When I was a kid I read a lot of comic books. I was an eclectic reader and comic books had their place along with Dickens, Isaac Asimov, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, H. Rider Haggard, Dumas, and boys’ (and girls’!) series books. That was a long time ago. I lost interest in comic books more than a half century ago.
Now comic books rule the world and everywhere you turn there’s a comic book adaptation, whether on the big screen or the small one (aside: the “small screen” isn’t so small any more). I thought I’d tell you my impressions of the comic book adaptations currently on TV.
Agent Carter
Agent Carter gave Peggy Carter from the first Captain America movie a vehicle of her own. I loved it and hope it returns. The acting is decent and I attribute a lot of the show’s charm to the attitude that its star, Hayley Atwell, gives the character. I find the cartoonish way it portrays the post-war period a bit trying at times but, heck, it’s a comic book.
Arrow
CW’s adaptation of the Green Arrow for television follows the CW formula. It has a very attractive young cast, short skirts, low-cut blouses, lots of beefcake, a very dark attitude, and terrible acting. It is a veritable festival of mugging, voguing, and reciting lines in extremely…portentous…tones. I found the first season interesting because of the concept and the angst-ridden central character. I’m starting to find it wearing.
Is the Arrow what has become of the Green Arrow in the comics these days? Green Arrow used to be funny. Played for laughs and armed with an enormous inventory of bizarre “arrows”. The very grim Arrow is nothing like that.
Daredevil
I’ve already expressed my views on this NetFlix series. I think it’s great.
The Flash
Same CW formula, this time applied to the Flash. Not nearly as dark as Arrow, initially I found the series evocative of the Golden Age Flash—a comic character. Over time that has faded, sadly from my point of view. As it becomes increasingly dark and angst-ridden, I’m starting to lose interest.
iZombie
Another CW series. Interesting concept: a young woman can prevent her deterioration into “full zombie mode” all the time by eating brains. When she does she gets some of the memories and abilities of the individuals whose brains she’s consuming. Uses that to solve crimes. Obtains her sustenance more or less benignly in the course of working as an assistant at the morgue. So far so good. I’ll give it a few more episodes.
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
I watched this for most of the first season but I just lost interest. Better acting and not quite as grim as either of the preceding CW series. I just didn’t care about any of the characters. I find most female martial arts masters require too much of suspension of disbelief. Interesting sidelight: did you know that Ming Na was over 50? Looks pretty good for her age.
The Walking Dead
Although it’s the grimmest of the grim, I think this is one of the best series of any genre on TV now. Short summary: surviving the zombie apocalypse. Acting is decent, the Georgia location shooting is interesting. The best thing about this series is its ability to use its McGuffin (zombies) to explore serious topics. Child-rearing. Society. Relationships under trying conditions.
Have I missed anything?
I want Marvel/Disney to do “The Hulk & Thor Comedy Hour”, a limited run variety series. (I’m thinking live action, but the guys doing the cartoon voices right now would be awesome if they did it as an animated series.)
Think Sonny & Cher but with lots of hitting and wrecking the studio. Comedy gold, I tells ya! It’d revive the variety show!
It will be interesting to see whether the move to diversity will revive or kill the printed comic books. I think it might be well-intentioned but misguided.
The movies seem to be doing just fine with international audiences despite their mostly white hetero casts.
I know I’m old but I can’t see the female Thor as anything but the comic book equivalent of New Coke.
We watch Agent Carter and Agents of Shield. Both are pretty good. Agent’s of Shield is tied directly in with the movies which gives some flavor and back-story that’s kind of cool.
I watched the first couple of seasons of the Walking Dead, but it grew tiresome after a while. I may get back to it at some point.
I can’t think of any others.
I know I’m old but I can’t see the female Thor as anything but the comic book equivalent of New Coke.
I was never really a comic book guy, but I’ve always had friends who were big fans. (Hey, I was and am a chess nerd. One can only take so much abuse!) So I’ve got a little familiarity with how it used to be.
Unless the audience has changed tremendously for super hero comics, I’m thinking all the diversity, especially with the gay characters, is likely to fall flat. The female super heroes have always had a bit of a fetishistic following among the fanboys, so mostly I don’t think that’s a problem, or the racial diversity. But if the core audience is still teenage boys I don’t see the gay stuff playing too well.
