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So, on the subject of how big changes to iconic characters always get rolled back --

There are two weird exceptions: Dick Grayson and Superman. Having gone on a long explanation of why replacing cultural icons never works (movies and TV will use the most popular default) -- the world at large knows Dick Grayson to be Robin, yet he's been Nightwing for decades and we've cycled through Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne.

Why is that? I suspect that, very simply, BATMAN comics have generally sold really well. With comics like GREEN LANTERN, THE FLASH and SPIDER-MAN, sales initially jumped when Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and Peter Parker were replaced, but sales eventually hit a catastrophically low point where drastic action was needed and the course of action chosen was to hit the reset button HARD.

I guess BATMAN comics have never been in that sort of sales crisis. Even people who don't like superhero comics tend to find something in BATMAN to enjoy.

Kyle Rayner and Wally West actually sold quite well, Kyle for a decade and Wally for two -- but they were hit by the gradual softening of the comics market over time and the need to make an event of Hal and Barry return and give sales a jolt. I don't remember where Oliver Queen's sales were when he was killed off and replaced with Connor Hawke, but anecdotally, GREEN ARROW was barely on anyone's radar until Kevin Smith resurrected Oliver and turned GREEN ARROW into a big hit again. (Take the last one with a grain of salt.)

For Batman, there's never been a desperate need to go back to basics because none of the changes to Batman's mythos prevented writers from having Batman solve murders in Gotham City. Also, any writers who wanted to write Bruce and Dick stories could do so because he was still around.

It's weird because Dick Grayson himself is not the most interesting character, and I say that as someone who reads NIGHTWING religiously. Dick's been written by brilliant writers and drawn by superb artists who created hyperkinetic experiences of John Woo-esque ballet using Dick's acrobatic skills to showcase his circus background.

He's been put in interesting situations like when he became Batman and had to mentor a homicidal 10-year-old as the new Robin and found himself struggling to impersonate his mentor. But the character is so well-adjusted, so stable, so confident that he needs to be written by a writer with a vivid and distinct style to make up for Dick's lack of vivid distinctiveness.

With Superman -- I have no idea why the rollback was rolled back where the late-thirties, married Superman, post-reboot, become a mid-twenties bachelor.

ACTION COMICS retells the origin of Superman in 18 issues -- but with a ridiculous EIGHT different artists, all with completely opposing styles within the same individual issues -- so the art shifts from loose cartoonism to crisp photo-realism to motion-oriented exaggeration and back and forth and back and forth, often within the same scenes.

There's a decent script underneath the visual confusion of an urban vigilante Superman and a slum-dwelling Clark Kent growing in power and responsibility, but it's unreadable.

SUPERMAN, set five years after the origin story, has five different writers over the course of its first 31 issues and is a mess of directions that start and then abruptly disappear in the confusion of a rotating door of writers each of whom start stories they can't seem to finish. Clark becomes disenchanted with journalism, quits the Daily Planet, becomes a blogger -- but that plot gets sidetracked with alien invasions and crossovers with SUPERGIRL and SUPERBOY.

The crossovers themselves are halfway intriguing -- a Kryptonian seeks to destroy the Earth to create fuel for a time machine to undo the destruction of Krypton. Superman is infected by a virus that transforms him into the Doomsday monster. But with five or six writers writing each crossover, the stories become an exercise in each writer writing some variant on almost indistinguishible action sequences over and over again until it's around 25 - 30 issues of motionless stalling.

It's quite clear that SUPERMAN editorial could not get their act together: hiring creators to make bold choices, second-guessing those choices, creators quitting, eventually resorting to clumsy crossovers to boost sales. There is no sense of what Superman represents or any noteworthy style, voice, perspective, insight or deeper meaning -- any writer who brought any to the table got frustrated and took it away with them.

The best that can be said of the later crossovers is that the SUPERMAN editorial office worked out how to get multi-artist books to look good. They hired artists within the same range -- mostly loose-lined, motion-oriented exaggeration -- and made sure that the colourists could keep the pages consistent enough that it wasn't jarring. Why this skillful planning was missing from ACTION COMICS is beyond me.

That said, JUSTICE LEAGUE, after an incoherent opening arc, seemed to find its feet with the distinct personalities of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, the Flash and Cyborg bouncing off each other. Superman was a strong presence and his romance with Wonder Woman -- a sheltered farmboy falling for an Amazonian goddess -- was rather sweet.

JUSTICE LEAGUE also had a delightful and still ongoing arc where Luthor decides that the best way to win the acclaim and fame and wealth and regard and power he wants is to renounce Evil, become a superhero and join the League.

The SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN title was also excellent, featuring strong writing that explored a very complex relationship of two people who will always feel like outsiders. There was the nine-issue SUPERMAN UNCHAINED where Superman was forced to struggle with his unwillingness to interfere in global conflicts outside of relief work.

It was baffling how the people writing the outlier SUPERMAN titles without full control over the character were the ones doing their best work while the core SUPERMAN office seemed incapable of releasing a single coherent storyline without an exasperated writer quitting without finishing.

