DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 19 of 28)

DC Comics has been releasing a series called DOOMSDAY CLOCK which is arguably the SLIDERS REBORN of the Superman mythology. Actually, I would say that DOOMSDAY CLOCK is SLIDERS REBORN, Part 4, "Reminiscence" where Quinn reflects upon five years of crazy continuity and explains why episodes aired in the wrong order, why the extra sliders and Henry disappeared, why Season 3 had monsters, why the Kromagg Prime backstory made no sense, why the show was stuck on the backlot in Season 5, why Quinn-doubles vanished after Season 4 and, most importantly, why it's 1994 in the Pilot but 1995 in "Summer of Love."

DOOMSDAY CLOCK is fascinating in its blatant metatextualism and a sequel to WATCHMEN, a seminal superhero epic published independently of DC Comics in 1986. Written by comic book visionary Alan Moore, WATCHMEN featured superheroes in a starkly realistic context in contrast to other superhero comics. In WATCHMEN, superheroes are a part of American history and led to America's victory in Vietnam with President Nixon never ousted and most heroes becoming part of the military and part of a global arms race of superhumans leading inevitably to another world war.

Mad Scientists: The most powerful of the WATCHMEN heroes, Dr. Manhattan, is a detached, aloof being of omnipotent, time-altering, reality-warping power devoid of empathy or love; becoming super has completely eroded his humanity. One of the supposed heroes attacks civilians, murdering half of New York City, then claims non-existent aliens were responsible in order to unite all countries and avert WWIII.

Dr. Manhattan elects to leave Earth, tiring of human life and its confusion and disorder. WATCHMEN is a cynical, insistently logical take on superheroes declaring that in a realistic world, superpowers would corrupt any human who had them. It was highly influential and very much why other superhero comics adopted the 'grimdark' in which Zach Snyder labours for not only his DC movies, but the WATCHMEN movie he directed.

Genesis: In 2011, DC rebooted its universe with the New 52 relaunch. Many superheroes got new starts while superheroes who sold well (like Batman and Green Lantern) continued their pre-reboot plots as though nothing had changed. Superman had not been selling well; Superman was rebooted into a more alien version to emphasize his detachment from normal people. Some good stories were told with this Superman, but a few years in, DC editorial decided it had been a mistake to eliminate Superman's marriage.

A LOIS AND CLARK mini-series revealed that the pre-reboot Superman had survived the relaunch; he and Lois were living under false identities in this new universe, avoiding contact or interference with the current Superman, and they'd also produced a son named Jon. The contrast was striking; this extremely human Superman struggling to wrangle his kid and having conflicts with his wife was a lot more fun to read.

The Unstuck Man: In a reality-warping plotline where reality around the Loises and Clarks began to break down, it was revealed that the New 52 Superman and Lois had were not doubles, but fragments of the originals. The story ends with the love between the original Lois and Clark restabilizing reality and they absorb their fragments back into themselves. The pre and post New 52 timelines are reconciled into one reality with the original Lois and Clark having never been absent. Their friends Jimmy and Perry and others now remembered Lois giving birth to Jon and Lois and Clark raising him.

It was inelegant, but it took the sting off deleting either version of Superman. DC had decided to merge their two Loises and Clarks much in the same way Dr. Geiger had combined Jerry O'Connell and Robert Floyd. Long-term fans were placated; new readers weren't that interested, but superhero comics lately have really been research and development for movies and TV shows and for superheroes, sales matter less than in other publishing endeavours.

Roads Taken: Despite the happier situation, Superman and Lois were still unsure: what mysterious force had attempted to sever Superman's connection to humanity? What unknown entity had cut open his timeline to remove the Legion? To kill Jonathan and Martha Kent earlier? To erase his marriage? And why did the reality around them begin to fall apart?

This is also the period where Wally West, the red-haired Flash who was erased from existence, also returned to the DC Universe. Wally warns that some dark force from beyond has been changing the DC Universe, erasing Wally, erasing families, legacies, histories, ripping time itself out of the superheroes' lives, making them angrier, colder, crueller and alone. The man responsible for all this is revealed to be Dr. Manhattan from WATCHMEN.

Revelations: Doomsday Clock delves into what Dr. Manhattan has been doing to the DC Universe. Ever since the events of WATCHMEN, he has been wandering. He has become fascinated by the DC Universe's heroes but found them difficult to relate to and their history of shifting retcons and reboots confusing. He sees that it starts out straightforward enough with the Golden Age Earth where Superman debuted in 1938.

But then there's a second Silver Age Earth where Superman first appeared in 1956 and both Earths' timelines begin to overlap. Then the Crisis moves Superman's origin to 1986. And Dr. Manhattan notes that moving Superman's debut changes the underlying structure of reality: Batman and Wonder Woman always come after Superman with the past rewritten to move Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince to be born later in time.

This confounds Manhattan; the confusing, asynchronous, unchronological nature of events in the DC Universe is troubling and he begins to experiment, wondering if he can make the DC Universe more orderly, more sensible.

A Thousand Deaths: He makes one small change in the DC Universe: he observed the origin story of first Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was a 1940 railway engineer who was caught in a bridge collapse. Alan survived by grabbing a nearby lantern that turned out to have paranormal properties that gave him his powers. Manhattan alters time to move the lantern six inches away. Alan Scott dies, never becomes Green Lantern, never establishes the WWII Justice Society, never creates a legacy of heroism that will later inspire the Legion -- and the ripple effect creates the New 52 version of the superheroes and a Superman who debuts in 2011. This Superman is distant from humanity due to losing Jonathan and Martha at a very young age.

