Let’s talk geek controversy

People who know me know how closely I follow geek entertainment news. Mostly they know it from those meetings where everybody sits me down and tries to explain how my obsession with geek entertainment news has affected them, and then I yell “No, the showrunners of Agents of SHIELD need an intervention!” and then come the tears… We have fun.

Anyway, some geek news as of late has caused ripples of controversy. Allow me to explain a few of them, and why I think they’re kind of a big deal. Well, as much of a big deal as movies based on superheroes are capable of being.

Ant-man shenanigans

What’s the deal? For eight years, as long as there has been a Marvel Studios, filmmaker Edgar Wright was pitching a movie based on Ant-man, a character who couldn’t possibly have been at the top of anyone’s list to give his own movie.

Not that the list couldn't use an edit.
Not that the list couldn’t use an edit.

Edgar Wright is behind such cult favourite movies as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, and The World’s End. He is a filmmaker of singular vision. He may not have the box office clout of a David Fincher, but damn he’s got the talent. And for nearly a decade he’s been asking for the chance to use those talents on a movie about Ant-Man. Only to pull out of the project right before it was due to start filming.

It’s now generally known that the reason for this split was that Marvel, late in the game, requested script changes Edgar Wright didn’t want to make. Whatever Wright had planned, it was too big a break from the Marvel model, and they wanted to correct that. A move not everyone on Team Marvel agrees was a great move.

Huh. Their other cult-favourite writer/director. Go figure.
Huh. Their other cult-favourite writer/director. Go figure.

Since then, other writers (three and counting) have been brought in to rewrite the movie, because nothing says “Quality movie” like four different screenwriters.

Why does this matter? A lot of the buzz following the split looked at what this might mean for future Marvel films. Are they anti-auteur? Why is a company that built its reputation being different and taking risks now pushing for safety and sameness? Were they worried that Guardians of the Galaxy might be their first failure? (Announcing a release date for the sequel before it was released says no, and their box office to date says they never needed to be) Will they have trouble attracting actors if they’re going to make a habit of changing the entire project (at least the script and director) after everyone’s already signed on? The cast committed to Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man, after all, not the version they’re ultimately shooting.

But that’s not why it matters.

First of all, those are questions thought up by a media that loves a good downfall story. Marvel’s on a winning streak on the big screen. Nine movies in, and eight are unqualified hits (Incredible Hulk didn’t bomb, but they’ve certainly been reluctant to talk sequel). Their movies have flaws, yes, mostly their inability (or unwillingness) to write good villains… fine, except for Loki that one time… but they’re reliably fun to watch and typically make a decent profit, and as long as that second thing is true, losing Edgar Wright will not hurt them as a company. Actors like being in blockbusters, so as long as the movies are hits, Marvel won’t have problems finding casts. It probably won’t even hurt Ant-Man’s box office much. More people were going to watch it based on “From the studio that brought you Avengers: Age of Ultron” than “From the director of Shaun of the Dead.” That’s just a fact.

It matters because it’s sad.

It’s sad that Edgar Wright chased this project for so long only to have it mutate into something else, something he couldn’t be a part of. It’s sad that Edgar Wright will never get to make his Ant-Man movie, and it’s sad that we won’t be able to see it. Because while I don’t know what the new writers are changing, or how much if any of Wright’s original story will still be there, I have seen every movie Wright has directed, and each and every one of them is amazing. So I cannot believe that this new Ant-Man movie will be anywhere as good as Wright’s would have been.

Doesn’t mean it won’t still be worth watching. Most of Marvel’s product is. But it could have been more. And it’s sad that the world’s most consistently successful film studio is now publicly against doing things differently.

Lady Stoneheart

What’s the deal? Game of Thrones is huge these days, but the fandom is split into two factions: those who read the books, and know it better as “A Song of Ice and Fire,” and those (like myself) who are just watching the TV show. As such, discussion of Game of Thrones (the show) is carefully divided, so that fans of A Song of Ice and Fire (the books) can discuss things without spoiling it for those of us who haven’t been reading ahead.

A covenant that was broken in the wake of the fourth season finale.

Now I’ll do what most websites didn’t and refrain from spoiling anything. Suffice to say, many of the book-reading fans expected the fourth series to end with a jaw-drop moment from the end of book three (which is approximately where they’ve gotten), that jaw-drop moment being the arrival of a character referred to as Lady Stoneheart. When the Lady didn’t appear, the internet went crazy, wondering why she wasn’t there and if we should expect her next season, spoiling who she is for the TV crowd all the way. Even the article headlines and choice of photos made it hard not to know what they were talking about.

As it stands, the producers are not claiming Lady Stoneheart will be turning up next year. They could just be lying in an attempt to preserve the surprise… which would be odd, given how badly that blew up in JJ Abrams’ face with Star Trek: Into Darkness (of course he was Khan, he was always going to be Khan, telling us he wasn’t was wasting everyone’s time). Maybe they’re hoping a few people remain unspoiled that they can shock in the fifth season premiere. Or maybe they’re authentically leaving her out. Which… seems problematic.

Why does this matter? Because this would mean one of two things, and they’re both bad signs.

Option one: they’re just skipping her. By and large, Game of Thrones has stayed pretty close to the source material. But they have left the odd thing out, and everyone from die-hard book fans to author George R.R. Martin has clucked their tongues at the showrunners over it. Some of what they’ve left out seems inconsequential (does it really matter whether someone’s death was called a suicide rather than framing some musician we haven’t seen since book one?), some of it less so (Rhaegar Targaryen might have been long dead when the series started, but he may have a larger impact than the show has suggested), but I’m not sure dropping an entire storyline is a good idea.

Especially since they might need to add stuff to fill the gap, and they do not have a strong track record. Season four, they invented a story involving the Night’s Watch mutineers in order to boost Bran Stark’s screen time, and all it brought to the series was a) yet more rape, right after they were (rightfully) accused of having too much rape as it was, and b) a near-miss where Bran and Jon Snow almost find each other but don’t, which we already did in the third season finale, and also almost finding family but then not has basically been Arya’s entire story for two seasons. The Caster’s Keep arc was pretty much pointless, so I’d kind of prefer they stick to the books rather than keep trying to add things.

Option two: they’re leaving out Lady Stoneheart because she’s ultimately not that big a deal. They’ve read book five, had some conversations with George R.R. Martin, and know that the Lady Stoneheart plot is short-lived and doesn’t impact anything, so they’re giving it a miss. In which case fuck you George R.R. Martin.

Which is apparently mutual.

I get wanting to subvert expectations. I get wanting to be unpredictable. But three times now, George Martin has taken a character I like, given them a plotline I want to see play out, and then ended it with a swift death for the guy I’m rooting for and a victory dance for Cersei goddamn Lannister. It’s getting old, and if it turns out Lady Stoneheart also ends in betrayal and swift, pointless death, then I will hold this over the head of every single person who tells me to read the books, because at that point I no longer consider the books worth reading. Because you can’t be “unpredictable” by doing the exact same thing over and over.

New look for Batgirl!

What’s the deal? Recently, DC announced a new look and a new direction for Batgirl, one which is seemingly directed towards teen girls. There was the usual wailing that comes whenever Gail Simone stops writing Barbara Gordon, but most of the reaction has been positive. Fan art of the new costume is already spreading.

It is pretty snazzy.
It is pretty snazzy.

In addition to the new look, Batgirl will be more immersed in youth culture. The most valid critique I’ve heard of this is that the new look and approach would have been better suited to Stephanie Brown, who briefly held the mantle of Batgirl prior to the New 52 reboot, than Barbara Gordon, who’s been through a bit too much to pull off the carefree youth angle. But you know what? Fair as that may be, I’m not certain I care.

Why does this matter? Because a Batgirl aimed at younger women is a bloody brilliant idea, that’s why.

I’ve accepted the fact that enough things are targeted at us 30-something (and up) white dudes as it is, and maybe other demographics could have a turn. Women like comics, women would like to be able to enjoy comics, so writing a comic with women, even girls, in mind is a good plan.

And yes, absolutely make it a major character like Batgirl.

Besides, I remember the last time DC tried this. Pre-New 52 they made Supergirl a book for younger female readers. They made her more relatable to teen girls, made her… proportions less exaggerated, her costume less form-fitting and her skirt a few inches longer (with the editorial mandate of “I never want to see Supergirl’s underwear again”), and not only did this not ruin the book, that was as good as Supergirl’s comic has been since Peter David stopped writing it over a decade ago. I still read Supergirl, but I miss her teen-girl-friendly days.

As incoming writer Cameron Stewart said, “One young girl being inspired by Batgirl is worth 20 dudes complaining that the costume looks ‘hipster.'” And that’s a sentiment I can get behind.

Just need to catch up on my comics so I can actually start reading it when it comes out…

Black Captian America and Girl Thor

What’s the deal? Meanwhile, over at Marvel, upcoming storylines will see Captain America lose his super-soldier-ness, and Thor no longer be worthy of Mjolnir, meaning they’ll both need replacements. Steve Rogers will pass his title and shield to Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon, recently seen in the Winter Soldier movie, while Thor will be replaced by a female Thor.

Which, well, is kind of weird. Marvel’s been shouting “No, she’ll BE Thor!” rather than a different character wielding the power of Thor but keeping their own name, like Beta Ray Bill, Thunderstrike, or anyone else who’s done that ever. This woman (not sure what her name was earlier) will be Thor in the same way Donald Blake was Thor way back when, a story mechanic that was dropped decades ago and retconned out of existence a few years back. So that’s… that’s weird, is what it is, but that’s not what really strikes me as uncomfortable about all the press Marvel has been seeking out around these stories.

Why does this matter? Because diversity in comics is important, and I’m not sure they’re doing it right.

I’m not saying making Thor a woman or Captain America a minority is the wrong move. Making Batman black or Doctor Who a woman or what have you will have far more impact than introducing a new minority superhero whose comic gets cancelled a year or two later then drifts into obscurity. But… well…

Every single thing I know about Marvel comics says one thing: this will not last. In recent years, Marvel had Bucky take over the title of Captain America, used a mind-swap to turn Dr. Octopus into the Superior Spider-man, killed major characters off… but almost none of it took. Most deaths lasted less than two years, in one case less than two months. Steve Rogers was back from the dead right around the time his first movie opened, and Peter Parker was Spider-man again right in time for Amazing Spider-man 2 to hit theatres.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is out next May, and if Steve Rogers and male Thor haven’t reclaimed their titles by then, it’ll be a small miracle given Marvel’s track record. And if Sam Wilson hasn’t stepped down by then, he will when Captain America 3 opens the year after.