The female Thor sounds ridiculous, a last-gasp kind of measure. (No idea how well the books are doing, but that doesn’t sound promising.)
The black Captain America, on the other hand, sounds quite reasonable to me. The guy that took up the mantle had always looked up to and been a protege of Cap’s, IIRC. So if Steve Rodgers disappears, he’s probably THE natural choice to take on the role.
Like Andy, I watched the first season of Walking Dead, and then decided I didn’t care. It was just too relentlessly grim. That’s fine for a two hour movie, but it can get old in a TV series. Did like seeing something set in the South though that actually felt like the people behind it may have actually had some clue what the South is like.
Don’t ask me why I was fine with the grim tone of Breaking Bad but not Walking Dead. Maybe it’s just that I can only watch so much, or that I didn’t have to suspend as much disbelief for the world of Walter White as I did for zombie Apocalypse, but whatever it was, I just couldn’t take it.
As for Agent Carter – it bothered me that a woman in that time and milieu was kicking that much ass of men who were clearly bigger and stronger than she was, and should have had some experience fighting. Okay, when Wonder Woman or Buffy do that, they’re relying on magical powers. But Carter is just a regular woman. It was a bit much. Also, she just looks too BIG for the times. But then, none of the actors really give off a post-war vibe, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
I watched John Constantine this year, which is based upon a character created by Alan Moore (*), who starred in a long-running series, Hellblazer. The character was a mash-up of occult detective, aged punk rocker, working-class-git, with horror often inspired by Thatcherism. He looked like Sting in a trenchcoat, smoking like there is no tomorrow. I never saw the movie.
The TV show stars an excellent Scottish actor, but transplants him to the U.S. with both mystery of the week and a long-term mysterious threat to be discovered. The formula moves too close to Supernatural, and loses all of the English charm and mature themes. They wouldn’t let him smoke initially. On the bubble for renewal, fans appear to want the show dropped from the networks and reworked on SyFy or Netflix w/ more fealty to the original. The character may reappear in upcoming Del Toro “Justice League Dark,” which is probably not Dave’s Justice League.
(*) Watchmen, V for Vendetta, League of Extrordinary Gentlemen, From Hell
I tried watching Agent of Shield, but somewhere along the line got behind and didn’t even know how to catch-up. As I recall, the increasing importance of who is having sex with whom, suggested it was probably not for grade-school boys and left me wondering if it knew what it wanted to be.
I keep watching Walking Dead and am probably in it for the long-hall, particularly as it’s not all about zombies, at least directly. Never read the comic, but do wonder if certain returning themes will run their course (discover a new tribe, can we trust them?)
Ah, yes. I forgot Constantine. I thought it was terribly grim, not suitable for the early time slot they had it in, and just barely okay. Another series where I didn’t care about anybody in the show so why bother?
Green Arrow has been doing the urban vigilante thing in the comics since I was collecting in the 90’s. He has gone back to the trick arrows and back again, but I don’t think he’s been fun for a while. Even before the vigilante schtick there was the political activist schtick.
Flash is a disaster. They had a nice chance to do something fun but went with teen angst x 1000.
I agree with those who TWD is too grim. It wouldn’t bother me in comic form, but it is hard to look forward to the next episode.
The diversity push from Marvel at least has been rewarding.
Miles Morales (the black/hispanic kid who took up Peter Parker’s example in the Ultimate Universe) has been well-written and his family mined appropriately for stories that utilize his different background and upbringing.
Ms. Marvel is a wonderful 50 year+ anniversary tribute to the original Peter Parker story while being a real improvement over it. She is awkward, goofy, and hopelessly outmatched at home. Our best friends are Pakistani-Americans and growing up, I can see so much of them in Kamala Khan, just without superpowers.
The female Thor is too early to tell. The engaging long-term Thor story Jason Aaron has been writing for years is beginning to pay off, but it remains to be seen if female Thor will be viewed with disdain or pity in a few years.
Other recent stories with black Cap (excellent writing that acknowledges the distrust and/or contempt people have for a non-Steve Rogers Cap), Silk (a Korean girl bitten by the same spider that bit Peter Parker), and Black Widow (feels less like James Bond and more like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with illegal genetic modifications) have been helped by great writing and minimal moral/SJW preening.