Applied Physics: Manhattan declares that he prefers this detached, aloof Superman, that Manhattan finds him more relatable -- and Manhattan is alarmed when the original Superman is restored. Manhattan realizees that the DC Universe is resisting Manhattan's changes, and that the DC Universe is, in his observation, a DC Metaverse, a central reality of which other universes are branches and reflections. It defends itself. And Superman is the crux of the DC Metaverse.

Manhattan notes that supervillains like the Anti Monitor of the 1986 Crisis or the Monarch of the 1994 Zero Hour situation have altered history to make Superman darker and colder, but Superman's hope and humanity are always restored -- and now Superman has become aware of Dr. Manhattan and is coming for him.

"To this universe of hope, I have become the villain," Manhattan observes. "I am a being of inaction on a collision course with a man of action."

The thing I like about DOOMSDAY CLOCK -- everything it's asserting within the fictional reality of the DCU/DCM -- it's true. It is completely true. The text reflects the reality and writer Geoff Johns has found a way to create a beautiful synchronicity between truth and reality from writers trying to alter Superman's hope and optimism to suit passing trends to WATCHMEN having darkened the DC heroes and the reality itself of the DC heroes now fighting back.

I almost wish I could go back and rewrite SLIDERS REBORN to tap into some of these metatextual techniques. The alterations to SLIDERS continuity detailed in "Reminiscence" (5) are explained as Dr. Geiger's Combine experiment retroactively altering the past, changing four years of happy adventures in alternate histories with the original quartet into the horror show it became by Seasons 3 - 4.

However, the motive for this is non-existent: "Reminiscence" asserts that it was completely accidental on Dr. Geiger's part, the unwitting effect of ripping Quinn Mallory and all of his doubles out of all realities, with Quinns (who are mostly sliders) having entangled themselves in so many timelines that removing him is like taking load bearing walls out of the apartment complex that is reality: it begins to collapse upon itself. I wonder if "Reminiscence" would have gained anything from making the alterations more deliberate and malicious.

Eye of the Storm: The other thing I really like is the awareness that Superman's presence specifically rewrites reality in ways that are still not fully understood. This is something you can only get away with when writing of a cultural icon like Superman. In X-MEN FIRST CLASS and APOCALYPSE, it was ridiculous to see Cyclops, Jean Grey and Angel appearing in the 60s and 80s when they would have either been non-existent or infants in order to be at their twentysomething ages in the 2000-era X-MEN films. Superman arriving to Earth later by two to six decades shouldn't change Batman and Wonder Woman debuting in the 1930s and 1940s, but it does -- and the justification that the DC Metaverse has made Superman its crux makes complete sense because this is SUPERMAN.

The Seer: The other fascinating thing is how Dr. Manhattan, while separated from any real emotion beyond empty and uncaring curiosity and a desire for order, seems to be at the closest he can get to experiencing fear. Dr. Manhattan can see time to beginning and end, but when he looks at the end for himself in the DC Universe, he sees Superman facing him and then nothing with the sense that Superman confronting him will result in some sort of cataclysmic end to time itself. Dr. Manhattan is afraid of Superman.

In contrast, I can't actually imagine any villain -- ever -- being afraid of Quinn. Quinn comes off as incompetent and barely functional and prone to being underestimated by his villains.

DOOMSDAY CLOCK is... wow. I normally wait until a series is complete before expressing anything towards it, even positivity, but wow.

Oh, I forgot to post about SUPERGIRL's Season 4 finale! I liked it.

There was a report that Tom Welling had announced he'd appear on ARROW in Season 8 ("I will be on ARROW next season") immediately followed by a report where Tom seemed confused and thought ARROW had ended with Season 7. Bizarre. Now there are clickbait articles claiming Welling will play Batman but merely show fan art of Welland in Ben Affleck's suit.

Still, it seems worth getting into. I'd love to see Tom Welling in anything! I can't really see him playing Superman as Tyler Hoechlin has that job, but I could see him playing a police officer or a friend. I can't see him playing Batman. The role calls for a certain cultured, moderately elitist, sharp intelligence and that's just not in Welling's wheelhouse. Welling is best playing characters of humble, earnest decency who give freely and without thought; he convinces you of his superhuman goodness. Welling's characters are not characters of calculating thought or defined by brainpower. Instead, Welling gives the sense that doing the right at personal cost is his natural instinct, his default setting, an immediate reflex that requires no thought whatsoever.

I guess I'd have him play Apollo. Apollo is from the Wildstorm comics, a company that presented analogue versions of DC characters in their comics WILDCATS, STORMWATCH and THE AUTHORITY. They had multiple variations on Superman: Mr. Majestic was a regal, royal Superman; Spartan was a robot and an AI Superman and Apollo was Superman as a social justice activist (freeing children from shoe factories) and he was gay and dating Wildstorm's gay version of Batman (the Midnighter). Yeah! I'd have Tom Welling play his best role, Superman -- but gay. It'd be a wonderful step forward for representation. Not as awesome as actually hiring a gay actor, but it's Tom Welling and Tom Welling is only slightly less awesome.

My niece wishes to inform me that it'd preferable for gay actors to play gay roles so that when young people who are gay look up the actors playing gay characters, they feel the actors represent the fans who need them. Oh, alright. Matt Dallas can play Apollo. Tom Welling should play Dick Grayson. My niece informs me that this is acceptable.

Well, the Kingdom Come Superman was used as a kind of stand-in for the original golden age Earth 2 Superman in the JSA comics; and the older Superman played a significant role in Crisis.  Routh, through his connection to the Christopher Reeve continuity, is probably the closest they can get to a golden age Superman at the moment.   Even Dean Cain beats out Welling as an older Superman.

