Superman Stuff #19: Review Roundup-April 18 Through May 6

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Another roundup of reviews, starting with some of the comics that were dropped on Superman Day back on April 18. I didn’t bother reviewing the reprint books (many of which I’ve covered before during the Year of Superman), but there are a couple with new material that I wanted to showcase, both featuring Supergirl. Let’s dig in!

Supergirl: The World (Superman Day Special Edition)
Title: (Story 1) Supergirl Y La Maliciosa, (Story 2) The Extraction
Writer/Artist: (Story 1) Aneke
Writer: (Story 2) Yann Krehl
Artist: (Story 2) Marie Sann
Main Cover: Joelle Jones

DC’s line of The World anthologies is an interesting concept. Round up comic book creators from different parts of…well…it’s the title. And then have them do a story about that book’s star set in their home country. The first three featured Batman, the Joker, and Superman (which I reviewed last year), and this summer it’s going to be Kara’s turn. This Superman Day special previews two of the stories from that book.

In the first story, by Aneke, Supergirl visits an art museum in Spain and overhears a conversation about a mountain featured in one of the paintings, one that is supposedly the home of a witch. Curious, she sets out to visit the mountain, “La Maliciosa,” and finds a climber with a bit of a secret. It’s a simple story that kind of has a Bronze Age feel to it, echoing the kind of things that we’d get from the Supergirl comics of the era. The art is really quite lovely. Whether it was intentional or not, Aneke invokes the same feel as Bilquis Evely’s work on Woman of Tomorrow, which is nicely appropriate. The second story is “The Extraction,” by Yann Krehl and Marie Sann. In this one, after the Justice League liberates a group of aliens that were being held captive and subject to experiments in Germany, Supergirl is sent undercover to try to locate one lost extraterrestrial that managed to escape before its comrades were freed. It’s a fun story, with gorgeous art by Sann preventing it from feeling as dark as the premise would suggest. The pages look like art from a modern Disney movie more than your average superhero comic, and that works exceptionally well.

No doubt when the full anthology drops on June 2, there will be a mixture of hits and misses. These two are a nice appetizer, and I’m looking forward to reading the book.

Supergirl’s Zoo-Per Heroes: Krypto’s Big Break (Superman Day Special Edition)
Writer, Artist, AND Cover: Rob Justus

Last year cartoonist Rob Justus brought us the early reader’s graphic novel Superman’s Good Guy Gang, featuring Hawkgirl and Guy Gardner, who you may have heard were in a movie with Big Blue last summer. This year he comes back with a new book that also seems poised to whet the appetite of the kiddies anticipating this year’s cinematic adventure. An accident somehow transfers the powers of the Justice League to a group of zoo animals, and it’s up to Supergirl and Krypto to fix things. The book also includes a preview of the sequel to Good Guy Gang, Follow the Leader, in which the one character who was bafflingly missing from last year’s book joins the fun. I like Justus’s sensibility a lot. It reminds me of Art Baltazar and Franco’s Tiny Titans, albeit lighter on the inside jokes for longtime readers. But these two previews promise a pair of silly, fun books that seem like they’ll be perfect for the superhero fan who’s just learning to read. 

Superman Unlimited #12
Title: Besides Myself (a Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Dan Slott
Artist: Lucas Meyer
Main Cover: Taurin Clarke

Last issue Jon Kent met Master Txyn, a more malevolent imp than our usual pal Mxyzptlk, whose taunting of the young Kryptonian prompted him to take on a new identity, Tomorrow Man. But before the sewing needle on his costume had time to cool Jon found a whole new complication dropping in his lap: a time-displaced version of himself from one of the most traumatic parts of his past. 

This issue, he decides to take young Jon to Lois, who just happens to be getting a visit from Batman and Robin (checking in on her in Superman’s continued absence). Adult-Jon decide to keep his own identity a secret, although Slott at least lampshades the fact that he’s got an uphill battle trying to keep a secret in a room that includes the world’s greatest detective, the world’s greatest investigative journalist, and his own best friend. Meanwhile, the El Cadero storyline moves along a little big as well, with the Kryptonite-rich nation announcing plans to use it as an energy source. However, more nefarious purposes seem to be in the works as well, and an escapee of an experiment makes a new friend.

Part of me almost wishes that this book was setting up a new status quo for the Superman titles. I’ve never liked the fact that we lost the child Jonathan in lieu of a teenage version (you may have heard me mention this once or twice), and the idea of having Young Jon living with Lois and Clark again while still having Grown-Up Jon doing his thing wouldn’t be the worst compromise. However, the Jon we have in this issue isn’t the one that I miss. This is a kid who has already undergone some horrific stuff, and grappling to deal with it looks like it’s going to be part of the character arc here. 

Slott has a little fun with the other characters here as well. Damian Wayne’s highly paranoid nature comes right into play, as it probably should, and one of my favorite supporting characters in the whole Superman family shows up in the B-plot, making for a delightfully absurd exchange right out of a Looney Tunes short.

I’m really not sure where Slott is going with this story, but I’m interested in it, which hopefully comes across as the compliment that it’s intended as. 

Superman #37
Title: Prime Time Part Two (a Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Artist: Dan Mora
Main Cover: Dan Mora

The Superboy-Prime saga continues this issue. Having settled in to his new life in Metropolis, Prime seems to be doing okay. He’s helping people, beating villains, and despite his tardiness he’s even making ground at his new job at the comic book store. But his past hangs over his head, with the Justice League tracking him down when he goes for a simple dinner with the Kents in Smallville. An encounter in Gotham City doesn’t go much better. What’s a reformed mass murderer with fourth wall awareness to do?

I’m really quite surprised to see this issue pull back from the “main” storyline for what is mostly 20 pages of character building…surprised, but not at all disappointed. Williamson’s re-casting of Prime into someone trying to atone for his past is working surprisingly well. What’s more, he’s even carving out a fairly unique place for the character but putting together bits and pieces of various other characters. Sure, he’s got Superman’s powers, but he’s got an awareness of his comic book origins that’s playing with in a different way than characters like Deadpool or She-Hulk. And now it seems like Williamson is adding on a healthy dollop of what can only be termed “the ol’ Parker luck.” Somehow, all of this is coming together to make for a really entertaining character. 

Dan Mora’s work is as phenomenal as ever, and he’s got a LOT going on in this issue. Despite the fact that the action is relatively low, he still manages to deliver a great (if brief) fight scene in the sewers of Gotham and some really excellent “acting” on the faces of the characters, particularly Jonathan and Martha Kent. All of the Superman books are solid right now, but I would never have believed a year ago that a title starring Superboy-Prime would be the gem of the line.

Absolute Superman #19
Title: Red Steel in the Hour of Chaos (Reign of the Superman Part Two)
Writer: Jason Aaron
Artist: Rafa Sandoval
Main Cover: Rafa Sandoval

Last issue Superman, Lois, and a newcomer with a hammer named John Henry Irons broke into Lazarus only to find a captive who’s been off the board for millennia: Teth-Adam, alias King Shazam. This issue is a lot of fight and a little backstory, filling in some of the history of this Absolute Universe. It’s a good reminder that this isn’t just a “What If?” scenario, where there’s a single point of divergence that separates this universe from the DCU that we know, but rather a universe that was shaped in the image of Darkseid from its very inception.

To me, to a guy whose favorite Superman side-character is Steel, I’m really happy to see their version of him show up. Like the mainstream version, we’re presented with a man blessed with a great mind and great compassion, cursed to live in a world where it seems like neither of those things are valued. Like Superman himself, he seems to be the kind of person that’s clinging to hope in this world where such a thing is more of a liability than an asset.

Sandoval’s artwork is sharp as heck. Any time you pit a Kryptonian against somebody with the power of Shazam, you’re going to have to be ready to bring the scale that such a face-off demands, and Sandoval does a great job really selling this as a conflict that reaches a global scale.

Every time I think I can’t find enough good things to say about this series, I find more.

