Return to Smallville: Season 10 - Fumbling at the One Yard Line

Well, we watched a collection of episodes from the final season - and more episodes than in prior seasons.  It was really pretty solid until it wasn't.

Lazarus - Oliver is Lethal Weapon-tortured by Ted Whittall (as Rick Flagg)!  I love Ted Whittall.  He should be in everything.  This is the episode where Clark does not much, Tess realizes she's got a bank of Lex clones, and one of said Clones forces Lois to look smashing as she's almost burned to death in a corn field.  Chloe also swaps spots with Ollie and is quasi written off the show so Allison Mack can go join a cult.  And Clark is an absolute dope about Lois throwing herself at him.

Shield - Lois wastes time in "Egypt" hanging out with Carter Hall and admits she knows Clark is The Blur.  We get Cat Grant - whose whole job is to suck as a person.  And, we get an hilarious take on Deadshot as a cowboy who Oliver informs us no one can ever find, despite the fact he looks like he's in a rodeo everywhere he goes.  But, yeah, the whole "Suicide Squad" stuff starts here.  

Supergirl - Laura Vandervoort returns as Kara and is trying to distract the public from Clark by being the superhero everyone wants.  This plot makes almost no sense.  But the real story is that Lois decides to take down Glorious Godfrey by taking photos of him cavorting in a sex club, which is... not great and irrelevant, Lois. And, anyway, if you wanted to see this show react like an awkward 11 year old to non-romantic sex, this is the episode for you.  But Lois plays dress up again, and it's fun.  Oh, Glorious Godfrey is maybe possessed by Darkseid?  I can't tell.  He also gets a book written and published in 3 weeks, so Darkseid is efficient as hell.

Homecoming - Lois drags Clark to their high school reunion where Clark gets Christmas Carol'd by Brainiac 5.  We see that Lois looks... amazing with her hair up and all serious reporter-style.  Really, that's my takeaway, but Clark's realization is that he can rest assured that it will not just work out with Lois, but make them both better.

Isis - Lois dresses up as in Spirit Superstore Egyptian costume and gets possessed by the literal goddess Isis, which raises innumerable questions, but she's treated like a Freak o' the Week.

Ambush - Lois' much-discussed dad shows up with Lucy Lane in the form of Mad Men actor Peyton List.  I'd say this take on Major Lane is cartoonish and dumb, but I've seen and heard things in this life, and some people are truly psychotic when it comes to how they address their children's significant other.  It's... fine.  Michael Ironside gets a paycheck.  And Ted Whittall is America's hero by blowing up the Talon so we need never see it again.

Abandoned - A mixed bad of an episode.  Good:  Features the only live action appearance of The Female Furies I'm aware of, and has a curious take on Granny Goodness.  Bad:  it has no resolution.  Tess and Clark just leave, leaving the Female Furies, Kryptonite, Granny and a herd of orphans.  But lots of Tess.

Luthor - The Kryptonian Thermos makes Clark of Earth-1 swap places with Ultra-Man of Earth-2, and it's a surprisingly good episode.  Lionel returns, and Tess's heritage is outed.  

Icarus - the feds do what they should have done and try to shut down vigilantes in Metropolis.  It's a good episode, and shows the maturity the show is now capable of with adult characters and storylines that don't feel like someone's first, unconsidered draft.

Collateral - Chloe is Morpheus in the Matrix.  Somewhere along the way Chloe learned kung-fu and how to handle guns.  Pretty good paranoia and allegorical trust stuff.

Beacon - Martha shows up for a rally and is shot by Clone-Boy-Lex.  It's got a good chiller of an ending.

Masquerade - Chloe and Oliver get wrapped up in Desaad's murderous shenanigans.  Clark realizes he needs to wear glasses and be a nerd.

Fortune - yup. The Hangover rip off episode that is none the poorer for lifting so obviously while employing super-feats.  Maybe the one where everyone making it clearly had some fun.  

