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exaltedviolinist · 4 years

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tlok rewatch 2020 - book 4

this is it...

- 5/10. this book is the worst book of the four and it’s not even debatable to me. i think 5/10 is the fairest assessment i could give it: it has, at its very core, some really interesting concepts, like korra’s healing journey, humans abusing of the spirits in a post-harmonic convergence world, republic city being used as the final battlefield... but their execution always flops ultimately, and beyond that, some pretty evil things go down in this book (korra being completely devoid of her usual personality, korra being "cured” by her abuser, korra validating the pain and torture she endured in order to learn compassion which she already had before, tenzin calling book 1 korra selfish, tenzin validating korra justifying her abuse, etc.). as a whole, the book is not good. there were some interesting parts for sure, but most of them were visual delights. if you even care about korra you would recognize that she is sidelined and her personality is toned down for the sake of appearing as someone she isn’t. the pacing is pretty bad and the show struggles to find its footing in the grand story it wants to tell. i’m thankful to say at least that book 4 was a... better experience to me than i anticipated. i won’t be AS negative as i was for over 5 years about this book, but i will never actively defend it for anything. - artistically, i feel as though this book isn’t as memorable as the previous three. i simply can barely recall tracks or sceneries that shook me to my core: the ones that DO come to mind all come from the finale - mako’s sacrifice, goodbye, and that shot of the republic city skyscrapers being sliced from afar. i saw the whole book just a few days ago! it’s really not a bad book visually or sonically but i can recall book 1, book 2 and book 3 shots/soundtrack way easier than book 4. - let’s start with the positives.... korra’s journey to healing started out great. her visions are realistic, the way she goes around dealing with them and reacting to them is accurate and to me having korra fighting an evil within herself would’ve been a much more compelling story than what we got. they really started dropping the ball after korra extracted the remaining poison out of her. dark korra shows up one last time against kuvira (which i thought was excellent!) but then is never brought up again? what was that about? i didn’t think it was realistic korra miraculously was rid of visions, trauma and ptsd symptoms once ZAHEER (of all people........) helped her with her spiritual block? one can accept something happened to the one without making it completely disappear. it doesn’t go away so simply. and a toe-to-toe face off with dark korra is something i fully anticipated yet never got. on that note, korra alone is a great episode but i think this is what the standard should’ve been for book 4: korra at the center of the plot and diving into her trauma and healing process. all they needed to do is replicate that recipe, put in supporting characters like the rest of the krew and tenzin/lin/the air nation and we’d be golden. - they had a good idea in making kuvira use spirit vines for her gains - why wasn’t anybody reacting to this? the spirits who now share this world were never outraged that humans were being damaging to them. there was a lot of potential to make this a human vs. spirit conflict that korra could’ve been able to resolve in this modern world where the portals are permanently open. spirits and humans alike simply let kuvira take the vines and use them for a destructive weapon. the one time vines reacted in anger to that their qualms with kuvira/humans were never dealt with or appeased - korra only saved humans in this episode, nothing more. and it was never addressed again. - republic city being used as a battlefield WAS. AWESOME. i WISH they didn’t have this ugly robot ruining it all for me. imagine if korra was facing off against kuvira in a fast-paced intense battle in which they collided in buildings, sliced skyscrapers and blew up the city..... that would’ve been sick. - and... that’s about all i can credit book 4 for honestly. kuvira isn’t compelling as a villain (just a repurposed ozai with viewer sympathy thrown at the end for some reason, probably because they tried so hard yet failed to paint a parallel between her and korra), the 3 years time skip is absolutely fucking evil and i rejected it years ago, i still do and for all times, the krew only fully regroups in episode ELEVEN and their separation creates the same problems the first half of book 2 experienced, the krew reuniting in the reunion episode was so basic and disgustingly anticlimactic, the beifongs take way too much space again, toph made her epic comeback only for her to brutalize korra for a whole episode before being actually sort of helpful, varrick and zhu li are main characters now and i will never forgive that (how did zhu li get more lines than korra in some episodes is BEYOND me), prince wu (and meelo to that extent) is an abomination of a character and nothing can redeem that, korra is devoid of personality (or is exhibiting a washed out version of her personality), korra is antagonizing her old self and justifying the violence she suffered from, tenzin was a terrible mentor this season and not even remotely helpful in any way, hiroshi is only brought back to be sacrificial lamb at the end and not further develop asami’s lackluster character which gets NO justice this book either and stagnates lower than her character in the book before it and worst of all korra isn’t the protagonist of the show she is the titular character of anymore.

- i tried my best to like this book, i really did. i did not want to resent this book anymore - it’s tiring to have this awful book constantly remind me that korra never got the proper ending she deserved. the worst season had to be the departing one!! and i don’t know who is to blame for all this ugliness really: nickelodeon and their terrible promotion/scheduling of tlok? the writers who tried to appease to fans by rewriting korra and constantly torturing her from 3x13 to the end? the creators who had some anger to let out on a brown woman? what happened??

- i don’t even want to address this final episode but i shall. the first 10 minutes or so are good. as soon as the portal is created though, that’s when everything turns to shit. korra and kuvira talking is fine but i still don’t buy the “kuvira is like korra” argument they kept forcibly bring up because they couldn’t find a way for us to organically create potential similarities but the rest is trash. the westernized zhurrick wedding can kiss my ass, korra not having a final scene with bolin or the krew as a whole can kiss my ass, the final episode not being named avatar korra can kiss my ass, tenzin and korra celebrating her abuse and attempted murder can kiss my ass (and on that note, it makes me laugh thinking that they thought korra needed to be taught compassion through torture as if her saving kuvira, sparing her life and being selfless was more compassionate of her than surrendering herself to terrorists in order to save a nation she had just brought back from their ashes) and korra apologizing to asami can kiss my ass. korrasami itself being a thing was a surprise for me back then but let’s be honest: as much as we like to see it we can simply cannot avoid the fact that the pairing had no romantic buildup the entire season - korrasami was only somewhat pushed in book 3, particularly at the end of it. i don’t feel like makorra had that much more anyway so know that this isn’t an attempt to put one against the other either - but i will say that mako accompanying korra to the spirit wilds of republic city and to zaheer’s prison was meaningful to me and to korra, as well as mako’s desperate look to jinora when they were looking for korra’s body after the spirit blast. to sum up my thoughts on the pairings: i think bopal and kainora are cute, and i only actively shipped makorra and korrasami in book 3 where they were written well. that’s about it. i’ve made my peace with this book. it doesn’t poison me as much as it used to be but i’ll always be angry at it for being the way it is. it didn’t need to be, and there were very easy fixes. it boggles my mind. this will probably be the last time i rewatch book 4, at least in a very long time. my favorite episodes of this book: Korra Alone and Reunion. i actively disliked: The Coronation, Enemy at the Gates, The Battle of Zaofu, Remembrances and the second half the The Last Stand.

in conclusion: book 1 > book 3 > book 2 > book 4. and korra’s bob isn’t as pretty as the pigtails/ponytail sorry not sorry.

#the legend of korra #tlok rewatch 2020

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kcwcommentary · 5 years

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VLD8x13 – “The End is the Beginning”(part 1)

8x13 – “The End is the Beginning”

I decided to post this commentary in two parts.

As much as this show frustrates me, I do have some level of sadness that this is the last episode, and this specific series of commentaries is at an end. My emotions that this is the end of the show feels more pronounced now than it did the first time I watched this season. There is a sense of loss to it, and some of that sense of loss comes from knowing that with this being the last episode, there is no possibility that the show will course-correct and produce a story that I started the series hoping for. In some ways, I feel like I’m mourning for the wasted potential that this series had.

Every story has flaws. Sometimes what works for one viewer doesn’t work for another. Even if there are aspects of a story that don’t quite work for me, if in the end, I feel fulfilled, then I’m good. Endings should have a sense of fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment. I wonder if the executive producers, the writers, the producers, the executives at DreamWorks, and others involved in this series’s production felt accomplished at the end, or if they just felt like it was finally finished and were past ready to move on.

This ending was not fulfilling to me, and that makes me sad.

The episode starts where the last one ended: Voltron and Honerva staring each other down, the Alteans in the nearby city in a panic. Honerva, with her gaze focused on Voltron, has her mecha aim and fire a hand blast at the nearby Altean city. The blast nearly hits until at the last second something blocks the blast. At first, I thought it was a leg of Voltron, but after a couple different shots, I realized it was Voltron’s sword. Voltron throwing its sword to block the blast leaves Voltron distracted, and Honerva tackles Voltron, sending them both sliding along the ground into the city.

Honerva’s mech extends a blade from its wrist and tries to slam down on Voltron, but Voltron takes flight and maneuvers out from under Honerva and back to its sword. They’re then suddenly out in a nearby field without any of the city in the background and start a sword fight. Honerva uses her tail to trip Voltron, which falls backward onto the ground. She then combines her wing-blades around her wrist-sword to create a spinning purple drill and she dives down into Voltron, sending the ground in the area crumbling. We then get a shot from far above the surface of the planet so that we can see their location relative to the city. My guess is the backgrounds during the more standard shots of the fight lack any inclusion of the city in the background as a way to not have to spend time and energy keeping track of precisely where the city is in relation to where they are in the field.

The drill doesn’t really damage Voltron though. Allura screams, pushes her controls forward, and an energy blast shoots out of Voltron’s eyes. Since when has Allura as a leg of Voltron been able to produce an energy blast attack out of the eyes (the head) of Voltron? The blast knocks Honerva back, and the wing-blades spin off and stab into the ground. Voltron then punches Honerva through a mountain.

