Some people just really hate kid characters, even among those who don’t hate kids in real life. Mostly it’s the kid haters, though.
There’s this idea from a rather vocal group that kids don’t belong in stories, even when the stories are made for kids. They tell you “kids want to be the adults, not the kids, and they want to see the adults do the cool things, not kids.” Yeah, that’s bogus. You can have both. You don’t have to be part of the false “representation” movement to want to see kids like yourself doing cool things. It’s why so many shows star teenagers, the next level for kids. The adults will usually get to do all the fun stuff because they’re older and more experienced, but you can have kids be cool in your stories, too.
The problem is so many writers don’t know how to write kids, or they have a goal for kids in their stories that don’t quite work the way they’re written. Now some I can defend. Scott Trakker is hated by a friend of mine in the Morning Nonsense “best chat” but when he’s written well he can add to the story. The trick is knowing when he can help and when it’s best he doesn’t. I don’t hate Scott, though most recent versions of MASK have tossed him out entirely while giving his dad a new paint job. There are some stories that he shouldn’t have been in, but I can go story by story and find ones where he actually adds to the plot and makes it interesting, freshening up the MASK vs VENOM stories. That might be fun someday.
Instead I want to focus on two really good kid characters, two of my favorites in fact. And these aren’t the little kid “Disney/Nick Junior” variety. These are the regular Saturday morning and syndicated shows for older kids not quite pre-teen yet. I’ll go over why they work and why I like them. Between those two, however, I’m going to show you a counterpoint with two really bad characters that show why some people hate kid characters in shows not about kids. I’m not so naive that I don’t realize how it can be done wrong. I just want to show how it can be done right. Going back and forth will make it fun. I also want to say that the fact that both of the good choices were girls and the bad choices were bad isn’t me turning “woke”. It’s me choosing a particular age group and finding the two best examples of both based on memory or recent viewings. These are old shows and they didn’t do that nonsense back then. The only boy option that came to memory were Jonny Quest and Hadji, and that’s stacking the deck.
BW Media Spotlight 
Why I’m Not Interested In James Gunn’s Supergirl
I was going to do a BW Vs article responding to a couple of articles in Variety about the failures of the Gunnverse Supergirl movie and why Hollywood is failing superheroines. I felt I’d be leaning too close to the culture war by the end and I’m trying to push back in my own way. So I chose a different path: why don’t I want to see it?
Trailers, interviews, preview clips, and backstage video are all supposed to get you hyped to see a movie, to convince you to spend time and money watching the film they’re promoting. All those things convinced me to NOT watch Craig Gillespie and Ann Nogueira’s take on the Maid Of Might as envisioned by James Gunn. Apparently I’m not alone, as the movie is bombing like it was at a party with a free open bar…fitting given that this is based on a Tom King story about Kara going off to get drunk on her birthday by finding a red sun planet with a lower drinking age.
The reviews, including reviews by women like JesterBell and Snarky Jay, have further convinced me to avoid this. The occasional mid rating goes against the more vocal apathy or outright rage, even from people who attacked other reviewers who complained about it. Remember Angry Joe Vargas from the Channel Awesome days, before Mike Michaud ruined the project in the name of tighter controls and ticking off the creators not part of the main videos? He decided to go after members of the Friday Night Tights crew over their complaints about the movie’s promotional info and when they finally got to the theater…only to rage against the movie himself after seeing it. It’s not how I expected two corners of my internet experience to cross paths but there we are. Curious how alt.toys.transformers ends up being part of this. (I’m not against a transforming Supermobile in theory, Hasbro!)
That’s all I’m going to say about that or Milly Alcock’s comments. Some are out of context (though she hasn’t bothered to clarify), some were made to make the…particular social viewpoint website that interviewed her happy during Pride Month, and the rest is the usual nonsense from actors and actresses who care more about what they’re making and who they’re working with than the source material and it’s fans, both of whom are responsible for making the thing you’re being paid more money in an day than I’ve ever had in my bank account to work on. What I haven’t already gone over in past controversies doesn’t fit with this site’s mission.
Instead I’m going to go over all the information I’ve seen and heard about this movie and flat out tell you why I want nothing to do with it or the rest of Gunnverse. There’s a reason this is in the Death Of DC category, and tied to the reason I have that category in the first place.
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Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on July 2, 2026 in DC Spotlight, Death of DC, Movie Spotlight and tagged commentary, DC Gunnverse, DC Movies, DC movieverse, James Gunn, Supergirl.
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