And the thing is, Marvel is the only company to actually pull something like this off long-term. In their Ultimate line, Peter Parker’s been dead for years now, and half-black, half-Hispanic teenager Miles Morales has been in his place, and that book is thriving (Ultimate Spider-man has long been the best, and often only good book in that line). But it seems powerfully unlikely that that’s what’s happening here. This looks to be two short term stories that Marvel’s crowing about like they just re-wrote the rulebook or something.

And that’s ultimately the issue I have. A black guy taking over the role of Captain America for eight months would be a non-issue if they weren’t shouting from the rooftops about what a bold move it’s going to be. Crowing about how progressive they are for character changes that almost certainly won’t last just feels… tacky.

Danny Writes Plays: U-boat of the Soul

This is a big week. An awesome week. On Sunday, July 13th, we rolled cameras for the first time on Writer’s Circle: the Webseries, the ongoing adventures of playwright Phil Payton, novelist Becky Porter, screenwriter Jeff Winnick, and blogger Zoe Jordan, as they share a sort of support group for writers hosted by their agent Tina Gellar.

And appropriately enough, we have reached the point in the Danny Writes Plays saga where I first thought “I should write another play with that Phil guy.” So let’s take a look at U-Boat of the Soul.

What’s it about?

Playwright Phil Payton was last seen in Two Guys, a Couch, and the Fate of the World, co-writing a spy play about Dirk Rhombus and his assistant Trina (based quite clearly on his girlfriend Tina). We rejoin Phil years later: he is now writer-in-residence for a theatre company, reporting to his now quite firmly ex-girlfriend Tina. They broke up for good and all six months ago, and three months after that the company commissioned a new script from him. It’s due tomorrow, and he’s barely started. Years after the unnamed Dirk Rhombus comedy of Two Guys, he’s decided to return to that well in a desperate attempt to crank out something, anything, that will fill this contract.

Turns out, one of the company’s other producers, Jacob Garrison (previously seen in Pride and Prima Donnas) has found a rising talent in Becky Porter, and is pushing for her to potentially replace Phil. Director David Locke (also from Pride and Prima Donnas) wants to keep Phil around (if only to prevent another Dance Into the Fire: the Duran Duran Rock Opera incident), but thinks Becky’s not only a strong talent, but a potential way for Phil to get over Tina. Frustrated that Tina’s willing to fire him and that David’s trying to hook him up with his possible replacement, Phil retires to his office in an attempt to write an entire Dirk Rhombus adventure in one night.

Only problem… Dirk hates this plan. Having popped up here and there to explain to the audience such crutches as exposition, supporting cast, pop culture references, and scene changes, Dirk starts berating Phil, claiming that he can do better than this, and takes Phil on a journey to show what Dirk’s adventures can teach audiences about the world, and Phil about himself.

PREMISE!
Fine. That… was not unearned.

Trina returns, but refuses to be Phil’s punching bag for his feelings about Tina. Jacob becomes Dirk’s boss, reluctantly pulling him out of retirement, despite thinking the espionage world no longer has a place for him. David becomes Jacques, the informant who warns that Dirk’s mission is not all it seems. And Becky becomes Katya, another lead who echoes Jacques’ warnings while also attacking society’s demonization of female sexuality (and through that, Phil’s fear of dating Becky) by deconstructing the “femme fatale” archetype. Phil’s gonna learn some things, and if you pay attention, you just might as well.

So why did that happen?

Sick of hearing about my divorce yet? Don’t worry, we’re almost through.

When my now ex-wife and I split up, I was concerned that, as someone who wrote primarily comedies and romances, this might impact my ability to do what do, a concern Phil shares in this script. A few months later, needing an idea for a writing contest, I pitched this concept to a friend, having already held workshops for Salvage and The Spy Who Left Me. He stared at me quizzically for a moment, then said “Seriously? You’ve tripled your output!”

A year and change later, I needed a new idea, so I came back to U-boat. Despite having made great strides in getting over the divorce, I thought the concept had legs, so as long as I was being indulgently autobiographical anyway, I filled it with characters from past scripts, references to other past scripts, and got to work.

Also, and let’s get this out of the way right up front… I was curious to see if I could write a nude scene and get away with it. Other writers might have no problem writing nude scenes, but having been directly involved in every production of one of my scripts up to that point, I knew that I’d never manage it unless I could look the actor and/or actress in the eye (as much as I’m ever able to, anyway) and say that yes, this is important. This is necessary. And since I was having Katya hold court against North American society’s idolization of sex/crippling fear of nudity (unlike enlightened, topless Europe), something that I’d been fuming about ever since Janet Jackson exposing her breast (not even the whole breast! There was a pasty!) at the Superbowl was viewed as a worse scandal than George W. Bush inventing a connection between Iraq and 9/11 to justify a war. I decided to call out society’s fear of women’s bodies, using Katya’s to drive the point home. (And also Jacob’s, because fair is fair.)

How’d it turn out?

All in all? Pretty decently. The humour’s solid, the only pop culture references are there to be made fun of for being pop culture references, it’s not a bad show. I mean, the whole thing’s pretty rushed. Didn’t even have an intermission, if I recall correctly, and I think that I do. Not that there’s a problem with the spy stuff being sped through, as the Dirk plot only matters as far as it provides the chance to deconstruct the Dirk plot.

Actually, about that.

The whole naked Katya-“why are women’s bodies terrifying” scene? It works. I believe that. It’s a good scene, it makes important points, it even works in the larger play’s context. Sure, Katya’s topless way longer than she needs to be. I can’t deny that. This was pointed out to me about a week before the original production opened, but by then it was too late to fix the problem on a script level. If this script were to re-surface, I’d find better places for Katya to ditch the bra and find her robe.

And the thing is, the scene works because it’s the best deconstruction of spy stories and the best attack on society. The rest of the scenes have their laughs, and advance Phil’s arc the way they need to, but by and large they’re over too fast and don’t say enough. Every scene should have the punch and insight that Katya’s scene does. Every character, inside Phil’s head or not, should be as interesting as I think Katya is. Especially Katya’s “real world” counterpart, Becky.

One time, Brian Michael Bendis wrote an essay claiming that the Green Goblin was not only the greatest Spider-man villain ever, but the greatest overall comic book villain, yet you’d never guess that from his ridiculous first appearance. So it is with Becky. She might be my favourite of all the female leads I’ve written, and you’d never guess that from this, her first appearance. It’s impossible to look at this script and not see it through the filter of Writers’ Circle, both the play and the impending webseries, and Becky the awestruck fangirl just does not measure up to the character we’re going to be filming over the next six weeks. It’s okay if she’s a fan of Phil. I’ll even grant that it’s okay if said fandom makes her want to date Phil, although come on man, are we inserting our own fantasy women again already? But she can and should be more than that.

Would you stage it again?

Not as it is. It can be deeper, stronger. It can say more, do more, and have well-written characters other than Phil and Dirk. Each time I get better at writing Phil, Becky, and Tina, I want to go back and make their earlier appearances work on the same level, and that would take some doing. And, yeah, like I said, if every scene isn’t as deep or cutting as Katya’s… well, why aren’t they? They just should be.

So, this one would need a polish. Not a full overhaul, and not a “burn it to the ground and start over on a white piece of paper,” but definitely a polish.

Repeated Theme Alert

  • Man and woman cannot be friends: Becky likes Phil! David likes Tina! Everyone wants to date everyone! There are only six people in this cast and one of them’s fictional!
  • The quiet, average guy the ladies unaccountably love: Well, one of the ladies stopped loving him, and at least Becky has an excuse. There actually is something interesting about Phil.
  • So how is this one about your divorce? Don’t, don’t, don’t even start with me right now. You know. I know. We all know.
  • Writing about writers: It wasn’t long after this script that a friend said “Maybe give the meta-narrative stuff a rest for a while.” Wasn’t terrible advice.

Better for TV: American Gods and other favourites

I love Neil Gaiman. That much is clear. His stories are rich, his characters fascinating, I could (and do) read his books over and over again. And of everything of his that I’ve read, I would have to say that my favourite is American Gods. Well, my favourite that he wrote by himself. There’s also Good Omens, which he co-wrote with one of my other all-time favourite authors, Terry Pratchett, but for pure Neil I’m all about American Gods.

Sure, Neverwhere is a faster read, and Stardust has a lot to recommend, but if I want to lose myself in a slow-cooked epic? Gotta be American Gods.

It’s the story of Shadow, an ex-con who ends up taking a job as bodyguard to the aging con-artist Mr. Wednesday, joining him on a rambling quest across America. An America that, as we and Shadow both learn, is filled with gods. Every time people came to the continent and worshiped their gods, the gods would manifest. But as the years went by, they became old and tired, starved for worship. And now a new pantheon is rising, gods of media and technology and celebrity idols. And a war between the old gods and the new is brewing, with Shadow right in the middle.

It takes its time, as Shadow slowly makes his way through small-town America, encountering gods and myths, trying to unravel the mysteries behind everything. It has one of the best casts of fascinating people you could ask for. And I never, ever wanted to see it as a movie.

Because there’s too much. There’s just too much. The story is too deep, the world too rich, the plot too complicated to possibly fit into two or even three hours. No, I thought that it could be adapted, but it would have to be a miniseries. Eight hours, minimum. I even came up with a rough breakdown a long time back. Wow. Thirteen years ago. Damn.

But now it looks like I may actually be getting my wish. Starz, the US cable network out to be an edgier AMC or lower-rent HBO, is breaking ground on bringing American Gods to television. And the guy behind it? Bryan Fuller, creator of Pushing Daisies, showrunner of Hannibal, person behind the legitimately good season of Heroes. Basically, one of my favourite people working in television right now.