Adventures of Superman: House of El #8
Title: The Wizard and the Queen
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Artist: Cian Tormey
Main Cover: Scott Godlewski

As Superman heads to Tamaran, he finds yet another descendant (because apparently in this future the sentient population of the universe is roughly 57 percent House of El) coming under fire. Meanwhile, Ronan and Rowan Kent face off against Pyrrhos the Red and learn the shocking (yawn) truth about his origins.

I’d hoped that the return of Rowan Kent would help this series pick up, as she’s been the element that I’ve been most interested in so far, but alas. We don’t explore her corner of the universe, but rather delve back into all of the Els that are running around, apparently reproducing like Kardashians on a bad day. Johnson just keeps throwing more and more things at the reader, and it’s not sticking. The story is trying to be Dune and it’s trying to be Game of Thrones and there’s a healthy chunk taken from Arthurian Legend, and when you put it all together you’ve got something that’s just not working for me.

There are a thousand characters running around here and, despite the fact that it seems like they’re all related to Superman, I don’t care enough about any of them to keep track of who they are. When this series is over, I’m going to have to go back and try reading the whole thing in one go. I’m just not getting into it, and I don’t know if that’s because there’s not enough to keep my interest alive from one month to the next or if it’s really just as big a mess as it feels like.

DC X Sonic the Hedgehog: Metal Legion #1
Title: Metal Legion Part One
Writer: Ian Flynn
Artist: Adam Bryce Thomas
Main Cover: Pablo M. Collar

The first DC/Sonic crossover last year was a lot of silly fun, so I wasn’t surprised when this sequel was announced. I was a little surprised, though, when the book jumps right into a massive status quo change: portals have appeared all over the globe, seemingly stable portals that connect the Justice League’s Earth to Sonic’s world. With travel between the two worlds now simple and safe, the heroes of both universes reconnect with their old friends. Of course, the more paranoid amongst them (Batman and Shadow, obviously) are in the business of investigating the portals, finding clues that point to some old foes.

Most of this issue is just showing the heroes bouncing back and forth between worlds and partnering up with the friends they made last time: Flash and Sonic having a race, Amy joining Wonder Woman and the rest of the Amazons in battle against Hades, and Knuckles and Superman introducing Supergirl and Krypto to someone they know will get along with them famously. I like the fact that the story seems to be expanding in scope this time as well. Besides Supergirl and Krypto, it seems like this time the Titans are joining in on the fun, and the last page promises to bring in more of the DC’s less savory elements as well. This is one of those first issues that feels more prologue than actual beginning, with only the scene in Gotham and the last few pages where we meet our villains actually seeming to progress the plot. That doesn’t bother me much, but it does suggest that this is a story that’s been paced for the inevitable collected edition.

New Titans #34
Title: The Future is Tomorrow Part Two
Writer: Tate Brombal
Artist: Sami Basri
Main Cover: Taurin Clarke

I gave the first issue for this new direction of Titans a lot of grace, because it was a new writer that was just beginning to set up a new path for the team. This issue we’re starting to see the shape a little bit, and while there are things that I like, others have me skeptical.

Part One of this story showed up the classic Titans line-up trapped in some sort of time bubble, bouncing around to different parts of their history and seemingly unaware of what was going on. It wasn’t until the last-page incursion of a new group of younger heroes (including Jonathan Kent, which is why I’m including it in “Superman Stuff”) that the spell started to crack. This issue we learn more: the pocket reality the Titans have been existing in was created by an aftermath of what happened in the whole DC KO extravaganza, and the newbies are apparently young heroes the Titans have had their eyes on as potential recruits.

All of that is perfectly fine. What’s bothering me here is more the way these new Titans are introduced. We get a few pages of narration explaining that these folks were selected because they’re the FUTURE and they’re gonna be SO AWESOME and dear GOD, do I hate that. The old writing adage of “show, don’t tell” isn’t always true – sometimes, you’ve GOTTA tell to get the point across. But when it comes to convincing the reader how great a character is, telling is perhaps the worst thing you can do. If a writer starts expounding upon how wonderful a character is without actually doing the work of crafting a story that allows them to demonstrate their awesomeness, that’s an immediate turn-off to me. And often, it’s a black mark against the character that takes some writing rehab to escape.

That said, it’s a relatively short sequence in this issue that bothers me. If it was just a one-off thing and the rest of the story works, I can be forgiving of it. It’ll all come down to what else Brombal does in this arc, I think, as to whether this newest iteration of the Titans is going to be able to stand on its own.

Justice League Unlimited #18
Title: Aftermath Part Two
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Clayton Henry
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Superman is still missing, and does not appear in this issue. In fact, as far as actual members of the family go, only Supergirl makes a (one-panel) appearance. But the thumbprint of our boy blue is all over this issue, so I really want to talk about it, and it’s my blog, so nyeah.

In the aftermath (hence the title) of DC KO, the participants were each given a glimpse of the future, including a dire warning about an upcoming battle that will make their struggle against Darkseid pale in comparison. In recognition of the threat, something that goes beyond normal concepts of “good” and “evil,” the Justice League is implementing an amnesty program, inviting supervillains who promise to be on their best behavior to join them – including Lex Luthor. Lex being Lex, of course, he’s got his own agenda, but at the very least it doesn’t seem to run COUNTER to the whole “saving the entirety of creation” thing the Justice League has going on, so we’re gonna cross our fingers for the moment.

It’s not the first time, by any means, that we’ve seen the toy with Lex playing hero, but they’ve always found different ways to go about it, which I rather enjoy. Waid also has done good work selecting which characters to feature here (Giganta is another one who joins the amnesty program, and one for whom rehabilitation seems far more possible than, say, the Joker). And they even get to show us what failsafes they’ve put in place to make sure the bad guys trying to break good remain on their best behavior. In fact, Waid is really embracing the “unlimited” part of the title here, expanding the cast even beyond its already-impressive roster and running multiple storylines that all weave in and out of each other. In addition to the Lex Luthor story, we also get to see a mission to Oa comprised of Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl, and Metamorpho (wait…where have I seen THAT group together before?), as well as the beginning of the time-travel mission starring J’onn J’onzz, Mary Marvel, and Booster Gold that Waid is exploring over in the pages of Action Comics.

While the larger “All In” storyline is playing out across the DC Universe, this title really feels like the core of the whole thing, and I certainly hope anybody who’s following this is paying attention.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #174: The Trouble With the Twist

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There’s something about a good twist. A surprise moment in a story, an unforeseen circumstance that propels you into areas of fantasy you may never have expected. A good twist, of course. A bad twist usually just leaves things feeling trite and warmed-over, something that is boring and predictable at best, illogical and completely nonsensical at worst. But a good twist recontextualizes the story, fills in gaps and makes them feel suddenly whole, and makes you look at everything that has come before in a brand new light.

The problem with a twist – especially a good one – is that after the story is over that’s all the audience wants to talk about. It’s a good problem to have, an audience that enjoyed your story enough to spread the word, but it’s still a problem in that it makes it more difficult for future audiences to enjoy the twist unspoiled. Dracula is a classic example. Brahm Stoker didn’t invent the concept of a vampire, but when he wrote his novel in 1897, it was written with the titular count as a mystery. The heroes in the story did not know at first what they were facing. The clues as to his true nature seem obvious today, in a world in which vampire tropes are ubiquitous, but to a 19th century audience that didn’t know what to look for, it worked as a surprise.

“Sure, this guy seems legit.” –Audiences in 1987

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde faces a similar problem. The story became so popular that “Jekyll and Hyde” is now an all-purpose term for a character (or a person in real life, for that matter) with two contrasting sides. But when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the book, that simply wasn’t a thing yet. The idea that Henry Jekyll transformed into Edward Hyde was the shocking twist. It’s so commonly known now, though, that most adaptations of the story don’t even bother to disguise it anymore. What was intended as a clever fantastic mystery has become a standard monster trope.

