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"Superman: Red Son" is an Elseworlds comic book story written by Mark Millar (published in 2003) which reimagines Superman's origin to have him land in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas, America. The hit story, a favorite amongst many Superman fans, was recently pitched to Warner Bros. by director Jordan Vogt-Roberts ("Kong: Skull Island"), but rejected... or so he thought.

A conversation between Mark Millar and Jordan Vogt-Roberts via Twitter has revealed that Jordan pitched the "Superman: Red Son" idea to Warner Bros. a few months ago, but was knocked back. To Jordan's surprise, Mark Millar reveals however that he's heard whispers that the studio is pitching the "Red Son" concept to other directors.

Could Millar have his wires crossed? Is Warner Bros. really considering a live-action "Superman: Red Son" film? Would this be something Superman fans would want to see on the big screen?

https://www.supermanhomepage.com/is-warner-bros-considering-a-live-action-superman-red-son-movie

The link includes some tweets between Vogt-Roberts and Millar.

I'm... not sure what to think of this. A lot of what makes Red Son great is ties to the rest of the DC universe, and how Superman's ship landing in the Ukraine rather than Kansas altered all those things. Given that a lot of those concepts are only just starting to be explored in the DCEU, this seems like a weird time to start twisting them. Plus, BVS showed a smackdown between Batman and Superman so is now really the best time for a movie with another Batman/Superman smackdown?

Some see Red Son as a pro-communist (and specifically pro-Soviet Union) valentine. Others see it as the exact opposite. I'll let you guys decide for yourselves how to interpret it.

Other questions. Will Red Son somehow be tied in with the DCEU? If so, will it keep the same cast we've seen so far? If not, why bother with it at all?

I'm intrigued but I don't see the point of doing this thing as a movie if you're not going to be faithful to the comic. And being faithful to the comic requires concepts and characters that the DCEU has only barely explored, if at all.

Not sure what to think here, guys.

[LOVED]

The down and dirty for Dead to Rights can be found at http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Batman:_Dead_to_Rights_(Collected) if anyone is interested.

The long and the short of it though is that I seriously LOVED this comic. I read it for the first time in trade format last night and I was hooked from the start. It basically tells a story (of dubious continuity) after the Joker's first arrest. What he did to get arrested is actually kind of incidental. The bigger issue is how unprepared GCPD was to jail him and the DA's office was to prosecute him.

What probably works best for me about DTR is how it hits a similar beat as TDK. See, to me the Joker being around should always cause havoc and chaos. And this story GETS that. One thing I love about TDK is the pandemonium of it all. The Joker calls in the bomb threat to a hospital and all hell breaks loose. Same type of thing here. The Joker is handcuffed, he's tossed in the back of police cars, he's put on trial, but literally nobody is ever safe. If he's not killing somebody at the moment, it's because he doesn't want to. He kills somebody in the story just by making one phone call.

But he's never shown to be a demented weirdo about it. He kills because he thinks it's funny. He kills somebody else in the story with a peanut because he thought it would be amusing to do so. That's it! No bigger reason, really.

A lot of writers try turning the Joker into a serial killer, basically. And to me, that's wrongheaded. Yeah, human life means nothing to the Joker. But he doesn't take life arbitrarily. Hell, he may not even take life with malice. Rather, he kills because he sees an opportunity for comedy. Sick, twisted, insane comedy. But comedy nevertheless.

The Joker recognized that his murder weapons (the telephone for one victim and a peanut for the other) were literally both victims' worst nightmares. There was literally no better way to murder them so that's the way he chose... because it's funny (to him) to kill them that way. He might have spared them if all he had available was a gun.

Though maybe not.

Also, the art is done by Scott McDaniel. I'm a McDaniel fanboy from way back so he's always welcome as far as I'm concerned.

If I had to fit Dead to Right into my head-canon, to me this is the aftermath of 'Images' from Legends of the Dark Knight #50. It might not be a perfect fit. But in my mind Images is Batman's definitive first encounter with the Joker. And so DTR is the aftermath of Images.

To circle back to TDK for a moment, I can't help thinking there's some TDK-influence going on here. Because in the jail, the Joker tells Batman "You complete me". It seems a little too coincidental.