Now, when Seth Rogen was announced as writing the pilot for a series based on the classic comic Preacher, I was conflicted, because as much as I loved Preacher and enjoy Seth Rogen, the pairing seemed too unexpected to wrap my head around. But this? This goes beyond good news. Beyond My New Favourite Thing. This comes closer to proof of a loving God. Or at the very least, a karmic “mea culpa” for some of the shittier developments in my life the last while.

A television series would give the story time to meander and explore the world, and as the larger world and relaxed pace of the journey are key components of the story, this is absolutely vital. Plus, as a bonus, it’s long been said that if an American Gods TV show was successful, Gaiman would write a second book to give them more material. And I am all good with that.

Or perhaps they’d just tweak one or two things in the finale to give themselves somewhere to go in season two. Like how in From Dusk Till Dawn, Robert Rodriguez went from an expanded but primarily faithful adaption of the movie in the first five episodes to telling a completely new story in the back half, partly to set up season two, and partly because “And then vampires attack, woogy boogy boogy” was barely enough story to fill an hour of movie and would never have covered five hours of television.

Which I mention in order to set up my next point. If Bryan Fuller’s doing American Gods (and if you still need proof as to how amazing he can make a novel adaptation, start watching Hannibal already) and Robert Rodriguez can turn From Dusk Till Dawn into a surprisingly good TV series, what else would I like to see come to TV, and from who?

V For Vendetta

Why this? I love the crap out of V For Vendetta. Used to read it once a year. Alan Moore’s vision of a post-WWIII England that succumbed to fascism (written at a time when the UK was in actual danger of succumbing to fascism under Thatcher), and the one psychopath out to bring it all crumbling down, is a masterpiece of comic book storytelling. The mysterious and brutal V; his odd relationship with Evey, an orphaned factory worker-turned-almost-prostitute that he takes under his wing and helps grow into a better person than he himself ever was; national head detective Eric Finch, on a quest to bring down V no matter the cost to his career or sanity; and the Game of Thrones level intrigue brewing amongst the senior staff of the government as the Leader’s credibility begins to erode.

V is the last survivor of a medical experiment in a concentration camp that horribly killed most subjects but left him strong, brilliant, and insane, carefully constructing a plan for revenge that would take years to carry out, but that would collapse the system that imprisoned him… and honour a wish from a woman he never met, but loved all the same.

Look, the financial woes of the last few years are making the world a dark place. Fascist parties are making a resurgence in Europe, Christian fundamentalists are running amok in the US, Canada’s going disturbingly right-wing… maybe this is a good time for a story about how any government that operates through oppression is a bad thing, and we the people do not have to accept it.

And yes, I am aware they made a movie out of this already, and people say it’s pretty good. However, they had to streamline a lot. A lot. V’s initial series of revenge murders, against key government personnel who worked at the concentration camp while he was there, are swiftly sped through, when they could fill two or three hours on their own. The poetry of V’s vengeance is gone. And the intricacy of his plot beyond their deaths is also stripped away: in the movie, V wants to kill the Leader (for himself) and blow up parliament (as an inspiration to the people). In the graphic novel, he settles for nothing less than the collapse of the Leader’s entire society, rendering it to rubble so that anarchy can grow to take its place. And least forgivable, in the movie V is in love with Evey, while in the graphic novel he’s grooming her to be his replacement, to build the better world that will have no place for him. It’s an epic tragedy, with a ray of sunshine for the future at the end, but to do it right you need more time.

Sadly I can’t see anyone adapting it for television when it, by necessity, would last two seasons tops. Well… maybe the BBC…

Who should do it? Stephen Moffat. First of all, he writes for the BBC, one of the few networks who might say “Sure, we’re fine spending money on a miniseries with no franchise potential.” I mean, they let him do Jekyll, which was an excellent mini-series that had little if any potential for follow-ups. So if anyone’s going to walk into a board room and say “I want to film V For Vendetta, I’m thinking one series of ten episodes and that’s it, that’s all we’ll ever do” and actually get a green light, it’s him.

Plus, look at his best known works right now. First, Doctor Who, a story about an enigmatic protagonist who seems friendly and good but harbours a dangerous dark side, and his companion, who looks up to him but isn’t always certain she can trust him (especially in series eight, if the teaser’s any indication). Second, Sherlock, a series all about elaborate and labyrinthine mysteries whose true natures are but hinted at throughout, leading to a climactic reveal.

V For Vendetta features an enigmatic protagonist involving a younger female companion in a labyrinthine plot whose true nature is only hinted at in the early stages. Throw in a penchant for monologuing and this is the dark reflection of everything Moffat’s been doing lately. Plus making Evey every bit as complex, well-rounded, and ultimately strong a character as Alan Moore did (she finds her true strength by embracing the lessons V has been presenting her, but rejecting his path) might help counter some of the accusations he’s been getting about how he writes women the last year or so.

So yes, that’s what I want the next time you’re waiting for Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman to have matching time off… Stephen Moffat’s V For Vendetta. I mean, I doubt this will ever, ever happen, but it’s nice to imagine.

Planetary

 

absolute-planetary-book-one

Why this? Warren Ellis’ 27-issue series Planetary was brilliant. The only flaws it had were that it took 11 years for those 27 issues to come out, and that the initial premise was discarded too quickly. The Planetary organization are “archaeologists of the impossible.” Cold-powered Elijah Snow, super-strong Jakita Wagner, and The Drummer, able to read and manipulate electronic information without the use of a computer, investigate the secret history of their world. This includes twists on Godzilla, the Justice League, John Woo-style justice ghosts, and their ultimate nemeses, a dark twist on the Fantastic Four.

There’s a secret society formed to build a better world founded by Ellis’ homages to, among others, Doc Savage, Tarzan, and Fu Manchu. There’s an ongoing mystery about Planetary’s past, and their funder, the Fourth Man. There’s a funeral for a friend that was, in effect, a funeral for the founding comics of DC’s Vertigo line, including Sandman, Swamp Thing, and Hellblazer, all of which were launched by British writers in the 80s, and all of which (Ellis claims) were marked by the darkness that Thatcherism brought to England in the 80s. In the end, the John Constantine character reveals he faked his death because the time had come to embrace a new paradigm… and the fact that he ditched his Constantine trenchcoat and took on the signature look of Transmetropolitan’s Spider Jerusalem means this is pretty clearly Warren Ellis addressing the reader directly.

The things Ellis did with pop culture and sci-fi concepts were nothing short of mind-blowing. And while he did cut the “secret history” aspect after the first six issues to begin shifting focus to the battle between Planetary and The Four, Planetary remained a great enough read that it stayed a cult favourite even when it was taking months or even years to crank out an issue.

Planetary would be awesome on a streaming service or cable network. With only 10 to 13 episodes to fill, they wouldn’t have to worry about stretching out plots or the excessive filler episodes that come with a network 22 episode season. Ellis left all sorts of room to play with in the Planetary world, so they could easily stretch out beyond the story of the books. And pop culture and sci-fi are always coming up with new concepts and ideas to twist and play with. Get Clive Owen as Elijah Snow, Aisha Tyler as Jakita Wagner, and Seth Green or Cabin in the Woods’ Fran Kanz as Drummer, and we’ve got a show.

Who should do it? I want to say Joss Whedon (when don’t I?) because I’m sure I once read an article where he said he was a Planetary fan (and once got in a hilarious shouting match with Warren Ellis in the comment section of Ellis’ blog), and so I’d like to think that if anything could lure him back to television, it’s Planetary.

No no no. Don’t bother mentioning Agents of SHIELD. I’ve yet to see any evidence he was involved in that past the pilot.

But he’s pretty busy writing billion dollar movies, and has expressed a weariness with telling other people’s stories. So you know who’d be a good replacement? His Cabin in the Woods co-writer and Buffy disciple Drew Goddard. Cabin in the Woods shows he has the chops for pop culture dissection, and he’s clearly moving into more comic-based projects as of late.

Plus, now that he’s left the impending Daredevil series for the Sinister Six movie, he’s gonna need something to do when that franchise falls apart.

Assassin’s Creed

Assassin-s-Creed

Why this? Assassin’s Creed, at its best, has a deep story of the struggle between the Templars and the Assassins, which really boils down to the classic Order vs. Chaos battle, with the Assassins fighting against the oppressive Templars to build a more free world. Of course, the games never look into what that world would look like, but that’s all the more reason to give them an expanded playing space. Through advanced technology, a man named Desmond is able to relive the memories of his Assassin ancestors, the most popular of which is Renaissance Italian Ezio Auditore.

They’re working a movie right now, with heavy involvement from the studio, but there’s two problems. First, the story is too complex. There’s rival factions trying to steer all of history, Templar plots behind countless historical figures, Ezio’s story alone covers decades, and that’s not even touching the plotline where aliens posing as gods basically created human society, leaving behind artifacts of extreme power that could determine our future, and revealed this to Desmond by explaining it to Ezio, knowing that Desmond would relive this moment centuries in the future. Show me a two-hour script that can do even a little of that justice. No, the movie will, at best, be two hours of parkour-driven revenge-murder with conspiratorial undertones, and at worst will be as bad as most other video game movies.

Who should do it? You know who loves historical conspiracies and badasses with daddy issues (most of your AC protagonists learn about their heritage after their father dies, explaining nothing to them first)? J.J. Abrams. Whether it’s the contemporary characters dealing with modern day Templar plots, or the historical characters doing Renaissance-style adventuring, this is right in J.J.’s TV wheelhouse. The man does spies, Italian inventors way, way ahead of their time, and compelling larger mysteries. If the guy behind Fringe and Alias can’t make an AC series worth watching, I don’t know who could.

I don’t know why I keep writing posts about TV series that I’ll never see. Maybe because I can’t stop thinking about them and this helps get them out of my system. Who knows.

Until next time, then.

Danny Writes Plays: Tyler and Selena

So, we’re entering the final stages of pre-production for a webseries that two friends and I have been working on for a year now. Soon, very soon, we start filming, which is exciting. The chance to see these scripts we cranked out brought to life, and to share them across the Internet. Which of course will be followed by months of stress about how we’re going to get people to watch them, but that’s a tomorrow problem.