Voltron’s sword, having been left stuck in the ground again, now has rockets, and it jets to Voltron’s hand. (Why did Voltron need to stop at the sword a bit earlier and pick it up on the way out of the city if the sword can come to Voltron on its own?) Voltron tries to stab Honerva in the head, but she easily moves to the side and the blow misses her. Allura yells, “Now, let’s finish this,” but then someone else yells “incoming,” and Voltron is hit by a wing-blade. The blade actually penetrates Voltron in the back (and stays stuck in Voltron). Then two more wing-blades stab Voltron, this time in either side of the abdomen. Voltron falls over face-first.

The other wing-blades swirl up into the sky and look like they stab the sky. It’s the wings piercing the fabric of space, and I actually kind of like the way it looks. Purple electricity arcs between the wing-blades to form a circle. The wing-blades piercing Voltron start to glow, a big bolt of purple electricity arcs between Voltron and the circle in the sky. Honerva stands up and flies up into the sky, into the circle. The way this is depicted, it’s so much clearer that she’s drawing energy out of Voltron to create a rift in space than it was the time she must have been doing similarly last episode. (Last episode, this similar moment didn’t show anything making a new rift, it was just spontaneously there.)

Shiro says, “We can’t let this happen. She can’t get away,” the Paladins grunt, Voltron pulls the wing-blades out of itself. There are no holes in Voltron in the three places it had been stabbed.

I do still actually like the visual design of this Voltron-Atlas combination.

Voltron blasts off and soars into the rift, everything goes white, and then Voltron is floating in space, but it’s not regular space. There are what looks like stars in the far distance, but much closer, there are wispy, glowing tendrils, like roots that look like they originate from a central, brighter source.

Lance asks, “What is this place,” and Allura says, “I’m not sure.” Then Honerva’s voice booms, “This is the beginning—” her mecha smashes into Voltron, sending it careening away “—and the end.” Honerva blasts one of the roots with an energy beam and the root explodes. The root withers away, up to the central source, and then that center and every root ignites in orangish, fiery energy.

Allura glows yellow and sounds like she’s in pain and there are flashes of different aliens living their normal lives. The light around Allura fades. Team Voltron concludes that “these strands” “are the only remaining realities” and that “this place is the source of time, of space, of” “everything.”

I know almost everything in this show’s magic system is made up and re-made in the individual moment as each moment of the series has been written, and doing that makes it impossible to argue against anything happening if it can be explained as because-magic, but it does kind of bother me that Honerva can destroy a reality now, not by tearing a rift out of or into a reality but just by shooting a strand representing it with a standard blaster beam.

Honerva sounds ridiculous when she, while gasping for air like she’s out of breath, says, “I—will end this—once—and for all!” Like I mentioned last commentary, I don’t find villains who end with cliché scorched-earth action to be compelling. This series has put a lot of time and effort into trying – and I do think the creative team was genuinely trying – to add complexity to Honerva’s character. I think the attempt was almost always clumsy, quick, and underdeveloped, but for a while they were trying to portray Honerva as not a flat antagonist. But to have her character be this spiteful person who is trying to destroy literally all of existence, every reality erases any attempt this show made to complicate her character. I know the creative team would think that saying that she’s being irrational is a defense of having written her character to act this way, but it’s not.

Let’s say I accept – and I don’t, but I’m going to pretend – that Honerva was a good person before she was poisoned by quintessence and before she was possessed by the rift entity. And then that poison and that possession turned her into the abusive, torturing, genocidal dictator that she’s been for 10,000 years. That I accept the premise that the poisoning and possession took maternal instinct away from her. That she is genuinely upset that Lotor hated her. How is her current behavior a logical, writing choice to have her react like this to a little boy from another reality whose mother died not instantly accepting her as his mother? One little boy that she knows is not her actual son says “no” to her, and she decides to destroy all of existence? Like, even if this one Lotor says no, she doesn’t want to try additional other Lotors in other realities first?

This just feels like an escalation that the writing team thinks works because what can be bigger than destroying all of existence, destroying every reality? And the end of a story has to be about the biggest thing ever, the most cataclysmic conflict possible, right?

Honerva projects energy blasts in opposite directions and spins, destroying several reality strands. Then she throws her arms wide and 18 energy beams blast outward with her at the center. (Her mecha can generate 18 blasts simultaneously? Why hasn’t she used that before? That’s a significant weapon capacity.)

While she and the others grunt with each destruction, Allura says, “She’s destroying – all realities!” This level of destruction is so over-the-top that it doesn’t have any emotional weight. This is supposed to be the climax of the story, and I don’t feel invested in the plot whatsoever in part because of its scale. Another part that keeps me from feeling invested is that this is Honerva’s story. It’s not Shiro’s. It’s not Allura’s. It’s not Keith’s or Lance’s or Pidge’s or Hunk’s. Nothing about any of the six of them has anything to do with what’s happening. They’re all just sort of here. Even with this show in the past having used Honerva/Haggar as a foil for Allura, within this specific plot, that is not being used. Maybe one could say that it comes back later in the episode when Allura’s making the decision to give up her life in order to reboot all of existence, that the story finally brings Allura’s personal story back into this and her as a “life-giver” parallels Honerva as the destroyer of all realities. But that is not now. What’s happening in the plot now isn’t connected to Allura’s story. This decision to focus the story entirely on Honerva makes the show’s protagonists all be reactive. Everything that’s happening, they’re just reacting to, none of them are active, none of them are trying to achieve anything. And no, stop-the-bad-guys does not count as a protagonist goal because it is baseline-level of simplistic.

I think we’re seeing more different species of aliens in this destruction of realities sequence than we’ve seen throughout the entire rest of the show combined. The destruction is now near total, with only one strand coming from the center remaining. Honerva has decided to pause and stare at Voltron for a moment before destroying the last reality strand. For some reason, rather than use her blaster to destroy this last one, Honerva decides to use her sword. Why? There is nothing to explain why Honerva decides to use a sword instead of a blaster. Allura quietly begs no one in particular, “No, please.” Honerva flies toward the last strand, but before she can strike, Voltron slams into her. This is the sole reason why Honerva switched to using a sword when she had been using her blasters: To allow for Voltron to hit her and knock her aside. In other words, it’s contrived. Why was Allura written to react as if there was nothing that Team Voltron could do and then have Voltron swoop in to attack Honerva? There’s a dissonance between Allura’s reaction beat and Voltron then attacking.

Voltron and Honerva fly around in a sword fight. Honerva stabs Voltron, and Pidge shifts her controls and Voltron grows knuckle claws and punches Honerva. Honerva drives Voltron backward, then Keith uses Voltron’s wings to push back. Honerva stabs Voltron with her tail and purple lightning sparks. Honerva’s enegines push harder, and she drives Voltron back more.

“If Honerva destroys this final strand, all of existence will end with it!” Allura says. That feels like it’s stating the obvious and thus unnecessary dialog. Keith thrusts his controls forward, all of Team Voltron screams, and Voltron produces larger wings. These wings are absolutely ridiculous. They are like 50 times larger than Voltron itself. Voltron pushes Honerva back.

Rather than push Honerva away from the strand, Voltron, without any characters saying anything about doing this, pushes Honerva into the light that was central to all the strands. What made them make this decision? It really bothers me that this show writes characters to behave like this. Characters aren’t supposed to just spontaneously do things. The writers are moving to the next set-piece and need to move the characters to there, so they just had the characters move to there.

I don’t understand how the show is conceptualizing this story-world’s cosmology. Where is this place from which Honerva is destroying realities? Does this location itself not count as reality? How could Honerva and Voltron exist here, how could they move around through space here if it isn’t itself a reality? I would imagine the creative team for the show would say something like Honerva and Voltron are outside of reality, but you can’t go outside of universes unless there is something there to go into. It kind of makes the fault of using the word “realities” instead of “universes” noticeable. The latter of those words could work, but the former doesn’t.

Inside, Honerva is kneeling on an endless horizon of white and slight purple above and below her. It looks a bit like the horizons that was the Black Lion’s consciousness until 8x10 “Knights of Light Part 2” had those environments be located inside Honerva’s mind where the Paladins fought the spirits of the old Paladins. I would have much rather had those environments remain the consciousnesses of the Lions, and then to have this white version be the consciousness of the White Lion. But this location is just some miscellaneous elsewhere. I also wouldn’t have minded if this white field location looked like the space Allura was shown in when the White Lion jumped into her in 5x06 “White Lion.”

Imagine if the show had kept Shiro as Black Paladin, kept Keith with Red, kept Lance with Blue, had Allura in command of the Atlas. Imagine if the show got to this environment as part of Voltron’s fight with Honerva. Imagine if here, the conversation that occurs here came to a point where here Allura actively proclaimed herself, I am the Paladin of the White Lion! That would have been so freaking cool!

Honerva turns around, sees silhouettes of the Paladins and Shiro. (I’m still curious what’s up with the rest of the crew of the Atlas. Are they still within the combined Voltron-Atlas mecha? Or were they magically thrown out into space and killed? Or were they magically erased from existence? If they’re still inside Voltron-Atlas, why aren’t they appearing here too? From the moment Voltron and the Atlas combined, the crew was simply ignored, and I guess the creative team on the show hoped the audience would ignore their absence too.)

Honerva asks, “Where are we?” and Allura answers, “The connected consciousness of all existence.” Is this different that the connected consciousness the Paladins used to get into Honerva’s mind in 8x09 “Knights of Light Part 1?” This connected consciousness definitely looks different than that collected consciousness.

Honerva continues to be annoying. “You think you’re safe here? Soon, all will cease to exist.” Hunk replies, “You have to stop this. All these worlds, all these realities, they deserve to live.” What does he mean “all these?” We were just told a moment ago that there’s only one single reality left. Also, why is he framing this as Honerva has to stop doing what she’s doing? Why aren’t the Paladins actively stopping her? This comes back to what I said earlier that this plot only has the Paladins reacting to things. This is being framed as Honerva has to stop herself, not that the Paladins have to stop her. The locus of action for this plot has been placed exclusively within Honerva’s character, not in any of the protagonists. That makes this story weak.

