What Lanterns Can Learn From Kamen Rider My-Th (And My Failed Comic)

There are two superhero shows that came out recently. Actually three, but we’re going to compare these two. Sorry, Ultraman Teo. I want to compare Greenless Lanterns and Kamen Rider My-Th. Lanterns comes from an American creator, My-Th from Japan. Japan makes what we used to, but still in a style unique to Japan. Yesterday I reviewed My-Th because it looks so cool. I still haven’t touched Lanterns because it does not. There shouldn’t be that much difference beyond the two countries and yet it’s there.

Both shows have hinted at a mystery with serious questions. Both feature something trying to be different from the predecessors. Both feature superheroes…allegedly. And yet I was more excited for a brand new property with a character that didn’t exist in public discussion until a month ago (longer if consider how long it took to make the promotional materials), while the show allegedly based on a childhood favorite has failed to obtain my interest.

So why does the Japanese superhero succeed in one episode where four episodes of the American series based on a long-standing character fail so miserably? And which of their arguments is giving me flashbacks to one of my own superhero sci-fi comics…and not in a good way, because it means the young amateur’s failure cause me to learned more than the supposedly successful older professional?

The problems start pretty much at concept. Damon Lindelof jokes about leaving the Green out because “we agreed the green was stupid”. I don’t know why he thought that but if you find something that’s been part of the character since technically before the character (Alan Scott was the first Green Lantern in comics but Hal represents a new take on it besides “ring creates light constructs based on whatever the wearer thinks of) was created. We have showrunners claiming the ring was sexist for not choosing the woman who projected her own racial opinions into desiring a Power Ring and doing terrible things to make her son fearless enough to be able to use that power. She’s like that failed athlete forcing their kid to succeed, except it was her hen-pecked husband who failed. By making John fearless everything I see from the actor’s performance and the dialog he’s given suggests he’s also emotionless except when his mother is threatened. I’ve never seen a soulless momma’s boy before, but I’m pretty sure the Vulcans would be jealous of how little emotion he usually portrays.

The Kamen Riders of My-Th were shows off immediately as being cool. They fought each other, as seems to be the multi-Rider trend nowadays, but each armor isn’t afraid of leaning into their animal themes, including the attack we see from My-Th himself. Where DC seems to be reject as much of the superhero world as they can, Toei embraces it. They know what they’re making and they don’t shy away from it. For one thing, the Kamen Rider franchise is a superhero franchise that aims at kids but with stories adults can also enjoy, while all of the DC movies and shows clearly hate kids and don’t want them anywhere near their cursing, causal hookups and orgies, and darker colored shows. My-Th remembers the sun exists and what it looks like while Lanterns seems more afraid of the sun than a vampire, and unlike the brightly colored suits of the Zodiac representatives, the Green Lantern suits are as dark in color as they can get.

Then there’s how the audience is introduced to these characters. Hal shows up late, supposedly after a night of drinking, and keeps treating his trainee badly more often than not. I’d sympathise with John, but he’s clearly just after the ring, insisting he has more right to it because his mom said so. He also hooks up with a random woman who turns out to be another man’s wife. That same man shoots Hal at one point (or his men do) and shoots the hero in the shoulder. That same hero forgets an important tool to charge his ring and sends the trainee by plane to retrieve it. These are the heroes we’re going to be following for eight episodes. Only eight, which may be a good thing, while My-Th only has two announced, but given the franchise history and plot is most likely going to have more. The previous series, ZEZTZ, had 50 episodes, a theatrical movie, a special that passed the show off to the next hero, probably a “Super Hero Time” crossover given the history of that programming block, and a series of specials.

Now look at how the hero of My-Th is introduced: Otosumi is making eggs for his young charge, as the servant of the her house. He is shown in good spirits. His ally, Yuna, comes down in good spirits as well, except for the term paper she didn’t finish, wanting Otosumi to help her with it, but he tells her she needs to do the work herself. When reports of the enemy monster attacks reach them, their first thought is to investigate, not jerk around with each other. Otosumi makes sure the girl goes to school so she can get a proper education. She’s not his trainee, she’s a high school student. There’s some connection to the hero’s powers as she can approve his “becoming a mouse” and “becoming human” even when she’s not present. There are times when he’s in charge and times when she’s in charge, a balanced partnership that recognizes Yuna as his boss and Otosumi as his being her caretaker and seniority.

We still haven’t seen the Lanterns fight anybody. Some dude was contained in a bubble before he exploded. It took until episode four before we got a construct more interesting that a force field, a bird, a bottle opener, or a watch. A drill tank. My-Th has an exciting transformation, a cool motorcycle, an attack that plays on the mouse motif since it looks like one of those exercise wheels for pet rodents, has skills stereotypically attached to a mouse…rather than the racial stereotyping and race war based comments from Hal, John, John’s mother, and John’s hook-up, basically everybody in John’s life is racist.

While My-Th is going to be challenged by the Twelve Animal Signs Alliance, Hal gets challenged by pretty much everybody. The Sheriff, the local land baron, John, John’s parents, even the Guardians all seem to hate Hal Jordan. The first episode ends with Hal dead in the future, while My-Th ends on an agent for the rivals infiltrating the group as Yuna’s tutor. At every step, Kamen Rider My-Th comes off as fun, heroic, colorful, bright, and optimistic, with a theme possibly tied to hope. Right now we don’t know what “true hope” is, why the original My-Th left and how Otosumi got his Ride Driver, what happened to Yuna’s parents, or whether the Alliance are as bad as the enemy. However, we want to know because we already like the heroes. Meanwhile, the mystery Hal and John are here to solve, a multiple murder that may be tied to the Manhunters, seems like an afterthought in the darkened world of struggles for power and who is worthy of it.