Day’s gonna come when I’m going to be talking a lot about the show on this blog. The obvious starting point seemed to be to do a “Danny Writes Plays” entry on the script that we adapted into the series, but… well, I haven’t made it that far, and skipping ahead seems like it kills the flow. So, may as well start catching up.

Which brings us to this: The Very Long Night of Tyler and Selena.

 What’s it about?

Office drone Tyler Jenkins is trying to juggle a special dinner with his girlfriend Cindy and prepping for a big meeting the next morning, when Cindy unexpectedly (to Tyler, at least) breaks up with him, and instead of dinner Tyler leaves to drink alone. At the bar, a woman named Selena bursts in trying to stay unseen. Selena, and her duffel bag of unknown but unpleasant contents, are on the run from notorious killers Vic and Jess, and after trying to do her a favour, Tyler finds himself stuck in the middle, with little choice but to stick next to Selena until he can find a way out… a plan Selena doesn’t care for at all. They run from hideout to hideout, finding safe haven where they can with Selena’s friends and informants, but it slowly becomes clear that there’s no easy way out for either of them, and they’re in for a very long night.

So why’d that happen?

So, remember a while back, when I talked about The Course of True Love and the Curse of the Jade Monkey, and how it had so many flaws I saw no choice but to burn it down to the basic premise and start over on a white piece of paper? Well, here we are. This is when that happened. Average guy, woman of mystery, dragged into quest, hopefully with a few layers of stupid and terrible scraped off.

Step one: I made Selena basically the anti-Maya. Where Maya was instantly and inexplicably attracted to Jordan, inserting herself into his life, Selena basically wants nothing to do with Tyler, but puts up with him out of a shred of respect for the fact that he’s only in this mess because of his misguided attempt to help her.

Step two: no more globetrotting. I saw a play at the Vancouver Fringe called The Doctor is Sick, in which a doctor, who was prepping a lecture on the evolution of cockney rhyming slang, escapes from a hospital and goes on an adventure among the underbelly of the city. I thought, if this show could have constantly changing locations and taxis and whatnot done through minimalist set, surely I could too, and made this story take place over a single night, albeit many, many places.

Step three: realizing that the Macguffin doesn’t matter. The Jade Monkey had a complicated and ridiculous backstory, but neither Tyler nor the audience ever learns what’s in the duffel bag, only that it’s both valuable and terrible.

Step four: no Travis. Well, I ended up backsliding on this one. Intrepid reporter Travis Thompson does, in fact, make a return appearance, but what’s important is that this time he wasn’t given his own subplot. Travis exists solely to advance Tyler’s story: indicating that all was far from well between Tyler and Cindy, then returning to give Tyler key information. He services the plot, rather than trying to steal the spotlight.

Step five: better villains. I’d been experimenting with “funny yet menacing” villains for a while, but for this one… for this one I finally admitted to myself why. And the reason was, I was trying to find my own spin on Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. I didn’t want to just copy them, so I tried Helena Von Drax and Manservant, Big Jim the mafia henchman, and Rose and Stern the goons. But then Terry Pratchett wrote The Truth, his 25th Discworld novel, which certainly seemed to have characters based on, or at least modeled in a similar vein to Croup and Vandemar, so I said “screw it, then,” and thus came Vic and Jess, Things Dealt With. Vic, short for Victoria, was the chatterbox, and Jess the strong, silent partner. Although I did what I could through reputation and unseen fights to imply that neither of them were to be trifled with.

Step five: less exposition. Not no exposition, just… less. Well, it was a start.

The concept for this show started coming to me almost immediately after Jade Monkey wrapped for the second time. But regular readers will remember, that’s also when I started work on Heracles for the 2004 Fringe tour. So I had to sit on this idea until Heracles was ready to rehearse. Which took around nine months. The second it was done and rehearsing, I jumped into Tyler and Selena. First draft was done in 11 days. Might be a personal record.

How’d it turn out?

Astute readers will also remember that the thing that started me down the road to scrapping Jade Monkey in favour of Tyler and Selena was the idea of doing it as a movie. And the movie idea was very clearly still in my head, because despite all that stuff I said about The Doctor is Sick, this is a screenplay. It is a screenplay that I shoehorned onto a stage.

That said, it mostly works. The staging difficulties caused by writing a screenplay for the stage do their damage, as every scene requires some exposition about where Tyler and Selena are, but I made that as organic as I could. The wit still mostly works. The characters are still good. It’s still a fun show. Not one of my crown jewels, but not one of my embarrassments, either.

Would you stage it again?

It could use some touch ups… the pacing’s not quite where I’d want it, there is still a clunky “Let’s swap backstories” scene, and Selena could use more of a story. Right now she’s drifting close to Manic Pixie Dream Girl territory, only there so that Tyler can learn about himself. I’d want to fix that before anyone did something with this script, or at least try to.

Also, it’s a screenplay. There’s no getting around that. As a stage play, it lacks the visceral energy that The Doctor is Sick had, something it needed to make the cross-town adventure work right on stage. In a movie, you could get that energy by actually having the characters able to move any amount of distance. Well, and I could punch up the script a bit. That pacing issue I mentioned.

Of course the real issue is that I know nothing about making movies. Permits, equipment, and most importantly distribution are all mysteries to me. So after at least one go-nowhere attempt to film this thing, I’ve started replying to any query about doing this or any of my scripts as movies with “Sounds great, let me know how it works out.”

Repeated theme alert

  • Something something pop culture reference: Aaron Sorkin once wrote the line “Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal outright.” I hope he meant it, because on page 6 I stole a line from Sports Night.
  • Let’s sit and exchange backstories for twenty minutes like that doesn’t kill the pacing! There had to have been a more engaging way to convey how Selena ended up with this bag.
  • Tyler isn’t quite “The quiet, average guy the ladies unaccountably love,” because for most of the play Selena’s tolerating him at best… but he’s close. Still, at least he actually does things to earn affection.
  • The funny yet menacing villains: a friend said to me, after reading the first draft, “You’ve done it. You’ve mastered the villains who are funny yet menacing. Now stop.” Good advice.
  • So how is this one about your divorce? A huge part of Tyler’s arc is about realizing he’s not in love with Cindy anymore, and that’s okay. So this one’s about letting go.

When next we visit this series, prepare for the return of some old friends from old scripts.

Favourite Things Speed Round!

There’s something missing from my life.

Who Knows, the Doctor Who tribute play I’d been directing since March, came to an end a week and a half ago. And for all my attempts to stay busy and avoid the typical post-show crash of depression… I miss it. I miss seeing my delightful cast every day. I miss waiting for the gasps from the audience when the Dalek made its appearance. I miss the cheers we’d get from certain houses when a notable costume turned up, like when Roger entered as the Master at the top of act two, or when Sarah James emerged from the vent in Amy Pond’s kiss-a-gram outfit. I miss it all… but I can’t have it back.

So, rather than dwell on things left behind (after all, first rehearsal for Frost/Nixon is but 12 days away), let’s do a speed round of Favourite Things that never really seemed worth a full post.

Allons-y! (Damn it, now I’m just depressing myself…)

Welcome Back, Potter

I would do a whole piece on Cracked Studios, and attempt to review each of their three (thus far) series, but every time I try I lose steam something hard. It’s like, “Why am I writing this down, and why would anyone read it?” So instead, let’s just cover everything I like about the latest (and most publicized) series, Welcome Back, Potter.

First, let’s be real, I find Michael Swaim and Daniel O’Brien hilarious, and Katy Stoll to be funny, engaging, and super cute. Put these three together in a parody of anything and I’m going to watch it.

One of my favourite After Hours episodes, also written by Swaim, is the one where they tear apart Harry Potter. It’s not that I dislike Harry Potter (I don’t), but whether we’re talking books or movies, that series has some holes, and Swaim knows how to exploit them for laughs. The notion that 12 year-old Harry Potter (should have been 11, but whatevs) would, upon learning he’s destined to fight the most evil wizard who ever lived, simply book it for America and hide tickles me. As do various other shots at Potter lore, from wondering if they tried to fight Voldemort with anything besides young orphans to the fact that wizarding school gives you zero prep for life in muggle world, to the fate of the Dursleys in a world where Harry lacked adult supervision (they had a run-in with some water moccasins).

It’s a fun series, and Daniel O’Brien’s take on Ron Weasley as a Jersey Shore guido (“I deeply regret so much of how I look and act. OH!”) is reliably amusing. Michael Swaim has been pushing it with behind-the-scenes videos and articles, so he clearly want to make more, and I’m hoping he gets to. Thus, me plugging it.

5-second Films

The mission statement of 5-second Films is a simple one: wasting your time, but not very much of it. For several years, the team put out a video every day, each lasting only five seconds (well, plus two seconds of opening credit and one second of closing). Somehow I managed not to hear about them until just recently, despite the fact that they got popular enough to feature guest appearances from Patton Oswalt, some of the Cracked staff, Stan Lee, Larry King, Weird Al, and Freddie Wong.

Look, this one’s pretty simple. And if all of those links aren’t swaying you, here’s a sampler.

Their output has diminished recently, as they’ve been working on a feature length film based on one of their videos, Dude Bro Party Massacre Three. Or maybe they actually were concerned that the rise of Vine made them obsolete. I don’t know. I’m not internet-famous enough to have spoken to them personally. But it’s probably the movie thing.

That said, if you’re just discovering them, like me, there are hundreds upon hundreds of five second comedy films to check out (and five really depressing ones from Bummer Week), so have at.

The Flash Trailer

I watch this a lot.

Okay. Lightning round.

  • Even people I know who don’t watch Arrow are talking about how good this looks. For me, a massive fan of Arrow? I cannot wait.
  • Harrison Wells (guy in the wheelchair, aka JD’s brother from Scrubs) seems to have a secret room somewhere. Six to five and pick ’em he’s betraying Barry by the end of season one.
  • Some people complain that they’re giving Flash his own team right off, instead of building it organically like Arrow did. On the other hand? One of his team is Caitlin Snow, better known to comics fans as Killer Frost, so between her and Wells this might not be the reliable inner circle that Oliver Queen has.
  • They call the bad guy, generally believed to be classic Flash villain Weather Wizard, “Clyde Mardon,” which is actually the Weather Wizard’s brother, and the man he stole his weather powers from. So if he doesn’t survive the pilot, don’t panic. I’m sure the Rogues are coming.
  • Barry’s father is being played by John Wesley Shipp, the star of the last Flash TV series. Come on, that’s cool.
  • The addition of legit super powers to the Arrowverse is everything I’ve been waiting for.
  • I’m not saying that if enough people watch this, they will cross over Arrow and Flash into the Justice League movie (in fact it is all but assured that they won’t), but it could not hurt.