Honerva says, “Those realities are flawed and weak, living out the same pathetic cycle of war and pain.” This philosophy is woefully uninteresting. It feels so weird hearing Honerva say this since she’s been such a huge inflictor of war and pain. She has no validity to speak in objection to war and pain. I can’t take her character seriously because she’s been written to say stuff like this that so diametrically opposite to how she has behaved. Also, if she’s condemning all realties for being flawed, does that mean that she thinks that she is flawless?

A scene of conversation like this at a point of climax in a story should produce a sense of enlightenment, but this doesn’t. It doesn’t work because Honerva’s comments and perspective aren’t, pardon the phrase given this story, grounded in reality.

How did Honerva’s psychology progress from an alternate reality version of her son won’t accept her as his long-dead mother to her having a problem with war and pain? There’s a lot of steps missing between those two mentalities.

Allura responds, “There is beauty in their flaws.” I have actively tried to avoid comparing this show to other stories, but I can’t talk about this line without doing so. This line instantly made me think of a far better-written conversation between a protagonist and the antagonist in a specific Marvel film. That Marvel scene felt poignant, but Allura saying it here does not. For this to have emotional weight coming from Allura, her struggling with her personal flaws would have had to be a much larger, prominent part of her character arc. I want to say that this statement would be better coming from Lance, but then the show gave up on doing anything with Lance and his feeling deeply insecure.

Allura goes on about the war killing her family and her whole planet but that she now has a new family. I wish it felt like they were a family. She also says she’s gained “a purpose stronger than any I could have imagined.” What purpose is that? Beyond stop-the-Galra, which turned into stop-Honerva, what has Allura expressed as feeling like her purpose is? Allura and whatever goals she might have or could have had haven’t been the driving force behind this story for a long time. Narratively, Allura’s purpose has been to wait around until the show got this last episode so that she can die and magically reboot all realities.

Pidge says, “Humans began very flawed. There were wars, hate, but with each mistake they learned and grew.” Is Pidge saying that humans in this story have ceased being “very flawed?”

Shiro picks up from Pidge, saying, “And now we reach out to other worlds, to pass on those same lessons and spread them across the entire universe, like your people once did.” I don’t like this idea that seems built into this dialog that humanity has moved beyond being flawed and that humanity can now function as some kind of lord handing out enlightenment to other worlds. This is a very arrogant perspective.

Hunk continues, “And with every new world touched, the message grows.”

Keith then says, “Every world. Every reality. We wouldn’t exist without the others.” Uh, yes we would. Keith personally might not exist without another world since he’s half-human and half-Galra, but humans here on Earth exist without needing other life on some other planet elsewhere to also exist. The ideal that every person has value is great, but Keith’s statement seems like it goes too far.

Lance says, “Our differences are what make us stronger.” I can agree with that.

Honerva responds, “You think your words mean anything to me? I’ve lived multiple lifetimes, and all of them filled with pain and loss.” Since when? Honerva has lived 10,000 years, that is not the same thing as having “lived multiple lifetimes.” Where did this suddenly come from? She mentioned it last episode too. When talking to alternate-Zarkon, she said, “I’ve spent lifetimes trying to get back.” I don’t if this is just really badly written, like the writers have conflated living one life for 10,000 years with living multiple lifetimes, or is this something left over from the season being revised (not even necessarily the re-edit that some fans think happened, but just something fundamentally changing in the story in the middle of production)?

In 8x06 “Genesis” where Honerva is at the two-hand pedestal and is in the process of bringing Sincline back, we see different realities temporarily mixing with the main reality. There’s a moment where Honerva’s appearance changes several times. At first, I had thought she was shapeshifting back and forth between Honerva and Haggar, but then I wondered if we were seeing multiple different Honervas all doing the same thing the main Honerva was doing at their respective Oriandes. Thinking of that again now that Honerva has twice referenced living multiple lifetimes, I wonder if maybe that was originally what was happening in that moment in Genesis. Maybe an earlier version of this season had Honervas from different realities combining into one Honerva, and these two comments that she’s lived multiple lifetimes are artifacts in the dialog of an earlier version of the season’s story.

If there isn’t some kind of explanation involving a story revised while the season was well into production, then her making this comment about having lived “multiple lifetimes” makes no sense.

She continues, and her voice really bothers me here: “If I cannot experience the simple joys of life, why should anyone else!?” There is a flatness to the sound of her voice. The story and dialog seem to want to evoke sympathy for Honerva, but she’s not behaving like a sympathetic person. The expectation placed on the audience by the narrative and the content the narrative is providing to the audience do not match. This statement she just made is incredibly selfish. We’re supposed to feel sympathy for someone who thinks like this?

I’ve personally had more than a few problems in life, but I don’t resent other people for having better lives than I have. I want people to have better lives than I have specifically because of how much pain I’ve felt in my life.

This show wants us to feel sympathy for Honerva right now, but the method they’ve used to try to evoke that sympathy – having her say, “If I cannot experience the simple joys of life, why should anyone else!?” – demonstrates that Honerva herself is not capable of feeling sympathy for others.

And is this perspective Honerva’s speaking from right now supposed to be her still behaving under the influence of quintessence poisoning? Is she still being influenced by the rift entity? Or is this the real Honerva? It feels like the real Honerva to me. This selfishness she’s speaking with here feels exactly like how Honerva pre-quintessence poisoning in 3x07 “The Legend Begins” felt to me. This is why it’s absurd that the show absolves her abuse, torture, and genocide by layering the quintessence poisoning and rift entity possession excuses on top of her character. This is what’s underneath all those excuses: Honerva is not a good person. Her abusive, torturing, genocidal behavior comes, not from her having been poisoned, not from having been possessed, but from her own inability to feel sympathy for others.

Allura touches Honerva’s head similarly to how she touched Zarkon’s head in 8x10 “Knights of Light Part 2.” With Zarkon, she was angry and showed him all the horrible things he did in his life since he couldn’t remember them. Now, Allura is calm and makes Honerva see her happy memories.

Allura says, “There was a time when you loved more than just your family.” This show has not shown Honerva having ever loved her family, nor has it shown her having ever loved anything. Having a couple of still images here or in “Knights of Light Part 2” does not actually show us Honerva having once been a happy, normal person. These still images that are shown now as Allura’s speaking are a total retcon of Honerva’s character. Throwing this content, these images, these claims in now right at the end of the show is contrary to how this character has been portrayed for eight seasons. This just feels like the show lying to me.

Allura continues, “A time when your fascination with how vast the universe is gave way to your desire to help and uplift others.” Honerva has never once in this show been shown to have acted in any way that uplifted anyone else. It is so offensive to me that this episode literally just showed Honerva being incredibly selfish at the core of her being, and now the show is telling me that she used to be a person who “help[ed] and uplift[ed] others.” This claim that she used to be a good person is not supported by literally any of the content of her in this show. Allura just saying it, having a couple of still images right now, is not this show having established Honerva to have once been a good person. Again, I feel like this show is lying to me right now.

A video-memory of Allura and Lotor together appears in the mist of the two of them in the pyramid on Oriande in 5x06 “White Lion.” Honerva says, “You tried to help him.” I guess she did until she turned against him because someone told her that he had been drawing quintessence from Alteans. Even after Allura threw Lotor across the room in rejection of him, before Voltron and Lotor started fighting in 6x07 “Defender of All Universes,” Lotor still tried to get Allura to not reject him. But she did, and they fought, and the Paladins let him die in the quintessence field.

Honerva continues, “He was happy.” Lotor did seem happy with Allura. But this show told us through the story between 6x04 “The Colony” and “Defender of All Universes” and in conversation with Axca at the end of 7x03 “The Way Forward” that all these happy moments Lotor had with Allura was just Lotor lying and manipulating her.

This is so infuriating! The show introduced Lotor as someone who was abused by his parents, who was mired in the toxicity of his culture, who was subject to ridicule for wanting to treat people better. The show then did its surprise-twist to say that Lotor had been lying the entire time and that he really was “evil” all along. That surprise-twist was a giant retcon of his character. And now, the show is re-retconning him back to having been genuinely happy when he was with Allura in season five? I mean, I would like to have most of season six not exist either, but this show made that season. And they made that season specifically to defile everything about Lotor that had come before. And now the show is doing this. When Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wrote this final episode, did they think that we had forgotten what they did to Lotor in season six?

Honerva says, “He deserved better, better than I could give.” He deserved better than this show’s executive producers and writers gave him for sure. Also, I don’t care about Honerva wishing she could have been a better mother to him now. I have seen this woman literally inflict so much pain on her son that he passed out. I don’t care if she feels bad about it now. I hate that this show is presenting the supposed sadness of an abusive parent reflecting on having abused their child as if their feeling sad about having been a horrible person is important. I care about the wellbeing of the abused, not about the wellbeing of the abuser.

Allura says, “Lotor may have been misguided, but ultimately, he wanted to preserve life.” Where was this understanding from Allura about Lotor trying to preserve life when Lotor was literally telling her this to her face? She rejected his explanations for his behavior. She repeatedly said what he told her was all a lie. The show itself did everything it could to reinforce the conclusion that Lotor was “evil” and that he had been manipulating everyone the whole time.

It infuriates me.

Allura says, “Honor your son. Help me change this.” Honerva responds, “I’m sorry, but the damage is done.” Yeah, the damage that the EPs and writers of this show have done is done. JDS and LM might have written this ending to undo the destruction of all realities, but they cannot undo the damage they’ve caused as executive producers of this series.