Booster - Booster Gold shows up and Blue Beetle is a bit of a wiener. 

Finale - An incomprehensible mess of a finale that feels like it was written by a drunk mongoose and shows Welling was going to just be an absolute dick about wearing the suit.  Mostly I'm confused and angered about the murder of Tess.  It is truly, truly some terrible television that the prior two years would lead to believe was going to be handled well and was an absolute disaster.

Return to Smallville: Season 9 - Where the show takes some big swings

Just re-name the show, you dopes

So, Season 9 of Smallville, which has absolutely no business being called "Smallville" anymore as it takes place 88% in Metropolis, does feel quite a bit like when the show grew up to be the show they thought or wished they were making in Season 7.

It's not the best TV you'll see, but it feels like they finally got pieces in place, logistics and characterwise, that were less awkward and like they were keeping one foot in teen-soap.  It's gone full serious super-drama, and is en route to being Superman.

Episodes We Watched

Savior - Despite clear instructions that the Legion ring was set to send Doomsday to the 31st Century, Lois returns from the future which is 1 year from when she left (but she has no memory of this for some reason?).  Clark decides he needs to give up being human at the worst possible time when his best friend is in crisis, making Clark the world's least considerate friend and reminding us he's both dumb and self-centered AF.  We also meet our Zod of the season, who is absolutely acting to the back of the theater in every scene.

Metallo - A reminder that Brian Austin Green is actually a really solid actor and should have been a main actor/ villain on this show for a season.  He's better than the guy they got for Zod, and his character's arc seemed way, way, way cut short.

Kandor - Julian Sands arrives as "Young Jor-El Clone" to basically cause a lot of trouble for everyone involved.  This whole thing makes Jor-El seem like (even more of) an inconsistent boob.  Sands is good, but the episode feels like a swing and a miss, like they forgot the impact that we may have had if he and Clark spent any time together.

Pandora - This is the episode where we find out this universe has an off-the-shelf technology that will allow you to see into someone's memories with a stick 'em pad.  It's AMAZING and never mentioned or used again.  We also see Lois in the future, and Clark shares her memories of them boning, which means Clark experienced what it's like to be fucked by himself.  Which is how we should all be feeling by this point in the series' run.

Absolute Justice Parts 1 and 2 - Geoff Johns takes on writing chores and shoves in every single JSA trope he can, plus Stargirl, and everyone new to show is acting at an 11.  Like, really, really hamming it up in a way that feels weird and incongruous to the overall tone of the show.  It also introduces Pam Grier as Amanda Waller, head of Checkmate.  It's very clear the actor playing Dr. Fate does not know what to do with his hands while in costume.  The girl playing Stargirl should have joined the overall cast, though.

Warrior - A cursed comic book (we've all got a couple in our collection.  Mine was Lady Death #1, and thereby hangs a tale) enables a street kid to become a superhero and in no way is this a riff on Shazam.  Chloe absolutely tries to rawdog a 12 year old, while Clark is faced with the challenge of throwing over Zatanna who is bodily forcing herself on him in favor of Lois in a Spirit Halloween "Amazon Warrior Princess" costume.  Shut the fuck up, Clark.

Escape - On a show that keeps ratcheting up the horniness, Clark and Lois go to an out of the way inn so they may bone for the first time, I guess?  Meanwhile, Green Arrow and Chloe also go to same inn to bone.  It desperately wants to be a sex-farce episode but is distracted by the appearance of Silver Banshee, low-key one of my favorite villain designs.  Lois also appears in negligee.  No notes.  A+.

Checkmate - All I want to know is what the meetings were like with the interior design firm asked to outfit a castle for a supposedly super-secret clandestine government organization when they were like "make this motherfucker look like a chess board, and spare no expense."  All in all, this is a competently told story, and has bearing and weight that make sense.  I was not cracking wise to Jamie throughout.