Outside of the Superman/Wonder Woman romance, the SUPERMAN office was unwilling to take any chances in committing to any creative vision whatsoever.

And then suddenly it was. Writer Greg Pak came aboard ACTION COMICS and plunged Superman into fantasy sci-fi with Superman discovering an underground population of monsters, creating civil rights allegories while keeping the book full of absurd visuals and showcasing Superman's empathy for all. DC seemed to step back and let a great team do great stories.

Then there was Geoff Johns taking over SUPERMAN for a brief arc of widescreen action matched with Superman battling an alien invasion that sought to use Superman's public persona against him. This led into Superman developing a new superpower: emitting a burst of solar energy that was highly destructive and would leave him powerless for 24 hours.

Johns was succeeded by new writer Gene Luen Yang who began having Superman deal with the delight and fragility of being human (got drunk for the first time) and the psychological mayhem of going back and forth between godlike powers and being normal. With SUPERMAN in excellent state, ACTION COMICS doing well and SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN a monthly delight, one wondered what had taken so long and why the writers could suddenly take chances.

The next storyline was TRUTH -- a strange story in that it was told out of order. But looking at it chronologically, it's an amazing storyline: Superman going from powered up to only human means he gets injured more often and while he heals, he begins to get sloppy in concealing his secret identity.

In BEFORE TRUTH, a villain finds out he's Clark Kent and begins blackmailing Superman into giving them bursts of his charged solar energy -- and Lois, having found out the secret as well, decides to put a stop  to it by revealing Clark's secret to the world.

Villains start attacking Superman's friends. Clark Kent is wanted by the police, the Daily Planet wants to sue him for fraud, and Perry White feels betrayed by Superman masquerading as a normal person and knocks the glasses off his face.

And problematically, Clark discovers that the villains draining him via his solar flare power have somehow damaged his ability to store solar energy: his strength is reduced to lifting a truck; he can no longer fly; his supersenses are diminished and he's down to a few thousand in cash.

In SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN, Clark discovers that the power imbalance between himself and Wonder Woman has left him feeling crippled and inadequate. Watching her fly off to cosmic threats is heartrending. Worse, she interferes when Clark attempts to pilot a shuttle into the sun in a failed attempt to repower himself and steps into Clark's dealings with the CIA and the DHS when Clark asked her to stay out of it. Feeling betrayed by both Lois and Wonder Woman, Clark severs ties with both of them and sets off on his motorcycle.

Returning to Metropolis, Clark finds that his former neighbours declared his district to be Superman's town and began public protests demanding Superman be acquitted of all charges, resulting in brutal police officers storming on the protests and a weakened Superman chaining himself up with his neighbours.

This whole thing is a terrific storyline. Superman loses all the things that make him Superman -- and then keeps going anyway. He gives himself a buzz-cut, buys a Superman T-shirt and a motorcycle and carries on trying to do his job -- defending the city, fighting alien invaders, tracking down who has stolen his powers, teaming up with the JLA, battling monsters -- all the while getting beaten to a bloody pulp and dragging himself back to his feet.

At one point, in a reference to George Reeves' career, Clark spends his last $20 on tacos and is reduced to fighting in boxing matches for money. At first ashamed and humiliated, Clark begins to enjoy the show and the friendships he develops with other boxers.

Throughout this arc, Superman is homeless, depowered, weak, outmatched -- but he doesn't stop trying to be Superman, partially out of ego, partially due to his inability to stop getting involved in any trouble he comes across whether it's criminal, supernatural or paranormal even when he is completely out of his league.

At times, he struggles to keep himself on the level of a fireman and paramedic while the Justice League is handling the big threats. It's a beautiful examination of what it means to be Superman -- and you wonder how DC can go to these lengths with this character, taking big chances where before, they seemed incapable of even small chances.

Even more curiously, a mini-series, SUPERMAN: LOIS & CLARK, reveals that the Superman we followed from 1985 - 2011 who married Lois -- is not the Superman whom we've been reading about since 2011. The assumption was that Clark was de-aged and his life altered by the Flashpoint reboot into the NEW 52 version -- except it turns out the 1985 - 2011 Superman has been living in the NEW 52 universe all along -- living with Lois Lane under the false identity of the Whites and raising their 10-year-old, Jon.

Furthermore, it's revealed that the 1985 Superman has been secretly interfering in all major NEW 52 events, but always hiding, always letting the Superman of this universe live his life.

And then comes THE FINAL DAYS OF SUPERMAN where Clark (NEW 52 version) uses Kryptonite to burn away the damaged cells preventing him from recharging his powers, learns that Vandal Savage is behind his depowering -- and that it's too late. The damage to his cells is irreversible; while his powers return, his body is failing. Clark is dying. Worse, the solar energy released by his body has come under the control of a madman who believes himself Superman. In a final battle, Clark just barely manages to stop the false Superman with the help of the 1985 Superman -- who brings Clark's dying body back to the JLA just in time for Wonder Woman to tell her lover good-bye.

So why did DC take such crazy chances with the NEW 52 Superman all of a sudden? Because they were going to kill him.