Lots of other stories have entered the common discourse. You would be hard-pressed to find someone that doesn’t know Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense is a ghost in every scene after the first one, even though the character himself is unaware of it. Everybody knows that Norman Bates is the killer in Psycho, but the movie does its damndest to make you think it’s his deceased mother right up until the climactic scene. And even if you’ve never seen Citizen Kane, at some point I bet you’ve heard somebody say the phrase “Rosebud was his sled.”

Oh quit whining. If you haven’t seen the movie by now you were never going to anyway.

The twist problem is kind of a subset of the spoiler problem. Stories are constructed in a certain way to create a certain impact, and if an audience knows too much too soon it will rob the storyteller of the opportunity to tell the story the way they intend. There are some who argue that if knowing the twist ruins the story, then it wasn’t a good story in the first place. This attitude is, to use a term popularized by Beatrix Potter, horseshit. It’s like saying that if you don’t like your pizza after someone steals your cheese, it was never a good pizza. Anything will become bad if you take away the elements that make it what it is. That doesn’t mean it’s not really good when all the elements are there.

Some story tellers do their best to preserve a twist. When Avengers: Endgame came out, the Russo brothers took to social media and pleaded with people not to reveal the ending. It didn’t really work, but they tried. That’s really the most you can do these days, but when Alfred Hitchcock was making Psycho he actually bought up as many copies of the novel it was based on as he could in an effort to prevent people from knowing the ending. I’m pretty sure that if Hitch were alive today the very existence of social media would send him flying into a murderous rage, which appropriately enough feels like a twist out of a Hitchcock movie.

Imagine being a bookstore clerk and then this guy walks in demanding every copy of Psycho you’ve got.

Solid twists are, in a way, a victim of their own success. Because they’re good, word spreads and the impact is lost for future audiences. The newest member of this club is Project Hail Mary. Now normally, this would be where I warn you that I’m about to spoil something from the novel, but the whole point of this column is that – if you have even the most marginal awareness of this movie – the trailers, marketing, discourse, and merchandise have spoiled it for you already.

Last year, when the trailer for the movie dropped, I saw comments online from fans of Andy Weir’s original novel warning that the trailer straight-up gave away one of the biggest surprises of the book. Not having read the book yet at the time I — in an act of self-preservation not unlike the hellish ordeal endured by Tom Hanks in Cast Away — avoided watching the trailer and moved the novel to the top of my to-read pile. And I’m very glad I did, because I was allowed to enjoy the story as originally intended: I read as Ryland Grace woke up on a spaceship, slowly regained his memories of how he got there, learned about his mission to save the world, and OH MY GOD, HOLY CRAP, IT’S AN ALIEN!

Amaze! Amaze!

And of course; if all you’re familiar with is the movie, that may seem like an absurd reaction. Of COURSE there’s an alien. He’s in every trailer. They’re submitting his puppeteer for Oscar consideration. He’s ADORABLE.

But you have to remember that Andy Weir is known for “hard” science fiction, stories that take great pains to make the science part as real as possible. There was never even a hint that he would be introducing an alien until the ship appeared, and the reader was as stunned as the character in the book.

There was no way this shock would be preserved for the movie, of course. The studio — fairly – wanted to show off their newest star. They’ve made promos of Rocky “borrowing” Ryan Gosling’s phone to buy tickets to see his own movie. You can get a popcorn bucket that looks like Rocky in his “hamster ball.” Fortunately – like with Dracula and Dr. Jekyll – it was possible to reframe the story just slightly so that losing the surprise didn’t stop it from being the best movie of the year. (Yeah, I know it’s only May. I’m calling it now.)

I don’t think there is a real solution to this particular problem. For as long as there are stories to tell, people will want to pick apart and talk about them and, eventually, the best twists will just become part of the common discourse. So instead of trying to stop it, let’s all just remember to be charitable to these kinds of stories, especially the older ones. Sure, we may all know that Mrs. Voorhees is the one who started chopping up those camp counselors now, but it wasn’t always that way.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He’s still irritated that the big twist in Reservoir Dogs turned out to be the unforgivable lack of dogs.

Superman Stuff #18: Superboy #1

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The end of the school year is approaching. Tomorrow is the last day for my 12th grade students, and my 10th graders will be wrapping it all up in about two weeks. So I’ve been busy tying up all the loose ends that come with being a teacher in May. That in mind, looking for something to read, I kind of drifted to stories of the younger heroes, and I decided this week to check in on the first issue of Superboy from 1949. 

In the first story, “The Man Who Could See Tomorrow” (written by Don C. Cameron with art by John Sikela), Superboy encounters Brandar the Great, a mystic whose jewel stolen from an idol gives him the power to peer into the future. The story actually begins, though, in Metropolis, with an adult Clark Kent ducking out on Lois Lane after a movie date to check in on nearby gunfire. Superman finds an injured police officer and rushes him to a hospital where he encounters a nurse, Margo Griffiths, whom he knew when they were kids in Smallville. His mind drifts back to the day they each gave a report on what they wanted to be when they grew up (Margo and Clark each got their wishes, by the way), a day that ended with a party at Margo’s house. There they saw the mystic Brandar, who predicted that some day Clark Kent would be world famous (and you can’t tell him that he was wrong), but that Margo would “cease to exist” on her 21st birthday. 

Of course, these distant predictions wouldn’t prove much, so Brandar uses his magic jewel to make three predictions for the next day: “1. Dr. Jekyll will turn into Mr. Hyde! 2. The first lady of the town will lose her crown! 3. East will meet west at sundown!” Clark brushes it off until the next day, when the newspaper reports that the mayor, whom everyone had thought was an honest man, had stolen funds from the town and fled. Worried about the rest of the predictions, Superboy checks in on a ship called the Queen Felice, also known as the “first lady” of the town. The crooked mayor nearly crushes the ship with a drawbridge in an effort to escape, but Superboy saves the Queen Felice and brings the mayor to justice. 

With one prediction fulfilled and the second thwarted only by Superboy’s intervention, he seeks out Brandar to find the secret of his jewel. Brandar confesses that he stole the jewel and was given a prediction that he would meet an untimely death because of it. In fear, he leaves the jewel and runs into the street, where he’s promptly hit by a car and killed. That’s the thing about predictions, friends, if you try to prevent them from coming true you usually cause their fulfillment. Dude should have read MacBeth.

Superboy, meanwhile, finds his third prediction about to come true – an eastbound and westbound train on a collision course! He knocks down enough of a forest to build a second track and diverts one of them just in time. Then, returning Brandar’s jewel to its point of origin, the flashback ends. In the “present,” Superman reflects on the final prediction that hasn’t been fulfilled – that Margo would “cease to exist” when she turns 21, and she must be almost that age. He, of course, helps her figure that one out as well, giving her a happy ending. It begs the question, though – if Clark and Margo were in the same class, does that mean that the Superman of 1949 was only 20 or 21 years old? That seems awfully young for him to be an established reporter at the Daily Planet, much less have such an established career as Superman.

Of course, continuity wasn’t that big a deal back in the day, and people got out in the world younger than they do now. Still, it feels so odd that the writer would lock him in to such a tender age when all it would have taken to make it more plausible is to set the prediction for the day Margo turned THIRTY-one. Even a later year in her mid-twenties would have made more sense.

The second story, “The Boy Vandals” (written by Edmond Hamilton with art by Ed Dobrotka), abandons the flashback framing sequence and just takes us to times past to view a quick and unremarkable story about Superboy teaching a young gang the consequences of vandalism. The interesting thing here is that this is the story where I realized, at this point, they hadn’t actually established Superboy’s home town as Smallville yet. In fact, this story seems to imply that young Clark Kent was a student in a school in Metropolis. It always interests me when we see these older stories playing fast and loose with details that seem concrete to us, but that wouldn’t be codified until much later. 