Additional news coming out says they have another Arrowverse series in development for next season, but won’t say what hero:

https://deadline.com/2019/08/the-cw-plo … 202660964/

There’s been a long rumor of CW wanting to do a Superman series with Tyler Hoechlin, but I would like to see them give something else a chance.  They should just bite the bullet and do a Green Lantern series.  The Kyle Rayner era was largely earth bound at its start (since as the last Green Lantern he had no one to answer to).  Kyle’s story also hits a lot of social notes CW and Berlanti would like - Kyle is Hispanic; he had lesbian neighbors; he frequented Radu’s coffee shop (an immigrant).

I think they’ve all but said Diggle is the John Stewart Green Lantern, and they would likely keep it in-house with their established actors and continuity; but I would rather see Kyle.  Kyle’s never had a real chance in the spotlight where John already had years in the Justice League cartoon.

I love Brandon Routh, but I don't know if I can wrap my head around him playing Superman when we have Tyler Hoechlin doing a great job.

Jared Padelecki would, of course, be a splendid Dick Grayson.

**

I really loved the last 3 - 4 episodes of SUPERGIRL in its fourth season. It was a spectacular, heartfelt fantasy with truly troubling threats: a criminal presidency using racial tensions and false threats of border security to consolidate power and engage in tyranny with impunity. A deranged fearmonger who injects himself with a what's essentially a steroid form of chemical hatred.

Then we have a Supergirl who discovers that her cape and tights are a liability, her superstrength and superspeed are useless against prejudice and bigotry masquerading as safety and protection, her values a political self-destruct in this climate of human-first activisms. Supergirl takes on everything we're facing and ends up (mostly) dead.

And then it turns around. Supergirl is powerless. Kara Danvers isn't; her journalism powers turn the tide and she exposes the president and sees him marched out of the White House in handcuffs. Ben Lockwood's life as a social justice activist is exposed too: he is a pawn whose paranoia and fear have been exploited to create a figurehead to prop up Lex Luthor and Lockwood ends up overdosing on chemicalized hate and explodes.

The world of SUPERGIRL was so vivid and true and beautiful and comforting that I didn't want to write about it for so long afterwards because it broke my heart to think that it was all make believe and our world doesn't have a Kara Danvers.

I think Shipp represents an older Barry’s appearance whether he’s playing Barry’s father or an alternate Barry.

My niece, despite having never seen ARROW, wondered how it would handle Season 8 without Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity. My response: I think Season 7 has done a good job of handling an unfortunate situation and I think Rickards, having fulfilled the six year contract she signed after her Season 1 guest appearances, has completed her obligations.

Season 7's flash forwards have established Felicity's life from post-Season 7 right up to Season 27 of ARROW. Even if we don't see her in Season 8, we know why she and Oliver are apart. We know where Felicity is. We know what she's doing. We know how her story on the show ends. We know that she and Oliver will be reunited and if we don't see it on camera, we know it will happen shortly after the series concludes. Knowing Felicity's whereabouts and activities during Season 8 isn't the same as having Felicity for Season 8, but the writers have made the best of it.

**

DC Co-Publisher Jim Lee revealed recently that DC Comics' digital sales are flat. That people love DC characters on TV and in film, but they aren't buying comic books digitally (and print sales are continuing to decline). I've said this before: I used to think I was a comic book fan, but I'm not. I read comics because it was the only place to find superheroes.

With superheroes in the cineplex and on streaming services, it doesn't make sense to spend $5 American on one issue of an a SUPERMAN or an X-MEN comic.

The comic book industry is really the superhero comic book industry, a genre that dominates the market, and the superhero comic book industry is failing to justify its existence. HOUSE OF X #1 cost $6 and each subsequent issue costs $5! To follow the X-MEN, SPIDER-MAN and AVENGERS line, you have to spend about $100 a month on 20 comic books that you could read in an hour.

Jim Lee wondered how he might drive more people to buy monthly comics which, to me, is like wondering how to convince more people to buy film cameras or visit Blockbuster to rent VHS cassettes. Over time, these financial models offered terrible value to the customer. Comics offer terrible value for the money. The prices for digital are the same as the prices for print versions.

If comics are to continue as anything beyond research and development for TV and film projects, the monthly 20 page pamphlet format is unworkable. The hackwork of the 1960s that filled these pages with slapdash content will no longer serve. The cost of hiring writers and artists at better rates to produce better 20 page pamphlets has led to a format that is unaffordable for potential readers.

I think the monthly format is no longer workable whether it's in print or digital. A better format might be a quarterly magazine or graphic novel released digitally and in a prestige print format that is the equivalent of the trade paperback collections. In addition, comic books have become so expensive for a consistently dwindling superhero audience: the medium desperately needs to branch out to a wide range of genres. It'd be ridiculous to go to the movies and only ever find medical dramas. Comics need to wean themselves off this overdependence upon superheroes.

If I wanted to save comics, I'd probably look at genres and demographics that are deeply underserved by film and TV. Right now, it's slacker comedies, romcoms, monsters and spoofs. And then I'd aim to produce product that can function in this quarterly or bi-annual format at a price point that offers a better value proposition to the reader.

Spending $5 on a 20 page pamphlet is insane; spending $20 - $30 on a 250 page magazine might make more sense. And the superhero magazines should be written so that casual readers can appreciate what's going on the way most cineplex goers could easily understand AGE OF ULTRON whether they'd seen the previous films or not.

For superheroes, it would be very hard to leave the monthly market, but that market isn't really working anyway. I wonder if the shift could happen gradually. It would require some upfront investment where as the monthly AMAZING SPIDER-MAN and SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN are being produced, different teams produce the quarterly magazine content for the following year.

