Night of the Awful Slavery/Zombie Episode.....

So, you’ll notice one comic related show I never talk about is Legends of Tomorrow. It’s not because I don’t find time to watch it or because I ration out my television time among select shows. It’s because, last I checked, Legends of Tomorrow was a generally terrible show. Of all the shows that make up CW’s Arrowverse, Legends is the one that most resembles Fox’s approach towards the X-Men movies. Take a few fan favorite characters, some good looking actors, a nerdy premise, shake well and the result is….well...a fucking mess.

For those of you that had the good sense to skip the show up to now, there are people out there fucking up space and time for various and sometimes, undefined reasons. So, the Doctor Rip Hunter went against the wishes of the Time Masters Lords came to the present day to ask Oliver Queen and Barry Allen to vouch for him so he could recruit a team of misfits including Firestorm, Heatwave and Not Quite Tony Stark the Atom. They call themselves the Legends (despite this being among the silliest team names of all time). So, this is the part where I go into a recap of the worst episode of anything I've watched in at least the past two months. There are spoilers, so if you're brave enough to still watch this horseshit after said recap, just know that there are spoilers after the jump.

Update: Arrow is Still Trash

Since I haven’t done a post in a while, I might as well check back in with comic based television. I know I said I was done with Arrow last season, but after seeing the trailer for the new season, I got curious as to where they were headed. The result is my first real hate-watch since Smallville. I mean….there are just so many bad things taking place, but the small handful of good things keep me interested in how they’re going to maintain them.

First off, I talked about this before but the whole thing with Oliver Queen maybe/maybe not doing murder is just getting silly. The whole point of a superhero is that they stand on a very basic code of morals, whatever that code may be. It’s hard to know if you’re the kind of superhero these people want to stand behind if that code is changing from season to season. If the writers are going to be so deadset on modeling the Green Arrow after Batman, he’s gotta be less indecisive than that.

And this whole Arrow Academy storyline wavers between “trash” and “kinda tolerable fan service.” And the main problem isn’t that the new team is garbage (although the new team IS garbage); it’s that the only reason there’s a new team is because the writers realized they’ve written all of the old team into a corner. Diggle has fallen so far from awesomeness, he had to run off to the Army just to have a sense of identity. A SUPERHERO had to quit superheroing and rejoin the Army just to feel like somebody. That’s a problem. Meanwhile, Ollie’s sister, Thea has quit being Speedy/Red Arrow to join her brother in politics just to have a credible storyline that isn’t focused on either a). her daddy issues or b). her consistently terrible choices in boyfriends. And Felicity is sick of being Oliver’s enabler even though she stuck around to continue serving as Oliver’s enabler. Because make no mistake, one of the primary reasons that the Green Arrow is an asshole is because Felicity spent four seasons telling him that his best, most dickish self is the key to beating the bad guys. Granted, this week’s episode was probably the best one thus far simply because the scene of Team Arrow assembling was epic (not to mention Stephen Amell settling his wrestling beef yet again with Cory “Stardust” Rhodes who played the villain of the week).

The problem with this show digging so hard into the Batman well is that Batman doesn’t work in a weekly CW show. Batman works well in comics and movies because either you’re not reminded constantly of what an irredeemable douche he is.

In any case, the show is probably going to crawl along on this redemption run until the Green Arrow finally throws down with Prometheus because there’s only room for one Impossible White Man in Star City. But for the most part, it feels like the show is trying so hard to gain its viewers trust back, it's just a reminder of how much they've fucked up.

The Week In Geek 5/14/15

It's sort of hard to explain how exactly CW is getting The Flash so right. This week's episode sort of brought back into focus a). Flash's standing as "the Superman of the Arrowverse" as well as b). the villainy sort of resembles professional wrestling. Captain Cold is admittedly part of the bad guy game specifically because he loves it. And probably because he's better at it than he ever was at being a small time crook. The implication of destiny being as much a factor for villains as it is for heroes is one of the major building blocks of superhero lore and shines through clear as day on this show. The only major problem I have with the show is its handling of Iris West. It made sense at first to keep her out of the loop of Barry Allen's identity, but in the meantime, in delaying the inevitable, the show has to find side plots for character development. It just so happens that these particular side plots have made her sort of intolerable not unlike Lana Lang on Smallville. Cockblocking Linda Park, making the Reverse Flash thing all about her, pulling Barry in and out of the Friend Zone at her leisure...not very endearing.

Meanwhile, the CW also dropped a first look at their next spinoff, Legends of Tomorrow. The best thing they could have done is bring back Caity Lotz as the White Canary or Canary Original or whatever they're going with. She was always the more entertaining opposite to the Arrow because Laurel is the WORST and has been for two seasons straight, suffering from a little more of Iris West Syndrome. The best I can figure is that this spinoff is in response to Marvel/Netflix setting up The Defenders starting with Daredevil. With the turnout Daredevil had, I doubt LoT is going to compete with that, but it shows that DC is at least trying to give fans what they want.

Also, my review for this week's issue of Thor is up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to read, share, comment at your leisure.

