Of the Justice League: Gods and Monsters

June 15, 2015 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Almost every superhero comic has its own alternative “what if” stories. As a fan myself, it can sometimes be difficult to suspend my disbelief when reading these tales. At the very least, I keep thinking to myself “that’s fascinating, but that’s not how — for example — Superman would be, or that person is not Superman.” We have an interpretation of a hero, villain, or character and we generally compare the alternative to the original. That is how a lot of alternative comics universes work: they work by comparing and contrasting the new with the original.

With superhero comics universes like DC, it often goes further into making those alternate worlds actually relate and connect to each other. Alternate Superman will meet the “real” Superman and we can go home thinking about how fascinating that was, but ultimately finding “our” Superman more valid.

Justice League: Gods and Monsters does something similar. We can see echoes of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman in these characters: or at least their roles. However, at least two of the characters already exist in the DC Universe in a different form, and this darker take on that universe says something about what it takes to be a hero with it.

Machinima and Warner Bros. have teamed up to create a trilogy of sorts: of three shorts that will provide backgrounds for the heroes of the main feature Justice League: Gods and Monsters: a DC Universe Animated Movie that will go straight to DVD.

You can view all three of these shorts: “Twisted,” “Bomb” and “Big” online and right here for your viewing pleasure.

Episode One: Twisted: In which there is honour even in one of the darkest of souls.

Episode Two: Bomb: In which the Son of Zod wishes he was a good man, rather than a Superman.

Episode Three: Big: In which Steve Trevor realizes that it is sometimes okay to ask for help. And that “help” can be a safe word.

This season of three shorts will lead into another ten episode long series in 2016. A four-issue prequel comic by J. M. DeMatteis and Bruce Timm will be released along with the movie: which will come out in July 28, 2015. Hopefully we will get to see these three characters stand on their own and look at where they are headed next into the dark, but honest horizon.

Representation: A Demand and A Not-So Secret Identity

July 18, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

On June 15, just a few days ago as of this article, the Kickstarter campaign for Will Brooker’s comics series My So-Called Identity was successfully funded at 10,306 pounds: well over its original goal of 8,500. Just a day after GeekPr0n’s exclusive interview with Dr. Brooker, it was announced that Cameron Stewart, Brenden Fletcher, and the artist Babs Tarr would be re-innovating Batgirl: revising her as a young college student living among peers her own age and creating a more pragmatic and customized costume. It is only fitting that the origins for Will Brooker’s own work, and its protagonist Cat, were based off of a similar re-imagining and hypothetical pitch for Batgirl: complete with an element of fashion and a focus on intelligent female superheroes in comics.

And not even a few days ago, we found out that Thor is now going to be a woman.

In such a relatively short period of time, we are seeing examples of a potentially great development in the comics industry: and we have ourselves — as fans — to thank for it. Heidi MacDonald says as much in her article The secret of comics history that people on the internet don’t want you to know! She explains that while a majority of female comics readers existed before in the 1950s and 60s, this changed in the 70s and particularly 80s as male fans — who primarily focused on the superhero genre — took over direct distribution of comics from the newspaper stands.

Yet slowly, over time, through the demands of a vocal fan readership this trend may be changing. It’s true that there are fans that think it is all “a gimmick”: particularly with regards to Batgirl and Thor. After all, the comics industry generally makes decisions to make more money for itself. Yet it is considerable that not even a few months ago, the main contention discussed between Paul Dini and Kevin Smith on Smodcast was that the comics industry focused solely on perpetuating a “boys market” in order to make toys and continue their “sure thing” of a profit: at the price of female characters and more diverse story lines.

So, clearly, there is an audience and a demand for characters that can be related to by female fans: one picked up on, to some extent, by DC and Marvel. Perhaps now is a changing spirit of the times. And while this is a trend that might well be reversed — certainly there has been a female Thor beforehand, and Barbara Gordon has undergone a few revisions in her own time — I would like to remain cautiously optimistic. We are, by no means, at the stage where women in superhero comics are fully represented as three-dimensional characters but, perhaps, these recent developments can function as symbols — as the stepping stones — in telling sophisticated stories and introducing differing perspectives through familiar forms and faces.

After all, it’s only smart… and smart is a superpower!

Zing! Pow! The Batman and Green Hornet ’60s Crossover

March 13, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes classic superhero comics are all about dynamic duos and, in this case, we have three pairs of them. Film-maker and writer Kevin Smith and comedian Ralph Garman along with the artists Ty Templeton and Alex Ross will be creating a Batman and Green Hornet ’60s crossover comic. Moreover, this Batman and Hornet ’60s crossover, entitled Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet, is going to be treated “like a missing ‘lost’ sequel to the 1967 Batman two-parter” that brought the two heroic duos together in the first place.