Anyway, not sure if any of the rest of you have ever read this story but it's definitely worth picking up.

What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity.  They didn't want female characters out there.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/03/31/marvels-david-gabriel-sales-slump-people-didnt-want-diversity-didnt-want-female-characters

Well this is awkward.

An accomplished San Francisco comic book and nonfiction author, who has been published in Marvel and a slew of other publications, was arrested on suspicion of possessing more than 600 child pornography files and uploading the graphic videos to YouTube, police said Friday.

Gerard Jones, 59, was arrested after a police investigation and ensuing search warrant at his residence in the 600 block of Long Bridge Street in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood turned up a host of electronic devices storing more than 600 images and videos depicting child pornography, police said.

The longtime author has written screenplays for Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, served as a writing teacher for the San Francisco Writer's Grotto, and put together graphic novels for both DC Comics and Marvel Comics, according to his official website.

He was arraigned Thursday and entered a not guilty plea on charges of possession of child pornography and distributing child pornography, a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney's Office said.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Comic-book-author-suspected-of-putting-child-porn-10841108.php

Crap, I hope there's no truth to these charges. I've admired his work ever since I was a kid. And today, he and I trade messages all the time about his non-fiction work.

If he's truly guilty though, I hope the judge throws the book at him.

[retain]

With comics, especially with characters who have been in constant publication for over 70 years, continuity and canon can be tricky proposition. The plethora of material out there means not very many people have read everything. And of those who have, fewer still retain everything.

So when it comes to a given character's history and his canon, a lot of comes down to individual preference. What do YOU consider to be essential?

I've begun putting together my canon for Batman. For many reasons this "canon" is entirely imaginary because these stories weren't necessarily intended to go together, there are internal problems with timelines and whatnot and probably other conflicts too.

But I don't care. This is MY head canon. Fine details be damned, this is a selection of stuff that I believe is and should be canonical.

Now, the below isn't necessarily comprehensive. Yes, the stuff listed happened... but I'm not saying nothing else happened. Indeed, other stuff could've. It probably did. But the idea isn't necessarily to be comprehensive. The idea is to nail down essentials (which I think I've mostly done) as well as a few optional stories.

The other idea is to present this stuff in a semi-chronological story. So the final story listed in the tenth year section is the "last" Batman story. It's not the end of Batman, as such. It's just the end of his story. That is Batman's series finale. Other stuff may have happened but the essential part of his story has been concluded.

I find that appealing considering how much I hate from what came after 2003 and more recently today.

Finally, you'll notice the Killing Joke is absent from the list below. The reason for that is because in my head canon, the Joker somehow crippled Barbara but the details aren't really known... even if the issues below include flashbacks to the Killing Joke. The Killing Joke does not exist in my head canon. It explicitly never happened. The Joker somehow crippled Babs. That's what we know. That's all we know.

And now for my head canon:

-- Year 01- Urban Commando
Batman Year One- Batman #404-#407
The Case of the Chemical Syndicate- Detective #27
Images- LOTDK #50
Detective #28-#30
Batman Annual #19
Batman vs the Vampire- Detective #31-#32
Shadow of the Bat Annual #03
LOTDK Annual #05
Detective #32-33
Detective Annual #08
Detective #36-37
Prey- LOTDK #11-#15
Storm- LOTDK #58
Criminals- LOTDK #69-#70
The Long Halloween
Going Sane- LOTDK #65-#68

-- Year 02- Enter Dick Grayson
Hugo Strange and the Mutant Monsters- Batman #1
Robin Annual #04
Batman Chronicles- The Gauntlet
Robin- Year One
The Joker Returns- Batman #1
The Crime Master- Batman #2
The Crime School for Boys- Batman #3
One of the Most Perfect Frame-Ups- Detective #58
Case of the Joker's Crime Circus- Batman #4
The King of the Jungle- Detective #59
Knights of Knavery- Batman #25
1,001 Umbrellas of the Penguin
The Fowls of Fate- Batman #48
The Origin of Batman- Batman #48