This issue also gives us “Superboy Meets Mighty Boy,” a William Woolfolk/George Roussos joint, in which our favorite boy of tomorrow seems to meet his match. A farmboy named Reuben is recruited for a scientific experiment to try to transform him into the strongest boy in the world. Reluctant at first, he goes along with it at the urging of his parents, whose farm is suffering and who could use the windfall if it works. The experiment is a success, granting Reuben remarkable power, and the recruiters challenge Superboy to a contest. At the circus, the two of them compete in various feats of strength, and as impressive as Superboy’s powers are, Mighty Boy outclasses him time and again. Returning to his tent, Mighty Boy overhears the promoters saying that the experiment was a fake and that they rigged all of the feats of strength to make it seem as though he had powers, fooling even Mighty Boy himself, as part of a criminal scheme. Superboy saves him just in time and together, they put the crooks under glass. Superboy brings Reuben back home and helps his family get their farm back on its feet, because that’s just what Superboy does. This was my favorite of the three stories in this one.

I haven’t read a lot of Super-stories from this particular era, that Post World War II time before the silliness of the Silver Age really kicked into gear. I enjoyed these stories, though, showing an interesting kind of prototype of the original Superboy that I’m far more familiar with. I’ll need to look out more stories from this period in the future. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #173: In Defense of the Old

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Recently, in one of those moments that divides the internet like nothing else in the past 27 seconds, a video in which a young woman confessed that she didn’t know who Madonna is went viral. There seemed to be two typical responses to this: Older people bemoaning the fact that today’s youth is so uncultured, and other young people doubling down on the fact that they, too, do not know who Madonna is. One responder said he’d always thought Madonna was a “concept.” Another thought she was dead. And my favorite reply came from the young person who thought Madonna was – and I quote – “Lady Gaga’s Alter Ego.”

The primary difference is that Gaga has more pixels.

Now as one of those aforementioned older people, it would be easy for me to point and laugh at this uncultured lass and her foolish ways… but the truth is, that would be pretty disingenuous. After all, why should we expect any member of the younger generations to be aware of Madonna? When’s the last time she had a hit song? The last time she was in a movie? And let’s be honest here, although she did write that one bestselling book, the rest of her literary output hasn’t made the same sort of waves, which of course is just one of the many things she has in common with J.D. Salinger.

The whole thing does, however, point to a larger issue that I, as a teacher, run into on a very regular basis. By and large, I find that the young people of today have very little awareness of any culture – not just pop culture, but culture in general – that precedes their own.

I – a child of the late 70’s who did most of his growing up in the 80’s – always remember having an awareness of older culture. Sure, a lot of the cartoons I grew up with were the 30-minute toy commercials of the era like Transformers and Masters of the Universe, but those were mixed with stuff like Looney Tunes and The Flintstones, cartoons that our parents and even grandparents watched, but were repackaged for our generation. Live action TV worked much the same way. Of course we had new shows, but not enough of them to fill an entire broadcast day, so we were fed those alongside a diet of shows that went off the air years or even decades before we were born like The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, or The Honeymooners. And of course, we grew up on genre shows like the original Star Trek, the Adam West Batman and George Reeves’ Adventures of Superman.

This and Emily Bronte, basically the same thing.

A lot of this, of course, is because we were most likely exposed to what our parents liked. Once kids my age were old enough to choose our own music we drifted towards hair metal and those 80s pop stars that gave birth to the modern diva, but we still sure as hell knew who Elvis and the Beatles were because our parents played them in the car before the invention of the Sony Walkman allowed children to erect musical barriers on road trips. And although it may surprise some people to learn that I did not grow up as a fan of horror movies, that’s because my parents didn’t watch them. Thanks to my mom, though, I have a not-insubstantial knowledge of live-action Disney movies of the 1960s, and I suppose I may as well admit that one of my earliest crushes was Hayley Mills circa the original Parent Trap movie from 1961.

Hayley is 80 now, but if you saw her in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2024 thriller Trap, you will admit she’s still got it.

You can’t change my mind.

Now you may be wondering what difference any of this makes. After all, trends have always come and gone, some culture fades and is replaced. And yes, that has always been the case…for some culture. But not all. There’s an old axiom that 90% of all art — and that includes music, writing, and any other art form you can name – is crap. And that’s true. We remember Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Beethoven. We remember them because they were masters of their craft. But there are thousands of others who lived and worked and created and died at the same time as them whose work has been utterly forgotten, and much of it because it just wasn’t as good. 

Not to say nothing good has ever been lost. There have been – and always will be — creators kept down due to class or politics or a million other reasons that have doomed them to obscurity. But while it’s true that many a deserving work has been lost, it’s also true that the things that stand the test of time largely do so because they’re worth preserving, and new generations have always recognized that. 

Until now.

Technology has reached a point where everyone has the ability to create their own little bubble, their own personalized feed, where they never have to be exposed to anything except what they teach the algorithm they like already. That’s horrifying to me. And I don’t mean that in a gatekeeping way. Like whatever you like, I don’t care. But if all you ever see is stuff you already like, how will you ever grow?

As an English teacher, it bothers me when someone wants to replace a classic with whatever the Flavor of the Week YA series is in the name of “Engagement,” and not because I don’t think the new stuff can be good. I’ve got no problem teaching, for instance, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels, because they’re well-written and even help with teaching the classics via their many links to Greek Mythology. But reading The Lightning Thief should be a supplement to things like The Odyssey, not an effort to take its place.

Although Zendaya as Athena would work in either of them.

I want culture to be additive. I want people to be able to enjoy anything and everything and not dismiss it because it’s old. My favorite part of the school year is when I can tell an 18-year-old is furious at Hamlet for how he mistreats poor Ophelia, because that means I got them to care about a 400-year-old play. How easy is it to get a modern kid to even care about a cartoon from 1987? And sure, it thrills me when a student says, “I scored a 28 on the ACT,” but it thrills me just a liiiiiittle more when that same kid says, “Man, Hamlet did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern dirty.”

I try my best. I encourage the kids in my class to seek out classics. I share my own favorites with my family. I am proudly the only parent among my son’s third-grade class with a child who can sing multiple variants of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song. And I could not wait until my niece was of an age where I could give her a copy of Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon for Christmas. 

It is possible, you just need to help someone find the value. One of my favorite TikTok feeds is by a young film student who wants to go back and watch all the classics she’s never seen before. Once a week, she randomly chooses a movie from a box full of suggestions and makes a video of herself reacting to it. It’s fun to watch this kid unravel the mystery of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, raid that lost ark with Indiana Jones, or follow the Hobbits as they leave the Shire for the first time. My favorite video of hers is the one where she sobs at the end of The Shawshank Redemption and asks, “Why do the movies my dad tells me to watch always make me cry?”

Because your dad isn’t made of STONE, that’s why.

If I ever meet her dad, I owe him a high-five.

I don’t oppose kids having their own stuff.

They should. They’re entitled to it.

I just want them to remember that Shakespeare wrote some damn good stuff. too.

And Mark Twain. Mary Shelley. Edgar Allan Poe. Charles Dickens. I’d like it for them to know when they’re humming a little Brahms, or that the Scream Ghostface mask is based on a painting by Edvard Munch.

I don’t even want them to forget Madonna.

So don’t shame people for not knowing the stuff from our youth. Share it. Give them a reason to engage. And above all, show them what it means to endure.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Could you imagine a world that forgot Jan Brady? Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t be all bad. 

Superman Stuff #17: Spider-Man/Superman #1

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It’s time again, friends – the crossover gods have descended upon us for the second of the two crossover specials featuring the Man of Tomorrow and the Friendly Neighborhood Arachnid. And I almost hate to say it, but this one may even be better than the first.

Marvel/DC: Superman/Spider-Man #1

Main Cover: Pepe Larraz. Like the last one, though, this issue was released with over forty different covers, which is absolutely absurd, but I once again would totally be willing to buy a special that collected all of the various covers of the two volumes. Maybe a charity special or something? Pay attention, people. 