Allura thinks for a moment and says, “I can change the quintessence within your vessel. Your son helped me learn how to transform it from a destructive force into a life-giving force.” Here at the end of this show, I still do not understand quintessence. We have been told time and again that quintessence is life energy. That it is inherently life energy. That it is energy produced by living things. That’s how the Galra, that’s how Honerva has gained quintessence, by taking it from living things. So, how is it according to Allura here that quintessence is a “destructive force” that she through Altean alchemy can turn into a “life-giving force?” It has always been a life-giving force. Why did this show have so much trouble keeping something this simple and this fundamental to the story straight? Why is this story even now fundamentally contradicting itself?

Allura says, “But I cannot do it alone,” and holds out her hand to Honerva. Honerva says, “But that would require—” and her voice falls away, and Allura says, “I know the risks.” How/why does Honerva seemingly jump to the conclusion that what Allura is talking about will result in their both dying? Characters throughout this series have jumped to a lot of conclusions, but why does Honerva jump to this conclusion?

Also, if Allura’s plan of action is to generate a lot of “life-giving force” what about this requires her to die? The logic of this resolution makes literally zero sense. Allura’s not about to die because that’s the inevitable outcome of this story. She’s about to die because Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery wanted to kill her. It is that simple. JDS and LM wanted to kill Allura, and they made it happen even though there is literally no reason in this story for it to happen.

I know JDS and LM have said that this is a story about sacrifice, but if it is, this seems like it comes out of a perspective of people who have never had to sacrifice anything.

And let me talk about how offensive it is for this show to do this. Allura is a female character of color in an action-adventure animated kids show. This does not happen often, if at all. So, it was amazing to have a female character of color in this show. It made the show seem, for a while at least, like the people working on this show cared about inclusiveness and diversity. They’ve showed us before that they really didn’t with how they treated Shiro’s character. And now, they’re showing again that they didn’t with how they’re killing Allura.

Allura is a female character of color. She’s a character who can use magic. And here, the story kills her to magically solve everyone’s problems. In this series, Allura had been a princess, a genocide survivor, a leader, and a friend. But here, in the end, the show reduces her into nothing more than a magical negress stereotype. If you think that the magical negro/negress stereotype is not a thing, then do some research. There is a long, long history of this stereotype used in black characters in stories. It is a deeply racist stereotype. Often when a character of color is used as a magical negro/negress, the writer thinks that they’re actually doing a good thing by writing them positively: Look at how awesome the character is, they have magical powers! But they’re written to have those magical powers to solve other characters’ problems, so that makes the magical negro/negress character subordinate to the other characters. Voltron Legendary Defender takes its one main character who is a female character of color and kills her to magically fix everything.

Part of me wants to characterize the blame for this as the result of VLD having been written primarily by a bunch of white men. But I feel like that’s just giving them an excuse. I am a white man, but I have at least a bit of understanding about why the show killing Allura to magically solve everyone’s problem is offensive.

Given how this show handled Shiro being Asian and gay and having a disability, given how this show had Lance’s being Cuban pretty much in name-only, given how Hunk’s ethnicity is never really defined at all in the show, given how the show had Zarkon speaking with praise about Keith in saying Keith’s leadership comes from Keith being half-Galra, I just don’t think most of the people who were in control of this show’s story, especially Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery, bothered to educate themselves about different constituencies of diversity. I think they were/are oblivious to how hurtful so much of what they wrote into this story has been.

JDS and LM wanted a story with a theme about sacrifice, they’ve said. They seem to think that that means characters must die. I think that they thought they were making it better when, in one of the interviews earlier this year, said that they considered killing all the main characters here at the end of the show. That just sort of emphasizes that they specifically chose Allura to kill to magically fix everything for everyone else in the story.

I don’t think the solution was to kill any of the main characters. Allure here told Honerva that she’s going to use energy that’s in Honerva’s mecha to do this. The show could totally have had Allura have to use, and thus sacrifice, the Lions of Voltron to make this reboot happen. The EPs chose to kill Allura.

Honerva takes Allura’s hand and stands up, and Allura then turns to the others and says, “I’m afraid this is where we part ways.” She tells the others that this “is [her] purpose.” Ugh!

Hunk tells her, “There is no Voltron without you,” and she replies, “Voltron isn’t needed anymore.” How is that accurate? The universe is now going to be an unrealistic peaceful utopia for everyone now?

Allura says, “The rest of the work is up to the people, and they’ll have you to guide them Hunk,” and she hugs him as he cries.

She hugs Pidge and says, “Remain curious and fearless.”

As much as I have a lot of criticism for what’s happening, I do still feel the emotion of it. And Shiro talking to Allura breaks me. I’m actually crying now:

Shiro says, “Most of them won’t know the sacrifice you made so they could live.” Allura says, “And they’ll never need to. Your selflessness taught me that.” They hug. Allura says, “Thank you.” Shiro says, “You never have to thank me for anything.”

Allura moves down the line, “Keith, I cannot thank you enough for all you’ve given me.” Keith says, “Allura, when you accepted me, it helped me to accept myself. Thank you.” Allura hugs him and says, “There is greatness in your heart and in your actions.”

Then she comes to Lance. He says, “No, Allura, there has to be another way.” She says, “There is no other way. This is all we have.” He says, “You’re too important to the cause. You’re too important to me.” She says, “I’ll always be with you Lance. And I’ll always love you.” She kisses him and Altean facial markings appear on his face.

What in the world does Lance getting Altean facial markings mean? There is never an explanation for them.

The light in this long scene has been white, but now it turns yellow. The light in the distance beams like a sun. Allura and Honerva look toward it. In the light stand Alfor, Lotor, Zarkon, Blaytz, Gyrgan, and Trigel. Allura and Honerva walk into the light.

Allura turns back to look at the Paladins one last time before heading on into the light.

(I hate that a story as hurtful and offensive as this is still making me cry.)

The light fades and Voltron and Honerva’s mecha remain. Light shrinks down into a point until everything goes dark then light explodes outward. The strands of existences spring back into existence.

The Lions and the Atlas are separated. Keith quietly asks, “Is this?” and Pidge confirms, “Yeah, it’s our reality.” The cockpit of the Blue Lion is empty.

Hunk sees a planet, “I don’t remember that planet being there before.” Lance looks up, “It’s Altea.”

Cut to “One Year Later…”

(This commentary continues in part 2.)

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 8 #vld 8x13 #commentary

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comicbookuniversity · 5 years

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Joker: A Review

TL;DR: Hated it.

Art, regardless of medium, is the sharing of a dream from one person or group to a wider audience, and a dream by its nature is an emotional experience of reality where the predictable and unforgiving laws of reality bends to the reactionary subjectivity of the heart. When it comes to narrative art, the goal of any narrative is show a transition from one emotional state to another of at least the protagonist, if not a larger number of characters. There is a conflict between wants and needs, and a rise and fall in emotional status until a final state is achieved. And the audience should have a parallel emotional transition as they experience the narrative. Whether we're talking about a beloved children's book or an Oscar Best Picture winner, they will all follow the same basic patterns of arcs. Now, you might be asking what does this 101 definition have to do with anything? I bring it up because the Joker fails as a story in the most basic of understanding of what a story is supposed to accomplish.

Let me be clear: I wanted to like this film and I tried not to create too many expectations about what it would say or do. I am, as many who know me, a massive superhero fan. I have encyclopedic knowledge of the multiverses that compose superhero worlds and of the lives of dozens of writers and artists who have worked within the relative niche industry that now serves as an IP farm for movie studios. I've read and watched plenty of teams tell stories with the same sets of characters with different tones and ideas, and I've enjoyed plenty of them. So the idea of a dark, gritty origin story for the Joker, perhaps the most famous supervillain of them all, was one I was interested in, if it could be pulled off by the team doing it. After all, the Joker has famously been without a true origin story for decades and this air of mystery has been a part of his gimmick from the start. And I'm all for a compelling villain; I don't have to agree with the moral choices or philosophies of "evil" characters in order to find them entertaining within the narrative. So bring it on, if it can be brought.

But, it was not brought, and I sat through a two hour slog pretending to be art that made me mad, because it was a waste of talent, time, money, and was frankly insulting to their character it was supposed to be about.

To be fair, Joaquin Phoenix clearly tried his best to bring his A game to this role that was so squarely centered around him, and he nearly carries the film to being in the territory of OK instead of bad on his performance alone. But the script fails him so hard that even his performance can't overcome it's shortcomings. And to continue to give praise where it is due, the production crew did a great job creating that NYC in the '70s on the brink of collapse look, and Phillips actually does a good job creating a Martin Scorsese direction facsimile. The problem is that the story fails so hard that anything where there was any talent put in was undone because it's all wasted in a story that goes nowhere.

I don't want to spoil the plot, if it can be called a plot, but the emotional journey of Arthur Fleck, who will become the Joker, basically starts as a sad, angry man on medicine, gets shafted every chance the director can create, and ends with a sad angry man not on medication who is now violent. That's not a journey or even a mental breakdown. That's a man on medication to a man not being on medication who's grievances or needs never change, and who lashes out violently in a manner that's far too predictable and boring as hell. And the only noticeable difference between medication and the lack of it is a minor uptick in violent tendencies. He kills five people in the film, and three of them were while he was medicated. So there's no cathartic release for the audience, because there's no pay off to speak of from watching him go from employed Arthur Fleck to incarcerated Joker.