TRUTH is a magnificent storyline. Beautifully illustrated. Splendidly coordinated -- except for the fact that it was inexplicably released out of order. First, we get the comics with Superman depowered (why?) with his identity public (because?) and then after that, the storyline explaining how this came to pass was released. Utterly baffling. I stayed far, far away from TRUTH until it was all done and I could read it in order.

It was great. Brilliantly edited: one writer handled Superman being exposed; one writer handled a depowered Clark struggling with Wonder Woman; one writer handled Clark struggling to earn money and carry on being Superman even when diminished. And the finale -- he dies saving lives. Beautiful.

But I wondered: what now?

ACTION COMICS #952 has Luthor publicly mourning Superman's death and declaring that he will be the new Superman -- only to be confronted by the 1985 Superman flying in to reclaim his name and shield. Superman is dead. Superman has returned.

... I don't even know what to make of that last one, but I will say that the SUPERMAN titles really found their feet after two years of screwing around. It's kind of horrifying to me, however, that DC had to be willing to kill this incarnation of SUPERMAN before they could bring themselves to tell worthwhile stories with him.

I cannot fathom why they went to the trouble to make Clark in his mid-20s instead of his mid-30s only to go and bring the mid-30s version back and have him as a father. But still. This was an awkward run that suddenly became a brilliant run and leaves me eager to see what's next.

We could probably just read the transcripts of story conferences we've had out loud -- like where you say that SLIDERS REBORN is not canon, cannot possibly be canon, will never be canon and that Wade is dead god damn it and I say that technically every fanfic is canon, all co-existing on the same multidimensional axis in some form and "Requiem" point-blank establishes that Wade is alive.

For me, the character of Batman is fundamentally optimistic, declaring that our traumas and tragedies will not overwhelm and destroy us but in fact inspire us to do good. In contrast, Frank Miller subsumed Batman into his own miserably self-loathing personality, using Batman to personify Miller's own mindset -- Miller's fetishism for prostitutes, Miller's obsession with violence, Miller's addictions.

The real Batman would not become a bitter old drunk who gets off on violence and dominating others in some pointless fight. The real Batman would accept that he had gotten old and find a successor, a new generation of heroes to inspire and tutor with his knowledge, experience and wisdom. I don't dispute that Miller is a talented visual storyteller, but he doesn't tell Batman stories, he tells Frank Miller stories and the world at large doesn't really know the difference. Sadly.

I think it is CRAZY premature to start saying that anyone other than Calista Flockhart is going to be on the show less. There have been no announcements whatsoever for the rest and three of these new hires are recurring, not regular. I'm not saying it won't happen because we don't know, but talking about it like it's a certainty as opposed to a theory is too far. I know Informant WANTS to see less of Chyler Leigh, but that's a different discussion. ;-)

I really can't see Tom playing the same Superman he did on SMALLVILLE. If he played Clark on Superman, I think it'd be a bit like how THE FLASH portrays an older Barry Allen (Henry) looking like the same actor who played Barry in the 1990s or how the SUPERMAN comics use Christopher Reeve's likeness now and then. I wouldn't mix the aesthetics of using Tom with the continuity of Tom's previous SUPERMAN series.

Despite being someone who obsessed over finding a solid explanation for why Jerry O'Connell and Robert Floyd both play Quinn Mallory without looking the same -- I just wouldn't worry about this. At all.

I'd love to see Tom Welling play Superman on SUPERGIRL not in a continuity-oriented sense -- just that I think the actor does a good job of being Superman/Clark Kent (as opposed to acting) and I think he'd do an amazing job. I'd be less in favour of Brandon Routh or Henry Cavill largely because I feel those are two actors who need the special effects -- the hairstyling, the rigs, the lighting, the costume -- to be Superman. In contrast, Tom comes off as Superman just from his affable, earnest, compassionate screen presence matched with his intensely commanding physical persona.

If they can't get Tom Welling, I would like them to hire Gregory Smith who is already working on ARROW as a director. He wouldn't be the traditional image of Superman as a muscled, six foot tall figure, however -- Smith is a toothpick sort of fellow, but Superman's strength doesn't come from his muscles anyway and he could capture Superman's earnest, heartfelt sincerity and love for all.

... so, this was meant as a tribute to the actor who played Mallory -- except I doubt he'd be able to appreciate it because the story makes absolutely no sense unless you remember the Season 2 episode, "Obsession."

Well. It's called fan fiction for a reason!!!

I barely remember it. I remember that I didn't hate it, that it wasn't a disaster, but that still left it quite a distance from being good.

I guess, to me, Apocalypse seemed like someone who would be perfectly happy ruling over corpses and rubble. It struck me as a failing of the villain rather than the plot, although I suppose it could just be the latter. While I might theorize that Apocalypse planned on using Rogue, Multiple Man and Wolverine to find and heal all the injured mutants, that's not in the film.

Sebastian Shaw's plan for nuclear war in FIRST CLASS seems to have the same problem.

