Let's hear it for James Gunn!

We honestly have to give Director James Gunn top marks for finally producing a superhero movie that I, personally, have been waiting years to see. He has developed the “initial” movie in a planned ongoing mythology that bypasses the (so-called) “mandatory” (re)telling of the hero’s origin when the lead actor has been replaced and does what I’ve been talking about for quite some time now. Just tell a story.  In one interview, Gunn said it himself. “We don’t need to go there.” Gunn’s statement acknowledges that—for all intents and purposes—we all know the basic elements of Superman’s origin and his arrival here on Earth.

Needless to say, while there certainly are many superhero characters who are not known by the general public, there are quite a few whose origins are already known or already explained in previous films. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere (over and over) retelling a character’s origin is something oddly specific to superhero films. Rebooting a story and retelling the main character’s origin is just bad storytelling. By way of example, Let’s look at the cinematic history of James Bond, perhaps one of the most well-known fictional characters who doesn’t wear spandex.

Since his debut film, Dr. No in 1962, there have been 29 Bond films (including the original Casino Royal and Never say Never), seven actors (including David Nivin) who have played Bond, and some 27 villains. Further, we never got an actual origin story for Bond until Daniel Craig portrayed him in Casino Royal (2006). Compared to Lex Luthor appearing in five of the seven solo live action films; Green Goblin appearing in three of the Eight solo live action Spider-Man films; Magneto appearing in eight of the 14 X-Men films; and the Joker appearing in seven of the 13 Batman films.

My point here is that many of these comicbook characters have been around for 87 (Superman) to 62 (X-Men) years, and yet the films keep going back to the same legacy villains when each of the various heroes has around 100 (or more) villains, not every film has to go back to the same small group of villains when each of them have such a wide wealth of a rogues gallery. This is why Marvel introducing movies with The Guardians of the Galaxy (under Gunn), Ant Man, and Dr, Strange, are important.

Hopefully, now that Gunn has brought the Guy Gardner Green Lantern, Metamorpho, and The Engineer into the DC Cinematic Universe (with the promise of more of the same) we can all move past that there are only a few heroes with only one villain each.

 

Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow: A Superman Story

So, we just came from watching the new James Gunn Superman flick—which we thoroughly loved—and we wanted to talk a little bit about it. This isn’t our review, we’ll be writing and posting about that later (We’ll link back here to hook you up with that review as soon as it is written, posted, and approved). But for now, what we want to do here is to talk a little bit about how there are reports on social media about how Gunn turned Superman “Woke” and they don’t like it.

To those people who feel this way, all I have to say (as someone who has been reading comics since 1961, working in the field as a journalist since 1981, and as a comicbook creator since 1986) You have no idea what you are talking about here. And trust me, as I’m something of an expert in this.

But first, allow me to go back a few years when the first Wonder Woman film came out in 2017. Back then a pair of conservative talking heads whined on-air about how disrespectful it was that the film changed her uniform from red, white, and blue like Superman’s. This without clearly realizing that her costume was never red, white, and blue, and neither was Superman’s. Hers has always been red, gold, and blue, while Superman’s was red, Yellow, and blue. Further, neither of them are actually Americans, Wonder Woman is from the mythical island of Themyscira, while Superman (Kal-El) was born on the planet Krypton and is (technically) on Earth (and in the U.S.) illegally.

Next up, in 2022 other conservative TV talking heads (probably from the same network) were griping that Marvel has gone woke by creating a female Hulk, without realizing that She-Hulk first appeared some 43 years earlier in her own Marvel Comicbook. According to information at the time, the character was created to protect the company’s trademark on the green-skinned Hulk character’s name. In fact, there is a video clip of a reporter interviewing Bill Bixby (who played David Banner on the TV show. That clip is shown below.

My point with these first couple of paragraphs is that quite often, the folks on (pretend) TV news shows very often don’t know, or even understand, even the simplest of things (which can be looked up) on which they are reporting, and if they can get simple (not important) things like those I cited wrong, then how can we trust them getting actual important news correct.