The Week In Geek 3/25/15

It seems like I do more Flash updates nowadays than I ever cared to do before. I really have to find a way to get Will over at Black Nerd Problems to invest in some kind of "Talking Dead" type of thing where we sit around and talk about the episode of Flash we just watched or something. People seem to like that sort of thing.

Anyway, this week marks the episode in which The Flash turned into professional wrestling....which sort of puts it in dicey territory. At the end of the episode, Flash meets with Captain Cold and they come to some sort of terms where they don't hit one another too close to home and the Rogues don't hurt people. This is one of those quiet-as-kept landmarks where casual watchers who don't read the comics get to see a side of comic-based storytelling that we haven't seen in a while in the era of Marvel's "it's all connected" approach. As awkward as it came across in the show, this actually makes it more in line with a lot of stand alone comics. Sure, there are the big guys who lurk in the shadows, plotting the end game (Reverse Flash), but there are numerous villains in comic-dom who just keep showing up because they like it. Cold says it numerous times and he's just starting to have fun being a supervillain. Hell, his sister turns things into GOLD and he still just wants to steal things for the hell of it. I think this all lends itself to what people love so much about this show. The degree of investment isn't nearly as heavy as buying into a universe where everything is urging you to watch something else (as high quality as it may be) to get an even bigger effect. It's an amazing representation of comic storytelling that Smallville just never managed to pull off.

My comic reviews for the week are still and always available on Black Nerd Problems. This week, I took a look at Batman Eternal and Uncanny X-Men.

The Week In Geek 12/10/14

So, this week's midseason finale to The Flash kicked several levels of ass. The fight between Barry and Reverse Flash...who is TOTALLY Dr. Wells (sorry if that's a spoiler but if you haven't figured that out by now...)....was pretty incredible looking for primetime network television. I've been hearing a lot of complaints about Iris West's character, but I'm sorry....I love a pretty brown girl as the leading lady in an interracial relationship. By the way, I don't seem to remember all that complaining when Lana Lang was the leading lady in Smallville and that was maybe one of the worst shows in nerd history. Just saying. At this point, the complaints that "it's so CW" just have to stop. We (I'm speaking to my generation in particular) have to learn to get used to the fact that comic culture HAS to attract younger viewers to survive. I mentioned this in an article a while back, but fans have to get better about sharing. Otherwise, we end up looking like insiders and troll. Just ask the Gamergate trolls.

My reviews for the week are up and available on Black Nerd Problems for your viewing pleasure. This week, I took a look at:

Thor: I am more convinced than ever that the new lady Thor is actually, Roz Solomon, Odinson's SHIELD girlfriend. That's why she was so desperate to get the hammer back before she turned back into Someone That Roxxon Would Recognize (from the Last Days of Midgard story). Anyway, I do appreciate that the hammer kinda offer tutorials in how to be Thor like Green Lantern's ring. Other than that, there's not much else to say. Jason Aaron is going to be remembered as one of the premier names when they talk about Thor in the 2010s.

Avengers/X-Men: Axis- Okay, this week was slightly better for Axis but not by much. I know Deadpool is supposed to something of a hood ornament to uptick your sales a little bit, but it just didn't work out here. Spider-Man, as usual, was something of a boon to the story and Scarlet Witch looked great and all, but this plot is so rough. It literally pains me to review it.

Batman Eternal: The funny thing is that the whole Jason Bard plotline hanging over the book has basically made plot "A World Without Jim Gordon", furthering DC's initiative to make Commissioner Gordon into a nigh-superhero. I've said this before, but aside from Batman, he's the only other thing saving Gotham from descending into Hell. This is, in part, why I'm so disappointed that the Gotham tv series sucks so bad.

No, I'm NOT Calling The Flash and Arrow "Flarrow"......

So, this week was the big two night "Flash vs. Arrow" crossover event and despite my mild skepticism (a "versus" scenario would have been a bit more plausible a few weeks ago before Barry did Mach One to put Not-Quite-Colossus on his ass), it was actually much better than I expected. One thing it did very well was establish a clear tone for each respective show in this one universe. And love or hate them, you can at least say that these two shows know exactly what kind of shows they want to be. You've got a shitshow like Gotham that has virtually no identity and, at the same time, EVERY identity. Sometimes, it wants to be a by-the-book procedural cop drama set in a famous fictional city. Every once in a while, it's a Batman prequel when it needs to bring back viewers. Other times, it wants to be Boardwalk Empire set in a famous fictional city. Some days, it's Rise of the Penguin. And sometimes, as evident by the many larval stages of Jada Pinkett Smith's wig, it wants to be a Bronner Bros. hair show in Atlanta. Arrow, makes a very clear statement in almost every scene that it's a primetime Batman surrogate. The Flash is obviously meant to be a Superman replacement (because we will NOT see Superman on primetime television again for a while; Thanks for nothing, Smallville), far more hopeful and cartoonishly optimistic than his gritty counterpart. It's actually the kind of dynamic I hope will take place in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (despite Henry Cavil's sad eyes). DC gets a lot of crap for being so slow to the starter blocks in competing with Marvel's unstoppable engine of movies, but as far as TV goes, they know how to sell a product. Then again, I could be wrong.