-- Year 03- Batman's Best Year
A Greater Detective Than Batman- Detective #168
The Man Behind the Red Hood- Detective #168
The Riddle of the Seven Birds- Batman #56
Joker's Millions- Detective #180
Joker's Crime Costumes- Batman #63
Joker's Utility Belt- Batman #73
The Crazy Crime Clown- Batman #74
The Penguin's Fabulous Fowls- Batman #76
The Menace of False Face- Batman #113
Operation: Escape- Star-Spangled Comics #124
The Jungle Cat-Queen- Detective #211
The Batwoman- Detective #233
The First Batman- Detective #235
Two Face Strikes Again- Batman #81
Ace the Bat-House- Batman #92
The Second Boy Wonder- Batman #105
The Great Clayface-Joker Feud- Batman #159

-- Year 04- Enter Barbara Gordon
Partners In Plunder- Batman #169
The Blockbuster Invasion of Gotham City- Detective #345
The Strange Death of Batman- Detective #347
The Joker's Happy Victims- Kellogg's Special
Batgirl- Year One
The Night Batman Destroyed Gotham City- Detective #362
The True False Face of Batman- Detective #363
The House the Joker Built- Detective #365
Batgirl Breaks Up the Dynamic Duo- Detective #369
Catwoman Sets Her Claws for Batman- Batman #197

-- Year 05- Dick At College
The Batman Adventures #18
Paint a Picture of Peril- Detective #397
The Hollow Man- Detective #397
The Batman Adventures #26
Half an Evil- Batman #234
The Batman Adventures #12
Man-Bat Over Vegas- Detective #429
The Batman Adventures #14
The Joker's Five-Way Revenge- Batman #251
Death Has the Last Laugh- Brave & the Bold #111
Hail Emperor Penguin- Batman #257
Strange Apparitions- Detective Comics #470-#476
A Caper A Day Keeps Batman At Bay- Batman #312

-- Year 06- Enter Jason Todd
Nightwing Year One- Nightwing #101-#106
A New Boy Wonder- Batman #408-#411
Ten Nights of the Beast- Batman #417-#420
Fever- Detective #583
Batgirl (1997 One-Shot)
The Diplomat's Son- Batman #424
Consequences- Batman #425
A Death in the Family- Batman #426-#429

-- Year 07- Batman's Year of Vengeance
Fatal Wish- Batman #430
The Wall- Batman #431
Dead Letter Office- Batman #432
Many Deaths of Batman- Batman #433-#435
Year Three- Batman #436-#439
The Mud Pack- Detective #604-#607
A Lonely Place of Dying
Crimesmith- Batman #443-#444
Rite of Passage- Detective #618-#621
Return of the Joker- Batman #450-#451

-- Year 08- Tim Drake Becomes Robin
Identity Crisis- Batman #455-#457
Debut- Batman #465
The Last Arkham- Shadow of the Bat #1-#4
Knightfall/Knightquest/KnightsEnd
Zero Hour- Batman #511, #0
Zero Hour- Detective #678, #0
Zero Hour- Shadow of the Bat #31, #0
Zero Hour- Robin #10, #0
Prodigal
Troika
The Joker- Shadow of the Bat #37-#38
The Penguin Returns- Detective #683-#684
Sleeper- Batman #516-#517

-- Year 09- No Man's Land
Cataclysm
Aftershocks
No Man's Land

-- Year 10- The End
He Who Lurks- Batman #578
Happy Birthday Two You- Detective #747
Urban Renewal- Detective #748-#749
The Dark Knight Project- Batman #584
The Janus Double-Down- Detective #753
Penguin Dreams- Batman #586
Officer Down
Bruce Wayne- Murderer/Fugitive
Hush

Going Sane is a story written by JM DeMatteis and pencilled by Joe Staton from Legends of the Dark Knight #65-#69.

The pitch is this:

The Joker lures Batman into a building and 'splodes the place. Batman is emotionally compromised that he has no idea he walked into a trap until it's too late. In short, the Joker wins.

From there, Bruce and the Joker both settle down into normal, ordinary lives. So what choices do they make when they can be anything they want to be?

This is the most poignant and sad Joker story I've ever read. It's only four issues long but I easily could've handled six issues. It's just so emotional. This isn't really the story for fights, car chases and big explosions. It's all about how much these two guys hate each other.