Once the superhero model shifts to the titles receiving four to five 300 page magazines every year instead of one a month, there will likely be a protest that without a monthly supply of new product, the existing market will collapse. While that will happen regardless, DC and Marvel might attempt prequel/interquel material in the same way STAR TREK novels and comics offer prequels and sequels to the TV shows and movies. The magazines should be aimed at a mainstream audience; AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2020, Volume 2 should work for people who might never have read the comic before.

However, between each of the four volumes, you could have SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, a monthly pamphlet that might offer additional setup for plot points in the quarterly or could tell stories set in the past. These would be the more intricate, Netflix-series style stories while the quarterlies show the big events.

Or, going back to STAR TREK, the quarterlies would be like STAR TREK (2008), INTO DARKNESS and STAR BEYOND while the monthlies would be like the COUNTDOWN prequels that explained how the TNG cast were involved in the Romulus crisis and why Khan went from looking like Ricardo Montalban to Benedict Cumberbatch. (I don't think BEYOND got any tie-ins.)

Diehard fans who want monthly comics will appreciate extra tie-in content and see the connections with the quarterlies; casual readers need not buy them to appreciate the quarterly magazines. I suspect that as the monthly market fades away, these tie-ins can dissipate as well.

And ideally, the tentpole quarterlies wouldn't just be superheroes.

The one thing that makes me unsure about Tom Welling playing Superman in an ARROWVERSE return -- Tom doesn't look like SMALLVILLE's Clark Kent anymore. He looks more like John Winchester. See here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/misc.php?actio … mp;preview

Tom has aged. The truth is, he probably aged this much on SMALLVILLE over 10 seasons, but he took certain measures to keep playing a young man. He worked out intensely except for the summer between Season 4 and Season 5 when he returned to the fall production overweight after what he called "a summer of gluttony" where the pressure of Seasons 1 - 4 had him spend the summer eating everything in sight and not exercising. He was constantly shaving and had heavy makeup to keep a smooth complexion, he was likely dying his hair, he had to have been on a specific diet and exercise regimen to have a muscled yet sufficiently narrow physique, he was most likely deliberately dehydrated for shirtless scenes. He likely had a dermatologist giving him daily facial treatments. The only reason to do any of that craziness is to look like a CW superhero.

Since then, Tom has stepped away from such roles. He has widened at the midsection. His hair has silvered. His face is weathered. He's lost the specific musculature he had during SMALLVILLE. For SMALLVILLE, he kept himself looking 25 for 10 years. He's now allowing himself to look 42. He doesn't look like a superhero anymore and I'm not sure if he would want to or if he should even be asked to. Surely Mr. Welling has done his time and given us everything he could (except a final shot of him in the costume which wasn't bright, but Welling's creative instincts for shepherding the SMALLVILLE could be needlessly fundamentalistic at times).

He's said himself that he has aged (because he let himself) and he doesn't know if it would be good for fans to see him as he is now playing Clark Kent. If Tom were still playing his SMALLVILLE role today and the show hadn't ended with Season 10, I can't see him staying 25, but I also don't think he would look the way he does now. Likely, he'd have the same widened frame but with muscle instead of fat and he'd have the smooth complexion he had before. And that might be a bit much to have him affect for a guest-appearance. I say let Tom Welling drink beer and eat corndogs in peace.

I don't know what their plan is for Kingdom Come Superman, but if they had him be an older Superman, they could probably have him be an older Superman who's appropriately aged and "widened"

Maybe as he ages, his Kryptonian metabolism slows down.  Maybe Clark's more of a cerebral hero and less of a "fly/run off to save everyone" kind of person.  You could even have him gain weight as the result of some sort of mental manipulation.  They had a heavy Thor in "Endgame" and a fatter/clumsier older Spider-Man in "Into the Spiderverse"  Maybe they could find a way to make that work.

If I were writing it, I'd make it work for Welling like Welling made it work for Rosenbaum in the series finale.  If Tom doesn't want to work out or look 25, that's fine.  We'll write around it.  Even if that means making his role a cameo or filming him in darkness or whatever.  But if they're going to do Crisis on Infinite Earths, I think Welling needs to be involved.  And while it'd be great to have him involved as (insert character), I think he needs to be Clark Kent.

Yeah, I don't want to make Tom work out if he doesn't want to.  I don't want him to suffer for the Arrowverse.

What's great about this situation is that I think you can make it work however you want.  If Welling is the only one returning from the Smallville universe, you can say that Clark has been Superman for 200 years.  He's gotten over losing Lois and Jimmy and Perry and everyone because he understands that it's his burden to carry.  That he might look like he's in his 40s, but his Kryptonian genes keep him looking middle aged...but his metabolism is finally starting to slow down.  Despite that, he's still as fast and strong as he's ever been.

Or you can have Welling's Superman tell Hoechlin's Superman to watch out for the cheeseburgers.

It doesn't really matter to me.  If Superman can live for hundreds of years, maybe his early 20s-30s are simply the tween years for humans where everyone is skinny.  And that now that he's (whatever age you want him to be), he just doesn't look like a Greek God anymore.  Which is fine.

People saw Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair, and they still saw him as Superman.  Tom can bald and gain weight all he want, and I'll still see him as Clark Kent.

Exactly - I would think, at some point, Clark wouldn't look 25 either.  Since Smallville could exists in our past, it could also exist in the Arrowverse's past.  And depending on how far back you want to put it, you could place Clark in that time period.  Whatever age a middle aged superpowered Kryptonian is.

And, again, if you put Clark in a time far in Smallville's future, you eliminate any future need for a crossover.  The Smallville universe went on, everyone lived full, happy lives, the comics exist, etc....but now they're all gone.  So no need to bother Michael Rosenbaum or Kristen Kruek or Justin Hartley or bother with the tragedies surrounding the show.

