The Signal Watch: DCU

Showing posts with label DCU. Show all posts

Friday, August 1, 2025

Super Third Watch: Superman (2025) - the Score, Design, Plot Holes and Discourse

Watched: 07/30/2025

Format: Drafthouse

Viewing: Third!

Director: James Gunn

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

For More on the Movie:

This will be the last time I watch this in the theater unless it's out for a long, long time. Or if it gets re-released, I suppose. But I'm glad I saw it a third time. Seeing the same movie three times between the 8th and the 30th is a lot, friends, especially when you've spent considerable time writing too many posts on the film.

Good Golly

I didn't previously mention it, but I really liked how the movie handled Superman's language. Taking a page from Superman: The Movie having Clark say "swell", Superman is mid-kaiju-fight and still saying "golly" and "good gosh" and delivering it absolutely earnest?*

All this as our guy is getting walloped by a 10 story monster. Major points for Corenswet there.

It's a movie and a world in which people do swear (Mr. Terrific has a bit of a potty mouth - a sign of higher intelligence if the memes are to be believed) - so it's a delight to see the same Superman who just saved all those people muttering polite swears under his breath.

Super Watch: Supergirl (1984)

Watched: 07/19/2025

Format: HBO Max

Viewing: Unknown

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

With Superman 2025 out, it occurs to me it's been a while since I revisited some Super-Media - and I cannot tell you the last time I actually watched Supergirl (1984) from start to finish - ie: I always give up somewhere in the middle.

I always feel bad saying this, but the movie is a mess. And there's no one place to point the blame, but the culprit is neither Helen Slater nor Faye Dunaway. I don't know that you can even blame director Jeannot Szwarc, as this was the fourth Superman movie by the Salkinds, and he knew he was a hired gun. So, yeah, as with all things going wrong with the Super-movies from this era, I blame the Salkinds. But, without them, there would be no Superman: The Movie and Superman II. And likely without those movies, no Batman '89. And if none of that, then what...?

Life is complicated.

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

For More on the Movie:

This will be far from my final word on Superman (2025), but I think I should probably not go nuts on you people for too much longer by just circling the Super-drain. One last thought:

You just never know when your niche interest will go mainstream

In high school, the music I listened to was not exactly underground, but I learned to stay up late on the weekend and catch 120 Minutes on MTV. That was where I found my bands rather than watching music video blocks during afternoons after school. Imagine my surprise when the type of music I liked over in my corner suddenly became labeled "alternative" music and was playing on the radio and MTV next to, say, En Vogue.* By Lollapalooza '93 - frat dudes and sorority girls were standing next to me in sun-pounded fields instead of just moody kids and guys with scalp tattoos. It was... weird. But here we all were, enjoying Front 242 together.

Superman Second Watch: Superman (2025) - Part 2 - Characters

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

For More on the Movie:

So, this is my consideration of the casting and portrayal of some key characters in the film. I'm bringing my opinions as an avid Superman comics reader, who prefers certain portrayals - often tied to certain eras. But I'll be mostly discussing portrayals in the comics over the last two decades.

One thing that Gunn seems keen on doing is not re-imagining characters too much. Except when he does, and I'll get to that. But the default between Gunn and John Papsidera to go with types for archetypes. Which may be a bit different from what Sarah Hailey Finn has been doing at Marvel - to great success - which has been finding a personality that will be kind of what you expect, but with a spin. And that's how you wind up with Tatiana Maslany as She-Hulk rather than a 6'2" weightlifter.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

Superman Second Watch: Superman (2025) - Part 1 - Likes/ Dislikes/ Punk Rock Superman

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Watched: 07/12/2025

Format: Drafthouse

Viewing: Second

Director: still James Gunn

For More on the Movie:

We've already posted on seeing Superman (2025) as an initial, kinda spoiler-light/ spoiler-free take that was really about how gobsmacked I was to see a Superman movie that actually cared about four-color comics and what Superman actually stands for.

While celebrating that the movie felt like a DC comicbook in that first post, I didn't get into the issues I had with the movie, because I wanted to make sure I didn't just miss something. I also didn't discuss the characters beyond our primary trio of Superman, Lois and Lex - plus Krypto. Or a few other things I figured I'd cover in a subsequent posts.