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I wonder what can be done with you're a director of a film budgeted at several hundred million and you're burnt out. I wonder if Singer could have asked someone like Roland Emmerich, a veteran of mass destruction films, to work with him as a co-director to devise the big action sequences while Singer focused on the detailed characterization he's so good at. Finding a collaborator when you're tapped out isn't a bad idea.

Another response is to demote yourself, which Allison Mack did for Season 10 of SMALLVILLE where she was so exhausted from playing Chloe that she wanted to back off before her lack of interest in the role became apparent onscreen (at least that's my read on her from a podcast interview where she talked about having a midlife crisis during SMALLVILLE) -- and doing six episodes instead of 22 meant she could fake it without phoning it in.

I don't know if Singer is the sort to do that. Judging from FIRST CLASS and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, Singer either takes full control of a project or benches himself. FIRST CLASS was more a reboot of X-MEN than a prequel. Singer was disinclined to interfere and just offered thoughts on how to make the mutant powers awe inspiring and exciting. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was a FIRST CLASS PART II until Vaughn quit and Singer took over and decided to make it X-MEN: THE LAST STAND: PART II; he wasn't going to facilitate Vaughn's vision.

A third route is to accept that you are tired and just hack out the material, knowing that due to rushing, it will lack detail, subtext, purpose and clarity -- and then go back later and put that stuff in afterwards. Probably not an option for a film director.

Having rewatched X-MEN and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST -- I think the problem is that Bryan Singer is just burnt out on X-MEN but perhaps didn't realize it until APOCALYPSE was underway and it was too late to quit.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST comes off as Singer's final statement on the series, specifically in the scene where Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy meet. The Professor tells Charles that strength comes not from refusing to feel pain but being able to bear both your own and the pain of others and that it will make Charles stronger than ever.

Then there's the blatant metatextual moments where young Charles reads Wolverine's mind, sees flashes of THE LAST STAND and ORIGINS and starts screaming, "I don't want your suffering! I don't want your future!" with compassion and empathy proving to be powerful enough to change that future to Jean Grey and Scott Summers alive and well in a future where the X-Men and their students thrive in a world without Sentinels.

And APOCALYPSE ultimately feels like it's trying to say what DAYS OF FUTURE PAST says with Xavier declaring: "Those of you are strong -- protect those who are not" -- except Singer seems to have used up all the different variations with which he used physical action, mutant superpowers and vivid fight scenes to express those values and that mindset -- or he somehow lost his sense of how to fine-tune the action to reflect these views. It feels like half the film is action and it's largely detached from characterization.

But I think, in addition to being burnt out and having already said everything he had to say about and with X-MEN, Singer also wanted to change his style for APOCALYPSE.

Having done X-MEN, X2 and DOFP as the more intimate action thrillers, he declared in Variety that for APOCALYPSE, he wanted to do a "mass destruction" superhero film that X-MEN movies had never done before. I think he wanted to do a TRANSFORMERS style X-MEN film with his skill and characters -- except this style is simply not suited to Singer's strengths as a director. He was tired out on X-MEN, he tried to reinvigorate himself with a new approach, but he's deeply unsuited to it.

Maybe he should have quit while he was ahead. It's really sad to me, because my fondness for Bryan Singer's work on THE WOLVERINE's tag scene and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST really fuelled SLIDERS REBORN. I'm currently finishing up a script featuring Quinn and Mallory and it's basically inspired by the Charles/Professor scene of DOFP. Singer's been an inspiration.

Watching the first X-MEN movie, I'm reminded of the complaints about Bryan Singer clearly not liking the fantasy elements of X-MEN comics, eschewing the yellow spandex, the sci-fi fantasy world building, the hyperstylized action spectacle. It was incredibly ignorant; the costumes needed texture and weight to work in live action and yellow was a flickery, ugly colour on film. The grounded tone of the film made the X-Men feel like they existed in our world as opposed to a superhero universe. The combat had a sense of brutal intimacy and were expressions of the characters. The first X-MEN film also didn't have the money to do widescreen fantasy action; it was made like it was a low-budget TV drama that required imagination and creativity to work past any shortages of resources.

Looking at X-MEN APOCALYPSE, most of what made the first X-MEN special is absent. The budget has rocketed to the point where Cairo can be reduced to rubble and the X-Men battle in a devastated cityscape and the costumes can look comic book crazy now without looking like cheap Halloween costumes -- and the result is that APOCALYPSE, despite some good location shooting and Singer showing normal people react, seems to take place in an exaggerated superhero universe. The limitations that made the first X-MEN film oddly plausible in its absurdities are gone.

I still enjoyed APOCALYPSE plenty, of course, but I would have preferred that Bryan Singer stick to what he's good at -- intimate character pieces. He's not really a crazy action director.

I dunno. Having read quite a bit of your writing, you seem very good at sudden tonal shifts where you can integrate absurdity into your story. I don't know if Bryan Singer is as good at it. The X-MEN films he's helmed along with the FIRST CLASS film were largely grounded in a realistic setting that just happened to have mutants. Any advanced technology existed in relation to mutants. The idea of Magneto raising a chunk of rock into orbit with a breathable atmosphere and converting it into a full fledged space station is something I would find very difficult to justify myself.