Title: Our Kryptonite
Writer: Brad Meltzer
Art: Pepe Larraz

In the first book in this series, Mark Waid gave us a tale of a Superman and Spider-Man who were clearly old friends. This issue seems to greet the two of them relatively early in their association, picking up in the middle of a story that has trapped the two of them in a building collapse that includes a dose of Kryptonite, forcing Spider-Man to try to keep them alive as Superman struggles against the radiation. 

And that’s just how it starts.

The story, ostensibly, is about the two heroes in combat with their respective arch-foes, Lex Luthor and the Green Goblin. But honestly the identity of the villains couldn’t matter less. The bulk of the story is built up around these two heroes trapped together in a harrowing situation and just…talking. Getting to know one another. Learning who each other are. The supervillain plot wraps up with several pages left, and we follow Clark and Peter into their respective civilian lives as well, including a final sequence that should touch the hearts of anybody who loves these two characters.

Meltzer knows Superman so incredibly well, and the way he plays Superman’s strengths into Spider-Man’s inherent insecurities builds up BOTH characters and makes them better, stronger, and more inspiring. I’ve seen articles online drooling over a few panels where the Venom symbiote snares Superman as if that’s what this story is about. It’s a perfectly good sequence, but Peter taking his Aunt May for dinner at the Kent farm is where the soul of this story is, and that soul is utterly beautiful. 

Title: Spider-Man Noir and Superman in “Metropolis Marvels
Writer: Dan Slott
Pencils: Marcos Martin

The first backup in this issue dives into the world of Spider-Man Noir, where the friendly fedora’d webslinger is targeting the kingpin of crime: Lex Luthor. But Noir’s more violent tactics bring him into conflict with a Superman pulled from the pages of Fleischer cartoons. The story is fun, and Martin’s artwork is fantastic (especially a page where Superman ‘38 gives us a quick homage to Amazing Fantasy #15), but as turned out to be the case with many of these back-ups, it was over too quickly and felt somewhat rushed.

Title: Gwen Stacy and Lana Lang in “Sweethearts”
Writer: Joe Kelly
Art: Humberto Ramos

A college-age Lana Lang and Gwen Stacy meet up on campus and strike up a quick friendship, fueled at least in part as the two of them talk about the mysterious goody two-shoes men in their lives that they just can’t seem to shake. This bite-size story is actually pretty perfect, showing the two women as foils to one another in a way that feels surprisingly natural. There have been many different incarnations of Lana Lang over the years, and Kelly seems to have created one who’s kind of a gestalt of different ones. She’s not the nosey mini-Lois that plagued Superboy in the Silver Age, nor is she the tragic, heartbroken wreck that John Byrne left behind, but rather a woman who is strong enough in her own right but still besmitten with the boy back home. Gwen, on the other hand, is pretty much Gwen, although (thankfully) not the angelic simulacrum that many contemporary writers have cast her as. The knowledge that each of these women are in doomed relationships – doomed for very different reasons but doomed nonetheless – gives the whole story a bittersweet edge that concludes things on a note of joy that is tempered by the fact that the reader knows it won’t last. 

Title: The Thing and Superman in “Identity War”
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Gary Frank

Frequent collaborators Geoff Johns and Gary Frank reunite for this story in which Mysterio has teamed with the Legion of Super-Villains and, using the power of a Red Lantern, set the Hulk out on a rampage fueled by even greater rage than he’s ever felt before. But that isn’t what this story is about. It’s actually about the Thing, one of the few people immune to the rage that is infecting the world, watching Superman tussle with his frequent green-skinned sparring partner and seeing how he handles the situation in a very, very different way than Ben ever would.

The description, I admit, doesn’t sound that exciting, but this story is a masterpiece of character work. Johns knows Superman, obviously, but casting him in this story is just perfect. The story about rage and division is a clear allegory for the real world, but Johns pulls it off without getting heavy-handed or pointing fingers, but rather by using Ben Grimm to draw conclusions that far too many people in the real world need to understand. 

Title: Hobgoblin Vs. Steel in “Ghosting!”
Writer: Louise Simonson
Art: Todd Nauck

Steel’s co-creator Louise Simonson gives us this quick tale about him going into battle against the Hobgoblin, with a special surprise guest that’s wonderfully appropriate. But like the aforementioned Slott/Martin story, this feels rushed and over too quickly. Great art by Todd Nauck, and I would love to see him draw Steel more often, but it left me wanting more.

Title: Ghost-Spider and Supergirl in “Remarkable”
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Art: Phil Noto

Ghost-Spider visits Metropolis only to find herself teaming up with Supergirl in combat with Live Wire. It would be a great team-up, if only Supergirl had any idea who she was. This is a really funny little story, and a strong character piece from Phillips (who has a lot of experience writing Gwen, but does a dandy Supergirl as well). This story really works well with the short format. In fact, I find that for the most part the stronger backup stories in this issue are the ones that tell a quick character study of the two characters rather than the ones that try to squeeze in an adventure in the limited page count.

Title: Miles Morales, Spider-Man and Superman in “The One Thing…”
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Art: Sara Pichelli

Miles Morales’ creators reunite for this one, in which Mile sees something crash to the Earth, only to find Superman trapped by a strange alien artifact. This story tries to split the difference between character piece and adventure story. It ends on a kind of cliffhanger (not unlike the Superboy/Spider-Man 2099 story from the previous book), but in the middle we get Superman talking to Miles and sort of propping him up as a hero. It’s not bad, and that’s coming from someone who didn’t like any of Bendis’s Superman run, but it also covers a lot of the same ground that the Meltzer story does at the beginning of the issue, only better. I feel like this was a wasted opportunity, honestly – it may have been more interesting to see Bendis write Miles and Jonathan dealing with legacy.

Title: Thor and Wonder Woman in “The Wondrous and the Worthy”
Writer: Jason Aaron
Art: Russell Dauterman

Jason Aaron, the writer behind the Jane Foster era of Thor, returns to that version of the character for this story. The most interesting thing about this one, honestly, is the setting. Aaron seems to be placing this story as an encounter between the two heroes in the midst of the War of the Realms event Aaron wrote back in 2019. In this version, however, it looks like Darkseid and the New Gods were tossed into the mix as well. It’s another “inexperienced hero gets a boost from the older one” story, and while I’m curious about the backstory, the character stuff feels a little incomplete. 

Title: Spider-Man and Superman in “One of Those Days”
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Art: Jim Cheung

Loeb and Cheung wrap up this issue with a two-pager of…well, it’s Superman giving Spider-Man a pep talk again. It’s fine for what it is, really, but we get a LOT of that kind of thing in this book. I’m all for Loeb and Cheung doing a quickie about the two heroes, but it feels like the editors should have kept a closer eye on the back-ups to make sure they weren’t all retreating the same ground.

To be fair, I loved this issue. The main story and the Johns story are both without peer. The Gwen/Lana and Gwen (the other one)/Kara stories are both excellent. The rest range between “good” and “would be better if it wasn’t the same thing we’ve already read.” But the thing I’m taking away from this is that there’s so much ground to cover in bringing these characters and their respective worlds together. These two one-shots, wonderful as they are, only seem to hint at a larger connection that I would love to explore. 

Marvel. DC. There is so much ground to cover here. Don’t wait another 50 years before you do this again. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #172: Creating a Character

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April is a little early to start talking about next year’s Oscar race, especially for somebody like me who – famously – does not care about the Oscar race. However, something interesting cropped up in the news cycle over the last few days that may potentially get me interested in the winner of a specific category for the first time in quite a while. This fella here is James Ortiz.

Some Jameses go by “Jimbo.” I just get the feeling he’s not one of them.

You probably don’t recognize his face, but he’s in one of this year’s biggest hits, Project Hail Mary. Ortiz is the puppeteer behind Ryan Gosling’s co-star, Rocky.

Rocky might, though.

Yeah, puppeteer. That little dude wasn’t CGI. It was an actual, physical puppet on-set, albeit with a few computer “enhancements.” But it was really there, interacting with Gosling, and crawling into the movie theater to reach into your chest and steal your still-beating heart.