In this post, I really don't want to get too much into the social media stuff happening around this film, and, believe me... it is tempting. There is some incredibly disappointing stuff happening out there.

SUPER SPOILERS AHEAD

What did and did not work

So what didn't work (for me)

Super First Watch: Superman (2025)

Watched: 07/08/2025

Format: AMC IMAX

Viewing: First

Director: James Gunn

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

For More on the Movie:

Light spoilers ahead. We'll do another post or two on the movie getting deeper into details.

Well, kids. We made it. It's 2025, and we have a Superman movie.

We posted some details of our screening previously, right after Jamie and I took in the flick.

At the top - I'll say, a good portion of my life has been spent reading Superman comic books, watching Superman films, television, cartoons, etc... I've read non-fiction about Superman's storied history as a pop-culture figure and feel pretty confident in saying that I'm up to date on the character.

And, yet, it is very, very strange to see Superman come to the screen and feel less like an interpretation of Superman re-imagined for the big screen by people wanting to put their own stamp on the character, and instead get a movie that feels like someone took a really terrific event Superman comic run and said "this is what we're doing. On the screen. With a budget that's equal to roughly the combined GDP of Europe."

Superman 2025 Pre-Watch: Superman - The Movie (1978)

Watched: 07/05/2025

Viewing: a lot. Whole bunch of times.

Format: Max

Director: Richard Donner

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

In prep for seeing Superman 2025 on the 8th, I figured I owed the OG classic one more spin before settling in for what Big Blue has to offer us in our modern era.

To catch folks up, I saw Superman: The Movie (1978) during its initial release in December of 1978 or shortly thereafter. Maybe in Spring of 1979. But I'd certainly seen it in the theater with my dad and brother during that window when I was 3. I recall seeing it, as they were giving away gumball machines that were red or blue, and at that time, my brother's stuff was coded blue, and mine was red, so my parents could be even-steven giving us things, but we knew what belonged to who.

I think often of how spoiled we were as kids in the 1980s. One of my first movies outings was seeing Star Wars in the theater at age 2, and then all of the paraphernalia around the movie from toys to wall paper . To me, movies were just where mind-boggling things happened, and what was the point if you weren't seeing something amazing?

Superman 2025: Making An Event

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

If nothing else, I think WB/DC - and maybe the film industry - will come out of Superman (2025) remembering that movies used to be events. And, how to create events again.

It's been a while since I've seen a studio work this hard to make a movie something for which they've built anticipation and a desire to participate in by the public... make them want to see it on the biggest screen possible. Even if Superman doesn't make a billion dollars at the box office, which is may not, WB has fired up the engines of the machines that once brought people out to stand in line for the privilege of watching one of their movies. Right now it *feels* like it's working.

Superman 2025: Predictable Patterns

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Well. With the arrival of the second trailer, it sure feels like people are getting onboard the Superman (2025) train, at least online. I think the slow roll out of images, ideas, etc... is actually working very well.

In my years of observing superhero media releases, there's a distinct pattern when it comes to superhero fans and their management of the conversation online. That conversation can impact what normies see online, which may shape what they may think is the "informed" opinion to have prior to a movie's release - especially in the critical demographic of young adults, who will pay more attention to their peers and what some guy in his mother's house said on TikTok than anything else.

That can be hard.

Superman 2025: Superman Day 2025

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Today is "Superman Day".

The day commemorates the arrival of Action Comics #1 as it hit newsstands on April 18th, 1938.

In years gone by, I might have written multiple paragraphs about what Superman means to me, but I'll hold onto that thought. Nor will I provide a history lesson.

What you should know is that Superman and Lois Lane arrived in one shot, echoing sci-fi and pulp-crime characters of the time, and somehow becoming more than the sum of their parts. There's been plenty of iterations, and there will be more, across comics, movies, television, radio, video games and peanut butter bottles. But today we're here to get jazzed about Superman as a concept so we all plan on going to see Superman.

The reality of the matter is that this day is really Warner Bros. working hard to turn the wheel of the Superman ship after letting it steer a bit rudderless in the public's eye for decades. It's work to rehab the idea of Superman for the average human with $20 to spend at the movies, and get people excited for this summer's new Superman movie when the last outings were not widely loved.