I dare you not to get choked up by the time you hit the last page of the last issue. If you can finish the thing without a tear in your eye, you have no soul.

Between this, the Laughing Fish, Batman Beyond- Return of the Joker and a few others, I don't need another Joker story.

[VERY]

Took some time but I finally read No Man's Land a few days ago. I read Cataclysm and Aftershocks probably a year ago but only just now got around to NML.

I was expecting the worst, to be honest... and so was pleasantly surprised! This storyline shows Batman having to evolve, grow and adapt to a VERY different environment. It's still fundamentally Gotham City... but it's a Gotham City stripped of any pretense of civilization or humanity.

Stories this big and epic typically have weak conclusions. This is no different. The point of the story isn't how it ends. In fact, to me few stories are about their endings. What matters is the journey the reader goes on as Gotham City gets closer and closer to going full Walking Dead in terms of depravity.

So don't let what I consider to be a kind of weak sauce ending throw you off. The actual climax of NML is gripping, powerful, tragic and genuinely moving, especially for people like me who loved that, ahem, subplot ever since it was introduced in Batman #458. Or Batman- Year One depending on how you look at it.

Not really a "fun" story but still a very enjoyable one.

Also, I remember people talking about how similar The Dark Knight Rises is in its premise to NML. I don't see it, m'self. To me, the closer similarity is between TDKRises and the Cult. Having actually read NML now, the similarities between it and TDKRises are so circumstantial as to be coincidence.

http://comicbook.com/2015/11/30/new-batman-v-superman-clip-released

A bit more context from the scene we've seen more of than any other scene.

Aside from being incredibly hot, Newmar's Catwoman was a cold, sadistic, greedy psycho.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2dazda_there-s-never-enough-for-two_tv

"There's never enough for two."

What I dig about this version of Catwoman is how, yeah, she's got a soft spot for Batman. But that doesn't change who she is at her core. She was totally willing to let Batman and Robin get mauled to death by tigers. In fact, more than any other villain from the show, Catwoman seemed the most callous about human life. It meant less to her than any other guest star I can think of off-hand.

So you can understand where Batman would see a bit of a kindred spirit in her in some ways. She's got the hunter-animal motif working, she's clearly brilliant and let's face it she's damned good at what she does. But ultimately he'd be totally repulsed by her on a moral level. A weird back-and-forth there.

The more I rewatch the TV show, the more I can't help but think Burton did an amazing job with Bruce and Selina's weird relationship... but he hardly invented that approach.

I have noticed that Smallville takes a lot of heat from a lot of people for inventing it's own continuity. And while it is true that there are instances aplenty where the show did it's own thing, my contention is that it did so no more often (and, God knows, to no worse an outcome) than other Superman media. Even some of the show's more outlandish ideas draw more from the comics than one might expect.

Now, I am not arguing that the showrunners took every single one of their inspirations from every single one of the comics mentioned herein. Except for one thing, which is so clear that I continue to be shocked that I'm apparently the only one who's talking about it.

But even if all or most of this stuff wasn't intentional, it still works to the showrunners' benefit. If their inspiration came from the source material... well, who among us will criticize them for that? But if we suppose that the majority of these examples can be chalked up to coincidence, it still says a lot that the writers, producers and other creators were dialed in to the characters enough that their stories have so much in common with these comic books. There's no down side to this for them.

As a corollary, there also isn't any way to argue that Superman comics haven't done a lot of what Smallville did. Perhaps the context is different, perhaps the comic book idea is superior to the TV show (or vice versa) but, intentional or not, the similarities are real, many and varied.

As much as anything, this blabfest is intended to get a lot of stuff off my chest about the whining about the show I've heard from a certain segment of the fanbase I won't mention... but if you consider yourself part of Superman fandom, odds are very good that you've at least heard of the personalities I'm reacting to and the web pages where they can be found. There seems to be a strange double standard where Richard Donner, Bryan Singer, Paul Dini and other creators are given license to do basically anything they want, wholesale reinvent entire concepts and characters from the Superman mythos but Smallville gets burned in effigy if it so much as pokes a toe out of line with what the comics are perceived to be. I don't mind someone not liking Smallville. That's hardly a crime. But if this is to be a comparison about which adaptations are most like the comics (and thus which are most "valid"), let's apply the same standard to all adaptations. I'm not asking to be the guy who picks the criteria; I simply want the same criteria applied equally. We'll sort the "winners" and "losers" out after that.