Evidently, according to Oscar rules, Ortiz’s work is eligible for a nomination in the best supporting actor category in next year’s Academy Awards, and Amazon-MGM has made it clear that they intend to submit him for consideration. Finally, something about these awards is interesting again. You see, one of the (many) reasons I stopped caring about the Oscars is this feeling that they ignore large swaths of movies that don’t fit into their hoity-toity aesthetic, in particular deserving genre films. No puppet character – or any voice performance, for that matter – has ever been nominated for an acting award in the history of the Academy, despite several performances that have been sincerely deserving.

I’m not saying this to denigrate anybody who HAS been nominated. I’m not pointing to anybody specifically and saying “this person didn’t deserve the nomination, it should have been that voice actor instead.” I’m saying that in the 98 year history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, you CANNOT convince me that there has NEVER been a voice acting performance that is worthy of at least a NOMINATION. 

A worse snub than Dicaprio in The Aviator.

If Ortiz gets the nod, that would be seismic. It would be the kind of thing that gets people’s attention, and the Academy wants that. But the thing is, he shouldn’t get a nomination just because the Academy is trying to get viewers, he should get it because he completely deserves it. Ortiz was the on-set puppeteer for Rocky and did the performance with the expectation that his voice would later be dubbed over by a big-name actor who hadn’t been cast yet. His on-set performance was so perfect, however, the directors decided to keep him for the vocal performance as well. And if you’ve seen Project Hail Mary, you know that the movie just flat-out would not work if the audience didn’t believe in and fall in love with little Rocky. It wasn’t just the vocals, but the motions, the mannerisms of the character. Ortiz created an entire living, sentient being that held his own with one of the movie industry’s top talents and the two of them made each other better. That’s what acting IS, whether you’re doing it with your own body or with a body made of rods and felt. 

It’s going to be an uphill battle, of course, because as I said, the Academy has traditionally shunned movies like this in all but the technical categories (things like special effects, makeup, costume design, etc.) There have, of course, been some few instances of genre films getting mainstream recognition. Sinners – a vampire movie – racked up a lot of nominations last year, including Best Picture, and it took home the awards for Best Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, and Original Score. But the acting award for a vampire movie still went to Michael B. Jordan for his (admittedly, deserving) performance of a pair of human twins. In 2017 The Shape of Water took home Best Picture, as did Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King back in 2003, although both of those were shut out of the acting categories. 

It’s that last part that bristles. Sure, these movies did well, but even though Return of the King took home awards for best picture, director, screenplay, and several others, not a single acting performance was even nominated. That’s absolutely absurd. 

The other thing that’s going to hurt Ortiz’s chance, besides the general Academy Attitude (Acadetude?) towards genre films, is the fact that Project Hail Mary came out very early in the year. By the time awards nominations are getting seriously discussed nine or ten months from now, dozens of other movies will have been released and have heavy Oscar pushes behind them, and it will be much easier for the Academy to ignore a film that doesn’t have that kind of recency bias. So as magnificent as it would be to see Ortiz get the nomination, I am not holding my breath.

Others have suggested that if he doesn’t get a competitive Oscar, the film could receive a “Special Achievement Award,” which is a rarely-given trophy the Academy hands out for groundbreaking work that doesn’t necessarily fit into any other category. It was first handed out in 1972, in an era where modern sound and visual effects were in their infancy and new innovations and technologies were beginning to be developed at a rapid pace. However, the last time a Special Achievement Award was given was back in 1995, for the first Toy Story film, ushering in the era of computer animation. That also feels unlikely. Besides, Ortiz’s performance isn’t a technical game-changer – puppeteering is an ancient art. He was just REALLY FREAKING GOOD AT IT.

This brings me to my larger point – there is a whole section of acting that the Academy has ignored for its entire existence, and it’s time to change that. After all this time, there needs to be a category for – and this is the best term I can come up with for it right now – Best “Created Character.” Vocal performances. Motion capture. Puppeteering. Instances in which a character is crafted in a non-traditional acting performance. These aren’t new concepts – even motion capture has been around for decades at this point – so why aren’t they recognized?

In the alternate universe in which I am in charge of the Academy, instituting this award will be the second thing I do, after installing a trap door under the microphone for anyone who starts yammering about politics in their acceptance speech. This award would be given to an individual or to a group of people who contribute to the creation of said character, with the exact names included decided at the discretion of the film’s producers when submitting for the award. In general, though, this would be used to recognize the vocal performer, on-camera performer, and technical creators of the character, whether that’s one person or an entire team. (It will pointedly NOT be given out for any AI “creations,” as all of the disciplines I mentioned consist of actual human skill and talent, whereas an AI character would require typing in prompts until the computer remembers how many fingers a human being is supposed to have.)

Let me explain. Had this award existed in 1979, when The Muppet Movie came out, Jim Henson could have been nominated for Kermit the Frog. He likely would have been the only person named in the nomination, as he was Kermit’s vocal performer, puppeteer, and designer. For the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors, on the other hand, the nomination for Audrey II would have gone to Levi Stubbs, who voiced the plant, and be shared with the principal puppeteers for her. (Wikipedia lists 21 separate individuals as being “principal puppeteers” in this case. That’s a little extreme, but the point is valid.) The nomination would also have been shared with Lyle Conway, who designed the puppet, and the fabrication team who actually built it. 

Of course, if there’s only one trophy, they would have to work out some sort of custody arrangement.

In traditional animation it’s a little simpler. Let’s use 1991’s Beauty and the Beast – the first animated movie ever to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. In most major animated films, each main character has a lead animator or animation team assigned to them, so that person or people would share the nomination with the character’s voice actor. The nomination for the Beast would have gone to voice actor Robbie Benson and lead animator Glen Keane, whereas Belle would have been shared between voice actor Paige O’Hara and animators James Baxter and Mark Henn. 

Then there’s motion capture, the (relatively) new kid on the block, which is an interesting kind of marriage between puppeteering and animation. In mo-cap, a performer’s motions and mannerisms are captured by computer and used as the model for the animated character. The performer may or may not also provide the character’s voice. The most legendary example of this is Andy Serkis, who performed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, and is often cited as the most egregious oversight in the trilogy’s many, many acting snubs. Serkis was both the on-set performance actor and the voice actor for Gollum, and in my category would share the award with digital “puppeteers” Jason Schleifer and Bay Raitt, who used Serkis’s performance to create the animated character. It would be similar for a character like Rocket Raccoon from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, where the award would be shared between the digital creators (I wasn’t able to find the names of the individuals, but the effects company who worked on him in the first film was called Framestore), voice actor Bradley Cooper, and motion capture performer Sean Gunn. 

The worst Oscar snub since — no, really, I mean it this time.

Amusingly, my own rules don’t specify that the performer be human, which would make a character like Krypto from Superman and this summer’s Supergirl also eligible. The puppeteering team would have to share the award with James Gunn’s dog Ozu, who was the model for Krypto. I mention this mainly because I find the idea of Gunn walking onto the Academy Award stage carrying his little hyperactive dog to be absolutely adorable.

Is the creation of this new award likely? To be honest, probably not. But it’s not impossible, either. After all, the Academy announced last year that it will introduce a new competitive category, “Achievement in Stunt Design,” beginning with the 2028 awards ceremony. That’s right! Stuntwork, one of the most fundamental elements of filmmaking since its inception, will begin getting recognized at the 100th Academy Awards! And if it took a mere  century for stuntwork to get the recognition it deserves, how far behind could my little idea possibly be?

I don’t really expect the Academy to make these changes, of course. And I don’t really hold out a lot of hope for Ortiz to get the nomination he deserves. But there’s always a chance, right? I suppose I agree with Ron Swanson: “I still think awards are stupid, but they’d be less stupid if they went to the right people.” 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. The fact that Carroll Spinney went recognized for his tearjerker performance in the 1985 masterpiece Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird will never cease to pain him.

