the game. It's Booker's mission to free her, it's Comstock's mission to groom her to be his successor, it's Daisy Fitzroy's mission to figure out what she is and how she can be used...and yet she doesn't get to be on the cover? That's some BS.

Now creative director Ken Levine has defended the choice, saying that in focus testing, this was the image that got the best response and the developers figured it would sell the most units. There's nothing inherently wrong with that; 2K and Irrational Games put together a product and they want to sell as much of it as they can, they want to get their work out to as many people as possible. That's all well and good. The problem here is the creeping undercurrent of sexism; that you can't sell an action game with a girl on the cover.

I'm not saying all gamers are sexist or that nobody will buy a game with a woman on the front cover. What I am saying is that a lot of video games have...'issues' with women, a fact that a rather vocal collection of gamers insists is a rumor perpetrated by the feminazis to take away their toys. Here in Infinite we see some great female characters, not only with Elizabeth (in spite of her initial damsel-in-distress status), but with Daisy Fitzroy and Rosalind Lutece, but the box art only plays up the manly man of Booker DeWitt and his manly shotgun. The only thing the developers really did wrong here was play into a culture that has some problems in it. I'm not mad, I'm just kinda disappointed that this utterly generic and ultimately misleading image is the best way to sell a game.

2) On the subject of Songbird

I love Songbird. I really do. Despite technically predating them by fifty years, Songbird is the next stage in evolution from Bioshock's Big Daddies; a partially human, mostly machine creature whose single-minded purpose is to protect his charge, a purpose he adheres to with admirable gusto. Plus he's got a really cool design. Being the big bad dragon to Comstock's evil (but frail and human) king, you'd then expect Songbird to be the final boss of the game. I know I did. But Infinite's smarter than that, and Songbird's demise ends up being one of the more poetic deaths I've ever seen.

After learning to control the bird through musical cues, Booker orders him to destroy the Siphon, a machine that limited Elizabeth's reality-traversing powers. The destruction of the Siphon does unlock Elizabeth's full potential, but also destroy's the music machine that's controlling Songbird. He returns to his original mission of killing Booker and reclaiming Elizabeth. It's then that Elizabeth, now with complete mastery over her powers, calmly sends the three of them to a city underwater (more on that in a bit)...but leaves Songbird outside in the water. The depths of the ocean and the underwater pressure crush the bird, and in his final moments, he shares a quiet goodbye to the charge he loved and protected so much, before his lights go out and he meets his end.

The real poetry of it lies in the fact that it's Elizabeth, not Booker, who kills Songbird. With the Siphon destroyed, she's mastered her powers. She knows all, sees all, and can go anywhere or anywhen she pleases. She's rejected Comstock's ideology and liberated herself from Columbia. She powerful and independent enough that she doesn't need Songbird anymore, and so removes him from the equation. This event marks the completion of her character arc.

There's also the symmetry of Songbird dying underwater and several other characters doing that, but more on that in a bit.

3) Anna DeWitt is Andrew Ryan's mother

Well, maybe not exactly that, but they could be related. This is more of a fan-wank theory than anything, but bear with me here.

Okay, so real quick ending rundown: Elizabeth is revealed to be Anna DeWitt, Booker's daughter whom he sold as an infant to Comstock in order to pay off his debts and ensure that his daughter had a better life than he could provide. However, he had a change of heart and tried to take the girl back shortly before Comstock and the Luteces returned to their own reality (BTW, they were from a different reality. More on that in a bit). As the portal between worlds closes before Booker's eyes, baby Anna reaches out to him, and the portal closes on her hand, severing the pinkie-finger on her right hand. This is their explanation for Elizabeth's powers: because a piece of her is in another world, she can traverse worlds. Makes as much sense as anything else in the franchise. Anyway...

Remember how Songbird died outside of an underwater city? Well, it wasn't Atlantis. It was Rapture, the same city from the first two Bioshock games. Now Booker and Elizabeth/Anna arrive in Rapture presumably during or after the events of the first game. This is believed to be so partially because the welcome center is free of any splicers (I guess Jack already cleared them out), partially because there's a rumor that you can hear Songbird's screams as he dies during a portion of the game, but mostly because the duo pass a sign telling them that the bathyspheres that serve as transportation between the undersea towers are out of service, meaning that Andrew Ryan's lockdown is in effect. And yet the pair hop in the first bathysphere and take back to the surface, to the first lighthouse, and begin their walkabout through reality.

People who played the first game will recall that the bathyspheres were only usable by Ryan himself or by people with similar DNA. This is why Jack could use them; he was secretly (SPOILER ALERT) Andrew Ryan's illegitimate son, artificially aged and manipulated by Frank Fontaine to bring Ryan down. By this logic, the DeWitts can use the bathyspheres because they have similar DNA to Ryan. I originally assumed this was because Anna DeWitt, in a different timeline, grew up, got married and had a kid who would eventually build a city at the bottom of the ocean; however, further research revealed that Andrew Ryan actually had a backstory, involving being born in Russia, witnessing the revolution and having it shape his beliefs, and then changing his name and emigrating to America, all of which makes the possibility of Anna DeWitt being his mother seem unlikely. However, there's still the fact that the DeWitts could use the bathyspheres, so they're related to Ryan somehow. I just don't know how yet.