Even though both the 1960s Batman starring Adam West and The Green Hornet were shows that started well before I was born, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ place watching both of them: and particularly Batman. In fact, when I look back I can say I’m fairly certain that Adam West’s Batman was the first serialized exposure I had to the character before Tim Burton’s 1989 film and I was always fascinated by the strange campy assortment of villains and how I wanted to know who they all were in the comics: even though some of them were made for the show itself. I took it seriously when I was younger, but as I got older I became “serious” about it and thought the show had become irrelevant to more contemporary times. Really, Adam West’s Batman in particular is a lighthearted comedic parody of itself that isn’t afraid to make fun of itself while paying homage to its sources. And it has a powerful zany effect: so much so that sometimes I find myself saying something along the lines of a Boy Wonder-worthy “Gee Willikers Batman!”

I also only saw a few Green Hornet episodes but from what I have seen, particularly with regards to the Green Hornet and Kato climbing scenes, it made sense that they and Batman existed in the same universe. And though it has been a while, I might have even seen the crossover happen as well.

And let’s look at dynamic duos again. The thing about heroic duos is, in fact, the dynamics that play between them. Kevin Smith and Ralph Garman are the collaborating writers of this twelve issue comics series. Smith himself has written many Batman stories and inundated his films with thoughtful and zany geekery, and Ralph Garman is the host of The Joe Schmo Show, a voice actor on Family Guy and Smith’s co-host on the Hollywood Babble-On podcast. And then there are the artists to consider as well. Alex Ross is well known for his high mythic art in Kingdom Come and he will be designing the covers for the Crossover series while the Canadian artist Ty Templeton, the creator of Stig’s Inferno and Bigg Time as well as The Batman Adventures, will be the comic’s central illustrator. I actually met Ty Templeton before in a seminar about writing and drawing comics back at the old Paradise Comicon. He and his wife Keiren Smith run the Comic Book Boot Camp in Toronto, while also helping to organize events such as the 12 and 24 Hour Comics Marathons.

So not only do I get the positive feel of visiting imaginary space from my own childhood and know of most of the players involved in its creation, but in writing this article I get to promote someone who is well known and loved in the local geek community of Toronto. There is just so much … fun in this collaboration and if Kevin Smith’s hopes come true, who knows: perhaps it will be adapted into a straight-to-DVD animated feature with Adam West taking a role as a voice actor. In doing so, it would almost be like a spiritual sequel or “second televised episode” of Batman meeting the Green Hornet. Knowing that this comes from a place where the creators finally get to play in the creative sandbox that shaped their youth is just plain full-circle and heartwarming.

You can read further on Batman ’66 Meets the Green Hornet on Brian Truitt’s USA Today article Batman, Green Hornet team for a ’60s crossover. Until then, see ya later. So long! Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

Amazons are to Kryptonians as Wonder Woman is To …?

January 9, 2014 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 2 Comments

Here is the scene.

We have Christopher Nolan’s Batman, who sounds like a chain smoker requiring subtitles, and Zack Snyder’s Superman, who might as well be renamed Collateral Damage. They will be in the next Collateral–I mean Man of Steel film (which might as well, from my understanding, be called Batman Vs. Superman). Just from my tone itself, you can already figure out how I feel about that. Based on how Superman leaves Metropolis at the end of Man of Steel, and also considering that Batman is going to be played by another actor, it already feels clunky in and of itself. But perhaps they can salvage something. Ben Affleck could possibly do a good job representing the Dark Knight and perhaps Snyder’s Superman might start to actually symbolize the House of El Kryptonian symbol of hope on his chest.

But all right. Fine. At least we are going to see a live-action Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, on the big screen for the first time since, well, ever as all the other iterations have been television shows, pilots and a direct-to-video animated film. I mean, Wonder Woman’s presence in this very film can be seen as a segue into her finally having her own film. Perhaps DC and Warner Bros. believe that having her in this crossover will cement her presence in this gritty, contemporary, realistic version of the DC Universe or build up her market presence to the point of thinking that they will make an equal amount of box office returns from her as they would her male counterparts. All right. Fine. I would have loved to see that standalone Wonder Woman film directed by Joss Whedon we’ve been hearing about for years now, and I thought maybe that this still doesn’t rule it out.

And then this rumour came out.