Sacrifice - Tess invades the watchtower, trapping she and Chloe inside where things get very sweaty, but not in a Cinemax latenight way.  Really my take-way is that Chloe's capture system (a) does not employ the way-overengineered HVAC system of the Watchtower, but (b) we learn that Watchtower has the world's most expensive and unnecessary HVAC system and the controls are right there, as well as the nuclear freon or whatever.

Salvation - After not watching most of the Kryptonian episodes this season and trying to remember them from my prior viewing, I think I'm pretty right in assuming this storyline was dumb as it looks, that the guy playing Zod needed to take it down about 8 notches, and Kryptonians seem dumb as hell for an advanced race.  The few good bits are undercut with stuff like the main trickster villain saying out loud "Yes, I did the one thing everyone here would find unforgivable and abhorrent."  Also, the stupid pilfering of "The Book of Rao".  But the fight choreography was pretty solid.

Where the actual @#$% is Smallville?

Superman and Lois - Season 2 Round-Up

Let me just say, sometimes you need to let a show cruise along for a season and trust in what they're doing when you think maybe it's not going great.  I never felt Superman and Lois was off the rails this season, but I just wasn't always sure why they were doing what they were doing.  And maybe they did too much of some things, not enough of others, but the show felt *intentional* in ways that were satisfying, carrying overall themes, arcs for all the characters (except for Lana's younger daughter, who is an astounding after-thought) that reflect and refract the theme, and allegory mixing with the concrete.

The show seems very aware of the faults and issues with most CW superhero shows from Smallville through to today, and works overtime not to fall into some of those traps even when it sometimes can't avoid them.  It's not perfect - there's stuff I don't love, and things I wish they'd sort out, and choices they made this season which felt poorly considered.  

But they also chose to go big and swing for the fences with big-time superheroics that somehow aren't just spectacle but contain genuine, complex emotional beats.

SPOILERS, AHOY.

Return To Smallville - Season 8

just go stand in the back, Clark

I dipped in an out of Season 8 of Smallville when it first aired.  They were hitting some key Superman business, and so I was recording episodes and would watch some, parts of some, and skip a lot.  

Season 8 was when CW realized Clark and Chloe were the only characters still around from Season 1, and they pushed Chloe a bit more center to mixed-effect.  With Lex gone, we got Tess Mercer (played by the fantastic Cassidy Freeman), and the introduction of Davis Bloom played by Sam Witwer.  

Episodes

Odyssey - Clark is in Russia for some reason?  Tess shows up and says "I'm the Captain now".  Davis appears as an EMT.  Chloe gets kidnapped and has a new power that could have been cool, but the writers will lack imagination and ditch it mid-season.  

Plastique - Clark is now at the Daily Planet, Tess is CEO of LuthorCorp but spends her time at the Planet, and a young meteor-freak kills people and Clark and Chloe just smile and pat her on the head.  

Bloodline - Clark and Lois wind up in the Phantom Zone, find Kara.  Faora shows up possessing Lois and screws up Season 9 continuity a bit, but we don't talk about that.

Legion - The Legion of Super-Heroes founders show up (Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl) and are somewhat helpful in extracting Brainiac from Chloe.  I liked the Legion depiction.  

Hex - a cute capsule episode where Zatanna shows up and can grant wishes?  The entire exercise seems to be there so someone could put a woman in a Zatanna outfit.  Which would be ridiculous, but Lois' gig seems to be "sexy disguise" starting with this season's maid outfit in S8E1.  But I feel bad for both Durance and Mack as Durance has to play Chloe in Lois' body, and has to walk the fine line of imitation without insult.

Doomsday - Ooof.  This is wildly anti-climatic and embarrassing.  And then there's the nonsensical part where a supposedly cured Davis just straight murders Jimmy, and then they both die, clearing the decks for Season 9.  But, yeah, this was amazingly bad.  And I'm not even going into the Doomsday look, which is...  muppety.