My webseries films soon

It’s coming, dear readers. Writers’ Circle: the Web Series is mere weeks from rolling. When that starts happening, you’re going to be hearing about it. A lot. I’m not sorry. It’s just what has to happen.

Also, it’s going to be amazing, so you’re going to want to be in the loop.

Next time… I don’t know. I’m hoping by next time I’m past this “Nothing seems worth blogging about” thing and ranting about nerd stuff again. Or, you know, something like that. Well. Until then.

Danny G Writes Plays: Heracles: The Mythologically Accurate Adventures

Real talk: today is not going to be a happy day. Who Knows, the play I’ve been directing since March, came to an end on Saturday, and the empty feeling that was sure to follow is settling in. But that’s okay. That’s good. If this is the price to be paid for three incredible months of endless joy working on an amazingly fun play about one of my all-time favourite TV shows with some incredible people, so be it.

And on the plus side, today I get to tell you about one of my old scripts without the usual round of self-flagellation. Because today, dear readers, today… we talk Heracles.

What’s it about?

A laugh-a-minute (minimum) tour through the original myths of Heracles that inspired the legends of Hercules, but with none of the whitewashing and all of the accidental-family-murder and general unheroic behaviour kept intact and, by and large, made funny. After a quick summary of Zeus’ ascension to the throne of Olympus, Heracles is conceived (Zeus attempts to seduce his mother as a swan, then switches to her husband when that doesn’t work), battles serpents that his step-mother Hera threw in the crib to kill him, doesn’t quite learn a lesson about not killing music teachers, decides to be a hero… a lot. A lot of stuff happens. Let’s move to the next section. It’s a better story.

So why did that happen?

It’s a play I wrote over nine months stretching from September of 2003 to spring of 2004, but to trace its origins we have to go aaaaalllllll the way back to June of 1997. The Amazing and Almost Accurate Adventures of Trigger Dandy had just wrapped its one-night-stand debut, and everyone involved was riding high off the buzz of the laughter and cheers that were still ringing in our ears. So of course, the topic weaving its way through the wrap party was “What’s next? Let’s keep this Mind the Walrus thing going! Do another show! We could do this so much better now that we’ve learned a few things! What’s next?”

And with Two Guys, a Couch, and the Fate of the World still a few weeks away from conception, we didn’t have a firm answer. Until an idea rooted itself in some of our heads. Somehow the champagne-fuelled conversation turned to the fact that nobody really gets Greek myths. People don’t even know, by and large, that Hercules isn’t the son of Zeus: Hercules is the Roman name of Heracles, so Hercules would be the son of Jupiter. And there’s a show we could do, we thought… dig up the original myths, warts and all, and make a Trigger Dandy style comedy about them. We even envisioned one of the scenes: Heracles would fight the Hyrda, the serpent who grows two new heads every time one is cut off, but get so into cutting off heads that the stagehands would start running out. Actual prop heads would give way to pool noodles, which would be replaced by paper plates, shoes, etc. until the stage hands finally gave up.

We did some research, looked up some myths, but ran out of steam before long, especially once Jason and I started breaking the idea for Two Guys. But I never let go of the idea. It was always in the back of my head, something I would eventually get to, time permitting. Hell, once Mind the Walrus was into its second season, I was envisioning a “greatest hits” play, the Mind the Walrus All-Stars, that would team up Trigger Dandy, Two Guys’ Dirk Rhombus, and Heracles against an alliance of their various nemeses, plus Ted the Devil from Date With an Angel, Coffee With the Devil. It was explained to me within seconds of theorizing this script that it was a horrible, horrible idea, and I never spoke of it again (until now), but what’s really interesting there is that despite not having written a single word of what I’d decided would eventually be called “The Mythologically Accurate Adventures of Heracles” (really, I do not know what my thing was with long titles), I was so convinced that it would happen that I had already included the main character in the Walrus All-Stars.

Anyway, years passed. In 2003, The Course of True Love and the Curse of the Jade Monkey went to the Edmonton Fringe. It was, shall we say, not a raging success. Small houses and brutal reviews that the cast told me not to read. None of that is surprising now, given the many, many flaws of that script, but after it was over, I started thinking about all of the sold-out hits I’d seen at the Fringe, and tried to figure out why they were hits and mine was not. Part of that process involved taking a long look at the script itself, and we’ll look at the results of that in the next instalment, but it also involved figuring out what the big hits had in common.

It seemed to me that the ingredients of a successful Fringe show, especially touring Fringe shows, were 1) one hour long; 2) fast-paced; 3) funny; 4) portable, meaning minimal set. So I tried to figure out what I could do that would fit the profile, and Heracles popped back into my head. Write it so that the whole thing could be done with three to five people, avoid set pieces, and make sure the jokes keep flying. The following month, while I was on my “impending divorce” vacation to London (trips to London help ease the pain), I stopped by the British Museum’s library to do some research on the myths, then bought myself a notebook at the Globe Theatre’s gift shop and started writing over dinner–that sounded really pretentious and I’m sorry. Those were the places I was when I broke ground on this script. I used geography for narrative inspiration. I’m sure I’m sorry.

Also I changed the title to Heracles: The Mythologically Accurate Adventures, so that the key word of the title wouldn’t get lost if the title turned out to be too long for the program again. You know, like “Jade Monkey” did.

And you’re damn right I used that hydra scene I mentioned. That scene was GOLD.

Now it wasn’t a quick process. As I said, it took nine months to get a draft of this script written and typed up, a process spurred somewhat by us getting into the Montreal, Winnipeg, and Edmonton Fringe Festivals. And when it was done, I had ninety minutes of material for our sixty minute show, so there were a lot of edits to be done by the time we reached Montreal.

And a few more edits once we got there and found out we were two minutes heavy.

And a few more edits once we got to Winnipeg, and our audiences quintupled, and the additional laughter once again pushed us to 62 minutes. (The Edmonton techs were more chill, they’d just signal us if we needed to speed up the climax)

How’d it turn out?

Awesome. Purely awesome.

We remounted this one back in 2009 and it was still funny. Even in a total blackout, with no lights but a keychain flashlight, it was still funny. Maybe not every joke lands in every performance, but there are so very many that DO work that we never had a dud show. After the Montreal leg of the tour, I had to take over the role of Heracles myself, and let me tell you… having a sold-out crowd cheering a show I wrote, directed, and starred in was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. The 2004 Heracles tour was exactly what I needed that summer, and the 2009 remount was a delight as well.

Would you stage it again?

The only reason I’m not saying “Yes, of course yes, can we do it now?” is the sad knowledge that if Heracles makes a comeback, someone else is going to be playing the title role. I had my fun. It’s someone else’s turn now. That said, yes, of course yes, can we do it now?

Next time: the play that had been festering in my head for the nine months that it took to write Heracles.

No more, Mr. “Nice Guy,” or “Nice Guys” Finished at Last

I wasn’t sure I wanted to write this post. But right now I’m not sure I could write about anything else. Because there’s an important conversation happening right now, and while it’s happening I can’t seem to see the point of writing a 2000 word blog post about the trailer for the Flash series.

Which I could. I absolutely could. But not today.

So… here goes. And yes, this will contain course language. This will get a little angry in the middle.

Confessions of a former “Nice Guy”

Real talk: there was a time when I bought into the whole “Girls say they want nice guys but only date jerks, I know this because I’m nice and girls aren’t magically falling for me” myth. I also once believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and a sinister organization with nothing better to do than orchestrate traffic to slow down my commute, but of all of these, it’s the “nice guy” thing I feel dumbest about believing.

Because seriously, I know it’s crazy, but sometimes that one pedestrian running into the intersection right in time to keep me from turning before the gap in traffic closes just feels a little choreographed, you know?

But as I was saying. Maybe it’s movies and televisions repeatedly hammering in the message of “You’ll win her over eventually” or “Nice guys get the girl from being nice, not by being confident and charming and actually asking her on dates,” maybe it isn’t, but I totally bought it. I blamed being single on girls not liking nice guys, not my crippling anxieties that make even talking to a woman at a party my own personal Everest, or my lifelong inability to tell a woman I like her, due to the fact that the first time I tried I picked the worst way I could have imagined. And I can imagine quite a bit.

Now I see the light. Now I’m aware that if a woman isn’t magically attracted to me, it’s probably more my fault than hers. I could probably stand to work out more often and make more than zero effort to convince her I’m worth her time. I can be rejected by a woman and not blame her entire gender for failing me as a person.

So why can’t the rest of us do that.

“Not all men,” but WAY too many

The other week, even before the tragic events in Santa Barbara, I came across a series of memes on Twitter making fun of those who pop into discussions of sexism and misogyny to shout that “not all men are like that.” Example:

Um, sure, fine, but now the boat is sinking. Jerk.

And at first, as someone who abhors rape, thinks women should be able to discuss comic books on the internet without threats of violence, and at the very least leans feminist, I wondered. I certainly don’t want to get lumped in with the asshats who spread misogyny and rape culture, so is saying that not all men are that awful really so bad?

Fortunately, instead of registering with tumblr in order to annoy the people posting these memes with my questions, I thought about it for ten seconds and the answer became clear. Saying “not all men are misogynists” does nothing to address the drooling mass of men who are. And that is the actual problem, a problem made all the clearer by Elliot Rodger’s shooting spree.

In short, if someone’s trying to have a conversation about how all women (Yes, all women, as the new hashtag says) are at some point on the receiving end of misogyny, and how maybe we should be doing something about that, shouting “Not all men” is just derailing the conversation, attacking the woman for bringing it up, rather than the fedora-wearing, slut-shaming, geek-girl-mocking, woman-hating, “nice guy” fromunda stains causing the problem.

And you shouldn’t want that.

Finding a better target

You can’t make violence against women go away by silencing the women who speak out against it, and you shouldn’t want to try. You should want the claim to not be necessary.