Take a moment to read that article and let the prospect of it sink in. You know, it’s funny. In some ways this potential origin is an interesting interpretation. Wonder Woman and the Amazons, at least in one retelling of their origins, were created directly from the Earth by Hippolyta and the gods. In the spirit of the ancient Greek myths they come from, the Amazons literally “sprang from the soil” of their land. In other words, DC’s Amazons were not born of man and woman and neither were the Kryptonians if you look at Man of Steel and some Superman origin reinterpretations. Also if you want to interpret the Amazons from a scientific, as opposed to a supernatural, perspective it makes sense that advanced genetic engineering over time is how they can reproduce without a male breeding partner.

And you know, it is very clever to think about the descendants of some of the lost Kryptonian colonies evolving in this way, adapting to another world, making “truth-telling” technology in the form of a lasso, Invisible aircraft, and becoming something different from Superman is all very well and good except that these should not be Amazons …

And Wonder Woman should not be a descendant of watered-down Kryptonians.

Let’s put aside, for the moment, the question as to why Kryptonian settlers would feel the need to engineer solely female descendants over time and the fact that there is absolutely no reason as to why their descendants would become less powerful under Earth’s sun when you consider that Superman–first generation Kryptonian or no–lives on Earth for many years and only somehow gets stronger for it. We can look at continuity. I mean, you would totally think in Man of Steel that Zod or Jor-El would have known there was a colony on Earth and made some mention of it. There was also an old Kryptonian surveyor ship on Earth too that didn’t seem related to anything aside from being a plot-point to allow Superman to access his father’s AI. And when the Phantom Zone soldiers, and Superman himself, were causing chaos and havoc in Metropolis … I don’t know, you’d think that Wonder Woman would have stepped in at some point?

I mean, we can explain that away too. Perhaps the Amazons are on Paradise Island and don’t want to interfere with the dysfunctional nature of “Man’s World.” Perhaps they tried to a long time ago and they, and perhaps their male and female ancestors, were considered to be gods before that “experiment” didn’t work out. Maybe this is Wonder Woman’s first ever time away from Paradise Island, or its equivalent, and she has some kind of mandate that may, or may not, be like the one she has in the comics. I can even understand that DC and Snyder want to make a more contemporary “realistic” take on all DC superhero origins and come up with yet more “realistic” interpretations of these stories. I mean, it’s no accident that Snyder was the director of the film adaptation of Watchmen: the comic that was central to making an era of cynical and Revisionist superhero mythology. Ever since that comic and others like it, that gritty, hard realism has become a genre for comics and film.

But look at it like this. Despite the grittiness added to The Dark Knight trilogy, which admittedly didn’t take much, Batman’s origins are pretty much the same: Bruce Wayne’s parents die by crime and he decides to become Batman. Despite the grittiness and outright destruction in Man of Steel, Superman’s origins are also pretty much the same: Krypton is destroyed and Superman is sent to Earth and is raised by the Kents and so on. So the male orphans lose their parents, gain their surrogate parents, and go on. But Wonder Woman, who is one of many daughters born from what seems to be a single mother isn’t a demigoddess anymore. She isn’t born from the clay of the Earth. Wonder Woman isn’t born from a race of immortal women gifted with wisdom and power by the gods with their own traditions, cultural artifacts, and philosophy. She isn’t different from Superman with her own background and advantages.

No. Instead, after having stripped her world and origins of myth and magic (thus eliminating it entirely from the DC Universe on film) Wonder Woman is essentially a less-powerful genetically-modified descendant of Kryptonians and not nearly as strong as Superman.

And I know. No one in the DC Universe is as powerful or as skilled with that power as Superman. But the fact is: Wonder Woman has her own origin story. She had her own unique background that is completely unrelated to Krypton. Wonder Woman stands on her own. So while the idea of the Amazons or something like them being genetically-modified descendants of Kryptonians is clever, I’d rather it be someone else’s back-story as opposed to Wonder Woman’s. Would it seriously kill them to try something else? For instance, Paradise Island itself often feels like it exists in another interrelated, but separate reality from Earth’s. Perhaps millennia ago, there was something like magic a long time ago and the beings known as gods and their creations fled to this other reality when the world began to change. Maybe magic is the science and physics of Paradise Island’s dimension and Wonder Woman is sent back into “Man’s World” to address a cosmic balance that is in danger of being even disrupted further than it already is. Yes, this example of what else could be done does sound like a comic book idea, but for a comic book film I’d think that sort of logic would make sense and it would keep Wonder Woman’s story, and importance, relatively intact.