That said, Singer wants the next film in space, so you may be onto something.

Mark Millar, in ULTIMATE X-MEN, had Magneto subjected to a mindwipe where he lived as a normal human, a teacher at a school for handicapped children -- and Xavier would visit him once a month to reinforce the telepathic blocks that prevented him from accessing his memories or powers.

The only way I can justify the onscreen events -- Xavier letting Magneto traipse off into the world to have another nervous breakdown of deadly consequence -- is that Xavier let everyone think Magneto went off to his happy ending except Xavier planted a hypnotic suggestion for Magneto to return to the campus later under cover of night, hook himself up to an IV drip and remain sedated and under lock and key in the basement infirmary indefinitely. I have plenty of sympathy for Magneto, but the X-Men are crazy irresponsible to let him off the hook so easily.

I love X-23, the female Wolverine. For anyone not familiar with her -- she's River Tam from FIREFLY. With Wolverine's claws.

I dunno. I'm currently writing an action sequence where the sliders are investigating a series of peculiar suicides. It could come out in September near Suicide Awareness Day. Should any story that inspires negative emotions be barred from release because a story element designed to create conflict and evoke concern might come when somebody is conceivably having a bad day?

That said, comics, more than any medium, seem a little overfond of one particular narrative device -- the fakeout. I think of HEROES as a TV show that reflected comics' worst traits and the fakeout was one of the most overused devices on the show. Sylar is Peter's brother! Hal Jordan is a mass murderer! Daredevil has become a supervillain with an army of bloodthirsty ninjas! Spider-Man has been killed and replaced with Dr. Octopus! Professor X is dead! Cyclops is dead! Wolverine is dead! Peter has become a Sylar-esque serial killer! Nathan is dead! Mohinder is dead! Sylar is dead! Claire is dead! Peter is dead! Captain America is dead! Captain America has lost the super soldier serum and aged into an old man! Captain America is an agent of HYDRA! No, not really, just kidding.

The thing is -- even if Captain America were really turned into a HYDRA agent and this is how the writer is going to keep the character going forward -- some future writer would someday undo it. Marv Wolfman was pretty sure Barry was dead forever, Ron Marz declared that Hal Jordan should rest in peace, Marvel was certain Peter Parker's days as Spider-Man were done -- but the truth is that these characters carry on indefinitely and some nostalgic writer will hit the reset button eventually. It's so inevitable that writers have decided to set up and trigger their own reset buttons.

Any copying started with me. The guy who wrote DC REBIRTH also wrote the GREEN LANTERN arc where he had to undo the once heroic Hal Jordan having become a deranged supervillain who killed the Green Lantern Crops.  He revealed that Hal had been infected by a primordial entity of fear that had been hiding within the Green Lantern central battery and it had corrupted his mind and driven him mad.

I stole the corruption idea and applied it to time as opposed to a character -- and that writer eventually applied his method to time as well in DC REBIRTH. It's a fairly ludicrous concept for anything resembling a grounded, realistic drama, but superheroes aren't really meant to be realistic and the sliders can occasionally be excused from realism as well if the circumstances are right... or if the story's executed in a short prequel novella that only offers a brief summary of the full story so as to avoid burying the reader with the weight of how ridiculous the whole thing is.

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Yay, new book to read! Can't wait to see how it all turns out.

The weird thing is that the legacy aspects of the DC Universe are part of why I never liked the DC Universe that much. While Superman and Batman are great, I dislike the scorched earth approach DC took to the Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, the JLA where DC would frequently kill off the most iconic version of these characters and replace them with a new one -- as though the fans' loyalty were to the codename and the costume. It seems really arrogant to expect FLASH fans to be okay with liking Wally over Barry, GL fans to happily take Kyle Rayner over Hal Jordan, GA fans to accept Connor Hawke over Oliver Queen, BB fans to embrace Jaime Reyes over Ted Kord, etc..

There's also the fact that the previous incarnation of the character would always be written out in a bloody and horrific fashion. Barry melted, Hal went insane, Oliver blew himself up, Ted Kord got shot through the head. There seemed to be a shock value oriented contempt for the characters and DC would eventually engage in some truly absurd methods of resurrecting the dead characters. The idea that Hal Jordan went insane because he was possessed by a yellow fear monster is just stupid, albeit executed with such love and grace and style that I didn't mind.

On one level, I am fascinated by how DC mutilated its characters and then repaired them -- because it inspires me to do the same for Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. On another, it makes me vastly prefer the Marvel approach where their signature characters are not the costumes and codenames for Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil and the X-Men -- their investment is in Peter, Tony, Steve and Charles and they know that's what readers come for. They come for the characters. They are our friends. Even when Peter and Steve and Charles weren't around for some time, their absences were played in a way that deepened what those characters meant.

In contrast, DC blows up its own fictional universe and continuity constantly and it's impossible to feel connected to the characters. Since 2011, Superman has been rebooted as a new Clark Kent and readers followed his adventures -- except the pre-2011 Superman returned, the post-2011 Superman has been killed off and readers are now expected to transfer their loyalty back to the pre-2011 Superman again. Wonder Woman got a new origin in 2010, essentially replacing the character with an alternate universe version, who was promptly deleted with another new origin in 2011. It's schizophrenic and it doesn't serve the characters because they're ripped away and replaced so abruptly and suddenly, it's difficult to connect to them -- especially when DC is so casual about wiping them out and acting like it's just the costume and the codename that matter.