The film wants us to feel for Arthur- to make you understand why he becomes the Joker, but fails to create any real reason for us to feel for him. They just keep presenting us with one indignity and injustice after another as if that were simply enough, but that’s not how stories work. Stories are about people in situations, so if you have a common/mundane situation, then you’re characters must be interesting/entertaining to compensate. Conversely, the reverse is true, so if your characters aren’t particularly interesting/entertaining, then the situation and the ideas embedded within the situation must be compelling or experimental. Arthur simply is not interesting, relatable, or entertaining; nor is his situation intrinsically exciting or uncommon. He’s sad, angry, and violent; and the greatest change is that he puts on makeup not related to his job, which could be representative of a dramatic psychological shift towards this larger than life persona, but it isn’t representative of any real internal change and merely a change in circumstances.

There are villains who are compelling and entertaining, despite their moral choices, and their origins make them relatable. Look at Hannibal Lecter, Tyler Durden, Darth Vader, Erik Killmonger, and Michael Coreleone among a few select examples of villains with similar star power who are complex, sympathetic, and fascinating for their own reasons. They all serve as proof of villains as being central to good stories. Arthur is perhaps most similar to Tyler Durden, but Tyler had conflict with his desires and his desires had larger sociopolitical implications. Arthur has no conflict and his desires are not political. Basically, had he been given a little respect and found a job, then he’d have never become the Joker. That could be interpreted as the film showing the universal quality of the Joker identity; that it only takes one bad day to push us over the edge. But that’s insulting to the character and myth of the Joker. The Joker is not anybody who snaps after a series of bad events. He’s the clown prince of crime, and a monster so sadistic and feared that mobsters and supervillains alike tell stories about him as if he were a Boogeyman. Arthur Fleck is not as scary as some real life killers- let alone a tenth as scary as the reputation of the Joker built up over decades of stories. And then when you compare Phoenix’s Joker to all the previous Jokers who have come before him, not only does his Joker seem mild, he comes across as incompotent. It’s not as if comparisons can be ignored or are unwarranted; the Joker is an iconic figure.

I would criticize how the subplots of the film don’t support Arthur’s journey, but there are no other subplots. Subplots would imply that there are other characters beyond Arthur the film wants to actively invest time in to create an emotional journey, but all other characters props for Arhtur. They don’t change and only exist to explore Arthur’s psyche. There’s an evolving idea of political unrest among the poor residents of Gotham and protests against the government and rich, but there’s no other character who is suffering as a direct result of the causes of the unrest or give voice to the concerns and issues. This is as close to a subplot that we are given. We primarily learn about this unrest through radio, TV broadcast, and an occasional line from a character. The film even attempts to connect Arthur’s actions to this unrest by making him an unlikely figure in it, but it never really explains why this is the case. The film simply expects the audience to accept that he has become this figure, and then despite his very public violent action, criminal confession, and public disavowment of the unrest, that he is accepted as some kind of folk hero by those who have for some reason made him into a symbol as they riot.

The film has nothing to say as a result. It’s not about anything, and then it further perpetuates the idea of the mentally ill as dangerously violent. To recap, there’s only one character who remains static throughout the film, there are no other characters because they’re basically props, and it horribly wastes time and talent trying to tackle an iconic character with a story about nothing. And to top it off, it unnecessarily tries to tie itself to Batman’s origin by showing the Waynes getting killed on film for what might have been the 800,000th time. Gross.

#the joker #joaquin phoenix #todd phillips #dc comics #joker

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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What DC’s Infinite Frontier Means for Batman and Joker

https://ift.tt/2OD8pfS

James Tynion IV has been writing Batman in some form or another for his entire career. He began his time at DC Comics by writing backup stories for Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman during the New 52 era, fleshing out the history of the villainous Court of Owls before landing his first owl-centric series titled Talon. Tynion was one of the lead writers on Batman Eternal and Batman & Robin Eternal, two weekly series that mainlined years of Batman continuity back into the New 52. And following the Rebirth reset, he got a long run with the Bat family on Detective Comics.

With all that time on the Bat-books, it’s a little surprising to see the deluge of ideas still pouring out of the writer now that he’s got the flagship title all to himself. Tynion took over after Tom King’s 85-issue mega run, and proceeded to pit Batman against an entire city of clowns in “Joker War” after stripping the Dark Knight of his greatest superpower: his money. Tynion returns to the Dark Knight for the Infinite Frontier era, the post-Dark Nights: Death Metal status quo that has an energy to match Tynion’s voluminous idea output.

We had a chance to talk with him about a new year of Batman stories, his next big arc, and the surprising Joker solo book spinning out of “Joker War.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Den of Geek: When we last talked to you, you were just getting Punchline into the wind and just getting cracking on Joker War. Now we’ve got Joker getting his own series, you’ve got Batman past the big 100th issue milestone. You’re the boss now, right?

James Tynion IV: :laughs: Right. And to be honest, when I came onto the title, the company had certain things that they were looking to accomplish with the Batman title. So I had a list of things that I needed to accomplish in the book, which is honestly part of why I leaned into creating so many new characters, especially once I got [artist] Jorge Jimenez as a creative partner. It was because those were the elements that I had the most control over. And in doing it because the company had where they wanted Batman to end at, where they wanted Joker then.

But then as things started to change and it started to look like I was going to be staying on the title for the long haul, they started asking me “totally blue sky, what would you do next year if you had total carte blanche to do whatever you want?” And I said “I want to do a Scarecrow story.”

There’s a Scarecrow story that has been in my head since I was working on the [Batman] Eternals, since I was working on Detective Comics. It’s changed a lot since then, but there there are some core pieces that I’ve wanted to explore in a big Batman story for years. And now taking everything I’ve learned from my first year on Batman, taking everything I’ve learned from working with Jorge Jimenez, and also just looking at the state of the industry and the state of DC Comics in particular, I wanted to try some new stuff. I wanted to see what was possible and sort of test the limits of how far we can push the Batman mythology and still have it feel like a Batman book. And that is what we’re up to next year, and I’m really really excited about it.

Scarecrow as a character has always been a great, classic Batman villain. But he’s also got some mission overlap. He’s creepy and scary like the Joker is. He’s a brilliant scientist like Hugo Strange. What makes Jonathan Crane stand out as different and important and worth examining to you?

Well, I think there’s a really interesting parallel between Dr. Crane and Batman, which is the fact that Batman, by putting on the costume, is trying to instill fear in people. That is part of the core mission of him trying to put on that costume. It’s the belief that criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot and if he makes himself into something that seems inhuman and frightening, criminals are going to be scared out of their mind. In a weird way, it’s a psychological experiment on criminals that Batman is waging war with.

With Jonathan Crane, with Scarecrow, he is someone whose entire modus operandi is trying to unlock all of the secrets of fear and doing it with the amorality of a classic mad scientist. He doesn’t care how many people get hurt around him, but he’s genuinely fascinated in scientific terms. He thinks he is unlocking some of the truths of human nature and he’s willing to use the entire city as the testing grounds for that. But in a weird way, so is Batman. And that’s why the name of the big arc is “Cowardly Lot.”

Post-Joker War, you’re taking [the Joker] outside of Gotham, right? Where are you most excited to send him and why?

Honestly, there are a bunch of exciting places. I like showing him in places where it’s tonally incongruous for him to be. Like, I like Joker in the sun. It’s just the most bizarre thing possible with his pasty white skin, just him out on a beach laying with some sunglasses is really, really wild.

But tonally, what I was really excited to explore is the idea of what is the whole secret criminal underworld that spans across the globe? How do people like the Joker stay off of Batman’s radar for years at a time sometimes before they reemerge to cause their latest havoc? And what are the support systems that hide these people away and all of that.

One thing that I tapped into was a little bit of real life history, with the ratlines out of Europe at the end of the second World War, where a bunch of Nazis basically snuck into South America and changed their names and identities. And a lot of those similar systems are how organized crime evade the authorities and set down roots in places where you can’t be extradited.

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Joker, in particular, he is someone who appears to be a part of that world, because he is part of organized crime. He is the Clown Prince of Crime. But at the same time, he is such a chaotic element that he cannot…he walks into those systems, and those systems think they can control and contain him, but they can’t. And so a lot of those players who have been burned by him before are just as eager to take the Joker down as the heroes of the world. So that’s some of the core pieces that we’re trying to unpack here.

The element of the Joker that I’m most excited about is the fact that Joker does not necessarily make a great protagonist, because he’s someone you can’t really get into the internal life of. So emotionally the real protagonist of the Joker series is going to be Jim Gordon, who is one of my all time favorite characters, and the character I’ve been missing writing the most while getting to make my mark on the Batman mythology. So getting to put him up front and center with all of his very personal enmity towards the Joker, that is really exciting. And it also gives the book its tone. I keep referring to Joker as a horror noir book. This is this is me trying to do something that feels a bit more like a work of crime fiction, with the horror knob dialed up to 11. I honestly think the first issue is one of the best things I’ve written for DC.

Joker is going to function more like a kind of Jason Voorhees, right? He’s a horror movie villain rather than the focus of the story?

He is. Everything in the book happens because of the Joker, and the Joker is in every single issue of the book. But it is about the people who are pursuing the Joker, and the Joker playing with the people who are pursuing. He is both the Hannibal Lecter and the Buffalo Bill of the book. There is still a Will Graham, Jim Gordon is the Will Graham/Clarice that he’s playing with along the way.

You are obviously a very well established horror guy, but the artists on your horror books generally have a certain art style to them. Something Is Killing The Children [Tynion and Werther Dell’Edera’s horror comic about exactly what it says on the label] and Department of Truth [Tynion’s book with Martin Simmonds about conspiracy theories that become real], they don’t look like your typical superhero books. Guillem March has a vastly different art style to what Martin Simmonds and Werther Dell’Edera are doing on the other books. Has Guillem’s art style changed your approach to the horror in Joker at all? Or has your horror brought something different out of Guillem’s art?