So where does my failed comic come in? I discussed years ago in an Art Soundoff v-log about my failed sprite comic, Tales From The Spriteverse, and another about why it failed. TL;DW: I made a bunch of mistakes with that comic. I didn’t introduce the heroes or the concept very well. While not going for a “mystery box” I wanted to really introduce the characters before the comic’s concept. I was accused of doing the same things as other Bob & George: The Comic Strip style sprite comics, when my plans were actually to semi-restore the fourth wall as meta text and mythology. My origin story was started in the second story arc to establish my namesake character, who was supposed to be an avatar of a character that shared my screenname because I always wanted to use it as a character name. In hindsight, taking it as my screenname was a bad idea, or I should have given the character a new name. It is, however, where I get the “Tronix” from, the secret identity of the “ShadowWing” of the comic. Turns out that while ShadowWing is my idea, I’m not the first one to come up with it.

The introductory comic to Tales From The Spriteverse, one of the few strips that didn’t get lost.

Then there’s “Sprite Force”, who would protect the dimension where the comic takes place. It was a fanficy excuse to have some of my favorite heroes of fiction team up to guard Spritopia so my hero could do his infiltration job in other dimensions, switching to his hero identity to stop the comic’s lead villains, Vulcan Zero, from wiping that reality out, as they were tied to the aftermath of a metatextual multiversal war between “sprited” and “drawn” realities. (In further hindsight I could come up with better terms now.) Trying to establish them early didn’t win me a lot of support, either, and even though the whole point of the comic was a fun way to practice storytelling I probably would have been better off not introducing it. I only used a Mega Man dimension because of the sprites and to use Brain Bot, a character from the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, as one of Tronix/ShadowWing’s allies. I just liked the character and was disappointed he only got the one episode. This was probably also a mistake, and unlike the Lanterns showrunners I acknowledge my mistakes, and I wanted to play in my favorite genres with established characters I liked, not to use them to push the story I really wanted to tell.

I explained all of that to go over what the showrunners have said that is the same mistake I did: insisting you needed to stick around for the good stuff. I was in my 20s and doing something new. The showrunners and writers are supposed to be seasoned professionals of their craft, having been in it longer than I was in a public comic. (I did have a series of homemade comics since middle school.) The truth is, readers and viewers aren’t going to wait just because you insist it’s going to be so really really good you guys. Even when critics said so I didn’t listen to them, so sure that when I was ready to go over the mysterious stuff I’d win them over. I was wrong, and the Lanterns showrunners insisting critics wait for episode 8 are just as wrong now as I was then.

I did a better job setting up the concept and (hopefully) grabbing readers with Captain Yuletide than I did with Tales Of The Spriteverse or that DC Studios has done with Lanterns. I also waited until issue #3 to finally do the origin of the Captain Yuletide powers because I didn’t have one at the time, while my sprite comic was planning to take what other sprite comics were doing and turn gags into mythology. My-Th is taking the base concept of the franchise–armored heroes on motorcycles fighting monsters–and doing a completely new lore and worldbuilding. DC in contrast has decades of Green Lantern and cosmic comic lore to build off of, and they’ve decided to ignore as much as possible to tell something completely different.

Defenders take moments from the comics out of context to prove it really is trying…while the creators themselves tell us time and again that they aren’t because they know better than the people who wrote the comics for years, or the fans that made the work popular enough to be adapted because the creators made something they connected to, which the show ignores or hates. Lindelof literally said getting the lore right has nothing to do with making a good adaptation, while a black female showrunner in interviews and promotion calls the Ring racist and sexist for not choosing the mother, possibly her insert character if you ask critics more interested in the backstage and culture war stuff than I am, to wield it. The Lanterns are more interested in the super, the Kamen Riders are more interested in the hero, and I know which interests me more.

Kamen Rider My-Th grabbed me immediately before it aired while Lanterns lost me when it was announced as a “true detective” story, a concept rejected by both fans of True Detective and the various Green Lantern comics, shows, and movies that came before as not being accurate. It’s a gritty drama about the trainee wanting the veteran’s position, and that’s not what I want from a superhero comic in general and a show about space cops who also fight supervillains on Earth. My-Th has a cool motorcycle and fights monsters with cool powers while still being a good person, which is what I expect from a Kamen Rider franchise. I’m over the rival Rider idea or third column being added, but I guess Japanese fans and the international ones like it because both Kamen Rider and Ultraman are using it right now. It’s the same kind of stuff I try to bring to my stories and even tried back then.

So much of this comic is technically lost media, but I’m probably the only one who wants to find the missing strips. Mostly because I made them.

So a bunch of pros are literally making an amatuer argument, and I’m the amatuer who made it so I should know, seem to hate the genre they’re working with, and push back against critics and the kids who love and need superheroes more than adults, while across the ocean another bunch of creators love what they’re working on or at least are professional about it, embrace the silly parts as a strength, and make things for everyone Western superhero writers seem to ignore or hate. It’s not surprised so many adults would rather watch the subtitled Japanese kids show than the American swearfest with naked penises and very little fun. I learned more from my mistakes than they have, but they’re the ones companies want to give a lot of money to in order to bring their stories to life. Plenty of people like me in the business. Maybe give them a chance to make the superhero stories your audience actually wants. Once again, Japan beats Hollywood.