Tom Welling's Clark is the only one who still exists.

I think that's fine.  Erica is probably one of the few Smallville actors who'd easily come back (since she's already been back )

I once wrote a long essay on why Routh is my favourite part of LEGENDS which is here:
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7938#p7938

To sum up, Routh was very stiff and wooden on ARROW, continuing a lengthy run of stiff and wooden performances in DYLAN DOG, SCOTT PILGRIM, DYLAN DOG, CHUCK and others. But on LEGENDS, he came out of the depression he'd been after Henry Cavill replaced him as Superman. His performances became impassioned and heartfelt, Ray Palmer became a joy and I'm sad that Brandon Routh is leaving.

It looks like he didn't ask to be written out. I'm not sure WHY the show would write out what has been a strong and consistent asset. However, if Routh is moving on, I would really like to see Routh perform a lead role again. One of LEGENDS' ongoing jokes, intentional or not, is that Ray Palmer looks like a leading man but clearly does not have what it takes to lead his own show.

Ray's initial hypercomptence on ARROW gave way to a staggering ineptitude on LEGENDS where he couldn't control his Atom suit, was easily outwitted by villains and was in some ways a liability to the Legends. Strangely, this turned Ray from the dimensionless mannequin of ARROW into a fully defined person and Routh went from being a somewhat bland figure of unthreatening masculinity to a real actor.

On LEGENDS, Ray is not the leading man type; he just looks like one, but he is completely dependent on Sarah to direct him, for Nate to support him emotionally and fraternally, for Rory to muscle through resistance and for whoever happens to be around to run interference for him while Ray supplies improvisation, perseverence and scientific brilliance. Deliberately or not, it reflects how Routh failed as a leading man and has at this point functioned best within the LEGENDS ensemble. Within LEGENDS, Routh has really blossomed as an actor.

He's gotten so good as an actor now that if he's to leave LEGENDS, I would really like to see him take on another leading role again. Someone unlike Ray Palmer but who can make use of Routh's ability to go from morose to hyper. I'd like to see Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford headline a reboot of the TV show REMINGTON STEELE. I've never seen this show, but I like the premise:

It could happen.

Anticipation!

I love Supergirl's new costume and I am relieved that the Flash is getting his chinstrap back. That alone would have elevated every episode of the previous season of THE FLASH from an average of 6 out of 10 to a 6.125 out of 10.

YES!

I don't care if Tom looks his age, looks his weight, or looks nothing like Clark Kent.  The fact that he's coming back at all is a huge gift to the fans.  This is how it needs to be.

Yeah I'm not sure his motivations.  Whether he's doing it because the CW found enough money to make it work.  Or if he was worn down by Guggenheim and Stephen Amell and anyone else who kept bothering him about it.  Or if he knew that he'd never hear the end of it if he didn't.

I'm hoping he just realized that he'd make millions of people, like myself, happy by giving it one more go.  And if that was his reason, I'm willing to write around however he wants.  Because I'll appreciate it for the gift it is

I'm reminded of how I felt when it was confirmed that Michael Rosenbaum was coming back for the finale of Smallville.  It didn't matter that he refused to shave his head again.  It was just nice to have one more Clark/Lex scene.

Erica Durance also on board to reprise Lois Lane:

https://tvline.com/2019/09/20/erica-dur … mallville/

It would actually be a wink at the original comics story.

When Crisis was released, the monthly titles that were tied in had a special masthead stating “Special Crisis Crossover”:

Some were legitimate crossovers that gave an insight or continuation to the story in the main event series.  But some of crossovers (like the one above) simply featured one panel of characters looking up at the red sky and wondering what was going on.  Collectors (who felt tricked into buying those issues) came to call these “Red Skies issues” of the crossover because that was the only relation to Crisis - red skies.

So, could we be getting all this hype just to have a red skies cameo?  Well, it would be true to the original comics release (including the resentment felt by some of the viewers).

Anyone want to place bets on Rosenbaum changing his mind half a week before filming and showing up for two days of filming which translates to two scenes and some second unit b-roll? I bet against that last time and lost.

For me, they’ve got to give these cameos a little more than a non-speaking 5 second clip.  In some cases (like Kevin Conroy), a speaking part is even needed - many wouldn’t recognize him otherwise.

And who doesn’t want Burt Ward to look up at the red skies and at least say “Holy sh...” before his words get cut off.

And looks like the new DC show hinted at is just a spin-off of Arrow.  Guess they could call it Arrow Beyond:

https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/arrow- … 203347438/

It’s okay, I guess.  I had hoped they would at least give us a different family of characters (like a Question series featuring the Charlton heroes).

Rosenbaum has to be exaggerating slightly. There is absolutely no way a production company could offer "no money"; the actor's union requires a base level salary no matter what. The pay probably wasn't specified which pissed Rosenbaum off. It makes a degree of sense, however, that the production would not divulge story details until the actor was locked in with an NDA.

It could be that production didn't know if they could come up with a role for Rosenbaum when they're already juggling a lot, but then they found one at the last minute. In addition, they weren't able to speak to him directly; they went through his agent as Rosenbaum was unavailable for a direct meeting and communication can often get garbled. People are only human and there's no need to assume malice or even incompetence as much as people being rushed, distracted and busy. That's how the very talented, very gifted Season 10 SMALLVILLE writers forgot whether or not Clark was wearing glasses.