If you’re like me, and want geek casting news to be concerned with finding the best actor to play, say, Doctor Who, and not which minority/gender boxes said actor checks off, don’t attack the people saying “why not cast a woman or minority instead,” get angry at the waves of idiots who scream to the heavens at the very idea of casting anything but a white male as Batman. They’re the ones making diversity in movies, TV, and whatnot an argument, when it should be a no-brainer. They’re the ones who don’t get that Idris Elba would be the best James Bond possibly ever because his skin contains an inappropriate quantity of melanin. When the idiots are silenced, then we can begin to defend Peter Capaldi being cast instead of Helen Mirren in calm, rational tones.

Getting tired of hearing people complain that women are underrepresented and/or badly written in comic books and video games? Don’t yell at Anita Sarkeesian, blame the industries that refuse to change, that can’t accept that women might be half of their potential audience. And then blame the dickheads who turned Wonder Woman wearing pants into a controversy that shook the goddamn heavens. Because if you can’t enjoy a comic about Power Girl if her costume doesn’t include a chest window, you need to sit in the corner and be quiet for a while.

Don’t want that cute woman at the club acting like you might try to rape her? Don’t blame her for worrying, blame the irredeemable cockstains who have ensured that all women everywhere have to worried that they might get raped. Blame them, and get angry. Get angry that we live in a world that blames the victims, and refuse to live in a society where only three percent of rapists will be punished for their crimes. Shout down the slut shamers saying “she was asking for it,” drown out those who would say “but sometimes they just make it up,” because if you’re actually more concerned about the tiny number of women who pretend to be raped than the thousands of women who are attacked and receive no justice, we cannot be friends.

We need to go after these wastes of human potential. The sexists, the rapists, the “nice guys” who think holding a door excuses having less respect for women than Fox News has for Obama. The idiots telling feminists “shut up and make me a sandwich.” The MRA activists angered that anyone might want as large a slice of the pie as white men get. The cocksacks drowning women’s blogs in angry comments and rape threats. The men defending Elliot Rodger. In short, the Fedoras. We need to turn on them, tell them they won’t be tolerated. Drag them into the light, tell them their ideas are wrong, that history will not mourn their passing. Because every day, somewhere, somehow, they are hurting people, and it has to stop.

And saying “Not all men do these things” doesn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it.

Hurgh. That’s a lot of vitriol. Let’s see if I can’t impart something positive to wrap this up.

Nice is different than good

As I said in the beginning, I used to think of myself as a “nice guy.” But I’ve had to reassess that over the years. Reading about “nice guy” behaviours and their sense of entitlement led me to think about some of my own actions, and discover that I may have thought I was being nice, but I wasn’t being very good.

And so I’ve taken some advice from Wil Wheaton, in his awesome speech to a couple’s baby girl on why it’s great to be a nerd.

I am not “nice.” I am kind.

Being kind is about understanding that each person you’re talking to is a human being, filled with turmoils and frustrations and fears of their own. Some of them are just jerks, to be sure, but there’s too many of them already, so we can’t afford to add to their numbers.

A “nice guy” performs an act of basic human decency because he thinks it earns him something. When you’re kind, you do nice things for people because you want to live in a world where doing nice things is the rule, not the exception.

Of course, here’s where I’ll lose the Fedoras of the world, because being kind doesn’t magically make women fall for you either. That’s not the point. If you do something nice and expect to be rewarded for it, that’s not an act of kindness, it’s an act of commerce. Being kind is about doing something kind because it’s a better way to live.

I am kind to the people in my life (well, save for the few I’m close enough to that we can safely enjoy a fair amount of friendly teasing). I was kind to the volunteers at Calgary Comic Expo, even if they were telling me I couldn’t enter the Highlander panel. I was kind to the media guests, even if they were charging me for an autograph. I am kind to customers at my work, and to strangers I interact with. And I see the inherent contradiction in saying all these things right after advocating a distinct lack of kindness towards Fedora-kind. But I have my limits.

They hurt my friends. They hurt women I wish were my friends. One day they might hurt my niece, and I can’t have that. They make it harder to build a better world. And they ruined the fedora hat.

I fucking liked fedoras.

Being kind means that I, personally, am not adding to the pool of misogyny drowning our world… but it’s not enough. We gotta drain that pool. Because as long as all women, yes all women, face this sort of abuse throughout their lives, we’ve got work to do.

Danny Writes Plays: The Spy Who Left Me

Salvage wasn’t the only script I managed in 2003. Before it was even done being edited, I had another first draft ready to go. Well, sort of ready to go. Salvage was chosen to perform first because it was thought to be closer to ready for the stage. And they weren’t wrong: my other script from that year was when I truly learned to love the editing stage, as there were a whole lot of rough spots needing to be reworked.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers, The Spy Who Left Me.

What’s it about?

Five years ago, Tommy Wexland (why am I this bad with last names? I can’t explain it) suffered a blow when his wife Alexis disappeared without warning. Today, he’s juggling Mr. Kane, the new executive visiting from Chicago, his on-again off-again girlfriend Fiona visiting from England, and his overprotective little sister Devra, who’s wondering why Alexis has started getting mail delivered at Tommy’s apartment again.

Soon the invitation to a party delivered to Tommy but addressed to Alexis is unraveling the truth: Alexis was a spy who went rogue, Fiona is an MI6 agent out to bring her in, and the man from Chicago is behind everything. And Devra would like it known that she totally called that something was off about Tommy’s ex.

PREMISE!
Well it didn’t sound that weird at the time.

Why did that happen?

The weird thing is that at the time, if you’d tried to tell me I was writing this script as a way to deal with my wife and I splitting up, I’d have not only denied it but actually believed you were wrong. So let’s leave aside the obvious answer of “Impending divorce” and look at what I thought were the reasons I wrote this play.

Simply put, it’s Len Deighton‘s fault.

As my marriage was crumbling, I’d been reading Len Deighton’s classic 80s cold war spy novel trilogies, Game, Set, and Match and Hook, Line, and Sinker. The two trilogies (which apparently were followed by a third, Faith, Hope, and Charity, which I should really track down) deal with Bernard Samson, a jaded, middle-aged secret agent working for MI6, and a complicated chess game of defections and double agents between his employers and the KGB, particularly the East German branches. In Game, Set, and Match, while trying to recover agents from behind the Iron Curtain and recruit high-level defectors, Bernard begins to suspect that his wife, Fiona (influence on the script already apparent), might have been turned by the KGB. In Hook, Line, and Sinker, he learns that the truth is far, far more complicated.

From this came the story of Tommy, learning that his wife’s life was far more bizarre than he ever guessed, her abrupt departure from his life, and her return, which brought with it even more chaos than her leaving.

And once I’d finished the first draft, I finally read Spy Sinker, and realized that I’d come at this entire project wrong. You see, while the first five novels are told from Bernard’s point of view (in the first person, no less), Spy Sinker retells the entire story from Fiona’s perspective. And that made it clear: I’d been writing Alexis all wrong, letting the more colourful spy antics of Alias’ Sydney Bristow shape her, rather than the bleaker, more grounded world of Bernard and Fiona Samson. Alexis hadn’t been on a fun adventure the last five years. Alexis had been in hell. Her life must have been exhausting even before she went on the run, and that meant that I had to rewrite the entire second half to correct this.

At which point, the script became too weighted against poor Fiona (my character Fiona, not Fiona Samson… lord that makes this more confusing than it has to be). Now my test-readers were convinced that Alexis was the one to root for, and Fiona was no good. (Well, except one reader who kept her draft-one dislike of Alexis and now hated both of them) I felt this was too easy, and thus had to rewrite the first half to make Fiona more sympathetic and level the playing field.

The Devra scenes worked fine, though. Minimal edits there.

How’d it turn out?

Last year, on a Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo panel I was doing on writing, someone in the audience asked what were our most embarrassing moments as playwrights. I forget what my colleague Ben said, but for me, there was only one answer: the night my ex-wife came to see this play. Suddenly the veil was lifted, and I was like I was seeing it for the first time. All the people rushing to assure Tommy that he was a good man, that he didn’t deserve all the things that had happened to him, and the fact that this ordinary schlub had two women–no, two glamorous secret agents fighting over him… the post-divorce wish fulfillment was oozing out of every pore of this thing and I could not unsee it.

Aside from that, though.

Other significant changes were needed to ready this thing for the stage. I had to ditch the narration, because once again having the leads narrate their story between scenes was just terrible, I mean god-awful, but unlike Jade Monkey I managed to figure that out before we started rehearsing. Kane’s comic henchmen, Rose and Stern, had to be made less wackily inept. But the end product was… pretty okay, I think? Sorry, I cannot see past the grotesque wish fulfillment aspects far enough to give any sort of judgement on overall quality. And maybe that tells you everything right there.

Would you stage it again?

Can’t say that I would. Not without a top-down rewrite. Back then I did a lot of “quiet, everyday guy dragged into bizarre circumstance” stories because that’s what Neil Gaiman did in Neverwhere, and I love the crap out of Neverwhere, but man I was not good at it. Instead of an everyman on a classic Hero’s Journey like Neverwhere’s Richard Mayhew, I came just shy of writing an Alias fanfic in which Sydney Bristow meets an obvious author-surrogate and falls for him because he has such a rich inner life despite the fact that he barely leaves his apartment. It’s sad it what it is. I can’t go back. I won’t.

No, if Spy Who Left Me were to return, it would have to change drastically. Tommy and Devra would still be at the center, but the story couldn’t revolve around Tommy. Other than existing as bait, the larger spy plot shouldn’t give two shits about Tommy. Also, around draft three, I had to make a choice. Either the play should be a straight-up wacky comedy, with villains right out of the Dukes of Hazzard, or it could be serious enough that ending in a shootout wouldn’t be a jarring change in tone. I picked the latter. Maybe I should have gone the other way. Maybe that’s how this play would work.