I don't have much new to say.  With Rosenbaum, Glover, O'Toole and Schneider gone, now they need for the new cast to perform.  Witwer and Freeman add a breath of fresh air.  The show seems to recognize Season 7 was a mess, but the writers still aren't much better.

But I do have a note for WB execs.

Superman Is Not Entirely About Krypton

Return to Smallville - Seasons 6 and 7 - So, So, Soapy

MOVE, Clark!  You're clearly in the way.

Jamie is piloting this ship, and we're now well into territory when I wasn't really watching the show beyond checking in to see what they did with Cyborg, etc..   She's far more familiar with this window of Smallville, and she really didn't want to much most of these two seasons.  

Return to Smallville - Season 5 - In Which I've Just Had It

Arrival - Brainiac's ship arrives, along with a few Zod-folk.  Clark loses his powers, hooks up with Lana

Mortal - Some guys escape from Belle Reve and decide to make their name by taking out Clark Kent, who is an urban legend at Belle Reve.  

Hidden - a former classmate of Chloe and Clark takes over a nuclear missile silo? and decides to dust Smallville to get rid of meteor freaks.

Aqua - we watched the first six minutes or so of this one before I remembered this episode is very bad and everything you need to see (YMMV) is in the pre-credits sequence

Thirst - vampires at Metropolis U

Exposed - Lois is a stripper

Reckoning - I'd never seen this one.  It's where Clark tells Lana, things go well until they go very, very bad.  It was actually like an episode of grown-up TV.

Vessel - Cliffhanger Season Finale where Lex becomes Zod and Clark gets tossed into the Phantom Zone.

So I really was thinking about a few overarching things in these episodes.  

"Smallville's" Clark Kent Bares No Resemblance to Superman In Other Media

Return to Smallville - Season 4

Move, Clark.  You're in the way.

Well.  We finally got to Lois.  

We also finally got to the season where Smallville went from teen-romance to "they're 18 now, so it shall be SEXY".  

It's also the season where, back when it aired, I started giving up and didn't watch everything.  

Season 4 episodes we watched:  

• Crusade - the one where Lois arrives and Clark returns from null-space with his memories wiped clean and he flies on camera to get a plot device MacGuffin stone that will do whatever it's gonna do when he collects all three.
• Transference - the one where Lionel Luthor Freaky Fridays with Clark
• Spell - the one where 17th Century witches Freaky Friday with Chloe, Lana and Lois
• Spirit - the one where a Mean Girl ghost possesses/ Freaky Fridays the cast, Martha is hilarious, Chloe wins prom queen, and Lois looks smashing in a pink gown she has for some reason
• Blank - the one where Clark loses all his memories and Chloe has to lead him around for the day
• Commencement - the one where Clark and Chloe graduate, Jor-El is a parent who just doesn't understand, Lex is betrayed by everyone in his life, and then a meteor shower falls on Smallville.  Again.

Look, doing "they aren't themselves" is cheaper than actual make-up or special FX, and it also gives the actors something else to do, which seems fun for them.  See Annette O'Toole's version of a Mean Girl in Spirit.  Fantastic stuff.  But if what you wanted was Welling somehow more wooden, boy, have I got some episodes lined up for YOU.

But like "mind control" in prior seasons, amnesia and possession get old fast as plots when you watch them back-to-back.  It's mostly just waiting for the characters to resume their normal lives and *never mention it again*.  

By the way, I was absolutely wrong that heat vision would not come back tied to boners.  It came up twice in just the few episodes we watched.  I mean, fine.  I'm not above a good boner joke.

Mercifully, by skipping so many episodes, we missed a lot of Clark/ Lana drama.  16 years ago when these episodes aired, I was exhausted/ bored by the show leaning so hard into their drama, and stunned then and now at the writers room's utter inability to give us a reason to root for them or care while utterly centering on those characters.  