Then there is the case of Dean Cain (who played Clark Kent/Superman) in the CBS TV show Lois & Clark, The New Adventures of Superman (1973–1977). Sometimes, proving that even when they have some understanding of who the character is because they actually played them on TV. Cain re-entered public awareness recently with his negative assessment over Gunn’s film (without even having seen the film). Cain claimed that the film is too woke because it celebrates Superman as an immigrant (somehow forgetting that only is he an illegal immigrant, but that there was an episode of Lois & Clark that dealt with the same topic.

Another issue the conservative Cain mentioned about the film is Gunn’s changing the long-standing mantra first associated with Superman m the 1950s TV show, stands for “Truth, Justice, and the American way” to “Truth, Justice, and a better tomorrow”. Well, two things here. First, under our current administration, America isn’t as welcoming to immigrants as we were in the ‘50s. Second (and more relevant to the character) those of us who actually read comics already know that back in 2011 (Action Comics #900), Superman addressed the full council of the UN and renounced his U.S. citizenship and declared himself to be a citizen of the world. Thus, making the “…for a better tomorrow” a far more reasonable pledge.

THIS JUST IN!

Shortly after posting this article, we learned that Dean Cain (who is Japanese American and whose father's entire family was interned in a camp in Idaho during WWII) has recently announced that he is joining ICE! 

Having written all that, we have seen the new Superman film and let us state that we fully enjoyed it and state that it is easily one of the best stand-alone Superman films ever made (and the presence of Krypto certainly helped in that regard). Further, the appearance of the Justice Gang (especially Metamorpho, an old favorite of ours) added to the film’s fun. Plus, the addition of Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor was simply brilliant. Ultimately, we believe that a large part of the misunderstandings covered in this article stem from the fact that many folks still believe that superhero films, and the comics from which they are based, are still “junk” or “kiddy” fare, and not legitimate literature or cinema. And frankly, as far as we’re concerned, that’s simply a crying shame.

* * *

Oh, and just to let all’y’all know that I know what I’m talking about, in 1961 I moved from reading syndicated newspaper comic strips to reading comicbooks. Around 1978 I joined comicbook fandom and began to contribute to an APA (Amateur Publishing Alliance). In 1981 my first comicbook article was published in Amazing Heroes #5. In 1986 my first comicbook (Agent Unknown: Renegade Press) was published. I spent the next 15-20 years working as a journalist in comics, writing for virtually all of the magazines that covered the comicbook industry. Currently I still post about comics both here and over at HubPages, I also still write comics at Dark Fire Press, and other indie publishers. 

 

Funnybooks I’ve Recently Read

So, I figured that I’d share with all’y’all my thoughts on a bunch of funybooks I’ve recently read. (Just so everyone understands, I’ve been reading comics since around ’61 or so, with much of my early reading done while sitting on the newsstand of my uncle’s grocery store. It was him that called them “Funnybooks” and that name stuck with me so much that when I launched my comicbook imprint, I called it Funnybook City.) But I digress.

To return to the topic at hand, the comics I picked up most recently. First up, issues 1–5 of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (which tie into the eponymous Disney+ series—I’ll review the Disney+ series in a different post). While the comic and the animated series each follow a slightly different path, they both focus in on a somewhat divergent path. Each of them telling the tale of our favorite wallcrawler (According to Google, the series (for both the comic and the TV show, independent of each other) is set in an alternate MCU timeline, specifically one that closely mirrors the main MCU but with key differences, making it a “What If?” scenario. It’s not considered part of the main 616 universe but is still part of the larger Marvel multiverse. The show is designed to explore a Spider-Man story within an MCU-like setting without directly impacting the main continuity. 

To be sure, the core of both the comic and the streaming series are that Peter is in high school, gets bitten by an irradiated spider, and gains the proportionate strength of a spider, then sets out to do good. The comic is written by Christos Gage and illustrated by Eric Gapstur, and it retells the origin of Spider-Man, but in a simpler style targeted towards a younger audience (ironically enough, presumably targeted to an audience the same age I was when I first began reading comics in 1962.)

The origin is mostly the same (young Peter, an irradiated spider) with the addition of some new twists and friends; Nico Minoru, her foster mom, Susan O’Hara, a (much) younger Aunt May, as well as existing in a modern timeframe. Some old characters are also reintroduced, but in updated versions (Silvermane, Man Mountain Marko, The Enforcers). Also, Peter’s first Spider-Costume is very retro different (a tank on his back with web fluid and long tubes conveying the fluid to his wrist-shooters).