When SMALLVILLE's final season was airing, I kept saying that Michael Rosenbaum wasn't essential to the finale; they could use Lucas Grabeel who played the young Lex in flashbacks and as a clone. Slider_Quinn21 said that it would never be satisfying for the Pilot to have started with Jerry O'Connell versus Jerry O'Connell and for the finale to feature Zoe McLellan versus Robert Floyd -- I mean, for the Pilot to have started with Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum and for "Finale" to end with Tom Welling and Lucas Grabeel.

Then the finale came and it had Michael Rosenbaum for two scenes and some footage of him as President and no Lucas Grabeel at all. I grumbled that Grabeel should have played Lex throughout the episode but then aged/morphed into Rosenbaum for those two scenes and Slider_Quinn21 asked if I were Grabeel's agent. I later found out: the plan had been to use Grabeel for every Lex scene and then pull a Season 7 shot of Rosenbaum's face and graft it onto Grabeel to show the young Lex growing into the adult version.

If Rosenbaum came back, they would have Grabeel age into the adult Lex earlier. But the finale lost Grabeel when he got a regular role on SWITCHED AT BIRTH and then got Rosenbaum but only for two scenes. Anyway. Perhaps it's time to revive the campaign and have Lucas Grabeel play Lex in CRISIS.

But honestly -- I cannot even wrap my head around Superman being played by Tyler Hoechlin AND Brandon Routh AND Tom Welling while having Lois played by Bitsie Tulloch AND Erica Durance and to have Routh playing Ray Palmer AND Superman. There was a certain TV logic to John Wesley Shipp playing Grant Gustin's father and also playing the older Barry Allen of Earth 90; Barry will look like Gustin when young and like Shipp when middle aged. But why the hell would a double of Clark Kent have Hoechlin's face while another has Routh's and another has Welling's?

Why does Erica Durance's Lois Lane share a face with Clark Kent's aunt, Alura? Ray Palmer noted in "Invasion!" that Kara Zor-El (Melissa Benoist) looked like his cousin, but I suspect this may be one of those things best not thought about such as why no one ever seems to hand over money for coffee at Jitters and Central City's citizens never panic over seeing Sherloque wandering the streets with the face of self-confessed murderer Harrison Well or how Oliver is paying rent when he lost his company.

Maybe I'll just have to dismiss the strangeness here or ask Temporal Flux to explain it to me.

Or take the Guardian world: the earth spinning faster means that days are shorter, so unless they somehow do everything -- *everything* -- faster, people on this world would never have had the time to cram as much life in one day as their doubles did on earth prime.

That said, when you say that no doubles would ever look alike, I think in some cases it wouldn't be true. I mean yeah in the worlds you mentionned it doesn't work, because something in their past is fundamentally different from earth prime's. But the way I make sense of the Sliders multiverse is more like a branching tree, with points of divergence (which IINM is more or less what the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is about). So the relative closeness of two worlds in Sliders would have to do with when their points of divergence happened: the longer ago, the more different the two worlds. It's a lot like evolution actually: the older their last common ancestor, the more different two species are.

So to take your example, if the point of divergence of the two worlds occured after fertilization, Quinn and his double would look a lot alike

This point-of-divergence interpretation fits nicely with what you said about neighborhoods: maybe there's something in the very nature of sliding that makes your landing in a recent-divergence world way more likely.

In the comics, they did a quasi-sequel to Crisis called Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time.  The idea was that this time various time lines were being destroyed (which is not a firm distinction from parallel worlds, in my opinion); and as time collapsed, the various histories began to overlap.

The comics visually represented this by having each character presented in their original art style from that period:

This is kind of what’s happening with the actors in the Arrowverse shows.  The comics didn’t try to explain why the Batmen looked different; they just put it out there, let those different personalities interact and fans just took it as a neat little nod to the history they knew or a pointer to check out things they hadn’t seen before.

But from a dimensional perspective as is currently theorized, we perceive reality different depending on what dimension we’re looking at it through (dimensions still denoted as a way of measurement and not a metaphysical concept as many often take it).

We live in the 3rd dimension of solid objects with length, width and height.  We master that.

We can perceive the 4th dimension of time but only in a limited, one way manner.  Travel or perspectives from the 4th dimension are Avengers: Endgame logic.  You can change whatever you want in the past, but the future you return to will always be the one you left.  You’re on one track - if you want to see that alternate future, you’re taking the long way.

The 5th dimension is alternate timelines.  This is Back to the Future.  You change something in the past; and when you return to the future, you’re now on the new timeline and don’t get to go back to the old timeline.

The 6th dimension is parallel probabilities.  For this, you don’t need time travel or any effort to make alternate time lines; you simply walk from one to the other.  These alternate realities will be things that look familiar.

The 7th dimension moves us into parallel possibilities.  The laws of physics begin to break down from what we understand.  You start seeing things that don’t make as much sense to you, but there is still some sense of things you do understand.  This begins to move us into areas of magic and folklore the further into the 7th dimension you go.

The progression on Sliders was showing us just how lost they became as time passed.  Like someone walking away from their house, they are at first going to see things and landmarks they recognize.  But the further out they go, they are exposed to things they never expected or even believed existed.

I believe what caused the Sliders to become so startlingly lost in season three started with Logan swapping out parts on the timer for less reliable technology (Double Cross was meant to be the first episode of season three).  The Sliders were pushed further toward the edges of the 6th dimension dipping into the 7th when they swapped to the Egyptian timer and it’s technology.  The Sliders were pushed even further toward the 7th dimension when they began to follow the path blazed by the more powerful Rickman timer.

So this is where I would put the actors playing dual roles in the Arrowverse Crisis. Characters like the Brandon Routh Superman are coming from the far side of the multiverse where realities start to bleed into the 7th dimension where things start to not make sense.  As the antimatter wave  progresses consuming the multiverse, it’s going to flush out these oddball refugees of alternate realities that are retreating toward Earth 1 (or at least that’s how I would handle it).  But these characters will be those that the Arrowverse characters would have never interacted with but for the collapse of the multiverse forcing it - the characters were simply too far apart until the multiverse began to “shrink”.