Happy Belated Birthday to Erica Durance, "Smallville"'s Lois Lane

Yesterday, June 21, marked the birthday of Erica Durance, Canadian actor, who played Lois Lane for seven seasons on TV's Smallville.  From her first appearance, she had the part down pat, and while I was an inconsistent viewer over the years, Durance remained a highlight and did a lot to elevate the show during some turbulent seasons.

She has several other TV series and a variety of movies under her belt, but has returned to the Super-media world as Alura, mother of Kara Zor-El on TV's Supergirl (yeah, I know, she's like maybe 9 years older than Melissa Benoist, but live-action depictions of Superman media often insist Kryptonian women age well).  

I am already planning an Erica Durance watch-party this Christmas, so get prepared to get merry.

Return to Smallville: Seasons 2 and 3

These people all hate each other but will only talk to each other

It's kinda kooky keeping on with our Smallville rewatch.  We're now past the few episodes we watched for Season 1, and moved from Season 2 (episodes:  Heat, Lineage, Rush, Rosetta) and all the way through Season 3 (episodes to date: Shattered, Delete, Truth, Covenant).  I'm not picking episodes, I'm just bearing witness.

It's amazing what a weird, weird show Smallville became in the course of three seasons.  

Tim Sale Merges With The Infinite

Comics artist and illustrator Tim Sale has passed.  

Sale's work was singular, unmistakable, and reminded an industry what could be done with a certain minimalism if you knew how to capture the essence of character in gesture, expression and motion in a line.  He volleyed between Marvel and DC for a good bit, but I believe I remember learning of his work through Haunted Knight and then the superlative Long Halloween.  

His work at Marvel provided a depth to characters with whom we're all familiar on multiple series, such as Daredevil: Yellow and Spider-Man: Blue.  

As a Superman reader, it's hard not to point to the defining work of A Superman For All Seasons, a new chapter to the life of a young Man of Steel finding his place in the world.  It's a beautiful comic with a deeply sympathetic take on Superman that you simply wanted to comfort as he sought his place in the world.

Return to "Smallville" - Season 1

It's a fascinating thing to return to a show 20 years later.  For the kids, Smallville debuted when I was about 26 and would have watched pretty much anything that was comic-book related, but was aggressively obsessed with all things Superman - an obsession which started roughly five or six years prior and continues to this day in a toned-down sort of way.  It will sound weird to new comics readers now, but arriving at Superman around the age of 20 or 21 was late for a comics nerd as I'd been reading comics for a decade with no particular interest in The Man of Steel.  But, a confluence of comics that spoke to me where I lived featuring Superman* began trickling out in the mid to late 90's, and that, paired with the WB's Superman: The Animated Series, turned the tide.

At the time of show's debut, I wasn't much of a TV watcher - as in, I didn't make time for television, but I did watch a lot of films.  That said - I'd followed X-Files til right about at this point (when I gave up on the program), but had not been a person to obsess over a particular show, otherwise.  Well, maybe Seinfeld, Simpsons and some Babylon 5.  And lest we forget, Chef!.  No Buffy, Angel or whatever else for me.

Things I have Been Watching That Are Not Movies

Jessie Spano looks on

We don't just watch movies at Signal Watch HQ.  If I'm being candid, re-employment and other things have reduced my time for movie watching.  But I'm also watching a movie or two per week for the PodCast, plus editing and posting, all of which takes time.  And I do write up stuff when I watch a movie.

This post is not your opportunity to recommend shows to me (please don't), and I am not telling you anything is essential and must be watched.  Sometimes we just say "hey, this is what we watched" when it comes to TV.

So what have we been up to on the TV side of the spectrum?

Sports

Chicago Cubs Baseball 

This is a mistake in 2022.  Since the Ricketts got their World Series win in 2016, burning through all the Cubs karma and possibly all of that for the Planet Earth to secure a win, the team has disintegrated in spectacular fashion.  They're usually 4th in the NL Central.  Which is like not being the absolute worst team in the worst division in baseball.  