And that's okay! Getting people excited for a movie, especially when you're giving them a version of that thing they've never seen before, is a challenge. If they didn't try, I'd be more concerned.

Superman 2025: Merch as Marketing

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

We have Superman (2025) on the way, which means a whole new, very specific wave of merch will roll out from now until, likely, next Christmas.

In a general sense, *some* Superhero nerds will buy almost anything with the right logo or image on it. T-shirts, sure. But I've had toothbrushes, picture frames, piggy banks, rubber ducks... I'd feel worse about this, but I also follow sports, and, friends, there is *nothing* you cannot buy that doesn't come with a Cubs logo slapped across it. The point being, one will find a wide array of items featuring superheroes, and for a bit, this will feature the Superman movie-specific license.

Back in 2001, I remember my own brother, Steanso, saying to me "if I put a Superman sticker on a pile of dog@#$%, I think you'd buy it." And that has haunted me ever since. But he's not too far off when it comes to how far DC and Marvel will go in letting just about anyone license DC and Marvel art to slap on a product.

And, since Zazzle showed up 20+ years ago, DC in particular, has been pretty free with "yeah, here's some clip art. Go nuts." And a lot of their imagery has just been out there, with Superman logos showing up on anything you can imagine.

The onslaught of super-product can be overwhelming, and it does not help that some people don't bother to get the license.

Superman 2025: Supergirl 2026

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

One of the oddities of the new DC Studios Universe is that they aren't running through the heroes I expected. We're starting with Superman, sure (as we should!), and we may be slow walking Batman into the DCSU, but we also have Creature Commandos. And, now, already... my friend Kara Zor-El is getting a movie.

Seen above, actor Milly Alcock is on set and shooting has begun for Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

Am I thrilled? Yes.

As a character, Supergirl's last big screen outing was in The Flash, and... it ended badly for her in a movie I didn't care for. Before that, it was the mid-80's Supergirl with eternal Signal Watch crush Helen Slater. And that movie is, maybe, not the best movie ever made. I also watched the full run of Supergirl on CBS/ The CW. As a comics-reader, I became a fan first of the alt-Supergirl Linda Danvers during the epic Peter David run, but loved Kara Zor-El on Superman: The Animated Series.

DCSU Watch: "Creature Commandos" on Max

So I have a new TV girlfriend.

I can fix her...!

No, but really. I can't begin to wrap my head around the fact that this is how James Gunn's DC Studios Universe is starting. Wildly violent, gross, Rated-R just for language, full of nudity, sex and swearing... My suspicion is that he pitched this to WB during his problems with Marvel/ Ike Perlmutter. Maybe he pitched this alongside Peacemaker and they said "well, that sounds like $30 million an episode or 250 million as a movie. But as a TV show cartoon...".

Honestly, I don't care. But, in theory, Creature Commandos does *count* as part of the new shared DCSU. Which is wild, because this thing is Rated a hard R, is grotesque, violent, morbid and hilarious. And, because it's Gunn, and he understands monsters - it's also oddly moving.

Superman 2025: Reaction to the Trailer

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

I was shocked at the reaction to the Superman trailer. Genuinely blown away by how people have taken to it.

A couple of follow ups:

I didn't realize one of the characters we see is an extreme close-up of Metamorpho, and that's good news. I knew he was in the film, but *kind of* forgot, given everything else we were seeing.

There's also glances of a character who is unidentifiable, and rumors abound as to who that is. And, of course, the kaiju thing, which I suspect isn't going to be seen after the first few minutes.

When I finished my very long post about the release and first reaction to the trailer for Superman (2025), I thought I'd have a long wait between posts. After all, it seems that after the first trailer, we'd be in a period where new information about the movie will be very carefully released, usually in the form of more trailers, staggered up to the movie's release. Plus, any press the cast will do.

But in no way did I anticipate how ready people seemed for mere visuals in a two minute and twenty second trailer. Stuff that I wasn't sure how it would be received.

