The Smallville Smackdown

This week it was announced that DC entertainment will release a weekly digital comic called Smallville Season 11.
I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.
Be thankful I haven’t launched the Fanboy News Network video series yet, I would have been yelling.
So why would I be yelling about a continuation of Smallville? Well let’s go over the reasons.
First, while I assume that if you read this blog you know what Smallville is, just in case you don’t here is the quick recap. The show is about the Life of Clark Kent between his freshman year in high school and his assuming the identity of Superman. It lasted 10 seasons. The mantra of the show was “No Flight, No Tights.”  
Ok on to the ranting.
Frist thing that springs to mind: Smallville already lasted five seasons too long. Seriously the idea was to show the events that lead Clark on the road to becoming the greatest hero of all time. The first four seasons were ok. It was never stellar Television. It was Superman as seen through the lens of Dawson’s Creek. It had two things going for it, a sense of destiny as we know how the two main characters would turn out, and the performance of Michael Rosenbaum as Lex Luthor.
Of course those early seasons had their issues too. Chief amongst them was the miscasting of Kristen Kreuk as Lana Lang. She had no chemistry with series lead Tom Welling. This would not have been so bad except that they cast Allison Mack as Chloe Sullivan, a character that had an unrequited crush on Clark. Mack had tons of chemistry with Welling, making Kreuk’s lack of it jarring.
The point here is that at the beginning you had an ok show that did surprisingly well in the ratings. And that may have been its curse. By season five the show had really run its course, but for CW it was doing great ratings so it was renewed. And they kept renewing it.
Maybe if the story had advanced it would not have been awful, but merely bad. But “No Flight, No Tights” meant they had to keep Clark as not quite Superman. What ended up happening was an amazing hack job of the Superman myth that made most fanboys rage. What was worst is that every now and then they actually had something good, like Geoff Johns love letter to the Golden Age with his JSA episode. But mostly it was crap that went on five years past its expiration date.
The final season was particularly bad in that it started out like most Smallville seasons, but part way through someone in the writers’ room must have woken up.
“Oh crap, this is the last season, we should take the Clark Kent character we have developed and shoehorn him into the personality from the comic books.”
I’m not kidding. It was the 9th episode of the 10th season that Clark Kent started wearing glasses. And was the 13th before he started with the mild mannered nerd persona. Like people who know him before would not figure out that the Clark Kent they knew for years was Superman.  I think it would ended up like being the Saturday Night Live Sketch with the Rock as Clark Kent where everyone know he was Superman and just humored him.
 A lot of this could have been forgiven, if they had nailed the series finale. If they gave us that rousing moment when Clark Kent became the Man of Steel and defeated the villain becoming the champion he was meant to be.
That would have been nice.
But Smallville had a history of unsatisfying season finales and I guess they saw no reason to make the series finale any different.
It was a two hour finale, and when Clark finally confronted the bad guy there were 14 minutes left in the episode. In that time the following happened:
·         He learned to fly
·         He defeated Darkseid, one of the most powerful entities in the DC Universe, by flying through him
·         He went to the Fortress of Solitude and got the Superman Costume.
·         He saved the airplane Lois Lane was on.
·         He flew in the sky and pushed a planet away from Earth.
·         Then there was an epilog.
And in none of that was there ever a clear shot of Tom Welling actually wearing the Superman costume. The rumor I keep hearing is that Welling, who was also a producer on the show, refused to wear it. I guess he felt that he should never fully been seen as Superman. What it did was leave the audience feeling cheated.
10 year build up with no pay off.
So now, I assume due to the success of the Buffy Season 8 and 9 comics DC feels they can give us this pay off.
I have an idea. If you want to see Clark Kent at the beginning of his career as Superman read the current run of Action Comics. At least they are going about it honestly.
For me the big mystery is why I watch that damn show for all ten seasons.
The only answer I can come up with is that I am such a comic fanboy that since It was something related to Superman thus I was obligated. 
Or maybe some part of me knew that one day I would write a geek culture blog and I would need to know the shows history to really tear into it.
I’m going with that last one. It makes me feel better.

DC Comics Relaunch: the first month of the New 52 in review.