I was wondering if you would recognize the first actress. She was Marina Oswald in that show you extra'd in. I do enjoy dreamcasting -- I imagine the character as looking like actress #1 but with the acting ability and body language of #2.

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I posted in the DC thread about the DC REBIRTH comic -- but just to summarize: the Flash is unstuck in time, erased from existence. In his untethered state, he witnesses historical events and discovers that reality has been altered: the optimistic world he knew has been revised into a darker timeline where past events are now infused with violence, hatred, anger and monstrosity. The Flash battles his way back to reality and learns that this changed existence is the result of a mad scientist's experiments with time and space. The Flash's return restores hope and love to the universe and offers the chance for repair and renewal.

Part 4 of SLIDERS REBORN, which I wrote early last year, is set in 2001, where Quinn describes four years of wonderful adventures with the original sliders until he was caught in the Combine experiment of "The Unstuck Man," which altered history and left Quinn unstuck, witnessing an altered history where Wade and the Professor were dead, home had been invaded and the multiverse was filled with supernatural monsters and paranormal threats. The situation is revealed to be the result of Dr. Geiger's spacetime experiment where Quinn and his doubles were erased, resulting in a corrupted reality and the nightmare version of the life Quinn knew. Quinn battles his way back to reality and is eventually able to restore the original timeline.

A friend remarked, "You're so far ahead of the curve that you're behind it!" Which is to say that superhero comics have clearly been imprinted on my brain, but I've learned all I can from them and should start studying something new for narrative techniques. Maybe opera!

There have been hundreds of stories where Superman murders Lois or Spider-Man is killed stone dead or Daredevil goes insane or where Captain America is turned into a werewolf or a robot or dead -- well, maybe 10 or 20.

This fakeout of Captain America being evil and having been all along merely got published during a slow newsweek. Marvel consistently refused to refute the media presenting Cap and Spidey's deaths as permanent; Joe Quesada even went on Colbert to mourn Steve Rogers' death and present Colbert with Cap's shield.

The DAREDEVIL storyline, SHADOWLAND, had posters where a deranged Matt Murdock grinned murderously at the reader while the text read: THE BIRTH OF THE GREATEST VILLAIN OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE (without any fine print to say that this would all be wrapped up inside four months with Matt back to normal right away). The hype is not the story. The hype should not be reviewed as the equivalent of the story. Of course things will go back to normal; the fun is in seeing how that can happen. Given that the characters can't change permanently, there's nothing wrong with making a meal out of changing them temporarily.

I think my trauma over SLIDERS is part of why I like how all these insane things can happen to superheroes in comics -- the idea that all these mutilating, destructive things can happen to these characters, and they can still come back.

As for Barry Allen, I already wrote about the necessity of bringing him back (and you responded to it!). To copy paste what I wrote:

DC has given no official statements on why they got rid of Wally West and brought back Barry Allen, but the reasoning seems self-evident to me. Wally West was too complicated a character for film and TV.

Wally's origin: Barry Allen is a police scientist who was doused in chemicals struck by lightning that gave him superspeed and then Barry's nephew was struck in a similar accident and became Kid Flash and then Barry died and Wally became the successor to Barry as the third Flash because there was actually a first Flash and who the hell would bother with any of this crap for a TV show or a movie?

All adaptations either used Barry's origin with Wally West's name or just used Barry. DC, realizing that it was only a matter of time before the Flash became a TV show or film, decided to get in line with what would be the most widely seen version of the Flash -- a Flash who is Barry Allen, police scientist. CSI with superpowers. Barry was brought back to life. His absence since 1986 was compressed to a year or two and explained with a cover story of him having been in witness protection.

That comment strikes me, rather alarmingly, as someone reviewing the news coverage of the story rather than the story. As for the fact that this isn't a permanent change -- why would anyone want it to be? Ultimately, characters in comics loop back to where they started; it's a cycle of mythology/marketability.

It's just a question of whether this is a SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN type long-term story where Dr. Octopus controlled Peter's body for 20 months or if it's a SHADOWLAND type story where Daredevil was a cackling supervillain for all of 120 days before it turned out he'd been possessed by a demon.

It's a perfectly acceptable narrative technique to present a radically altered backstory and mission of the character that reveals them to be a traitor to everything they ever represented -- only to reveal that it's part of a ruse. Or that the Red Skull has used the Cosmic Cube to alter Cap's history to transform him from an enemy into an ally. And to follow up with a Captain America from the original timeline entering the story or Cap to reveal his secret plan, etc..

With SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN, fans rioted over Peter Parker being killed off as though Marvel would permanently remove such a popular character from publishing. A year and eight months without Peter Parker was a way to examine his morality and purpose through the absence of both; Marvel's doing something similar with Cap and of course they're not going to give away the full story through interviews.

