Category Archives: DC
Arrow Keeps Piling Them On
At least two more comic book heroes will be joining the TV show Arrow next season: the Atom and Katana! I’m excited to see Arrow continue to give us quality DC cameos, though neither one of them is on my list of hopefuls. The Atom is a pretty big deal, being a solid member of the Justice League. In fact, beyond the Flash and Black Canary, this is our fourth Justice Leaguer in this TV universe. And Katana has a special connection to the Green Arrow in Jeff Lemire’s current comic storyline, The Others. Both represent different weapon clans, the Sword and Arrow clans, respectively. Maybe that will come up, though I kind of doubt it.
The Atom will be played by Brandon Routh.
Routh, of course, both started and stopped his career playing Superman in Superman Returns. Poor guy. He was darn good in the third season of Chuck, and in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. According to the news, Ray Palmer will be the new owner of Queen Consolidated, so he’s gonna be a businessman with a focus on the applied sciences division. Will he be shrinking? Who knows!
Maybe DC is trying to get their shrinking superhero onto screens before Ant-Man next July. You know what…that’s probably exactly it!
Katana will be played by Devon Aoki.
Aoki starred in Sin City as a badass sword-wielding warrior woman, a role she’ll hopefully fill in Arrow too! Apparently she’s going to be a contact of Oliver’s in the Hong Kong flashbacks, though like with Deathstroke, she’ll hopefully show up in the present day too.
I’m perfectly happy with these castings. Arrow is one of my favorite shows right now, and I look forward to more comic book characters popping up! Everyone except Nightwing, though.
Hench-Sized Comic Book Reviews – 7/5/14
Happy Day after Independence Day! Did everybody watch the movie, Independence Day, like I do every year? Or should do every year…I need some Fourth of July traditions. I need to be more patriotic. And there’s nothing more patriotic than reading comics! Especially Captain America comics…which I didn’t do this week. Man, I’m bad at this.
Anyway, I mostly read Marvel comics this week, because DC didn’t have much of anything to tickle my fancy. We’ve still got new Batman Eternal, because I’m still subjecting myself to that series. But we’ve also got new issues of X-Factor, Magneto, Moon Knight, Original Sin and the first issue of Legendary Star-Lord. If you’re wondering why they added the word ‘Legendary’, well, it’s kind of obvious once you read the comic, but not for the reason Marvel probably wants.
Thor: God of Thunder #24 wins Comic Book of the Week for another one of those quieter, talking heads issues that Jason Aaron does so well with this series. I tell ya, Thor has never felt so grand and yet so personable.
Needs more Beta Ray Bill.
Comic Reviews: All-New X-Factor #10, Batman Eternal #13, Legendary Star-Lord #1, Magneto #6, Moon Knight #5, Original Sin #5 and Thor: God of Thunder #24.
We’ll Make the Batman Metal
Enjoy this lovely ditty about Batman as one badass metal mofo!
The animation is pretty good, and the song is pretty metal, so it’s got that going for it. Batman, of course, could be the king of metal. And Robin is kickin’ it on drums. The video was made by ArhyBES.
An Angry Superman and a New Bout of Rumors
Production on Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is amping up, and as such, pictures from the set are flying around the Internet. In the slow march towards acceptance, a lot of studios have started revealing characters and costumes well in advance of when those same images might get leaked on the web. For example, the CW put out the first official pictures of the Flash costume just days before pictures of him in costume on set hit the web.
So perhaps that’s why Warner Bros. released this startling image of a dour Superman today.
The ‘S’ stands for Eternal Sorrow
Somebody really sneezed in his Cheerios. Is that still a thing kids say?
Anyway! The reason I’m posting this grumpy picture of Superman is because there’s a new spat of rumors about characters and actors in Dawn of Justice. Normally I don’t like publishing rumors like that, because they can be wrong at the drop of the hat.