Also, I just learned that in 2011 the title got jacked by the first in a series of romance novels called the “Ex Agent” books. Not sure if that impacts this play or not, but… don’t love that turn of events…

Repeated Theme Alert

  • The Quiet, Shy Protagonist The Ladies Still Unaccountably Love rears his whiny, stupid head again. And once more I took a moment to make sure everyone knows he’s good at sex. I had friends, I don’t understand why they didn’t try harder to stop me.
  • Funny yet menacing villains round three. Kane was the heavy, Rose and Stern his comic henchmen. Rose and Stern were born from my regret that I didn’t make Supervillain’s unnamed henchmen the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (see what I did there?) of that play. They’re not terrible, but they do clash tonally with everything else happening.
  • So how was this one about your divorce? We… I think we covered that, didn’t we? I mean, how is it not?

Next time on Danny Writes Plays, a break from divorce-based therapy-writing to do something ridiculous.

Five things I want from Geek TV next season

Last time I talked extensively about geek TV projects coming to television next season, which were exciting, and briefly why. Today, I have some specific requests from those shows.

Now, I’m not saying that any TV executives are, in any way, listening to me. I’m not insane. Well, not that brand of insane. But two years ago, as part of an interview process for an entertainment website, I wrote an article about things I wanted from Arrow (it wasn’t actually called “Ways to be better than Smallville” but could have been), and pretty much all of them happened. And then I said “This show would be even better without that voice-over,” and they cut the voice-over a few weeks later.

So what the hell. Here’s my wishlist for some of the shows I’m excited for next year.

Flash: slow build the right things

One of the big stories that will be part of The Flash was set up when Barry Allen was introduced on Arrow: the fact that his mother was killed by something mysterious, his father went to jail for murder as a result, and Barry is on a quest to figure out the truth and exonerate his father. This is based on a recent addition to Flash lore: when Geoff Johns, executive producer on the show, reintroduced Barry to comic readers a few years back, this quest to find his mother’s true killer was one of the twists he added. And then solved.

Which means that comic readers know that this mystery has only two possible answers: either it was the Reverse Flash, travelling back in time to screw with his nemesis’ entire life, or it’s Barry himself, forced to allow his mother to die in order to save the entire world (see The Flashpoint Paradox, now out on DVD, or the Flashpoint graphic novel, for how that makes any sense).

The point is, let’s not make the same mistake Agents of SHIELD did with “How is Coulson alive” and drag things out too long. Mention it from time to time, sure, but as soon as it becomes central to the story, get moving. Don’t linger too long. Fortunately, the showrunners have already discussed the fact that working on Flash Forward taught them that audiences don’t have the same patience for drawn-out mysteries that they had prior to Lost, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

What they should take their time in doing is introducing and building up some of the most complex and interesting supporting characters the Flash has: the Rogues.

The Sinister Six might get their own movie. These guys actually deserve one.
The Sinister Six might get their own movie. These guys actually deserve one.

 

Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, Heatwave, and the Trickster. And to a lesser extent, Captain Boomerang and Kadabra. When Geoff Johns first started writing the Flash (years ago, when Barry was still dead), he turned Flash’s Rogues Gallery from a bundle of villains so lame they had to hunt in a pack to deadly menaces whose complicated ethics and deep characterization meant they were almost as much fun to read as Flash himself. Each of these characters could be just as fun a recurring character as Arrow’s Malcolm Merlyn or Slade Wilson, so don’t rush their intros. Make a meal of these guys.

And then use the Suicide Squad to set up a crossover with Arrow. Do a damn crossover with Arrow, you’re the only ones who can.

Constantine: plenty of magic users available

Constantine is not going to be crossing over with the Arrowverse, nor the big-screen Justice League. And that’s okay. It’s not my preference, as I may have indicated, but 300 issues of Hellblazer teach us that John Constantine doesn’t need a larger universe of superheroes surrounding him to be interesting. Hell, as much fun as he’s been in the Justice League Dark, Constantine’s kind of better used in a world without Batmen or hooded archer vigilantes. A world where no Justice League is going to swoop in when things get bad.

There are, however, still DC characters that I’d like to see turn up.

There’s the Nightmare Nurse, a recent addition to DC’s magical line-up. She’s the person to turn to if you need healing from a bad spell or curse, the magical equivalent of the doctor who runs an off-the-books clinic where you can get a gunshot treated without a lot of questions or police. Tell me that wouldn’t be worth having in this show.

There’s Andrew Bennett, star of I, Vampire, a character that made a well-received return to the comics after a few decades of absence. I don’t know if Constantine intends to include vampires amongst the things-that-go-bump the main characters will be locking horns with, but if they do, a repentant vampire trying to protect innocents from his psychotic ex, Mary, Queen of Blood, might be a fun way to do it.

With an aversion to sunlight and shirts, apparently.
With an aversion to sunlight and shirts, apparently.

And there are others. Detective Chimp, a chimpanzee magically given speech and heightened intellect, was a fun part of DC’s magic books a few years back. If they find themselves with extra budget to throw around, Constantine has a long history with the Swamp Thing. Want to give John a contact in the spirit world? Why not Deadman? (Assuming they’re not still trying to give him his own series) But there is one character who, more than anyone, I want to see on this show.

Zatanna.

Mistress of Magic.
For reasons besides the obvious.

Zatanna is one of DC’s longest-running magic characters, a sorceress who uses her ability to cast spells by speaking backwards to fight evil while maintaining a career as the world’s most popular stage magician. Done right, she’s also one of their most powerful characters, since she can do practically anything, as long as she can say it backwards. And she’s got an on-again, off-again romantic history with Constantine, often acting as his surrogate conscience in recent years. I shouldn’t even have to suggest that she’d be a brilliant addition to the show. It should be staggeringly obvious. Sadly that doesn’t mean that it is.

Gotham: Watch the Wire and take notes.

Gotham has already taken great strides to ease my initial dislike of its very existence by promising to avoid the teen soap melodrama that made Smallville a show I watched but never endorsed, and by releasing a not-terrible-looking trailer. Instead, we have a show about the early days of the future Commissioner Gordon and the people who will one day become the Penguin, the Riddler, and Poison Ivy. Also they are threatening to include the Joker, even though the Joker can only be the Joker if Batman already exists, and maybe I’m too hung up on the Killing Joke, but a Joker who wasn’t already a vicious criminal when he fell in the acid works so much better.

I digress.

My point is, this show may focus on Gordon (and, sure, tween-Bruce Wayne), but the villains are also a big part of the proceedings. Oswald Cobblepot’s climb to the top of the underworld is just as much a part of the show as Gordon’s rise in the GCPD. So, if I read the trailer right and know my Batman lore, we have a show based on the cops and criminals of a city beset with crime and police corruption, in which a few select cops are trying to redeem the force and save the city while criminals scheme to gain greater control of the underworld. Turns out, there’s a great show you can learn from that did pretty much all of that, as well as any TV show ever has.

Not something that frequently enters conversations involving Batman.
Not something that frequently enters conversations involving Batman.

The Wire is widely believed to be one of, if not the best, TV shows in recent memory. Possibly ever. And it contains all the elements you need to make Gotham a success. Watch the cops who form a special task group to oppose the Barksdale Organization’s drug trade have to swim upstream against a corrupt and budget-stricken police force driven more by statistics than justice, and see if it can’t instruct you on how to approach Gordon’s working relationship with the GCPD. Want to keep us hooked on the crime side of the story? Check out the clash between gangster kingpin Avon Barksdale and his right-hand man, Stringer Bell, who’s looking to take their drug revenues and build an empire that stretches beyond fighting over street corners. And if you need a new take on the Joker… maybe give Omar Little some thought.

Now even though I’ve started to admit Gotham might not be as bad as I feared, I see little way it could be as good as the Wire. That feels like a pipe dream. But the guy in charge of the series also brought us the excellent HBO show Rome, so despite a few years of slumming it running The Mentalist, I believe he still has something special in him.

Agents of SHIELD: you’re a new show now, act like it

17 episodes into Agents of SHIELD, everything changed. SHIELD collapsed, leaving the central team with no backup, no resources, and little hope. And man does that make for more exciting television. Finally there was a sense of high stakes, which the show had severely lacked up until then. The CGI touchscreen computers that solved every puzzle were gone, replaced with 60s-style spy gear salvaged from a former Howling Commando’s estate. And the dullest character was revealed to be Hydra, making him 500 times more interesting.

So the worst thing they can do now is backslide on all of that.

It’s still unclear what Agents of SHIELD will look like next year. Apparently their sister show, Agent Carter, will involve Peggy Carter running missions for Howard Stark, as she’s been shut out of the post-war spy business. Maybe Agents of SHIELD will involve them doing covert ops for Tony Stark, via his new employee Maria Hill. But hopefully they continue to grow and evolve as a series, rather than sink back into the so-so NCIS: Marvel Universe… no, they were too afraid of using anything Marvel… NCIS: Funky Sci-Fi that they wasted over two-thirds of their freshman season being, while wondering why their ratings were in a tailspin.

Arrow: Now go nuts.

So there was one thing I really wanted from Arrow that the second season not only didn’t provide, and actually hinted it never would: to be part of the same universe as Man of Steel. That’s apparently not happening. DC isn’t trying to have all of their properties connect: the movies will be one world, the Arrowverse another, and all other TV series and animated DVDs will pretty much keep to themselves.

There is a potential here.

For the longest time, DC kept its properties separate and allowed no overlap. Smallville reportedly couldn’t use Bruce Wayne because the powers-that-be thought it would conflict with Batman Begins. But that’s no longer happening: if Gotham is a success, then Batman will be hitting the big screen in whatever Man of Steel 2 ends up being called right as Gotham’s Bruce Wayne is hitting his teen years. Flash will be turning up in Justice League while a younger Flash is still running around on the CW.

So the seal is broken. Multiple worlds, multiple versions of the same characters. Which I posit means you should be able to bring whatever and whoever you want into the Arrowverse. Especially since the Flash is adding the existence of powers into the world, something not present in the first season. So why not go for it, Arrow? Start name-dropping the big guns.

You’ve mentioned companies like STAR Labs (DC’s ubiquitous R&D company), Kord Industries (founded by Ted Kord, known in the 80s and 90s as the Blue Beetle), and Ferris Air (employers of Green Lantern), now name-drop the big boys… WayneTech and LexCorp.