Superman Stuff #16: Superman Family Adventures #1-6

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Something I always wanted to get around to during the Year of Superman but never quite managed to fit in was Art Baltazar and Franco Aurelani’s Superman Family Adventures. The creators of Tiny Titans brought that delightful, charming, all-ages aesthetic to this series back in 2013, and I remember really enjoying it at the time. This week, in search of a little delight, I decided to revisit the first collected edition, which includes issues #1 through 6 of the 12-issue series.

Issue #1, showing the kind of world that Art and Franco always do so well, begins with “Meanwhile,” then goes straight into a page of Superman saving Metropolis from a meteor falling to Earth. It seems like a small thing, but it’s really very indicative of the kind of storytelling they excel at: they thrust us straight into a fully-realized world that is accessible and easy to understand whether you’re a hardcore fan or a small child just learning how to read. It starts with “Meanwhile” because no matter what angle you’re approaching this story from, you already have everything you need to pick it up and enjoy the issue. In typical fashion, though, this turns out to set up one of the series’ many running gags – EVERY subsequent issue begins with “Meanwhile” and something falling to Earth from outer space. 

In the first issue, the main story is about Superman and his family (specifically Krypto, Supergirl, and the Conner Kent Superboy) fighting a trio of giant robots adorned with the letters X, E, and L. They may have been standing in the wrong order. We get a classic Silver Age style battle against a bunch of Luthorbots, with Lex himself hatching a scheme to steal Superman’s powers. Of course, this being an Art and Franco story, things don’t go as expected. The story gives each character an introduction and establishes the main dynamics between the various characters, including a scene where Lois demonstrates her incredible investigative skills by finding Lex’s address clearly printed on one of the robot arms. It’s that kind of goofy sensibility that made Tiny Titans so much fun, and the creators carried that kind of storytelling here.

Subsequent issues build up this world considerably, each of them introducing new heroes, villains, and supporting cast members, including Bizarro (issue #2), the Super-Pets (#3), Titano (#4), Parasite (#5), and Metallo (#6). And as dastardly as many of the villains can be in the real DCU, this book lightens them up considerably. Lex is still a manipulative jerk, but Parasite and Metallo are far less intense than they usually are, while at the same time, still demonstrating that they’re a legitimate threat to the Superman family. While still being family-friendly, they DO pose a danger…which of course makes it all the funnier when Solomon Grundy gets his comeuppance from Martha Kent.

Although the book is about the Superman Family, Art and Franco make it clear that it exists in the Tiny Titans version of the DC Universe. The Titans themselves make a few cameos, and by the sixth issue the world is starting to expand. Steel is introduced, with a very different origin than any other version of the character (which, fortunately for the tiny audience, does not require Superman to die first), and there’s room for the rest of the DC heroes to pop in as desired. 

As much as the series is geared towards children, the creators love to drop in Easter Eggs for longtime fans as well, such as frequent references to the 1978 Superman movie. (If you, too, like pink very much, Lois, then this comic book is for you.) They also employ assorted running gags that may go past younger readers, like making Perry White a coffee addict and torturing poor Jimmy Olsen with his frequent quests to…well…get the chief his coffee. Kids may read that and think it’s silly, while adults will see a slightly different subtext that’s still perfectly family-friendly, but more relatable to an older reader. 

Most of the issues contain lots of short stories, including little snippets of the different members of the family having their own adventures or the pets attempting to train Fuzzy the Super-Mouse (a new creation for this title). It makes for quick reading, and gives perfect bite-sized nuggets for the title’s intended audience. 

I loved this comic – loved this whole universe, really. And while I’m happy that Art and Franco are mostly doing their own thing these days with their Aw Yeah Comics brand, I do wish they would pop back over to the DC office once in a while and revisit it. It’s been some time since we peeked in on the Tiny Titans Universe, and there’s plenty of new toys in the main DCU that they could play around and have some fun with. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #171: You’ll Figure it Out On the Way

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Recently, on the advice of – and this is a rough estimate so please forgive me if I leave somebody off this list – everybody, I picked up Matt Dinniman’s LitRPG novel Dungeon Crawler Carl. I’ve never read a LitRPG before, but a lot of people whose options I highly value told me over and over again what a great book this was and that I needed to check it out or watch my Geek Cred stats rapidly plummet. And I must concede, that first book really grabbed me.

My friends just know how wild I go over “crawling” fiction.

From what I can tell, LitRPG is a subgenre of sci-fi and fantasy in which the story emulates traits of a typical roleplaying game, including having the characters’ stats and levels prominently featured and even included in the plot. In the case of Dungeon Crawler Carl, these stats and levels come as Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, are forced to risk their lives over and over again in a massive global dungeon with the entirety of the human race – at least those who are still alive – hanging in the balance. If that doesn’t sound like a riot, I should remind you all that Douglas Adams chose to begin his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by blowing up Earth, so an apocalyptic comedy is by no means unexplored territory. And Dinniman handles it extremely well. I admit, when I started reading the book I expected the conclusion of the Dungeon Crawler story to come by the end of the first volume, and I wondered what the follow-up would be that would extend the series to seven installments (so far, at least – the latest word is that the series will wrap up in volume ten). I was quite surprised, then, as I progressed through the novel and realized, at the pace we were going, there was no way in hell the story would be finished in one book, and Carl’s singular quest through the dungeons would, so it appears, be the entire series.

After reading some massive doorstoppers early this year, I was pleasantly surprised not only by how entertaining the adventures of Carl and Donut turned out to be, but also by just how quickly I whipped through the first novel. After spending the better part of a month on Stephen King’s It, I finished the first Carl book in less than a week. I informed some of my friends who recommended it to me in a group chat the day after I finished reading book one, and one of them told me that book eight is scheduled for release next month, May.

“I doubt I’ll make it through seven books by May,” I said.

“Yeah, you will,” he replied.

And damned if it’s not possible. When I picked up the second volume this week, I got through roughly a quarter of it in the first day, an almost unheard of chunk of novel in a modern era in which my valuable reading time is often stolen by such frivolous things as going to work, driving a car, and parenting. But I quickly noticed something unusual about the second book, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. Most of the time, when you get to the second installment of a series, there’s a bit of an effort to restack the world for the audience – reminding them of things that happened in part one, re-explaining the rules of the world, and otherwise attempting to bring them up to speed in case there’s anybody just joining in for the first time. This is pretty common in fiction of all types. TV shows with serialized storylines will frequently begin with a “Previously on…” segment. Movie sequels will usually have some brief lip service where the characters recap the events of the first film, even if doing so makes little sense in context. Comic books make frequent use of flashbacks. 

The idea here is that there’s always the chance that there’s someone joining the audience NOW – somebody who has not seen the earlier episodes or read the earlier books, and therefore needs a little help so they don’t get lost. There was a point in the 80s when Jim Shooter, then Editor-In-Chief of Marvel Comics, issued a company-wide rule that every character be referred to by name when they first appeared in each issue, just to make sure a theoretical new reader could tell who’s who. The spirit of the policy made sense, but in terms of writing, this would often result in clunky panels with inorganic dialogue. This was never demonstrated better than the infamous “Mouseketeer Roll Call” Shooter himself wrote in the pages of Marvel’s first major crossover event, Secret Wars, when dozens of heroes and villains who had just been kidnapped and brought to the other end of the universe by a cosmic deity stopped the action, stood in a line, and identified themselves.

The Wasp and the Thing are at opposite ends, both of the panel, and in terms of the spectrum of humility.

Dinniman, however, makes absolutely zero attempt to recap the story for new readers. Although Carl’s Doomsday Scenario begins with a new Chapter One, it may as well have just continued the numbering from the previous book, because it picks up just seconds later and makes every presumption that the reader is up-to-date. It doesn’t recap part one, doesn’t explain the logic of this universe, and pretty much just goes on as if Dinniman is quite confident that anybody who is reading Doomsday Scenario will also have read Dungeon Crawler Carl, so why bother? It was temporarily jarring even for me, somebody who had just finished book one a week earlier, when Carl started getting messages from somebody named “Brandon” that had not been mentioned before in this book and I had to go back and remind myself who he was. 