One of my first books for DC comic was a title called Talon back in 2014, and Guillem March was the artist. I had been a fan of Guillem’s work, but I started realizing how good he was at the horror moments. Because he has this style that, I think you can see a lot of Joe Kubert. In his line work, it has a kind of Gothic edge to it. I’ve always loved writing some really scary moments for him. And I tried to tap into that, again with Batman…I think that his work on [Joker] so far is my favorite stuff he’s done in all the time that we’ve worked together, which has been pretty much my entire career.

Who’s your definitive Joker? When you’re dragging in a script, what Joker stories do you go back to to try and catch his voice again?

Oh, boy, that’s a really good question. One of the north stars just because of how closely I’ve worked with him, and for how long, is the Scott Snyder Joker. I think Scott got into the Joker’s head more than almost any other writer in the modern era. There’s a certain element of the Joker as the devil who just knows how to hit every single emotional pressure point on your body to make you afraid and to pick you apart. And the idea of him being almost ever present and in this solitary, terrifying way. So there’s an element of that, that I always bring in.

But I’m never going to be able to shake the Mark Hamill voice from my head. There is an element of Joker when he’s at his most performative and he’s always performing to an audience, [but] it depends who the audience is. Sometimes the audience is Batman, but his voice changes a little when he’s talking to other villains and those are the stories that I’ve always loved. When I was doing my Legion of Doom one shots during Scott Snyder’s Justice League run, writing him as a foil for Lex Luthor was incredibly fun. Even going all the way back when I was doing the backup stories in the New 52, writing a Joker up against Two Face or up against Penguin or up against Riddler. He has a very different dynamic with all of them that is a little more playful because he’s not trying to kill them. He’s just trying to mess with them. So that Joker gets a little more Mark Hamill where he is a bit more of the clown.

But honestly, my favorite Joker story ever is Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. I think it captures all of the sides of him. It’s him at his most performative, but you also see the deep hatred and also the incredible intelligence of the character, which is the thing that makes him so dangerous. The Joker would not be effective if he wasn’t as smart as Batman. The scary thing is he’s always playing a larger game. And it’s a larger game that does not necessarily follow a logic, but he can follow every step of it.

So we’ve got Jim [Gordon] in the Joker book. I’ve also read Barbara [Gordon], Bluebird, Punchline, [canonical best Batgirl] Cass [Cain], and Stephanie Brown are all showing up there.

Yeah, in the Joker book, there are also going to be backup stories continuing from the Punchline one-shot that I co-wrote back in November of last year, and continuing the story of Leslie Tompkins and Bluebird investigating Punchline’s past while she’s on trial for her crimes committed during the Joker War event. That story is going to continue there.

Barbara Gordon is going to play a key role in that book, especially her relationship with Jim Gordon. Joker looms large in both of their pasts but also in both of their recent pasts. In the Joker War tie-in issues, we saw the death of James Gordon Jr. and that’s going to be one of the key things that sets the story in motion here. So, there is both a loss in their family instigated by the Joker that sets the Gordon family on this journey.

The Gordon family is a very central force in the book, and tied very closely into that is the new arrangement in which we have Barbara Gordon working a bit more [behind the scenes, but] has not fully given up the Batgirl costume. But she is working more and more as Oracle again. And because she’s behind the computer, she is using Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown as her agents in the field, as her Batgirls. And so we are playing and building out that whole dynamic.

A lot of people are very happy with that.

I’m very happy about it. :laughs: And we have big plans for all of the Batgirl characters in the line that will become more and more clear as the year goes on.

Is everything pointing back towards each other? You’ve got the big Scarecrow story in Batman, you’ve got all of the toys that you’ve brought into the Bat-family hanging around with Clownhunter and with Ghostmaker. But it sounds like they’re kind of eventually going to converge again.

Oh, absolutely. You can’t have two parallel threads going if you don’t plan to have them intersect. And honestly, one of the big things that I am most excited about this next era is how closely together all of the writers are working. There are certain things you can only pull off in a connected superhero universe. And especially like in the era right now, there is an incredible opportunity at DC which is, we have Black Label and books in the YA space and all of that. There are more straight up the middle, back to basics Batman stories being told that are more in the classic mold. And then there is stuff written for all ages audiences with the Bat family characters. So it frees the main line books to go a little further, where we don’t need to reset everything to the status quo, we can kind of push the status quo a little bit and change it

The guiding idea that I’ve been going back to over and over is we’re further down the timeline than we’ve ever been before. If you look at Batman The Animated Series as a kind of core archetypal peak Batman moment where you have Batman, you have Bat Signal in the sky, you have Jim Gordon on the roof of the GCPD, you have a Tobin at his side, he’s in Wayne Manor, and Alfred’s in the Batcave. That is the era of peak Batman. And then you see at the end of the spectrum, you have stories like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Beyond. We’re now at the midpoint of those two points. And that’s really exciting to me. Because you get to play with a Batman who’s a little worried that he used to be more effective than he is. Because when he first came on the scene, he cleaned up crime, he was all that, he made it for a better city, but then everything started pushing back even harder. And the city started becoming a more dangerous thing.

And now Bruce Wayne is no longer a billionaire. He’s still wealthy, still a millionaire, but now he can’t just buy up all of Gotham City and try to fix it. He’s having to re-approach what he’s doing, build his methods back from the ground up. He’s doing it with the Bat family. But this is not an all powerful Bat God who can solve any problem that’s put in front of him in 30 seconds. This is someone who has to do the grunt work, the detective work, and touch up on his training and push himself to new limits, despite the fact that he’s not as young as he used to be. And I think that that makes for exciting storytelling.

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I’m really excited. And seeing how the other writers in the line are tapping into the new elements of the status quo. The hope is creating an era of Batman comics that people come back to long into the future. I want people to look at this era and be like, “that’s my favorite era of Batman.”

The post What DC’s Infinite Frontier Means for Batman and Joker appeared first on Den of Geek.

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racefortheironthrone · 7 years

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Thoughts on Spiderman: Homecoming

I’ll put my short, non-spoiler version above the cut for people who haven’t seen it yet: it’s good. It’s really good, head and shoulders above the Amazing duology and it holds its own against the Raimi films more than you would think.

Specifically, it has two major strengths: first, as many people have noted, Tom Holland’s Spiderman feels like a real teenager way more than either Andrew Garfield or Tobey Macguire did - in part because the movie makes the most of out its science high school setting by giving Holland a secondary cast of other teens to bounce off of, and by making the conflict between his superhero life and his regular life being about high school things generally (making Lego Death Stars, Academic Decathalon meets, detention) instead of just about his romantic relationships.

Second, as other people have noted, Spiderman: Homecoming feels way more New York (more of a neighborhood Spiderman, you could say) than previous Spiderman movies. The Amazing movies’ idea of New York was some abstracted Times Square theme park, and with the best will in the world, even the Raimi films portrayed an extremely white New York that didn’t go beyond Midtown canyons and various landmarks. But Homecoming felt like Queens, from the multicultural student body at Midtown Science to Spiderman and the Prowler (you were great, Donald Glover!) arguing over which bodegas have the best sandwiches, to the jokes about how the outer boroughs aren’t well-stocked with tall buildings to web-swing off of, to Spiderman’s interactions with neighborhood locals who get pissed when would-be superheroes web their hands to their cars or repay subway directions with churros.

Protagonist

So let’s start with Tom Holland. For all that people complain about the Marvel “machine,” one of the things the machine does very well is make sure that their writers and directors nail the main characters, even if that’s at the expense of the plot, because you have to sell the audience on the character to get the audience to care, and because superhero plots are generally pretty secondary anyway. And Homecoming does a really good job of building on the excellent work that Civil War did. To quote myself:

“I buy Tom Holland more than I ever bought Andrew Garfield or Tobey Maguire - Tobey was always a bit too soft and saccharine for me to buy that he was the irreverent snarker behind the mask, whereas Andrew’s performance was way too much of an over-reaction to the backlash against Spiderman III, and came off as way too cool.

That’s the thing about Spiderman/Peter Parker that makes him tricky: he’s a nerd and a bit nebbishy (although he kind of ages out of that a little - there had to be something there that Mary Jane Watson liked), but once he puts the mask on, he gains the confidence to express himself, even if that is as a smart-alecky motor-mouth. There’s a side of Peter Parker that has an ego, a yearning to show the world that he’s not Puny Parker any more - after all, the first thing he did when he got super-powers was to get in front of TV cameras - that makes him prank J. Jonah Jameson to get back at him, or not just fight the Kingpin but relentlessly crack fat jokes at him.

As I’ve said above, it’s really easy to grab one part of that personality and not the other. And one of the things I really like about Tom Holland’s Spiderman is that I feel like you have both...”

So how did Homecoming build on this? First, the nerd side of Peter Parker was nicely contextualized by his high school (which because it’s an elite magnet school is full of nerds) - he’s extremely high-scoring (he’s bullied by Flash because Peter’s constantly showing him up in class, and he’s the lynchpin of the Decathalon team until MJ steps up in his absence) but you get the sense that he feels like he’s maybe too smart for school so he sometimes gets himself in detention and probably hurts his GPA a bit by not doing homework in favor of his own projects; he’s a joiner (Decathalon, band, etc.) because he’s not very socially confident (hence his small friend circle of Ned and MJ, hence his mini-freakouts about Liz’s party and the eponymous dance) BUT he’s also someone who over-extends himself and then quits (holy crap did that one hit close to home), so he’s seen as a bit of a flake.