I’m not saying you should start casting the Arrowverse Superman and Batman, in fact hold off on Superman until we see how well superspeed gels with this more grounded world, but lay some groundwork. Let us know that Gotham and Metropolis exist in the same world as Starling City. And while you (hopefully) keep up your great work in building your own little DC Universe, get a little out there. Introduce some more heroes, even ones with powers like Black Lightning or, since Markovia exists, it’s prince, Geo Force. Season two took everything that worked in season one and cranked it up: I can’t wait to see you do that again.

My New Favourite Thing: Geek TV News

So this week was the network upfronts, when the US networks announce what new shows will be hitting screens next season, and what bubble shows have gotten the axe. And I have… some reactions. There was enough good news (for me, at least) to file this one under My New Favourite Thing… save for one piece of news. But we’ll call the upfronts this week’s New Favourite Thing just the same.

Allons-y.

Gotham

Okay. I have spoken out against this show in the past. “Smallville but about Batman” seemed like a woefully bad idea. But the trailer… the trailer does not look awful.

And I just want to get this out of the way: yes, I complained about the series existing. Yes, I was afraid of watching another Smallville. But that’s because I knew, deep down, that if this show made it to air, I was going to be watching it. And the trailer not being terrible doesn’t dissuade me from that being an inevitability.

As a bonus, it may not be full-on Smallville. It certainly helps that it’s on a network other than the CW, which seems contractually obliged to slather a minimum amount of teen soap-opera and pretty 20-somethings on anything they air. So it may not be about Bruce Wayne going through puberty and moping over not being able to ask out Selina Kyle because he needs to focus on his Batman training. It’s more about the struggles between the cops and the criminals, in particular Jim Gordon, freshly arrived in the GCPD, and young Oswald Cobblepot, climbing the ranks from low-level henchman to, ultimately, the Penguin. And there might yet be some material to mine here.

Will it turn out that Bruce’s parents’ death is part of a larger mystery? Maybe. Would that be a stupid thing to do? Yes, absolutely. The whole “Become a bat” thing hinges on the fact that his parents were killed in a random street crime, thus to make sure no other child suffers as he did he needs to take on all criminals, not because they posed a threat to some sinister organization. (Although if the showrunners wanted to sneak the Court of Owls into the works, I wouldn’t complain.)

But there is a chance that I won’t have to hate myself too much when I ultimately start watching it in September.

The Flash

This one, on the other hand, I’m nothing but excited for.

THE-FLASH-Full-Suit-ImageTwo years ago, I learned that the CW, looking to replace Smallville, had greenlit a TV show based on Green Arrow, albeit a new take on the character and not the continuing adventures of the Smallville version. That a TV show based on Green Arrow, a character I like but not exactly an A-list DC superhero, would even exist seemed improbable. That it would a legitimately good, sometimes great series was nothing short of miraculous. And now the producers have gotten the go-ahead for their spinoff featuring Barry Allen, the Flash.

Arrow has been soaked in DC lore, filled with Easter eggs and reference characters, and Flash looks to be even more so. There are already three supporting characters pulled right out of the comics. Eddie Thawne of the Central City Police sounds like a play on Eobard Thawne, better known as Flash’s arch-nemesis Zoom, the Reverse Flash (that is not going to sound less ridiculous out loud but he actually is pretty deadly)…

If you were paying attention, they already foreshadowed him on Arrow.
Laugh at his name and he might run into the past and kill your parents right in front of you.

STAR Labs scientist Caitlin Snow sounds like she may be destined to become her comic book counterpart Killer Frost…

Not a good guy. If that wasn't clear.
Not a good guy. If that wasn’t clear.

And her associate Cisco Ramon has been making a comeback lately as Vibe, once upon a time the most regrettable Justice Leaguer.

Made Aquaman look like Batman with a lightsaber.
Made Aquaman look like Batman with a lightsaber.

With his uncomfortably over-the-top Latino streetwise attitude and powers derived from… erm… breakdancing, Vibe has long been seen as a cautionary tale about trying to create new superheros while freebasing cocaine, as I’m pretty sure was standard practice for most of the 80s. Not just comics creators, pretty much everyone was on cocaine in the 80s. DC head honcho/Flash executive producer Geoff Johns is on a mission to redeem Vibe, having rebooted him in the comics…

LESS lame, I'll give him that...
LESS lame, I’ll give him that…

…and now sneaking him onto TV. We’ll see how this goes.

So yes, absolutely I’m excited to see the Flash return to TV. I enjoyed it in the 90s (that show holds up better than I expected), I enjoyed the Arrow two-parter that introduced Barry , and I’m excited to see actual super powers added to the Arrowverse, which remains the best comic property on TV. Yes, by all means, give me The Flash as a companion show to Arrow.

Elsewhere, also on the CW…

iZombie

I don’t know much about the comic iZombie. I read a preview for it that looked intriguing, but never got around to picking it up. Basically, a young med student finds herself turned into a zombie, needing to consume brains. So she feeds off corpses, and in the process also absorbs the dead person’s memories. Which gives us our TV show’s premise: she helps solve murders, using the victim’s memories to help her. Not entirely unlike Pushing Daisies, where Ned the Piemaker could revive the dead just long enough to ask who killed them. And it’s from the creator of Veronica Mars, and co-stars Mr. Sark from Alias, so what the hell, I’m on board.

And there’s still more comic-based news…

Marvel’s Agents of stuff

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is back for a second season, and will be joined on ABC by Marvel’s Agent Carter, a spinoff series for Captain America’s love interest from his first movie. Now, Agents of SHIELD did not exactly hit the ground running. Their larger plots moved too slow, they spent too long being weirdly reluctant to use anything from Marvel comics, their villains made the killers-of-the-week from Hawaii Five-0 look like Heath Ledger’s Joker (We’re pagan anarchists, so we’re smashing things! Because, um, anarchy! Right?), the high-tech touchscreens they used to solve every problem were dull, and their cast was a little bland, especially leading man Grant Ward.

Gonna spoil some stuff now.

But then came Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Then came the fall of SHIELD, following the revelation that they had been utterly, thoroughly infiltrated by Hydra, since the very beginning. And for Agents of SHIELD, everything changed. And it suddenly became a show worth watching for something other than Agent Coulson. Bill Paxton gave an amazingly compelling face to their season-long nemesis, the Clairvoyant. The head of the AIM-from-Iron-Man-3-knockoff Centipede was not a precog, just a high-ranking SHIELD agent who was actually Hydra the whole time. Even more amazing? Agent Ward finally became interesting once they revealed that he, too, was Hydra. It took them 17 episodes, but Agents of SHIELD has finally become a show worth renewing, so I’m interested to see where they go from here (with SHIELD dismantled, backsliding to the show they used to be is pretty much impossible).

And Agent Carter might be okay as well. Peggy Carter was no Phil Coulson, and I worry that they’ll feel a need to remind us she kind of dated Captain America for a bit way more often than they need to, but we’ll see how they do.

Okay, that’s Marvel (who could probably cut back on putting “Marvel” before the name of everything they do… “Marvel’s The Avengers” was necessary for copyright reasons, but “Marvel’s Agent Carter” is pushing it). Back to DC, because there’s still more.

Constantine

Ever since bringing him out of their mature readers line and back into their mainstream comics, DC has been milking John Constantine, magician and conman who sometimes begrudgingly saves the world from demons and monsters, for all he’s worth. And now he will officially be coming to NBC in his own show. I have to say, they have nailed his look…

Not that it's hard to do.
Not that it’s hard to do.

…and the descriptions of the show imply they’re capturing his edge as best they can on a broadcast network. Okay, fine, they didn’t cast Mark Shepard (still time to get him in as a recurring villain), and unlike Flash it’s basically guaranteed to never cross over with Arrow, likely existing in isolation from all other DC properties. But I’ll allow it. Constantine doesn’t need crossovers to be cool. And it might not be on HBO, but just look at what NBC lets Hannibal get away with. Oh, hey, that reminds me…

Hannibal

Third season! Despite being chronically low-rated, Hannibal has scored a renewal once again. I’ve already discussed my love for this show, despite its overwhelming grimness, and the opportunity to get more, to see the show continue to inch its way towards the events of Red Dragon, is definitely good news. I’m used to losing the shows I love: Fox lives to cancel geek-friendly shows, and I still recall the year ABC cancelled six shows I liked or loved in one season. But NBC… NBC gave Chuck five seasons when the ratings never fully justified it, so they’ve earned some love from me.

Even though not all their news thrills me.

Community

After five seasons on the brink of cancellation, two of them as a mid-season replacement with vague commitments to air eventually, Community has finally come to an end.

I’m of mixed feelings. At it’s best, Community was the sharpest, funniest, and smartest comedy on television, with gags ranging from broad to so subtle you barely see them, and one of the best ensemble casts in recent memory. At it’s worst, it was a desperate attempt to trade on mass-market quirkiness, inside jokes and references to fan-favourite episodes. Season four, in other words. The year NBC thought they could live without the series’ creator, Dan Harmon.

A year ago the only reason anyone would have been sad to see Community go was that it would be a shame for a show that used to be so brilliant to end on the worst episode they’d ever done. But then, miracle of miracles, Dan Harmon was re-hired to run the show, and they pulled themselves back from the brink. They weren’t at their peak, especially after Donald Glover left, but they were Community again. But now that’s over, with our final sentiment being Abed’s claim that if they weren’t back soon, it was because an asteroid had hit the Earth and killed everyone. “And that’s canon.”

Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe Community should end now, while they were still a show worth loving, before sinking back to where they were a year ago, somewhere between self-parody and Community fan-fiction masquerading as the real thing. I’ll miss the Greendale gang, to be sure, and if a cable network throws them a lifeline (something that gets rumoured every time a cult favourite gets cancelled but only rarely happens), I’ll follow them, but for now… you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Right now we can believe the sixth season (and the movie) would have been hilarious. An actual sixth season might have proved us wrong, especially if losing John Oliver (again) and Jonathan Banks (surprisingly effective replacement for Chevy Chase) hurt the show as much as losing Donald Glover or Dan Harmon.

That said, if a Kickstarter titled “Fine then, FIVE Seasons and Movie” turns up, I’m on board.

Any or all of the shows I’ve mentioned could be joining Community on the scrap heap by Christmas. But hopefully they don’t, because most of them sound fun.