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Yesterday I mentioned that Ana Nogueira, the screenwriter for the upcoming Supergirl movie in the DC Gunninverse, had trouble believing Supergirl could be so upbeat after seeing her planet die. Kal-El was a baby and saw nothing, while Kara, depending on the continuity, was either on a Kryptonian colony or a chunk of the planet that somehow maintained atmosphere and gravity. Some versions still have Argo City alive but out of phase with the regular universe, or in a pocket dimension or warp or something. The official comic story however is that Kara is as much a survivor of a doomed world as Kal is. While Kal-El was raised on Earth as Clark Kent and only learned about Krypton later in life, Kara has to see her people die, with knowledge of her cousin being alive on Earth her only benefit…only to find that thanks to cosmic shenanigans he was already grown, thus taking care of her instead of the other way around. Not how one wants to spend their teenage years.
I was thinking about this after writing yesterday’s article and remembering that’s kind of why Geoff Johns remade Billy Batson’s personality, or so I theorize. Billy Batson lost his family in a car accident, in his earliest version having his uncle steal his inheritance (I’ve never heard how big that actually was…were the Batsons rich?) and kicking him into the streets. In the original Golden Age version Billy survived as a newspaper boy until he was brought to the Wizard and given the power of Captain Marvel, today going by Shazam for a bunch of we don’t care for this article reasons but don’t be surprised if I end up using both interchangeably or “Captain Shazam” because to me he’ll always be THE Captain Marvel. He ends up with a job in a radio station, then they retconned in a sister who was thought dead but found and later raised by a loving family who also took Billy in.
So what’s the problem? Billy, like Kara (who was also adopted by a loving couple after taking on the identity Linda Lee, depending on continuity), didn’t react the way current writers think he should. He was good natured, caring for others, and so optimistic that Captain Marvel would be called the “Big Red Cheese”, though I don’t think that’s the actual origin of the nickname. I’ll find out when we start looking through the old Fawcett comics. According to the writers, they should be despondent, angry, weighed down by the huge trama of how terrible their backstories are. Except they aren’t, and the fact that they don’t understand why shows they don’t understand how DC used to operate.
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In order to get the daily comic reviews up on time I have to do them by the night before at the latest. Well, yesterday (depending on your timezone, writing today for me) I spent the day running around with various tasks and I’m just not up to doing a review today. Still, if you come for Sonic Wednesdays there will be a slight difference in how we’ll be doing this, though it’s mostly on my end.
I didn’t realize that the third attempt at following Archie’s Sonic The Hedgehog comics coincided with the debut of BW Media Spotlight. When I first started the site, new comic reviews came out in a group on Sundays, in the “This Week’s Reviews” feature. (This feature would soon debut the Jake & Leon comic as I was running out of fresh intros for the feature, and now the comic has taken over the Sunday slot along with updates of my week’s plans and that week’s The Clutter Reports posting.) Proving to be more trouble that it was worth, I moved to daily as Today’s Comic, and when I stopped buying comics I decided to review all my old comics under “Yesterday’s” Comic.
Well, from this point onward most of the Sonic comics have already been reviewed, with maybe one or two I still haven’t or at least can’t find the old This Week’s Reviews posting for. I could stop there, but since I am going through these comics to see which if any I still want, I’m going to be re-reviewing these comics. “Yesterday’s” Comic is less concerned about spoilers that Today’s Comic was because they’re old comics. So I may update a summary to reflect that or just make a new one. The usual “What they got right/wrong” segments will be updated from the original review, which I’ll link to for comparison and update thoughts versus the original, replacing the “recommendation” from the new comic reviews with a “What do I think overall” final review like I do with “Yesterday’s” Comic. Wow, that’s a lot of quotation marks.
This week is a bit nuts but next week we’ll resume the proper reviews with Sonic Universe and alternate between that title and Sonic The Hedgehog, broken up by Free Comic Book Day re-reviews and the crossover with Archie’s Mega Man, which led to finally cutting ties with the series for reasons you can find now by looking up those Today’s Comic reviews or just wait until I get there. I did enjoy the Mega Man run by the way, so worth looking into. Regular reviews should come back tomorrow so long as my brain is working again.
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Depressed and angry. That’s about right.
Warner Brothers Discovery is continuing a legacy of not knowing what to do with their comic properties when it comes to adaptation. Still overeager to get their own shared universe without the work put into it before Kevin Feige was given full permission to be an idiot. A discussion for another time, but I will probably reference him again.
Before WBD, AOL Turner Time Warner Brothers etc. decided that Zack Snyder would be the best choice to bring the DC Universe back to the big screen. He wasn’t, and his vision was so off that Warner Brothers actually tried to “fix” the mistake and lighten the tone of the DC movieverse. How they did it is was still a jerk move (the man was mourning his daughter’s suicide), but the direction change had become necessary…but too late. What made Snyder perfect for Watchmen, the reason they thought he could make them money with the mainline DC characters, made him a terrible choice for how DC characters are regularly depicted, not only with comic fans but with casual moviegoers who just like Superman.
So the new company turns to James Gunn. His rendition of the Suicide Squad was the one people liked (though there’s talk that David Ayers dealt with studio interference…according to David Ayers), his Guardians Of The Galaxy movies led to Marvel Comics completely altering the team from a futuristic Avengers to oddballs trying to do good because it was so well received, and his Scooby-Doo had made them money no matter how much I think it was hot garbage on a California July afternoon. Surely, Gunn would succeed where Snyder failed!
Well, so much for that idea.
Look, I’m not trashing either of these people. I don’t like Gunn’s style and Snyder isn’t for me, either. I still maintain Man Of Steel was a decent superhero movie but a terrible Superman adaptation, and I like nothing of what I saw after, but I’m not here to say he’s a bad director because I’ve seen so little of his work. I hear Rebel Moon wasn’t very good. What I’m trying to say here is that you need the right person for the right job. John Hughes’ take on Freddy Kruger would be as welcome as Clive Barker remaking The Breakfast Club. There are directors who can work with multiple styles, but not these two. Allow me to explain where they went wrong…and by “they” I mean Warner Brothers.
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I wonder if this Dum-Dum will turn out to be a robot the whole time, too? No, I’m not over that!
Thunderbolt #1
“Origin Of An Avenger”
CREATOR/ARTIST: P.A.M.
BW Media Spotlight 