Second, that nerd side nicely parallels his super-hero side, with the wonderful euphemism of the “Stark internship” (god, no wonder Flash is jealous). Peter is desperate for recognition, to get called up to the big leagues, to the point where he’s constantly biting off more than he can chew (literally taking the training wheels off too early) to prove himself to “Mr. Stark” and then tries desperately to hold everything together or explain his screwups away when it blows up in his face. (Notably, all of the major action setpieces in the movie except the last one involve situations where Peter’s over-enthusiasm has actually created a bigger problem: foiling the bank robbery causes the bodega fire, his investigation of the alien power source causes the damage to the Washington Monument, his web-slinging damages the fission gun that damages the ferry, etc.) At the same time, he’s trying to live up to the image of what he thinks a super-hero ought to be, whether that’s in posing for commuters and doing backflips for hot dog vendors or making quips at bad guys (notably, his smart-alecking always comes off as a mixture of nervous posing and too much energy rather than coming off as mean).

But most importantly, at root Spiderman is a genuinely selfless hero - his first thought is to save the bodega owner and the bodega cat, he gives the ferry rescue everything he’s got even if he comes up short as 98% sucessful, he tells criminals to shoot at him rather than at anyone else, and in the film’s master-stroke, he goes all-out to save Adrian Toombs who’s repeatedly tried to kill him the moment he realizes that his wing-suit has gone unstable, because Spiderman doesn’t want to “instant death” anyone. And he’s utterly determined, as we see in the whole third act where he goes right after Toombs despite getting his ass kicked by the Shocker, then pulls himself out from the rubble Toombs buried him under, then gets himself onto the Quinjet then saves Coney Island from the crashing Quinjet, and on and on....

Antagonist

So...Michael Keaton. While not given a ton of time, Keaton does a great job reframing Adrian Toombs as the voice of blue collar upper-middle-class resentment, justifying theft and murder with his hatred of Tony Stark and the 1% on the one hand and the need to provide for his family on the other, and selling you on how this guy gives more and more reign to his dark side while trying to hang on to his hypocritical moral code. Also, it was an inspired idea to build on the idea of the Vulture being a scavenger by making him both a salvage operator and someone who later makes his money by stealing the aftermath of the Avengers’ battles and turns them into weapons. (BTW, even though the wings were re-done as military high-tech, they still had some personality - the way they draped down feather-like when he was resting on the billboard, the way he used them to pick up Peter and maybe use them as blades.)

Critically, the movie didn’t kill him off. See, Marvel’s villain problem isn’t always about how generic they are (although that was a problem for Malekith and Ronan the Accuser) but that they constantly kill off their villains which means that there’s no opportunity to build up a relationship between hero and villain - Robert Redford’s HYDRA true believer or Ultron would be great recurring villains, except they’re dead now. If Keaton ever wants to reprise his role, it would only take a jailbreak to put him back in the mix gunning for revenge according to his own code.

Also, the movie did a good job seeding future villains. We see the mantle (or rather the gage) of the Shocker get passed on in the film, the Tinkerer seems to get away in the end so is on hand for future movies, we get a great setup for why the Scorpion would go after Spiderman, and we even meet the Prowler who’d make for a great frenemy villain.

Secondary Cast

The kids are more than all right, they’re damn fantastic. Ned was a great audience stand-in as well as a voice of reason, was great as “the chair,” and even got to use the webshooters, Liz Allen nicely avoided a lot of “superhero girlfriend” pitfalls, Flash was a nice alternative to the over-used jock archetype, and Zendaya was a genuinely oddball presence who makes for a very different MJ than we’ve ever seen before (my friend @elanabrooklyn thinks that she’s basically comics Jessica Jones in all but name, which I would be ok with).

Marissa Tomei as Aunt May could have used more screen-time, but what there was, was great, from the ongoing gag that she’s completely oblivious to the fact that pretty much all the men in the service sector she meets are in lorb with her, to her very real mix of showing concern and trying to encourage while giving a teenager room, to her final F-bomb - which thankfully cut short the “Aunt May can’t know” storyline.

RDJ as Tony Stark actually didn’t over-shadow the film as much as people had worried - mostly, he’s there being simultaneously neglectful (answering some text messages, providing some encouragement outside of post-crisis situations, and actually explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing would be a good idea, Tony) and over-bearing (tracking devices and surveillance cameras are not a substitute for communicating, Tony), which is sort of how you’d expect him to handle being a mentor/surrogate father on his first go-round.

Plot

Despite how confident people were about what was going to happen in the movie from the trailers, the film actually did a great job throwing the unexpected at you, whether it’s the suburban lawn-chase sequence that wasn’t in the trailers, or the FBI showing up on the ferry, or the fact that Peter and Ned were directly responsible for the Washington Monument crisis, or why the Vulture and Spiderman were on a plane.

More importantly, the high school plot really really worked and intersected nicely with the superhero plot - Peter’s indecision about using his Spiderman persona to boost his and Ned’s social standing leading into the suburban lawn-chase, the Academic Decathalon giving the Washington Monument rescue real stakes, and best of all, the moment where Adrian Toombs opens the door for his daughter’s date and the commonplace dad/boyfriend tension goes into overdrive.

#marvel #marvel meta #spiderman #spiderman homecoming

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cnrothtrek · 7 years

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On the Q

It was a revelation to me when I first rewatched Star Trek on Netflix a couple of years ago, that John DeLancie’s Q is considered malevolent or villainous. Given that I was born during the summer between seasons one and two of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), and that the series I remember most clearly from childhood is Voyager (VOY), one can understand my confusion.

In the pilot episode, the Q are introduced as a species of extremely powerful beings who can manipulate space and time to their will. They place themselves as judges over so-called “lesser” species, issuing subjective rulings about whether or not these other species are worthy of expanding, growing, or even existing. Sins committed by members or factions can be held against the whole species, being used as evidence of their immorality. Of course, Captain Picard convinces Q to allow him and his crew to prove themselves as having transcended the sins of their past, and is (more or less) successful.

By the end of TNG, the character of Q has evolved. Because audiences responded more to his snide humor and chaotic-neutral alignment than to the possible metaphors to be found within his character, that heavily influenced what he became—an amusing pest who pops in every so often to teach someone on the Enterprise a lesson about life or exploration or themselves. Yet, as he revealed to Picard in the series finale, he never really stopped being what he always was. The trial was not over, and the fate of humanity had yet to be decided.

Then, came his arc through VOY. As with anything related to VOY, this has been the most heavily criticized portion of his development. His first appearance, in the episode Death Wish, followed quite well with where his character left off at the end of TNG, and remains one of my favorite episodes of any Trek series. After that… well… he goes a bit off the rails.

Now, let’s just step aside for a moment to acknowledge the elephant in the room. A large number of the *cough* cisgendered-heterosexual-male *cough* Trekkers/Trekkies who hate VOY, hate it because both the primary protagonist (Captain Kathryn Janeway) and the primary antagonist (the Borg Queen) are strong, authoritative women. WAIT! Don’t tune me out yet; stay with me.

Yes, I know there are many legitimate criticisms of the series—its writing, its quality, the lizard babies, blah blah blah. Yes, I know. I fully acknowledge those things. I don’t deny them. And no, I am not turning this into a rant about how Janeway-haters are all misogynists. That’s another topic entirely. Simply, I do not want this to become a VOY-bashing session. I adore that show, and if you insult Captain Janeway, I will have to toss you out of an airlock.

That being said, I personally do not like where the writers took Q in the later seasons of VOY. It simply does not fit his character for me, and I think it cheapens what he represented throughout his run on TNG. It sold him out for easy laughs and entertainment instead of building into what I think could have been an incredibly potent allegory for power and privilege—one that was wonderfully fleshed out in Death Wish and then surreptitiously dropped in favor of a much more shallow and subtly sexist plot meant to garner lolz at the expense of strength and complexity in Janeway’s and Chakotay’s characters.

Power and privilege, I think, is where I really hone in on the essence of Q, for better or for worse. In some ways, he knows exactly what he has over everyone else; in other ways, he is blind to it. That is the nature of being a privileged person, is it not? For example, men can be fully aware that there is a social power imbalance that favors them and disadvantages women, yet completely blind to the fact that their reasons for disliking Janeway are characteristics they overlook and even praise in the male captains. That is the nature of privilege. Q knows that he is more capable than humans are, yet he never seems to grasp that his own privilege is exactly what skews his understanding of humanity in unfair and stereotypical ways. It also blinds him to the things they have in common.

But, here is where I want to get meta on my meta: Q is a character representing privilege, who is created and written by people of privilege. He is Bill Gates lecturing about income inequality. He is Iggy Azalea giving an interview on the value of rap. He is a mansplainer, telling women what sexism looks like. Sometimes, he does actually get the idea across. Sometimes, the allegory is good and poignant. Other times, it’s problematic. Always, it ignores the perspective of those for whom the issue is most real.

This character misappropriates the issue of power and privilege. It skews the allegory in favor of the privileged viewer, to the detriment of the oppressed. The fact that he uses epithets against Worf and Chakotay go unnoticed. Remember that time he turned Dr. Crusher into a dog in the middle of her absolutely spot-on criticism of his actions towards Amanda, rolling his eyes at the “shrill” woman? Or the time he tried to coerce Captain Janeway to have sex with him in exchange for getting her crew home? Did you laugh at those interactions and then promptly forget about the implications when the “real” moral of the story came to light? Those things soil otherwise good episodes for me, not because they exist but because they are written simply to make privileged viewers go, “lol, Q’s an asshole.” It isn’t so funny to those of us who actually live with that sort of treatment on a regular basis. If anything, it twists the knife. Meanwhile, white men can pat themselves on the back for watching such an enlightened, progressive tv show.

Still, there are positives to be pulled from this mess. I cannot help but think about the story of two Q who chose to leave the Continuum and move to Earth, and I consider the parallels to be found in how horribly allies are often treated by people of privilege who view them as traitors. I think about how it boggles Q’s mind that Riker did not want to give up his human life in order to be a Q. I think of how petty I can be when I know that I have a larger base of knowledge on something than someone else does, and how quickly I can dismiss their perspective as being beneath me. I think of how utterly unjust and narrow-minded it is for “developed” societies to judge “underdeveloped” cultures when the truth is that they have no such moral right. I think of how, sometimes, having everything handed to you can suffocate that which makes life worth living until you don’t know why you even bother anymore.