Incidentally, by our modern theories Mxyzptlk would most likely be from the 10th dimension.  However, he was established as being from the 5th dimension so many decades ago that they are unlikely to ever change it.

And now the old Birds of Prey tv series getting pulled in:

https://tvline.com/2019/09/26/birds-of- … -huntress/

And it would be pretty easy to get Rachel Skarsten to reprise her Black Canary.  Skarsten is already starring on Batwoman as the main villain.

Was Birds of Prey worth watching?  I've never seen anything other than the opening sequence with Batman and Joker.

Is Kate Bosworth going to be Lois to Routh's Superman... ?

**

It's hard for me to say whether BIRDS OF PREY is worth your time. I eagerly bought the DVD when it first came out and watched all of it happily with my niece, but...

IB: "Ooooh! I love watching Ashley Scott leap across rooftops! Amazing."

LAUREN: "That is not even Ashley Scott; that's some shitty computer generated animation and it looks like a PS2 graphic. Oh my God, they used that same computer generated shot in the LAST EPISODE!"

IB: "I wish you wouldn't overanalyze it so."

LAUREN: "Is that building supposed to be on fire? Those flames look like pixelated orange tissue paper!"

IB: "Lauren! Why can't you see the appeal of this?"

LAUREN: "WHAT appeal?"

IB: "We are watching 13 episodes featuring the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, the former Batgirl and the offspring of Black Canary fighting crime in hand to hand combat!"

LAUREN: "Oh, right -- that dark haired girl is Catwoman's spawn. I forgot, they only mention it EVERY OTHER SCENE and IN THE CREDITS."

IB: "I'm probably overexplaining this. The women are superheroes and the villains are the people they beat up! I'm still probably overexplaining this. Women! Punching! Evil!"

LAUREN: "The ENTIRE SHOW is overexplained and underbudgeted. They can't even afford to buy stock footage of generic cities!"

IB: "But don't Ashley Scott and Dina Meyer have amazing chemistry as Huntress and Batgirl?"

LAUREN: "Ashley Scott can't even act!"

IB: "But she... inhabits! She personifies! I just love low budget 90s shows with female leads battling supervillains. They're not for everyone."

LAUREN: "I can't take another episode of this. You're only watching this because you like watching cute girls; we might as well be watching BAYWATCH."

IB: "I've never seen BAYWATCH, but if it has Batman's hellraising offspring fighting crime, I'd check it out."

Hans Tobeason, one of BIRDS OF PREY producers, did a lengthy Q&A with the fans after the cancellation where he didn't seem very happy with the show. https://web.archive.org/web/20070902105 … eadid=4052

Bitsie Tulloch posted on her instagram a picture of her and Tyler Hoechlin on the set of the old Smallville Kent farm.  No Erica Durance in the picture.

That seems to imply that there's a scene that they're in together, and maybe it's a scene with no Erica Durance Lois.  Does that mean there's a chance that Welling could be in more than one scene?  Maybe even have a legit part?  That'd be awesome.

Haha, what's the easiest way for me to purchase them?

I watched the premieres of Supergirl and Batwoman.  I'm confident that Informant would've continued to hate Supergirl, which continues to be the preachiest of the Arrowverse shows.  I thought the premiere was fine - I thought either show might reference Crisis in one way or another, but I guess Batwoman is technically a prequel?  I wonder how it will catch up to the present day.  I also wonder if the show will ever have Bruce show up.  Or whether or not there's a Dick Grayson or a Jason Todd or a Bat-Family of any kind.  Or Commissioner Gordon.  Or Alfred.

FLASH opened Season 6 well with the return of the chinstrap to the Flash's suit. The giant head look was very awkward in Season 5 and I'm relieved that an absurd design choice has been amended. What took them so long?

Despite the misfire of the Season 5 Nora, I thought the premiere did a great job of playing Nora's loss for grief and balancing it with a new season of threats and dangers. Cecile pointing out to Iris that she can't skip over the grief of losing a daughter was quite beautiful.

The use of the FLASH GORDON song rankled much in the same way the use of other songs in THE FLASH's musical episode irked Informant. Once again, a song made for a completely different narrative and for a completely different character has been foolishly repurposed to content that doesn't offer the right fit.

**

In contrast, SUPERGIRL using the song "Supermassive Black Hole" was oddly fitting in its season premiere. I continue to adore SUPERGIRL and Informant had, in his inappropriate gatekeeping form of criticism, certain grains of truth. SUPERGIRL assumed a direct corellation between immigrants to the United States in our world and alien immigrants arriving on Earth except SUPERGIRL's immigrants could read minds and blow up buildings with a hard stare. SUPERGIRL would have been better off exploring its fictional issues and letting the audience make the connections or fail to.

Temporal Flux once noted that shows like THE TWILIGHT ZONE (or SLIDERS) would tell stories about the forces of prejudice and fear rather than transplanting "Nevertheless, she persisted" into a script and calling it a day. Because these shows focused on human nature and allegory instead of photocopying catchphrases from reality, the stories had greater meaning and timelessness. I would merely argue that ripping material from the headlines is just as valid as indirect allegory and metaphor -- it isn't as universal and it certainly won't age well, but it makes sense for SUPERGIRL given the greater visibility of gender inequality in our world today. But it puts SUPERGIRL is in an awkward place with Season 5: it wants to continue criticizing the Trump administration while preserving the victory over President Baker in Season 4.