I see this as an interesting exercise: what if Cap's most positive characteristics were applied to villainy?

I can't believe anyone is taking this Cap has been a HYDRA agent all along plot seriously. It is so obviously a sting operation.

... well. I kind of like it as a story? I guess I've been reading comics so long that this sort of thing doesn't startle me at all anymore and I continue to enjoy seeing it anyway.

I keep seeing SLIDERS resembling superhero comics where I suddenly realized that a confusing plot problem could be addressed by bringing in a guest-character who appeared in one scene of one episode and this character's presence would immediately justify all the weird contortions of the plot.

I enjoyed LoT much in the same way I enjoyed the better episodes of SMALLVILLE and also AGE OF ULTRON and CIVIL WAR -- it wasn't deep, but it was engaging and fun superhero escapist fantasy. As for why it wasn't particularly satisfying -- I suspect it's simply because LoT lacked the strong character work and philosophical depth that elevates a series from functional to exceptional. Most of the characters are in the same place they were at the start of the series.

Mick Rory remains the gruff and not entirely trustworthy teammate despite having spent centuries as Chronos. Leonard Snart remained self-serving without being evil and his sacrifice was hardly unexpected. Ray Palmer remains earnest and brilliant while being utterly incompetent. Professor Stein remains high minded but often arrogant. Jax remains rough but deviously clever. Rip Hunter remains heroic but troubled and manipulative. Kendra remains well-meaning and unsure of her power. Carter Hall remains arrogant and loyal. Sara remains a charismatic former assassin.

A lot of things have happened to them and they've done some things that are a stretch for their characters, but their dialogue and the performances don't really reflect any of it. It's not exactly BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER where Spike went from being a murderous sadist to a hero. Admittedly, all that takes time, but LoT had a lot of significant stuff happen (Chronos, Ray and Kendra's lengthy layover) with little to no real impact. Ray and Mick mention how they were settled down/training with Time Masters, but their dialogue and behaviour are no different from before these events. When characters are the same at the end as they were at the beginning, it feels like their adventures were just filling time.

It reminds me a bit of SMALLVILLE at its worst where Clark caused his mother's miscarriage and became a petty supervillain in Metropolis who did henchman work for a crime boss and lived a life of absurd luxury during which he threatened both Chloe and Lana only for the following week to have him milking cows and working on the student newspaper and exchanging longing looks with Lana like none of it ever happened.

I liked it up to a point. My problem was with Hive's plan to turn the vast majority of humans into mindless drones. I ultimately found that so fanciful that I didn't believe it would actually happen, given that AGENTS OF SHIELD needs to exist in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I also didn't feel the show sold us on the dehumanizing horror of that -- all those SHIELD agents get turned and while the team are angry about it, they were all extras.

So I would have shifted Hive's plan -- where his ability to sway Daisy and others would have become global over anyone with Inhuman potential, and he'd be able to turn people against their families and friends the way he turned Daisy. Then, the show would be threatening a horror we'd already experienced and could fear -- and also, if Hive is swaying people covertly, then this could be conceivably playing out even while the next THOR movie is taking place.

That said, I definitely felt all the character moments and I really liked how, as you said, Lincoln and Hive ended up having a quite, civil conversation as they awaited their fates. The end teaser with Daisy using her powers to super-jump was also stunning.

Singer has partnered with every showrunner on SUPERNATURAL from the creator of the series to Sera Gamble and Jeremy Carver. It's nothing new. Singer did take a slight reduction in responsibilities Season 11 so that he wasn't managing things day to day as much as he used to, but his role wasn't any different. I don't think Singer will be writing much of anything; his credits on SUPERNATURAL for writing were largely when somebody else's script needed to be rewritten, giving him a co-writing credit. As for "Bloodlines," that seemed to be a clear case of too much interference reducing the script to a painful mess rather than any reflection on Dabb himself.

The problem with the CIVIL WAR crossover in comics, in my view -- the Registration Act should have been played consistently as something ambiguous; some heroes are for it, some are against it and the audience is free to choose which side they support. The core CIVIL WAR series by Mark Millar was cautiously non-committal. However, Marvel editorial encouraged every writer writing the tie-ins to use their own opinions. The writers scripting NEW AVENGERS, SPIDER-MAN were largely against Registration and proceeded to portray the Pro-Registration side as the villains. As a result, the readers got the impression that Captain America's team of Secret Avengers were supposed to be the heroes, full stop.

The tie-ins that were Pro-Registration (IRON MAN, FANTASTIC FOUR, SHE-HULK, MS. MARVEL), due to scheduling, came out much later than the Anti-Registration tie-ins and contained the Pro-Registration heroes' justifications -- but the impression that the Pro-Registration side was wrong had become impossible to overturn for the readers who thought the message was that these were the (reluctant) bad guys. As a result, Captain America surrendering to the Pro-Registration side in the CIVIL WAR mini-series came off very awkwardly.