I think of these things and I wonder if Q, like the Borg, is simply another antagonist blatantly abusing power and privilege in order to teach people with real world power about themselves.

#star trek #tng #st voy #q continuum #star trek meta

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hellyeahheroes · 7 years

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Cleansing the Crimes of Old Krypton: Comparisons Between Superman #1-6 and Supergirl #1-6

Ever since the rise of the comic-book anti-heroes, Superman and his family were positioned by writers in the opposition to them. This is a natural progression for those who understand the character’s roots as the hero of the little folk. Such qualities are resonating with the liberal and socialist ideals. Meanwhile, antiheroes often voice ideas that would be very terrifying if said by real-life politicians. The efficiency being presented as more important than human rights or collateral damage. The idea that the justice system only stops the protagonist from doing what’s necessary. An approach where stopping the bad guys is more important than protecting the innocent. These ideas can easily be applied to politics. And as a result, lead to authoritarian or outright fascist thinking. Don’t get me wrong. Some people claim if Batman won’t kill the Joker, he has the blood of Joker’s future victims on his hands. I’m not saying they’re cheering Donald Trump saying federal judges who overruled his ban on Muslim Immigrants are to blame if a terrorist attack happens. But we need to recognize the parallels.

Many successful antihero stories were built on exploring the consequences of this approach. You can find those themes everywhere from The Authority and V for Vendetta to Code Geass. Sadly, lately, we have a continuous increase of those problems being glossed over. And not only for actual antiheroes but even more upstanding characters. Especially in movies. Once paragons of virtue on big screen become terrifying. And yet we're supposed to cheer when they commit atrocities. Violating borders of a foreign country, intruding on people’s privacy, destroying an entire city in battle, murdering people. It all becomes not only justified but even glorified. They say it’s okay for “good guys” to do those things. Because otherwise, we’re all going to die. Because they’ll stop once the danger is gone, pinky swear. Because only the bad guys get hurt and killed. So relax and handle all the power and no accountability to those guys, they need it to protect you.

Superman stories often tackled this issue. Sometimes results is a compelling, meaningful voice in the discussion. Other times we get an awful, hypocritical story. That is given praise regardless because it sticks it up to the other side. “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice And American Way” and it’s adaptation “Superman vs the Elite” are a prime example. There Superman proves wrong the Authority knockoffs who claim that might makes right. By beating the living shit out of them, thus proving that might do indeed makes right…. if you’re Superman. Thankfully, two stories I want to talk about do not have this problem.

For inspirations, both stories reach back. To a tale of 4 individuals that tried to replace Superman after his supposed death - Reign of Supermen. Superman books under Rebirth banner, in general, try to recreate the feel of that era. Superman is dead and his replacements start showing up. Kenan Kong in the New Super-Man, Lana Lang in Superwoman, even Lex Luthor dons the cape. But DC managed to have their cake and eat it too. The main Superman book still has it's Man of Steel. It's Superman from another Universe, with wife and son. He is more in line with old DC Continuity, compared to Superman that died. Meanwhile, Supergirl reaches to feel more like beloved TV Series, even if Kara is still a teenager. To connect with Reign of Supermen both books use a different way. They reach for its “bad” Supermen - Eradicator and Cyborg Superman. They also revamp them to have them fit a specific purpose.

Or use earlier revamps, as is the case with Cyborg Superman. Before Flashpoint this name was held by Hank Henshaw, a scientist with a grudge. In New 52 he is the man who had sent Kara to Earth from Argo, last surviving city of Krypton. Her father, Zor-El. He failed to save the whole colony and is desperate to undo past failures. He turns dead corpses of his citizens and even wife into cyborgs like him. But to regain sentience the need to consume life force of intelligent beings. Then Zor-El hears Kara cry in her moment of doubt. She question she’ll even be able to fit on Earth and how strange and, well, alien, our customs are for her. Her father doesn’t hesitate. He decides to invade Earth, harvest humanity to resurrect Argo and take his daughter back.

Eradicator was absent from New 52 era of DC, to resurface in Rebirth, with a simplified origin. Before Flashpoint it was an alien A.I. obsessed over Krypton. In Rebirth Eradicators were created by General Zod. It was a mechanical police force used against both criminals and political rivals. This one came back to life through contact with the blood of Superman’s son, Jonathan. And then vowed to protect and restore Krypton’s legacy. Starting with the last heir of House of El, Superman himself. Clark is reluctant to trust the robot when it offers to examine Jon’s health and fluctuating powers. Turns out it was a good call. Eradicator decides that being half-human half-Kryptonian, Jon is impure. And that the best way to heal him is to eradicate human part of his DNA. Jon would become fully Kryptonian, but also cease to exist as a person he was up to this point.

Both those villains have a history of representing darker shades of Krypton. In old continuity, Eradicator was a go-to explanation for every Krypton-related bad thing. Villainous interpretation of Zor-El is nothing new either. Before Flashpoint his whole motivation was "He hates his brother, Jor-El". He didn't send Kara away to save her, but to make her kill Kal-El. He had brainwashed his own daughter to make her a weapon against her cousin.

If anything, this version of him comes off as, if not sympathetic, then at least pitiable. Flashbacks show us he was a caring, loving father, who sent Kara away to protect her. It makes it much more tragic to see how far he has fallen. Even Kara starts to feel bad for him over the course of the story. She recognizes in him a man haunted by his failures, whose actions are a desperate try to fix everything. But Supergirl still calls him out. She points out that he doesn't care about anything but himself anymore. If he did, he’d see how twisted his “solution” actually is and try to find a better one. The results were more important than how he achieved them. And things like mass murder became merely means to an end. It doesn't matter how many he has to kill. It doesn't matter he turned his wife and friends into mechanical monsters. Once he gets them back, everything will be back to normal, he tells himself. He expects his wife and daughter to go back to their old life and ignore all the blood on his hands. He is delusional. When his wife regains part of her mind, she sacrifices herself to save Kara's adoptive mother. She'd rather be dead than part of this. Does it get to him? No. because for Zor-El it doesn't matter how appalling his methods are. Only that he wins.

Both Zor-El and Eradicator are operating on racist and xenophobic assumptions. They see everyone who is not Kryptonian as inferior and disposable. The whole idea of a Kryptonian living with human family is appalling to them. Zor-El several times states he never meant for Kara to stay on Earth forever. He expects her to simply abandon her new home, now that it served its purpose. He also mentions in passing wars betweenKrypton and other races. It's implied they were as horrible as what he is doing now. Meanwhile, what is Eradicator? A Kryptonian version of police brutality and law-enforcement being used for political reasons. All these factors make the reader ask a question neither of the villains bothered with. Should you bring old Krypton back? If Kryptonians were warmongering xenophobes, then why should they return? Who is to say if they do, they won’t go down the same path again? Neither Eradicator nor Zor-El makes a strong case against this argument. Not when they’re willing to stomp into the ground anyone who stands in their way.

We live in times when people in power tell us we need to give up parts of our freedoms for our own protection. That we need to do whatever it takes, no matter how unethical, to protect our way of life from “the enemy”. Even if it means crushing rights of those different from us. This is no different from many anti-heroes in comics. How often do we see one accusing more restrained superheroes of not having what it takes to “get the job done”? Or claim not only are they too weak, but people they protect are dumb masses easy to sway and control? Those themes are still being explored by creators of both books. Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason do it through later Superman villain, the Prophecy. Lord Havok and the Extremists serve this role in Steve Orlando’s JLA. But it isn’t enough to have heroes beat this type of villains. What is even more important is how they beat them. As I mentioned above, in that kind of stories it’s easy to come off as a hypocrite, if you play your hand wrong.

Luckily, even on that ground, the stories are on point. Neither Superman nor Supergirl can defeat their enemies alone. It is the strength of family, friends, and allies that allow them to overcome this threat. As Kara says, she isn’t on Earth to inspire humans – they inspire each other. Threat Eradicator and Zor-El present cannot be defeated by an individual. It needs the united effort of everyone it threatens. Even average people like Cat Grant or Bibbo Bibbowski have their part to play. It’s love, family, and unity that save the day.

And in true classic fashion, they are both shown mercy. While Eradicator’s physical form is destroyed, Superman’s very aware that’s not enough to kill him. Meanwhile, Cyborg Superman ends immobilized and imprisoned. The story ends with Kara hoping to find a way to save her father. If you follow solicits you know they’ll both be back in May’s Action Comics. Some might complain about the never-ending nature of superhero comics. How no victory is ever meaningful because the villain will come back. It’s one of the major problems raised by supporters of the antiheroes. But looking at those villains a metaphor for fascist tendencies, it works. Fascism can be beaten, but it cannot be killed. It will always find a way to creep back under a different name. The weakness of anti-hero stories lies in them giving the reader a fake sense of finality. They tell us we have to do whatever it takes, even if it’s immoral and unethical, to win against the evil. That once we beat it, it’s gone and we can go back to normal. But that’s not true. Evil is forever and it will keep coming at you in new forms. We can see it in today’s world as well. Not so long ago many folks would say fascism died when WWII was over. Allies victory over this evil was final and definite. The questionable choices made by them like bombing civilian cities, were justified because fascism is now dead. Once put down it will never rise to power again. And then Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon started making the news…..

The purpose of this text is not to bash on fans of the antihero characters. But when working with them it's important to show their questionable aspects. Otherwise, they can become propaganda tools for the worst kind of people.

#Superboy #Jonathan Kent #Jon Kent #Supergirl #Kara Zor-El #Kara Darvens #DC

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