The situation is confusing: Catco's new owner sees that Kara Danvers TOOK DOWN THE PRESIDENT with an article last year -- and wants to make sure Catco doesn't engage in any of the journalism that made it a contender. The new owner is immediately adversarial towards the staff who inexplicably signed non-compete agreements with Catco during Lena Luthor's stewardship.

Obviously, Lena deliberately sold Catco to someone whom she knew would be hostile towards it specifically to antagonize Kara. But why would anyone take a job that would prevent them from finding other work in the event of layoffs, firing or resignation? Why would Catco staff, riding the high of TAKING DOWN THE PRESIDENT, agree to such an absurd contract? And legally, it's not remotely enforceable. Once again, this is relevant to journalism where investigative reporting is proving unaffordable and reporters are competing with clickbait farms.

However, there is a lot of strain to force real-world dilemmas into a superhero reality or even a TV reality when in the fictional universe of SUPERGIRL, it's hard to believe such problems would exist.

But despite that, SUPERGIRL is doing a great job of bringing Kara's most rewarding friendship from and center, presenting it with importance and gravity, and exploring Lena's dark side beautifully.

**

I really liked BATWOMAN and thought, despite the clumsy use of voiceover to speed through exposition, it was effective and sets up a great first season. Ruby Rose embodies Kate Kane's defiance, superiority and feelings of inadequacy well and she performs the sardonic lines and the fight scenes beautifully. She's just as capable as Ashley Scott with the physicality but has the acting skill for the characterization as well. I really enjoyed it, but I did notice that BATWOMAN is clearly edging around a lack of access to specific Batman rights.

Specifically, BATWOMAN doesn't seem to have dispensation to use Batman, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon or even Alfred. Much like BIRDS OF PREY, BATWOMAN seems to have a fraction of the TV rights to unused segments of the Batman license. As a result, BATWOMAN is using characters and concepts that even within the comics were seen as throwaway discards, much like Batwoman herself.

The Batwoman that Ruby Rose plays made her comic book debut in 2006 under strange circumstances. DC had hired prominent LGBTQ writer Devin K. Grayson to develop a BATWOMAN title with a lesbian lead named Kate Kane -- but when the media caught wind of DC premiering a gay female lead, the company responded with a frenzied denial that there was any BATWOMAN title in the works. This was news to Grayson who was in the middle of writing BATWOMAN #2 and she says that DC never contacted her to tell her to stop working and actually never contacted her again and she moved into the video game industry.

Batwoman appeared in various backup stories and was introduced as Kate Kane, a former girlfriend of Renee Montoya. However, Batwoman only truly came into focus in 2009 when she became the lead of DETECTIVE COMICS from #854 - #863 as written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by the astonishing JH Williams III whose amazing sense of design and artistry gave Kate Kane vivid definition. Williams III's work permeates the BATWOMAN live action rendition even though as of the premiere, Kate has get to gain the vivid red wig and crimson insignia. Kate's backstory is largely the same as the TV show, and this led into 2010's BATWOMAN series written by Williams III and co-writer W. Haden Blackman.

BATWOMAN delved deeper into exploring the conflict between Batwoman and the mysterious origin of her archenemy Alice, an origin that was clearly intrinsic to Kate Kane's own origin story. Whatever Alice's secret, it was clearly Kate's secret as well and one Kate was trying to uncover.

In addition, Kate's new girlfriend was Maggie Sawyer (Alex's girlfriend from Season 2 of SUPERGIRL).

However, Williams III and Blackman abruptly quit the book with #24 and on a cliffhanger with Kate in mortal peril. They had submitted a plot for Kate and Maggie to be married. DC approved it -- but then unapproved it. Outraged that a scripted and partially drawn story was now unapproved and that the marriage was now prevented after being agreed upon, Williams III and Blackman refused to continue writing the title.

#25 was written by a new writer, Marc Andreyko, who didn't address the cliffhanger and wouldn't until BATWOMAN ANNUAL #1 which resolved the immediate threat to Kate's life from #24. However, the Alice arc by Williams III and Blackman had been structured to gradually reveal her origin story, the reasons for her psychosis, her connection to Kate Kane, her reasons for antagonizing her -- and the two writers took those stories with them when they left.

Alice never received her origin or a climax to her opening arc. Her story was left unfinished much in the same way Marc Scott Zicree's Kromagg arc was left incomplete and unaddressed.

Another castoff element that BATWOMAN has received: Luke Fox. In the comic book BATWING, Bruce Wayne was shown to be franchising Batman all over the world. BATWING was about the Batman of Central Africa, a police officer named David Zavimbe who took on the name Batwing. Despite some excellent writing from Judd Winick, BATWING sold poorly and in BATWING #19, new writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray abruptly took over, shut down the plotlines of #1 - 18, had David quit -- and the plot switched to the newly introduced Luke Fox, son of Lucius Fox, a boxer who took over the role of Batwing.

From #19 - 34, BATWING was now set in Gotham City with a character who had some (tenuous) connection to the Bat-Family while completely discarding the Central Africa setting. While the retool was understandable, it was also jarring and the series only lasted another 16 issues before cancellation. But Luke Fox has staggered into BATWOMAN, presumably because the Alfred character is being withheld from the CW.

Anyway. I look forward to seeing Dick Grayson's Aunt Harriet instead of Dick himself, the Puzzler instead of the Riddler, Marsha Queen of Diamonds instead of Catwoman, Egghead instead of R'as Al Ghul, Tweedledum and Tweedledee instead of the Joker and other D-list villains. Ultimately, it's not the stature of the characters but what the writers do with them -- however, it's pretty clear that the writers have been given the bottom of the barrel for now.