-- Evil Version of Superman
Clark Luthor received a lukewarm greeting when promos for 10.10- Luthor. The one mitigating factor seems to be his alias of Ultra Man as even a lot of comic-illiterate fans recognize the name. In the Pre-Crisis DC universe, Earth 3 was effectively a mirror world of Earth 1. Earth 1's heroes were Earth 3's villains, Earth 1's villains were Earth 3's heroes, etc. So Clark Luthor adopting that moniker has helped somewhat.





Still, you're left with the fact that an alternate universe Kal-El is raised by a Luthor. But, believe it or not, the general concept of Kal-El being raised in a domain of evil and villainy isn't completely isolated to Smallville. In DC's 80 Page Giant #1 from 1964, there's a story about a duplicate of Earth 1's Superboy being raised by criminals. He eventually adopts the stunningly original, completely non-cheese name Super-Menace. Normally, you would want to consign this story to old, weird, goofy Silver Age Superman stories, except that, as with Clark Luthor, Super-Menace eventually sees the error of his ways and turns over a new leaf. Granted, Clark Luthor and Super-Menace meet very different fates but their journeys and subsequent revelations have a lot of similarities.





-- Evil Doppleganger
Smallville has taken a lot of crap for not having a strictly traditional depiction of Bizarro. The main problem as I see it is that the character was promoted as Bizarro. That's helpful for marquee value but I've never found it to be a very accurate description. When you realize that Smallville's Bizarro is something of a mashup of the comics book Bizarro, the sand creature from Denny O'Neil's Kryptonite Nevermore storyline and Smallville's showrunners taking their own creative license, the influences and even the character motives become clearer. It's not simply that Smallville's Bizarro loved Lana every bit as much as Clark. The issue is that he wanted to take over Clark's life lock, stock and barrel. I'm not aware of that ever being a motivation for most incarnations of Bizarro but that was the sand creature's ultimate agenda, which dovetails nicely with how Smallville presented Bizarro/the final Zoner.



Even so, Smallville's Bizarro could be said to be an imperfect duplicate of Clark in that he is copied from Clark's DNA but is weakened by director exposure to sun light, energized by green Kryptonize and defeated by blue Kryptonite. Those all sound like classic traits of Bizarro to me.

-- Zod
Even now, there's a common misconception that Zod was created by Richard Donner for the movies and, no matter what, should be a SUPERMAN villain. But when you realize that Zod was created in the comics years before Superman: The Movie and that he first appeared in a Superboy comic book (Adventure Comics #283), his inclusion in Smallville becomes less objectionable.



True, Smallville set up a very direct rivalry between Clark and Zod (which was itself a product of the rivalry between Jor-El and Zod) where the comics largely didn't but if you're going to crucify Smallville for that, you need to be ready to do the same to Superman: The Movie and Superman II as well.

-- Costume
As with other things, Smallville has taken a fair amount of abuse for the pre-Superman costumes Clark wore through the run of the series. And to be fair, it is true that there is little or no precedent in the comics for Clark to wear a different outfit prior to becoming Superman. However, there is some history to the black outfit he wore through the ninth season. For starters, Jor-El wore a similar outfit during the trial of Zod, Non and Ursa at the beginning of Superman: The Movie. The implication is that Jor-El is acting as judge and, indeed, executioner in the trial. In fact, the director's cut of the film indicates that Jor-El, given his druthers, might've preferred real execution for the villains rather than eternal imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. So for the ninth season where Clark essentially becomes a Kryptonian vigilante, his all black wardrobe makes a lot of sense. Much different context, of course, but the idea behind the idea is logical.





Apart from that, Superman wore a similar outfit in Superman v2 #81 during the Reign of the Supermen arc and also in the TV series Lois & Clark.





So while the black outfit is hardly traditional Superman attire, it's not completely foreign either.