Superman 2025: A Trailer Drops

I think this Krypto movie will have Superman in it

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Firstly, I meant to spend any Super-writing time this week on discussing Elizabeth Tulloch as our Lois Lane on the recently completed TV series Superman and Lois. But I guess I'm punting on that 'til we're done talking the trailer for Superman. Suffice to say, my discussion of Tulloch will be a deeply positive one, so just... insert that in your brain for now.

As is evidenced by now, WB, DC and the popular movie community has lost its collective mind over the Superman trailer, happily following the marketing breadcrumbs along the way. This isn't a criticism. Movies stopped advertising during the covid-era, and I have no @#$%ing idea why they did that. You need to advertise to get people excited. Wicked advertised and is doing swell.

We knew Gunn had been working on a trailer and it would come out this winter. I thought it would come out for The Big Game, but... I think they wanted it out there for NCAA football game commercial breaks as we head into Conference Championships (SEC is this Saturday), and then bowl games.

The timeline, as near as I can tell, is that around end of October or early November, actor Frank Grillo said he'd seen the trailer for Superman 2025 and loved it.

Rumors abounded we'd see a trailer in December, but the internet is full of all kinds of non-facts, and so I was in a wait and see mode. Then - I saw that they were holding a showing of the trailer on the WB studio theater on Monday, and said "oh, I guess... maybe? For Christmas?"

What I didn't anticipate was that WB re-awakened their mostly dormant hype-machine and went into full-court-press. It seems obvious now.

Super Watch: Superman and Lois Season 4 - End of Series

It's been a wild ride with two of my favorite fictional people, Superman and Lois Lane, over there on the CW.

Ever since DC television introduced Tyler Hoechlin as Superman on their Supergirl show, and eventually brought in Elizabeth "Bitsie" Tulloch as Lois, CW kinda/ sorta had to figure out how to make a Superman television program. And, indeed they did.

As DC wrapped up the "Arrowverse", it was decreed that the coming Superman and Lois show would have nothing to do with that universe, and we'd see a stand-alone Superman. No Arrow, Supergirl, Black Lightning, Flash, etc...* For the time being, it would be pure Superman. And with comics going back to the 1930's, that was plenty, for me.

Ownership of the CW changed mid-production for the show, and I think it did have some impact on DC's willingness to bother with the CW. I won't go into the politics, but there is no way it didn't have an impact on the show as Nat was portrayed for the first time in media as straight, and the bisexual storyline for another character was never mentioned again.

The clock was ticking on the show once WB put all of DC's motion-media in James Gunn's hands, and *everything* (minus The Batman and the flop that was Joker 2) would be part of a coherent, single universe. TV, cartoons, movies, flipbooks... I can understand WB's desire to give Gunn a clean slate to work with as he brings his vision for Superman to the big screen, and there were always going to be casualties of things I liked.**

SPOILERS

BatTV Watch: The Penguin

Well, the final episode of The Penguin dropped.

Don't read this if you haven't finished the show.

All in all, I really don't have any major complaints about the series. And y'all know me. I love a good bout of complaining.

I guess if I was to complain, I'd say that the back-and-forth sometimes felt a bit unnecessary, regarding who was on top. I get it was a reversed Red Harvest situation, but... sometimes it felt a little loosey-goosey. I also wish the Maroni plotline felt a bit more built out - but that's me wanting more Shohreh Aghdashloo. Also - I don't know how the Falcone/ Gigante mob was supposed to work, how big it was supposed to be, etc... it sometimes seemed huge and other times like it was maybe 8 guys.

But these are nits which I have picked.

On the whole, it's kind of astounding. And for all the good Marvel shows, it really did feel like new territory and showing audiences what was possible.

It's not a secret I like a good crime story or gangster story (and, no, I probably haven't seen that one thing you want to talk about immediately. Stop asking.). But from the first episode, it was clear The Penguin was going to be better than it needed to be. By the 4th episode, you kind of knew that this show is going to be held up as one of those highlights of a genre that makes folks ask "why don't they make more stuff like X?"

Superman 2025: Krypto, The Superdog

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

Today, James Gunn announced that, yes - after a year of playing hide-the-ball with the issue - Superman's canine companion, Krypto, will appear in 2025's Superman.