Or maybe Booker and Elizabeth arrived after Jack's adventure in Bioshock and he left the spheres unlocked when he left Rapture. Who knows?

4) Booker DeWitt can see THE FUTURE!

Plot twist number two for Infinite was that our hero Booker DeWitt and our villain Zachary Hale Comstock were in fact the same person. The explanation given is this: Booker, in his younger days, was a bit of a white supremacist, and when he was accused of having a family tree that 'sheltered a teepee or two', he decided to prove his fellow soldiers wrong by burning a few teepees during the Wounded Knee Massacre. Afterwards, he was wracked with guilt over his violent actions and tried everything to alleviate his guilt, including attending a baptism that would cleanse him of his sins. Booker found he was unable to go through with it, as how could a dip in the water really wash all the blood from his hands? He left the ceremony and began a life of drinking and gambling and also fatherhood somewhere in there. But what if Booker had accepted the baptism? What then?

In another reality, Booker DeWitt went under the water and Zachary Hale Comstock came out. Comstock went on to try and share his vision of the world, his violence and white supremacist beliefs no longer held back by his own guilt. He met Rosalind Lutece, she built a device that could see into the future, they made Columbia, Comstock went sterile, he bought Anna DeWitt, and the rest is very confusing history.

Now Comstock's prophetic visions are attributed to Lutece's machine, that it showed him probable futures and he used them to guide his followers. However, Comstock had a vision before he met Lutece; namely the original vision of the angel Columbia showing him the city above the clouds, the new Eden that would someday lay waste to the Sodom below, for what was the city of Columbia if not another ark for another time and all that. No explanation has been given for who the angel really was and how Comstock saw his city before it was created. This kinda bugged me until I remembered something: Booker DeWitt has a vision too.

Early in the game, Booker has flashback/dream, wherein he opens the door to his office and sees the city of Columbia now below the clouds, raining fire and destruction upon a New York City that is much more modern than it is in the year 1912. This vision comes to pass in a future where Elizabeth accepted Comstock's influence and became his heir and thus the seed of the prophet sat the throne and laid waste the mountains of man and blah blah blah. The point is, Booker and Comstock both saw the future. That says to me that Booker just has that power sometimes. Why? To move the plot forward and to build tension.

It's not a good explanation, but it's an explanation.

5) The Luteces have done this before

Rosalind and Robert Lutece (supposedly twin siblings but actually they're the same person from two different realities and of two different genders) are one of the best parts of the game, an enigmatic pair who help guide Booker on his journey while acting cryptic and weird and actually pretty entertaining, for what little time they have onscreen. Anyway, plot twist number three is that Robert Lutece not only got Booker to sell him Anna, but convinced him to bring her back (presumably because Robert saw what Elizabeth would become under Comstock's guidance and wanted to put a stop to it before she burned America down). Little dialogue choices and actions they take imply that this is not the first time they've sent a Booker DeWitt to Columbia to rescue Elizabeth. The bloody corpse you find in the lighthouse? Possibly an earlier Booker who was killed by the lighthouse keeper? Or just the lighthouse keeper himself whom the Lutece's had to snuff out in order for Booker to proceed? We'll probably never know but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.

6) The Columbians aren't as interesting as the Rapturers

This is one of the places where Infinite falls short of the original Bioshock; the people you meet in Columbia just aren't as good villains as the ones in Rapture. Cornelius Slate is an interesting counterpoint to both the Founders and the Vox Populi, and Daisy Fitzroy is interesting if you've read the expanded material, but other than that they all fall short. We never learn much of Lady Comstock, Jeremiah Fink doesn't do much except be a racist businessman, and...well that's sort of it as far as named characters go. Compare that Bioshock's characters; people like Dr. J.S. Steinman, Peach Wilkins, Brigid Tenenbaum, or Sander Cohen. Those were some interesting faces who really helped flesh out Rapture and make it such an engaging location. Now granted, this is because game one and Infinite had different focuses; in Bioshock, Jack didn't have much personality...or any personality...but that's okay because everyone else in Rapture was just so larger than life. Comparatively, Infinite focuses squarely on Booker and Elizabeth, and because of this, they're the ones that get fleshed out, not as much the world around them. Still, it would've been nice to see the Vox Populi be more interesting, as they're touted as being a major part of the story and then sort of fall flat by the end.

So, those are my thoughts on Infinite and it's place in the general Bioshock pantheon. If you have anything to add or detract, post it somewhere in the comments. Thanks for reading, and would you kindly join me next time?