And no, I don't count The New 52 t-shirt/jeans pre-costume thing from Grant Morrison's run Action Comics as that isn't "precedent"; I've seen Smallville's fingerprints all over that decision since the day it was first announced. Smallville exerting influence over the comics isn't the same as the comics exerting influence over Smallville.

-- Powers
Smallville, particularly the first season, shows a Clark Kent that truly is a hybrid of what has been shown in the comics from the very beginning up through about 2000 or 2001.

In the pilot, we see a Clark with basically the Golden Age Superman's power levels (super speed, super strength and a reasonable amount of invulnerability), the Silver/Bronze Age Superboy's sense of responsibility and the Byrne Age young Clark's lack of a dual identity. In a very real sense, you can't draw a straight line to any single era of comic book lore for this particular iteration of Clark Kent since the influences vary so wildly. Even so, the whole enterprise rings true because it draws on so many different eras in the character's history.

Separately, one of Smallville's trademarks has been actually showing Clark moving faster than a speeding bullet in episodes too numerous to recount. This has long been assumed to be Smallville taking advantage of modern effects to demonstrate Clark's powers but that may not be entirely the case as Superman v1 #3 shows Superman moving faster than a speeding bullet from Superman's own point of view. It's not hard to imagine the trademark CG distortion and color trail the show employed substituting for the cruder motion lines drawn by Joe Shuster in that issue.



-- Smallville's proximity to Metropolis
Smallville has taken a lot of heat for situating Smallville so close to Metropolis. And to be fair, placing Metropolis in the state of Kansas is definitely unique to Smallville. However, fans have come to a pretty skewed understanding of the geography of the Superman universe. With Superman: The Movie, Donner established that Smallville is located in Kansas (while Metropolis is likely a surrogate for New York City). Beginning with John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot, that concept was canonized in the comics. Prior to that point, however, Smallville had come to be depicted as a suburb of Metropolis. The history of this is muddled at best but by about the 1970's, it was generally agreed upon that Smallville was in *VERY* close to proximity to Metropolis (as to the location of Metropolis, that's a completely different can of worms). This is made quite clear in The New Adventures of Superboy #13, where the Kent family will depart from Metropolis airport for a flight to California... which would hardly be logical if Smallville is located in Kansas while Metropolis is located somewhere on the east coast.



Point being that the show placing the town of Smallville so close to Metropolis is no great innovation on their part.

As a sidenote, fans have also generally made too much of the distance between Smallville and Metropolis based on Chloe's dialogue from the third season episode Truth, where she implied that it would take several hours to drive from Smallville to Metropolis. That is not consistent with earlier presentations of Metropolis in relation to Smallville, where it could be seen from Smallville if one simply reached a high enough altitude.





-- Superman meets Superboy
In Homecoming, the 200th episode of the show, there is a memorable sequence where young Clark meets a version of himself from the future. They snip at each other a little before Future Clark announces he is about to leave the building to put down a nuclear reactor explosion set to occur on the other side of town in mere seconds and orders Young Clark to go to the roof to rescue Lois who is about to be in a helicopter crash.



Again, this has precedent in the comics as Superman v1 Annual #1 shows a story where Superman is infected by red Kryptonite, which brings Superboy into the modern day. Superman and Superboy bicker even more than Young Clark and Future Clark through out the story.



-- Red K
Speaking of red Kryptonite, the third season episode Whisper shows Clark being temporarily rendered blind after an accident with green Kryptonite. The New Adventures of Superboy show Superboy being temporarily rendered blind after being exposed to red Kryptonite. Interestingly, in both of those Clark must wear glasses before making a full recovery (which is used in the show as a wink to Clark's future and as tragic irony in the comic book to jeopardize his secret identity).





Apart from that, Red K had made only sporadic appearances in Superman comics at the time 2.04- Red was broadcast. It was generally known though that Red Kryptonite had a temporary but powerful wild card effect on Superman. In the comics, that is. On TV though, it transformed Clark into the worst version of himself. However, you could somewhat No Prize this by suggesting that all Red K seen in Smallville might've come from the same source and thus could potentially have the same influence on him each time but Red K samples from a different source could bring out different behaviors, mutations, characteristics or whatever else.