Full disclosure - a full subset of my Super comics and paraphernalia collection is Krypto-related. My house is littered with white dogs in capes. There's like 7 of them in the room I'm in right now. I am also a grown man who spends 45% of his waking time talking to a 128 pound dog with zero manners.

If you think a Super Dog is a dumb thing and superheroes can't have pets... I would like to introduce you to DC Comics' longstanding tradition of Super-Pets and related animals. Krypto was a mid-1950's addition to the Superman canon, showing up less than twenty years after Superman first showed up in 1938. But after the insertion of Rex the Wonder-Dog into DC's world of action-adventure, sometimes in military comics. Batman has Ace the Bathound. Wonder Woman has had a variety of pals, but Jumpa, her kangaroo, is probably most famous for nerds. Robin has a Batcow. Here's an encyclopedia of them.

It's important to remember that one of the biggest stars in movies through the late 1920's was Rin-Tin-Tin, a German Shepard. Rin-Tin-Tin and Lassie enjoyed stardom in movies and television through the 1990's. Dogs as characters just wasn't a weird idea to people in media. And especially when you're trying to rope in a younger audience, as comics were intended through the 1980's.

Streaming Superhero Media This Week: Penguin, Agatha, ElectraWoman and DynaGirl

Last week, DC and Marvel sort of went head-to-head releasing two very different shows, but with some interesting similarities. Meanwhile, Jamie was scrolling my Amazon account, and Amazon (correctly) alerted me that the 1976 Krofft Superstars show, ElectraWoman and DynaGirl is fully available - and in excellent condition.

DC's take was to put out a very adult-oriented mob-show about what seems to be the rise of Oswald Cobb(lepott), better known as The Penguin in Bat-circles. It's the spin-off from the successful The Batman movie, in which famed handsome-man Colin Farrell put on 40 pounds of latex and a fatsuit to play a character very, very well, that some critics (Paul) have called out for being a role any character actor in LA could have nailed. And maybe he's not wrong.

It's a show that's a wild take that has nothing to do with the source material, uses the name of the character with only minimal care for the comics, and is doing it's own thing while using the DC label. I do not expect Dr. Fate to show up and help out.

Superman 2025: Jimmy Olsen and the Many Media of the Man of Steel

Superman 2025's Jimmy Olsen, Skyler Gisondo

You can follow our posts on Superman at this link, and our posts on the new movie, Superman (2025) at this link.

On August 25th, writer and director of Superman, James Gunn, celebrated the creation of James Bartholomew Olsen with a picture of actor Skyler Gisondo in costume, playing Superman's Pal. He also included an image that is very, very early Jimmy Olsen, written by Siegel, drawn by Shuster.

Jimmy really existed as a background character, mostly nameless, at the Daily Star and Planet (so I don't really know how they came up with the specific "first appearance" but whatever). It would be the radio show that pushed Jimmy as a featured player in Superman's world.

Actor Jackie Kelk would provide the first voice for Jimmy, making sure that Clark/ Superman would have a conversationalist who wasn't his boss or Lois. On the show, Jimmy cemented his role as the eager kid on the learning curve who, like Lois, was constantly stumbling into danger.

Tommy Bond played Jimmy in the original serials, but the one who kind of *made* Jimmy was Jack Larson. His Jimmy was an eternal 18 year old who acted 10, making the bow tie and a sweater vest or jacket his signature look - something Jimmy still sports these days as a sort of hipster.

The character was so popular with kids, we wound up with a comic series that ran for 20 years, Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. And if you want to see how a comic book series can change drastically over two decades, check in with that comic and Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane. (Especially Lois Lane, to see the changes in attitudes about women and their place in culture and the newsroom.)

Pages

Friday, August 1, 2025

Good Golly

Sunday, July 20, 2025

You just never know when your niche interest will go mainstream

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Saturday, July 12, 2025

What did and did not work

So what didn't work (for me)

Thursday, July 10, 2025

Monday, July 7, 2025

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Friday, April 18, 2025

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Thursday, January 23, 2025

Friday, January 10, 2025

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Thursday, December 19, 2024

Friday, December 6, 2024

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Friday, September 27, 2024

Tuesday, August 27, 2024

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