Cubs gonna cub.

Austin FC Futbol

I was a massive skeptic of Austin's foray into Major League Soccer, but we got a team that started in 2021, and I've watched about 80% of their matches on TV or online.  I have not yet been to the stadium.  I now follow the team and try to make sense of a sport that I've struggled to grok in its complexity for my entire adult life.

It's still fun!  I'm kinda into it.

New League of Super-Pets trailer

Still pretty happy with everything I've seen so far in the trailers and ads for this.  

Hey, we're getting a full DC Super-Pets movie!  That's excellent!

Happy Birthday, Sarah Douglas!

 

Happy birthday to Sarah Douglas!  Among other things, this site is a Superman fan site - and what would Superman: The Movie and certainly Superman II be without the casually-delighted menace of Sarah Douglas's Ursa?  I won't get into her full filmography, because that is what we call "a storied career" and you can IMDB her on your own.  You will begin realizing "man, I really have seen and heard her voice work in a shocking amount of stuff".  

Ms. Douglas is also on twitter, and seems as cool as you would hope!  

Here's to Ms. Douglas, and let's hope she's celebrating with pals.

Hallmark Christmas Watch: Christmas Together With You (2021)

Watched:  11/24/2021

Format:  Hallmark Channel!

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Kevin Fair

This year vis-a-vis Hallmark movies has been an emotional rollercoaster.  We had to switch cable services and wound up on YouTubeTV (recommended), but it had no Hallmark Channel.  I was a little sad, but I don't *need* to see my Hallmark Christmas stories, so I figured: time to move on.  But then, I was informed a week or so ago that, NO, YouTubeTV now carried all three Hallmark networks.  Feliz navidad, indeed!

But, Jamie now has a pretty hard rule about not putting on Hallmark movies til Thanksgiving night, so I honestly hadn't been watching.  But this last week, the network debuted a new movie, Christmas Together With You (2021) - and the stars caught my eye.  Harry Lennix portrayed General Swann in Man of Steel, and Laura Vandervoort played Supergirl (sort of) on Smallville off and on for half the show's run.  Thus, it got recorded.  

And, then, I needed to watch something that needed minimal attention while I worked out.  So here we are.

Supergirl on the CW Ends

I started watching Supergirl from the pilot when the show had big ambitions and was going to air on CBS.  The pilot of the show is... not great.  You could feel the hands of CBS, home to a wide array of boring shows I don't watch, all over the show and kind of wringing themselves with all this superhero weirdness.  But they did bring in a decent cast, and seemed to have some ideas for modernizing the Maid of Might from her incredibly goofy origins in Action Comics 252.  

I won't get into it here, but Supergirl as a property allows for some flexibility as the character's titles never last, no one working on the latest iterations seems aware of prior incarnations, and once on the title, never seems to know what to do with the character for more than 3-6 issues.  I have probably hundreds of Supergirl comics, and there's been exactly two modern runs that I would recommend.

The show started off on CBS, which was always an awkward fit and probably one of the things that drove DC and WB to realize that working with network suits was more trouble than it's worth.  For the first half of the first season, the show felt deeply uncomfortable with itself, bucking against old network tropes and trying to make the domestic life of Kara Zor-El as basic as possible.

Superman Stuff: Let's Talk That Jonathan Kent News

If you came here because you're under the impression that the character known as Superman - who goes by Clark Kent in his everyday life as a mild-mannered reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper - is now categorized as bisexual:  he's not.  Hang in here with me.  

Let's start by clarifying - at this time, Clark Kent, Kal-El of Krypton, is still into women as far as the comics have indicated.*  The "Superman" in question is - in current Superman comics - the young-adult son of Lois Lane and Clark Kent, one Jonathan "Jon" Kent.  In the comics, as Clark Kent has had to take care of some business elsewhere, Jon Kent has been promoted from Superboy to Superman.  