-- Meeting other heroes/characters
There are enough examples of Superboy meeting other DC universe superheroes that my text editor runneth over trying to fit them all in. Nevertheless, there are several notable examples of Superboy meeting characters from his future.


Jimmy Olsen (Superboy v1 #55)


Hal Jordan (New Adventures of Superboy #13)


Aquaman (Superboy v1 #171)


Carl Draper/Master Jailer (New Adventures of Superboy #18)


Lois Lane (Adventure Comics #261)

Given the above, the idea of meeting younger versions of Green Arrow, Bart Allen, Cyborg and other characters seems like a small matter.

-- Season 10/Legends
Smallville's tenth season could be a subject worthy of a column unto itself but as far as story elements are concerned though, the main influence I've noticed is the Legends miniseries from 1987.



The premise of Legends is fairly straight forward. Darkseid bets the Phantom Stranger that he can get mankind to turn against superheroes. Darkseid then sends a few of his minions to Earth to make trouble, pick fights and generally cause a little mayhem. Brimstone beats the snot out of the Justice League while Godfrey that incident and others like it to whip up anti-superhero hysteria.

Darkseid's campaign is so successful that President Reagan issues an executive order banning all superhero activity pending the resolution to this current crisis.



As Godfrey leads an assault on Washington to take over America first and, later, the world, superheroes defy the law and rescue President Reagan from an armed attack, which prompts him to repeal his executive order banning superheroes. Later, Godfrey's power over his followers is broken by Robin and a group of small children, who act as a buffer/human shield between the hordes and Godfrey's mind control.



Darkseid never really takes an active role in this storyline. He operates primarily from the shadows and mostly uses subordinates to carry out his orders. His plan was to deny mankind their heroes, little realizing that he would only prove how desperately mankind will always need heroes to cling on to and give them hope. Ultimately, that's where his true defeat originated.

It doesn't take very much imagination then to draw a few parallels between that story and the broader arc of season 10. Some nuances are different. The TV show outlawed heroes by means of a new law rather than an executive order, it was repealed in a referendum before Clark becomes Superman, Clark defeats Darkseid's avatar and it was Superman who broke Darkseid's power over mankind rather than Robin breaking Godfrey's power.

Even so, the similarities are too many and varied to write off as coincidences. Even the concluding chapters of both Smallville season 10 and Legends are both titled "Finale"! Particularly, the seeds of Darkseid's defeat are very similar in both stories.

There has been some criticism of this season in general and the finale in particular for not doing a battle royale between Superman and Darkseid. However, not only is Darkseid's presentation in this season fairly consistent with Legends but it's also pretty true to how the character was often portrayed for several years in the comics. His characterization as a brawler is a relatively recent thing. Originally, he worked from the shadows, used avatars and minions to do his bidding while Darkseid himself primarily dealt in conspiracies and secret schemes.



The obvious inspiration here is Darkseid's original portrayal as a schemer rather than a front and center baddie, which is perfect for a TV show working with a limited budget.



This is not to say Darkseid isn't powerful. Obviously he is. In The Great Darkness Saga (Legion of Superheroes v2 290-294), his mere projection is powerful enough to beat the snot out of the entire Legion of Superheroes -- which, lest we forget, included Mon-El, Superboy and Supergirl in all their Pre-Crisis glory at the time. That's ridiculously powerful! But Darkseid originally considered physical combat beneath the dignity of a god, hence his reliance upon lieutenants to do the fighting and dirty work for him. But the fact that he is capable of manifesting avatars and astral projections was a clear influence on his depiction in season 10.

This is not to say that Smallville didn't somewhat innovate with the character. To my knowledge, he's never shown the ability to possess people as he was shown to do with Gilbert Godfrey in 10.03- Supergirl, raise people from the dead or care much about peoples' souls. Even so, his portrayal in the show is a lot closer to his original characterization than a lot of more recent fare.

Anyway. There's a lot more that could have been mentioned but I decided this is a good sample.

Am I to understand there isn't a Star Wars thread? Wowzers, and you guys call this a message board...