Over the last month we saw the release of the 1st issues for DC comics new 52, the relaunch of their universe.  It’s clear that it has been an initial success.  Many titles are already in reprint, DC is dominating the sales chart and Marvel is already showing signs of their attempt to rip it off.
But was it any good?
I guess the final answer is…..sort of.
There are certainly individual books that are good.  Originally I was not going to pick up Green Arrow or Swamp Thing on a regular basis, but both first issues were good enough to change my mind. Batwing and Justice League International were not as good, but good enough for me to give to want to read more.  Aquaman I bought on the strength that it was being written by Geoff Johns, and it paid off. The Superman books and Wonder Woman were well written and I enjoyed them. The Batman and Green Lantern books were continuing stories from prior to the relaunch and still enjoyable. Resurrection Man also seems to be jumping off from the old series from a few years back, but its nature makes it flow well into the new continuity and was a good relaunch of the character.
I have heard good things about Animal Man, Blue Beetle and Demon Knights, but as of yet I have not picked those up.
On the negative side were Catwoman, Red Hood and the Outlaws and Deathstroke. And each case it is an issue of bad or lazy writing. No second issues for these.
I’ve also heard bad buzz on Hawk and Dove, OMAC and Suicide Squad, but again I did not pick them up.
And on the meh side was the Flash, Justice League Dark. Both were passable individual stories, but didn’t fire me up. I’ll give them a few issues to see if they are worth keeping up with.
And then there is Justice League. The way it was written, I have no idea yet. I can’t help feel this one was paced for the trade edition. I’ll give it a few.
Overall I am happy with the books I am getting, but I see a major flaw developing. The source of this flaw is an issue with consistency of continuity.
When the relaunch happened you had some characters like Superman and Flash getting full on reboots. Others like Wonder Woman and Aquaman were more or less getting some retooling. Characters like Booster Gold and Resurrection Man are vague on what, if anything has been changed. And then you have Batman and the Green Lanterns, where they have not been changed and are in fact continuing their stories uninterrupted. 
Add to that there we have some books taking place today, and others five years ago.
This leads to confusion as knowing how characters relate becomes muddled.  The Kid Flash in teen titans, who if he? Barry Allen is not dating Iris West, so it is unlikely he is Wally West. Is he Bart Allen? Ok but again Barry and Iris are not together so saying he is their grandson from the future is still awkward at best. Is he option C, none of the above?
What about Superman? In Action comics, the book that takes place 5 years ago his costume is jeans, a t-shirt, and a cape that I suspect started life as a table cloth. In Superman which is set today his custom is some sort of Kryptonian armor. Ok fine, expect that Superman appears at the end of Justice League number 1. That issue was set five years ago and yet he was wearing the Kryptonian armor.
I’m sure the real answer was that the editors were not keeping up on what the creators were doing; this seems to be a problem at both DC and Marvel right now.
Once a few more issues are out I will probably start giving more in-depth opinions on the various titles.  

San Diego Comic-con; It has begun

Day one of San Diego comic-con and here is what we know.
First off I can admit it when I am wrong. When I was first going over the changes coming to Superman in September I speculated that they were moving away from the Siegel owned portions. Turns out I was wrong, they are in fact moving closer to them. Just before the convention DC announced that in Action #1they would present Superman at the beginning of his career “Five years ago” when his powers were still developing. In other words he will be powered down to the original power levels from the original Action #1. Additionally his costume will be a t-shirt jeans and a small cape.  In Superman #1 it will be “present day” and he will have his full powers. The armor costume I mentioned previously will be homage to his Kryptonian heritage.
They also unveiled Lois Lane’s new boyfriend. They really want to drive home the idea that Clark and Lois are not a couple.
The stated goal with the Superman reboot is to make him more relatable. They are going to do this by emphasizing his alien nature and his sense of isolation.
Let me repeat that.
They are going to make Superman more relatable being emphasizing his alien nature and his sense of isolation.
Moving on.
Wally West; The Flash through most of the 80’s and 90’s will be nowhere to be seen despite many fans being more familiar with him then his predecessor and current Flash Barry Allen. This is stated as being needed to preserve Barry’s uniqueness.
At one point they were going to have Wonder Woman in long pants. They have changed their mind and the new costume is closer to the classic one.
A big question surrounds the character of Booster Gold. The explanation for the reboot is rooted in the time travel related story Flashpoint. In Flashpoint Booster, a time traveling superhero, is aware that reality has been changed and is trying to fix it. This has lead fans to ask if he will be aware of the differences in reality port reboot. No answer has been given.
As expected, Twilight fans camped out overnight to get seats for the Twilight panel. Some fans tried to start their camp out on Sunday and were told to come back Monday instead. They did. As a reward, several supporting actors from the series brought muffins to pass out to the lineup.
The convention wised up this year and had Twilight be the first panel on the first day so that the twi-hards wouldn’t clog up the hall waiting.
And as I said yesterday, tonight Comic-con will have the Premier of Captain America: The First Avenger. Apparently the reason they didn’t release over the 4th of July was to be able to premier at Comic-Con.
I’m looking forward to what we learn tomorrow.