It’s almost like DC and Snyder want to adapt the mentality behind the Thor movies to this character and the world they are trying to remake while not realizing that the Asgardians were already given their science-fictional origins in the comics from whence they came. Perhaps it is a marketing ploy, or their idea of how to make Wonder Woman “relatable” to a particular demographic. I don’t really know. But I believe that in what feels to be an immensely clunky and haphazard film to come that Wonder Woman should stand on her own merits and I sincerely hope that sigil of the House of El can be applied to this rumour and not to the Princess of the Amazons.

UPDATE:

Like mythology, a rumour spreads like wildfire: to the point where you don’t always know where it begins. Unfortunately, in this case, we at G33kPr0n have been made aware of where this rumour began and it was not from a reputable source. According to one commenter SuperheroEnthusiast, who was kind enough to link us to this following article (http://www.newsarama.com/19980-wonder-woman-is-kryptonian…), the rumour of Wonder Woman being a descendant of Kryptonians is not something that sanctioned by DC, Warner Bros. or anyone associated with them. Instead, it simply an opinion/theory by a Blog poster named Bill “Jett” Ramey. You can find Jett’s original post, who is in no way affiliated with the film project, at his site Batman-On-Film (http://www.batman-on-film.com/BOF-Mailbag_1-1-14.html). The fact of the matter is that our post on this subject was always based on a theory: a theory that became so widespread that it caught the attention and circulated through many other online magazines. Once again, thank you SuperheroEnthusiast for bringing this to our attention.

Bill Willingham’s Fables Ends Happily Ever After by Issue #150

November 4, 2013 ~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Now, if the title of this article doesn’t entail an unreliable narrator, or at least false advertising, I don’t know what will. Nevertheless, you read most of that correctly. Not only is Bill Willingham–the creator of Fables–planning to end the entire series by issue #150, but he is even partially retiring from comics writing: so that he can become more “selective” about the projects he takes on.

Fables is a series that operates on the premise that all characters from Earth’s fairytales, children’s stories, mythologies and legends–such as the Big Bad Wolf, Snow White, Prince Charming, Blue Beard, and the Frog Prince–actually existed in other worlds and dimensions collectively referred to as the Homelands before they were driven out by the monstrous Adversary and his Empire. These Fables, as they actually call themselves, are immortal beings forced to hide on Earth in a secret colony in New York known as Fabletown, while the less human and more talking animal versions of these beings must live in a place in the countryside called The Farm so as to avoid being discovered by the human Mundies. Also, depending on the popularity of their stories, some of these Fables are not only immortal, but virtually indestructible.

For a long time, I actually collected the series in their trade paperback incarnations. I remember the first story beginning like a gritty noir detective or murder mystery story, only for the next to become one of political intrigue and revolution, and then the rest expanding outward into interpersonal dynamics, secrets revealed, outright epic warfare, terror, awe, and some really satisfying personal moments. Then Willingham also made Jack of Fables: in which Jack of the Beanstalk and so many other tales are amalgamated into one man who is basically an asshole without any of the charm whose personal quest is to gain more money, prestige, and power for himself. I have to say, it was the first comic that I read with a truly unlikable protagonist whom both I–and the narrative–constantly wanted to see get screwed over.

The Fables universe has a prose novel called Peter & Max, a Cinderella miniseries made by Chris Roberson, an anthology named 1001 Nights of Snowfall, the standalone Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland, an upcoming graphic novel Fairest in All the Land, and a female Fables-centric series aptly titled Fairest. There is even a video game called The Wolf Among Us created by Telltale Games and its “Episode One” in the mythos to consider as well.

To be honest, Willingham could have easily ended the series after the Fables finally defeated the Adversary in the War and Pieces story arc, but Willingham decided to expand the universe past the war stories and look at each of the worlds in the Homelands as well as some of the more … powerful and truly terrifying forces that exist in the Fables universe. After all, fairytales came from oral folktales which were neither sanitary nor pleasant tales. Even the more modern children’s stories were built on a foundation of cautionary darkness. But that all said, to me it isn’t too much of a surprise that Willingham is going to retire the series. After destroying an Empire, he and Mark Buckingham–with the latter’s lush and vibrant illustrative style–have made and portrayed so many worlds and characters in this one creative universe.

The image below is the cover for Fables issue #137: which is apparently scheduled for January 2014, while Fables itself is projected to end in early 2015. And while I admit that I will miss my favourite characters Prince Ambrose and the Black Forest Witch, and like the dark cautionary tales from around the fire Fables may not necessarily have “a happily ever after” for everyone, it most certainly will be a series that many comics fans will talk and ruminate about for many years to come.

You can read the original story at Comic Book Resources, from the man himself on The Online Home of Bill Willingham, and the Newsrama Interview.