Tag Archive: DC Comics


PowAvengers 2 comes out this weekend. Well, Thursday, in many places . . . which means you might wind up with a lot of geeks missing work on Friday. Me? Ha! I get paid for this stuff!

Well, no, I actually don’t. This blog is a 100% free resource, and I can’t get paid for reviewing Age of Ultron. I can, however, potentially get paid for talking about superheroes in general. (Mind you, I can neither confirm nor deny any involvement in the development of a multi-author shared-world superhero setting. Hush, now. I don’t know how these rumors get started.)

Superheroes have, arguably, been around as long as science fiction or fantasy, at least as separate genres with somewhat dedicated followings. They’ve always seemed a bit separate, however, because they use what I call the fourth medium of print: visual art. (The other three are prose, poetry, and script.) Superheroes have rarely done well outside of comic books, in large part because the visuals have dominated the storytelling so completely that it’s difficult to have the same effect in pure prose. It’s only been recently that film technology has advanced to the point that the big screen can live up to the promise of hand-drawn art.

That, however, is a stylistic difference that more people are accepting these days, and it is entirely because of indie publishing.  Continue reading

Daredevil Now Live

11958118In case you hadn’t already marked your calendar, the new Netflix original Daredevil TV show is now live.

Yes, I’ll be reviewing it, but not for a little while unless I wind up reviewing chunks rather than the whole thirteen-episode season. (Yes, Netflix released them all at once. What did you expect? It’s Netflix. Binge-watching is encouraged.) While I’m down with particularly severe fibromyalgia symptoms for the third day in a row, which would make for a perfect time to binge-watch, I’m scheduled to watch it with someone else after work tonight. We probably won’t finish it this weekend.

But for those of you who are still sticking around and not clicking that oh-so-shiny link, let’s talk Daredevil for a bit.  Continue reading

Flash Backward

What’s this? I haven’t done a dedicated blog post on The Flash yet? Well, after the latest episode, I think it’s time to fix that.

For me, despite the significant lack of Felicity Smoak (beauty, brains, and geeky quirky humor — yup), The Flash has been better than Arrow. That’s not because Arrow is grimdark, but more because teamwork and character interaction on that show is just slightly too soap opera for my taste, at least when there’s an alternative like Flash around. Flash is serious when appropriate, but its true strength is in how quickly it built a team for people to care about. Arrow is built around a loner, and that’s used as a source of conflict just a little too much.

(I also enjoy how the police are actually useful in Flash stories, which isn’t something you normally get in superhero fiction. My brother is a cop, so that’s something that stands out to me.)

The one major thing I don’t really like about the show is that, frankly, I don’t like Iris. From day one, she’s just not struck me as someone good for Barry. Plus, there’s the whole foster sister thing. That’s a bit of a squick factor for me. That meant I was really glad when Linda Park showed up. I knew they were just going to use her as a means to get Iris jealous (and bingo, I was right), but they work together far better than Barry and Iris. I don’t know how much of that is the actors, but Barry and Linda have been meshing so well, and think so much alike, that I was really hoping we’d just go for that rather than the comic book continuity.

Of course, before Linda showed up, I was rooting for Barry and Caitlin. Okay, I admit it. I have a thing for geek women. Shocker!

Mind you, I have to admit that Iris was feeling a little bit more natural in the most recent episode, “Out of Time.” Which brings me to the spoiler part of this post, so if you don’t want any, leave now.  Continue reading

I’m not a DC Comics fan. I like Batman, but usually the rest of the universe seems . . . stilted. Yes, I enjoyed many of the animated series while I was growing up (and even more after I decided being grown-up is a bit overrated), but I just can’t get into the mythology and worldbuilding. Too many fictionalized yet supposedly “realistic” locations, too much space between “gritty” and “heroic,” too much “hey, that sounds good, let’s go with that — who’s going to think about it too deeply?” Continue reading

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