But as a rabid fanboy, I am going to follow every possible iota of information about Dick Grayson being in Dawn of Justice. I probably want Dick in Dawn of Justice more than I want Multiple Man in the next X-Men movie (though it pains me to say that).
As such, the rumors come from Latino Review, and they basically state that Scoot McNairy – who I had pegged as a Nightwing front-runner – might actually be playing Morgan Edge, a businessman-type villain, who they figure will be Lex Luthor’s slimy PR man.
Normally I would be saddened by the news, but the scooper, El Mayimbe, seems pretty confident that Dick Grayson is indeed going to be in the movie. He practically mentions it as an established fact, that Dick Grayson will be in his mid-20s, and can’t be played by the 30something-year-old McNairy, so that buffers my fears somewhat.
Beyond Edge, El Mayimbe claims we’ll see Victor Zasz, David Cain and Amanda Waller all in the movie. They’re all human characters, so it wouldn’t be hard to toss them into the movie somehow. Batman Begins used Victor Zasz in exactly that same, simple way.
So there you have it. From some much more experienced and knowledgable bloggers than me, McNairy will be playing Morgan Edge, and Dick Grayson is definitely in the movie.
Good times.
So Scott Lobdell Went and Changed Tim Drake’s Origin a Bit More, and Nobody Noticed or Cared
Three years later, I’m comfortable in saying I don’t care for the New 52 at DC Comics. There are a few good comics at the company – though only Wonder Woman really springs to mind – but for the most part, everything is kind of crummy, and there is no indication that DC has any long term plans. They’re just throwing whatever they can at any walls they can find. But I’m not here to mock DC Comics. I’m here to pound more nails into the coffin of Tim Drake, one of my most favorite comic book characters of all time.
Suffice to say, Tim Drake, otherwise known as Red Robin, is a character who suffered a great deal in the New 52 change. Before the reboot, Tim was Robin was nearly 20 years (in real time). He was great in the role, and quite honestly, he was the greatest Robin of all time. Hands down.
But DC isn’t done screwing with or retconning his origin, apparently.
Never is not enough!
In the New 52, DC and writer Scott Lobdell rewrote Tim’s origin story and they altered his entire history as Batman’s partner. No longer was Tim ever ‘Robin’, instead calling himself ‘Red Robin’ from the very beginning. And he was only Batman’s partner for a short while, seeing it more as a stepping stone in his career than anything permanent or worthwhile. Tim suddenly became a gymnastics prodigy. And instead of having a long, complex story involving his parents, particularly his dad, Lobdell shuffled them off into ‘Witness Protection’ before Tim ever even became Red Robin.
Also, New 52 Tim Drake is kind of an asshole, especially to Batman.
Most of these changes were laid out in Teen Titans #0, the flashback issue that first told us the new origin of Tim Drake. Among the changes, we learned that Lobdell also took away the fact that pre-reboot Tim Drake had figured out Batman’s secret identity all on his own. That was Tim’s thing. That’s one of the things that made him so special.
Batman has a bunch of creepy old man masks at the ready
That was nearly two years ago, after which Teen Titans became a terrible wreck that nobody read, prompting cancellation.
Well it seems DC wasn’t done letting Lobdell mess around with Tim Drake. Apparently everyone involved wanted to re-retcon a few things, so they put out Secret Origins #3 this week. I didn’t even know Tim Drake was going to be part of the issue until I saw a brief mention of it online. And further searching the web, I couldn’t find anyone who seemed to care about any of the new changes made to Tim’s origin. So perhaps it falls to me, of all people, to at least document that these changes have happened.
For example, guess who really did figure out Batman’s secret identity?
Fixed a mistake?
And Lobdell tried to fix that weird, unexplained part where his name wasn’t really Tim Drake.
Because this makes it better, I guess?
I dunno. I guess I just wanted to write this article for posterity. Somebody has to pretend to still care about Tim Drake, right? He still has fans somewhere…right?
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