So yeah. Disney bought Lucasfilm. I can fairly say I never saw that one coming. If you'd asked me six months ago, I'd have told you that most likely Katie Lucas would take over and probably carry on Georgie Boy's tradition of not releasing the oh-riginal unaltered trilogy. Swing and a miss, I guess.

Episode 7 is coming. If you'd asked me six months ago, I'd have told you that Satan would need a parka and a heating pad before such ever saw the light of day. Swing and a miss again.

Fanboy conventional wisdom holds that diminishing George's role in the new trilogy is the unquestioned magic bullet for better films. I'm not so convinced. He wrote and directed A New Hope, which is generally very well regarded. As far as I know, his "minimal" involvement with Empire (the acknowledged favorite) is fairly similar to his level of involvement with Jedi (less favored). All of these are much more beloved than the Holiday Special, with which Lucas had zero involvement and which nobody but media masochists enjoy. In fact, it sounds like his involvement with the new trilogy will be along the lines of the 2008 Clone Wars CG animated movie... which, while not terrible, never bowled me over.

My best advice? Be careful what you wish for.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/16/the-dark-knight-comes-to-smallville-season-11

IGN Comics: Let's get the elephant out of the room first and put it to rest: Nightwing. Stephanie Brown. What's the real story behind the change to Barbara Gordon?

Bryan Q. Miller: The editorial staff wanted a more "iconic character" in this case. Given the nature of our female Nightwing's use in the story, of the available replacements, I leaned toward having Babs wielding the charged-escrima. That really was the beginning and the end of it.

IGN: What's the nature of Batman's introduction? Is he already operating as Batman when Clark meets him or will we see him take up the mantle after the fact?

Miller: You will most certainly meet a Batman who is knee-deep in his career within the first 10 pages of the arc. Intergang's been shipping high-tech anti-hero weaponry to any city with a "cape problem." Batman and Nightwing's run-in digs up a connection to his parents' murder, lo, those vaguely many years ago.

IGN: From the cover images that we've seen, Batman looks like he's more armor-plated than we're used to seeing him. Can you talk a little bit about the design of the Smallville version of Batman and how it relates to the character that we'll meet?

Miller: He's very much just a man, and a smart one at that. And he's also quite wealthy. Batman doesn't take his war on crime lightly, and does his best to equip himself for any situation. This isn't Year One for Batman. We're somewhere between year 5 and 10 for him. You'll see a Nightwing who's far less armored – literally armed with escrima, a few gadgets, and a ton of moxie. She's the scout. She's the dancer. Batman – he's the tank. And Gotham criminals don't play fair. So Bruce is going to carry around as much with him as possible.

The digital issue came out today. I've been digging on this series but I didn't have such a good reaction to the announcement that Batman would be guest starring in this title. The idea of that kind of a Bruce/Batman guest appearance in Smallville lost whatever appeal it had for me after season 4 (and it had whiskers even then).

But whatever, it's here. Batman and Superman don't share any scenes with each other. That's still to come, I'd imagine. But what we get here... not bad. I enjoyed it. It's a different dynamic for Batman and his partner than I've seen before. If one presupposes this is a Batman unencumbered by the baggage of having lost Jason Todd, I could see him having this kind of working relationship with his sidekick. It's something we haven't seen from Batman in a long while. He seems darker by being paired up with such an energetic, feisty partner. I think the Batman/Babs-Nightwing stuff works pretty well, actually.

Tonight's episode of SV had a bit where Tess and Oliver Queen discover each others secrets in pretty much the same way that Bruce and Selina did at Shreck's Ball.  Too specific to be a coincidence, imho, but not a ripoff or anything.

I thought it was cool.  Anything that gets BR more in the public eye is fine by me.

Dunno how many of you have seen this yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QFWBFIEuig

I dropped my grandmother off at my cousin's house yesterday.  I took the picture below with my (really crappy) camera phone on the way home.  It looks just like the duck in BR.



The sad part is that I had a brand new 10 megapixel Canon camera in my car but there wasn't enough time to get it out of the box to take a picture. 

Dunno if any of you have seen this.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/featuresnews.php?id=7641

Eckhart: No. I asked Chris [Nolan] that question and he goes, "You're dead" before I could even get the question out of my mouth. "Hey Chris, am I?" "You're dead!" Alright, cool.