The overall story itself revolves around Silvermane wanting to buy the land on which Midtown High sits and the kids (and Spider-Man) not wanting that to happen (all while attending another high school that is specifically for especially talented kids. The story is entertaining, and we certainly hope that Marvel reaches its target audience with this title, and more kids come to have the same appreciation for both Spider-Man, and comics that my association with them resulted from sitting on Uncle Franks’s newsstand when I was that age.

Having recently watched (and reviewed) Thunderbolts*  I picked up the first two issues of the newest comicbook incarnation of their comicbook. It wasn’t until I got them home that I realized that the comic actually came out in 2024. Still, upon reading it I discovered that (while I had read various runs of the previous incarnations of this title, I was still a bit surprised by the nature of this version of the team. Just in case you have only seen the film, let me do a quick recap of the comic here.

A little bit of comicbook history

The first appearance of the original incarnation of the comicbook team, Thunderbolts, (created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley) was in The Incredible Hulk #449 (January 1997). The team itself showed up after the presumed deaths of Avengers and Fantastic Four and consisted of Citizen V, Atlas, Mach-1, Meteorite, Songbird, and Techno. One month later, in February, Thunderbolts #1 hit stands. However, it was later revealed that they were, in fact, the Masters of Evil, led by none other than long-time Avenger villain, Baron Zemo, who was aiming to gain public trust for his nefarious purposes. While this was their beginning, over the years, the team has evolved into an actual superhero team giving us quite a few iterations of the Thunderbolts, each exploring themes of redemption and second chances.

In this ’24 version of the team (by Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly as writers, and Geraldo Borges as artist) we are presented with a roster that was quite similar to the cinematic version of the team. Here, the team consists of Bucky (as team leader), a Life Model Decoy of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Sharon Carter as the Destroyer, and Red Guardian, with Black Widow (in a new spidery costume) joining them in issue #2. The White Widow, Chang-Chi, and The Captain (John Walker) also join the team during the series four-issue run.

In the first issue, the team went up against the latest incarnation of The Red Skull, killing him and torching his South American HQ. In the second issue the team goes up against the (then) current incarnation of the Hellfire Club which is being led by Kingpin (who was no longer the mayor of NYC as this was taking place during the Gang War storyline in the Spider-titles with Luke Cage as Mayor). Eventually going up against Doctor Doom himself!

The two issues we read were so good that we were honestly disappointed to learn that the series was over and we were unable to find the other two issues or the trade paperback edition either. Still, it was a really cool spy/assassin and anti-hero team, and we really did enjoy the two issues we read (we may try to fine the other two issues moving forward).

Next on our list is Vatican City #1 (from Dark Horse by Mark Millar & Peter Berg). This is a interesting horror story were a horde of vampires take over the world, save for mankind’s last holdout, which is Vatican City. As we only have one issue, what we have to go on is that one evening, in a coordinated attack (at night around the globe) the vampires come out of hiding and methodically descend on the human population until all that is left is the Holy City of the Vatican. The issue concludes with the vampires breaching the catacombs in an attempt to free their queen.

Perhaps our favorite comic is Metamorpho The Element Man #1. We have fond memories of reading this book when it first appeared (between 1965 and 1968). The character was created by Bob Haney, and initially illustrated by  Ramona Fradon. We recall it being fun, hip, and quite cool at the time. We are happy to report that this first issue is every bit as fun, hip, and cool as we remember, with all of the original elements of what made it so much fun still intact. We can only assume that Rex Mason’s re-appearance in comics is wholly due to his showing up in the new Superman flick. To which we say, Huzzah!

The last book on our list today is Marvel’s Rivals which we are sorry to announce is a dismal disappointment. Truthfully, we really did want to enjoy this comic but couldn’t get past the first few pages as there was way too much dialogue and not nearly enough art to enjoy. The story so obviously takes place in a non 616 timeline (as evidence of a female Galactus) who spent so much time yammering about who could tell what, that it quite frankly simply turned us off to even completing the book.

That will teach me to spend just a little more time pursuing the book before actually buying it. Sigh.