Straczynski seemed to have some sort of breakdown while scripting the CIVIL WAR tie-ins. His work on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was completely out of sync with the CIVIL WAR mini-series. The reason for that was partially due to Straczynski's style and politics; his view is that all governments are inherently untrustworthy and self-serving, so his version of CIVIL WAR wasn't going to be ambiguous over which side was right. The other part of it -- there were some strange miscommunications throughout; Straczynski was given script pages that mistakenly gave him the impression that Anti-Registration heroes would be imprisoned without trial permanently when Millar's pages were meant to present it as a temporary option. Straczynski was told that Iron Man and the Fantastic Four would profit hugely from the government contracts with Registration; he wasn't informed that all those profits were going to relief funds for survivors of superman battles. As a result, he thought the Proi-Registration side was evil.

Straczynski also scripted FANTASTIC FOUR and he visibly failed to explain why Mr. Fantastic would support the Registration Act, having Mr. Fantastic declare that the law was the law and had to be obeyed. Straczynski, after completing this issue, quit FANTASTIC FOUR in mid-storyline, again confessing that he just couldn't figure out why this character would behave in this way. The subsequent writer who completed the story had Mr. Fantastic reveal that he was mathematically predicting future events, and he believed a terrible superhuman disaster would result without the Registration Act. Later tie-ins would also reveal that Tony Stark felt that superheroes may explore and save people, but ultimately, they fight and would eventually fight each other and terrify the populace and that Registration was inevitable, but with Tony's involvement, it could be humane and empowering instead of fascistic and horrific.

CIVIL WAR has been out for two weeks and earned 950 million dollars globally. BATMAN VS SUPERMAN has been out for eight weeks and earned 870 million dollars globally.

I don't think it's hard to see that CIVIL WAR's box office drop is dropping from much higher earnings than BVS. CIVIL WAR probably cost as much as BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN to make and market. There is no way that CIVIL WAR could be reasonably portrayed as anything but a financial success. I also don't think it's hard to see that Warner Bros. would have hoped for CIVIL WAR level success with BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN.

I don't know. As much as I like the shared universe ambition, I'll be the first to declare that shared universes are often a contradictory mess of opposing genres existing in the same space. Even the Marvel Comics universe is kind of a mess with the X-Men hated and feared while the Fantastic Four are loved and adored. AGENTS OF SHIELD, in its first season, seemed like an awkward student fan film rather than being set in the MCU proper while the Netflix material has convinced me that it's the life on the street perspective of the big movies. I agree that a crossover isn't necessary, but AGENTS OF SHIELD really stepped up with WINTER SOLDIER and AGE OF ULTRON, creating the illusion of both fitting into each other well with Coulson's near-season-long secret built into the climax of AGE OF ULTRON -- the terrifying, super-secret weapon was a means of evacuating civilians.

It's probably not as big a deal as it seems, but the CAP3 screenwriters confessing they were totally ignorant of AGENTS OF SHIELD was a huge blow to the sense that it all matters. AGENTS OF SHIELD treated CAP3's registration accords as a minor side detail at best; the tie-in was perfunctory.

**

Tony shouting that Steve didn't deserve the shield and Steve leaving it on the ground next to Tony was a really bittersweet moment as Steve tried to show some measure of grace towards Tony's anger.

So, I did the unthinkable -- I upgraded my iPad Mini 2 from iOS 8.1.3 to 9.3.1. I hadn't planned on it. I liked all my jailbreak tweaks. But there turned out to be a new feature that made upgrading worthwhile for me, and it didn't even come from Apple. Google released a new iOS keyboard app, Gboard, with swipe-typing, and it was only for iOS 9 and up.

Swipe-typing is so convenient and speedy -- I just couldn't see myself doing without it if it were available. I was kind of nervous because my iPad 2 went from being a capable tablet to a lagging mess after a few rounds of upgrades, but after some obsessive Googling indicated that poor iOS 9 performance on the Mini 2 was anomalous, I did the (irreversible) upgrade.

It's good. A few of the animations are a little laggy here and there, but it doesn't affect usage at all. I liked having the jailbreak feature of pattern unlock and miss it. Jailbreaking also allowed a blue light filter, but thankfully, iOS 9 has one installed. However, the occasional pause for animations makes me think that upgrading any further would be pushing my luck when downgrading isn't possible.

**

This final chapter of SLIDERS REBORN keeps giving me pause for thought and I keep wondering if maybe I've gotten overattached to a certain idea. I keep saying that I see the sliders as superhero characters and that the final installment is SLIDERS doing a superhero movie. But -- well, there are certain aspects of superhero films that wouldn't suit the characters at all (like costumes). The main thing I wanted to do -- I didn't want Quinn to ever throw a single punch and to present a version of Quinn Mallory who has become so powerful through his mastery of sliding that he never has to use violence.  But it is *really* difficult to work out situations of physical threat and danger in this fashion and I don't know if I can maintain it. On some level, it is again an instance of personal bias. There was a poster awhile back on this Bboard who kept insisting that Quinn's maturity was best represented through Quinn beating people up and shooting them on a regular basis which made me feel compelled to write a script around rejecting that viewpoint entirely. However, this has put me in a situation where Quinn's pacifism might have become an authorial decision rather than a character decision.