It happens. I don't make the rules, I just report them.  But, yes, there are now two Supermans.  Mens.  Whatever.  It's less and more complicated than who is and is not a Green Lantern.

I don't think it's any surprise to folks that know me or follow this site where I stand on certain topics.  

In coming issues of Superman: Son of Kal-El, a maxi series based on current events in Superman comics, it seems our guy Jon is finding love with a male reporter.  Jon Kent's sexuality is not an issue for me as a reader.  He's a character reflecting both science-fantasy ideals but also a character who will be defined by many characteristics as a person which will appear in his serialized adventures hopefully for many years to come.

TL;DR: The New 52 - 10 Years later - from a guy who just buys comics

Polygon recently ran an oral history of the New 52 effort from DC Comics.  It features then DC Co-Publisher, Dan Didio, as well as a number of writers from the era.  It's a fascinating article for a lot of reasons, in part because of what those interviewed considered success and good ideas, and it seems that at least one person seems to have some difficulty separating fact from fiction on a few points.

A lot of talent - writers, artists and editors - seem to have turned down Polygon's request for an interview, some even citing that working on the New 52/ Nu52 was so unpleasant, they'd rather not talk about it.  So the number of voices that you'll see represented are minimal and probably well insulated from being seen as "difficult" or "willing to talk" by the current folks in charge.  After all, it's a tiny industry, and speaking out of turn even about deposed rulers can still label you as a problem.

In my opinion, reading the article, it's shocking how little self-reflection has occurred and how little awareness at least Dan Didio has about how it all ended - eg: being shown the door in early 2020 - just as he was gearing up to do a redux of New 52 and literally needed to be stopped.

Well, here's my history of DC's  New 52 publishing adventure as I remember it.

Superman & Lois Season 1 - That Went Okay

Well, that went better than expected.  

If you watched, I invite you to jump into the comments.

It's hard to wrap up talking about an entire season of a television show, but I can say without reservation that it was considerably better than I figured we'd get.  I've done some due diligence - I watched *most* of Smallville, all of Supergirl to date, several seasons of The Flash, about 2.5 seasons of Legends of Tomorrow, and plenty of crossovers between the shows.   The CW DC shows are great to watch on the elliptical when there's a shortage of O2 headed to your skull, but none of it's working on the level of Watchmen or name-your-prestige-show.  

At this point, I've seen some remarkable comics adaptations on TV as well as the movies.  I'm still reeling from what Marvel has delivered on Disney+.

I didn't mind that DC and CW were afraid to take on a Superman show.  After all, Superman should be a movie-level property, even if Superman has traditionally employed serial and multi-episodic formats in radio, cartoons, television and more.   I mean, the Fleischers were so certain of this notion, they asked for a ridiculous budget to make Superman cartoons, and someone gave them that money.  And, 80 years later, those cartoons still look insanely good.  Superman: The Movie was massively expensive and, man, it's a singularly beautiful movie.  You can see how the character fell from grace as sequels worked with lower budgets, limping through Superman 4.  

But, as rocker David St. Hubbins observed:  It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.

Happy Birthday, Lois Lane

art by the great Nicola Scott

Well, the internets (and especially Max) tell me today, August 17th, is the observed birthday of intrepid reporter, Lois Lane.  

If you've hung around these parts long enough, you'll know I'm a Lois Lane fan, be it comics, television, movies, cartoons, what-have-you.  She's as big a deal to me as anyone else in comics and very much the key to Superman as a character.  

It's been an absolute delight to have Lois on my television this year and realized in the capable hands of the astounding Elizabeth Tulloch.  She doesn't just get the character through and through, she's managed to sort out the Lois of the show and made her her own.  And made 100% clear how she's at least 50% of this package.

Anyway, any excuse to celebrate Lois, I'm going to take.  

Happy birthday, Lois!