Of man, and Superman, and lawsuits.

Previously I touched on the Siegel family lawsuit to regain rights to the Superman copyright. This got me thinking about how I feel about the whole subject.
In 1932 Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the character of Superman. In 1938 they sold the character to what would become DC comics for $130 and a contract to create material for the publisher. By 1947 they decided that they were tired of getting paid a fraction of the income their creation was bringing in and sued DC to regain ownership. The courts favored DC, and in response DC fired the creators.
Siegel and Shuster made another attempt to regain the rights in 1974. Again the courts sided with DC. However a year later DC’s parent company Warner Bros opted to give both men a yearly pension of $20,000 and health benefits. In addition it was decided that any comic book, novel, film, or TV series featuring Superman would include a credit to Siegel and Shuster as his creators.
In 1998 a new copyright law was passed that opened the door for the estates of both creators, who had by then passed away, to attempt to reclaim ownership. This has led to suits by both Estates. I have found little information on the Shuster suit other than one has been filed.
Of course the Siegel suit is the headline getter as they have had success, having recaptured their half of the original copyright. Their lawyer Marc Toberoff has vowed that they will have the entire copyright by 2013.
The whole situation leaves me feeling torn. On one hand I would like to see the family win as the creators were basically screwed by the original deal. But on the other hand as a fan I want to keep reading about the Superman I grew up with, and with as bitter as this suit has grown anything short of a complete victory by Warner Bros will not allow that.
The Superman intellectual property earns Warner Bros over a billion dollars in profit every year. Even a small percentage of that would equal millions of dollars. No corporation wants to give up any of that if they don’t have to, hence the fight on WB’s side. They have already shown a willingness to alter the story to reflect legal status.
On the heirs side there has been no indication of them caring about the copyright on any level other than financial. Superman’s status as cultural icon and his rich history have not come up in any statements I could find. This makes me question how they will treat the character if they gain complete control.
Here are some scenarios that I can foresee.
Scenario one: Warner Bros prevails.
Result: The status quo is maintained and the estates continue to battle for the rights
Scenario two: The estates gain 50% rights to the entire IP.
Results: WB has to suck it up and pay the estates their half of the profits. The heirs would have a say in how the character is handled.
Scenario three: The estates gain complete rights to part of the IP
Result: Several possibilities here. WB could come to an agreement with the estates to continue using their part of the IP for a huge chunk of change. I don’t see this as likely. More likely is that WB phases out the parts of the IP they don’t own and published an altered form of the character. We may be seeing shades of that now with the DC relaunch. This could also lead the heirs to shop around for a new home for their version of Superman which would be a watered down version of the one we all know and love.
Scenario four: The estates gain complete control of the IP
Result: Well it is possible that WB could come to an agreement to keep using Superman. However with how contentious this suit has been I could easily see the heirs shopping the character around, or even setting up their own publishing house. This would mean the end of Superman as the icon of the DC universe.
It seems crazy to consider a lot of these, but keep this in mind. The courts are not concerned with the artistic integrity of the character. All they care about is the legality of ownership, which means these scenarios or others I have thought of or bothered with could come to pass.