I defy anybody to find evidence in this image that this book is a sequel. You can’t, can you? Because you’re too busy looking at the cat in the tiara, that’s why.

The style of storytelling in which a recap is expected…in some ways, it’s kind of a relic of a bygone era. It made a lot of sense in the days when a TV series aired one episode a week and if you missed it, you just missed it and hoped you could catch a rerun over the summer. In these days of binge-watching, when you can start a series from episode one no matter how many episodes have been made, and when the streaming service will roll right into the next episode after you finish it, it’s not nearly as important as it used to be. It’s still a little more necessary in other forms of storytelling, but not always. In movies like those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – particularly the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday – we should expect a certain amount of recap because it’s unreasonable to presume every audience member will be intimately familiar with the details of the past three decades of Marvel movies and television, especially since the former Fox X-Men universe is being folded into the multiverse of the MCU. But James Gunn’s Superman launched a whole universe in the middle of a story and figured – correctly – that there was no need to go over Superman’s origin yet again because everybody should be familiar with it at this point. A few title cards at the very beginning told us everything we could possibly need to know.

But what about episodic storytelling like comic books? Shooter’s rule – even when it was executed poorly – made a lot of sense in an era where it was presumed that every issue was potentially somebody’s FIRST issue. Comic books aren’t really written that way anymore. Most series – even so-called “ongoing” series – are given a certain number of issues to tell a story (although this exact number is often undisclosed to the reader it is typically low – maybe five or six issues at a time). If the series sells well enough, it will be renewed for another number of issues, then another, until either it becomes unprofitable or the creative team finishes all of the stories they had planned. With this structure, even as comic book sales are on the rise, it’s reasonable to assume that the number of people jumping into a series on issue #8 is relatively slim. But we WANT new readers, so there has to be a way to make it accessible without alienating the existing audience.

And there is, and it’s a simple way. Marvel Comics have long had a policy of including a “previously” page at the beginning of each issue, recapping the story to date and showing headshots of the major characters. It serves the same purpose as Shooter’s old rule, but it’s not intrusive into the story itself. Somebody who hasn’t been reading along can use the page to get into the saddle, but faithful readers can easily skip it if they wish. It’s a sensible policy, and other publishers (DC included) have slowly gotten into the habit of incorporating similar pages in their own comic books, although I wish it would become more standard. 

I mean, without this page how would you ever know the Scarlet Witch is a witch?

With prose books, we’ve got an interesting sort of mix of possible readers. On the one hand, if somebody is an ebook reader, it would make little sense to begin in the middle of a series. If you’re browsing the Kindle store and a book sounds interesting, it’s usually labelled as something like “Book 2 in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series,” with a handy link to look at all the books in the series at once so you can get them all and start from the beginning. But for a print reader who gets these books browsing a brick-and-mortar store, it’s not always as clear. Not every series is clearly labeled as such on the cover, and even if it is, there can’t always be a 100 percent guarantee that the store will have the earlier volumes in stock on the day you pick up volume three while you’re casually browsing. 

Many of us have fallen victim to this at some point or another. Back in middle school I was poking through the shelves at our Scholastic Book Fair (if you’re someone that just got a little thrill of excitement at those words, you are my kinda people) when I saw a book with the fascinating title The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. I picked it up and I read the back cover, and it sounded interesting. So I bought the book, brought it home, devoured it, loved it…and THEN I discovered that it was actually the sequel to a novel called Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Had I noticed that parts of it were a little confusing the first time I read it? Sure. But my seventh-grade self already was aware that there were jokes and references I didn’t quite understand (I did not have an encyclopedic knowledge of British politics and popular culture circa 1980, believe it or not), so when there seemed to be something missing I assumed that gaps in my knowledge could be attributed to that, rather than the fact that I’d skipped an entire book.

And even if I DID notice, based on this cover, I would have thought the book I missed was Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

In Dinniman’s case, the lack of recap makes more sense when you learn that the series originated on the online platform Royal Road, which allows writers to serialize their fiction. The Carl series was not originally written in book form, but in this more episodic format, and when the decision was made to publish it as a book series Dinniman basically chose where to end each volume based on a point where a logical pause happened rather than necessarily having it planned out as a ten-volume series. That kind of planning seems to have crept in later, as the book went from a popular online fic to a publishing juggernaut, but it wasn’t baked in from the beginning, and the book version reflects this. 

(Personal side-note: I’d never heard of Royal Road before I began digging into the backstory of Dungeon Crawler Carl and I feel the need to look deeper into this system. I’ve been thinking about looking for a new way to serialize my own work ever since the demise of Kindle Vella, and this seems like a far more stable outlet.)

The recap thing is a trope in storytelling, and although I can understand why it may be frustrating for people who are devoted followers of a particular series, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It serves a purpose, and if it allows a story to be opened up to a larger potential audience, that’s a net positive. It just needs to be done in an unobtrusive way. “Previously” pages in comics or even in novels are a good way to do it, and although lacking one doesn’t hurt anyone’s enjoyment of the series at all, I’m surprised that Dinniman didn’t include one in Doomsday Scenario.

At the very least, publishers, make it damn clear on the cover or spine of a book if it’s part of a series. Numbers are your friends.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Seriously, go read the first part of Little Stars, because he’s working on polishing part two. He needs people to stare at him and ask him when it will be finished. 

Superman Stuff #15: The Superman Experience

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Since Superman was released last summer, we’ve been working under the assumption that we would have to wait until 2027 and the release of Man of Tomorrow to once again glimpse that corner of James Gunn’s new DC Universe. Turns out, though, that for the lucky among us, that next glimpse is going to come as early as this Saturday, with the debut of the new “Superman Experience: Defenders Unite” exhibit at Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood.

Described as a “live walkthrough and gameplay experience,” the event will supposedly utilize motion capture technology and 3D effects to place visitors into an adventure where they will travel to the Fortress of Solitude, be given Kryptonian powers, and fight alongside Superman himself against one of DC’s vilest villains. After the main event, there will be a secondary attraction where guests get to look at different exhibits and play mini-games at their own pace. And although the press release I read doesn’t mention it specifically, I have no doubt that the experience will also include a gift shop where visitors will be highly encouraged to exchange specific amounts of American money for “Superman Experience”-branded merchandise.

I’m sure you can imagine the conversation I had with my wife when I saw the trailer for the exhibit.

“It’s only $39 a person,” I said.

“Mmm-hmm,” she said.

“Ages five and up. I bet Eddie would love it.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Plus, you know, the cost of a Warner Bros. studio tour.”

“Uh-huuuuuh.”

“And whatever it would cost to travel to California.”

“Theeeeere it is.”

So needless to say, this is not an experience that the Petit family will be participating in any time in the near future.

That said, I find stuff like this infinitely cool. Back when Las Vegas was still fun, before Erin and I were even married, we visited the sadly-defunct Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton, an attraction where you could hang out on the Deep Space Nine Promenade, drink a Romulan Ale at Quark’s bar, fight the Borg with the USS Voyager, or actually get beamed onto the Enterprise-D. I will never forget Erin looking at me when the lights came up to reveal that we were standing on a transporter pad, like a parent watching their kids opening Christmas presents. The fact that she still agreed to marry me after witnessing my childlike glee at this attraction is the evidence of our bond.

But I really like these kinds of experiences. I’m the nerd who enjoys escape rooms. Every time I see a video about a Meow Wolf instillation, I feel a pulse of envy rush through my body over the fact that none of them are within driving distance. The Museum of Illusion recently opened a new exhibit in the Jax Brewery building in New Orleans, and if I don’t do anything else on my summer vacation this year (besides watch Supergirl, of course) I want to take my son there.

I love movies and books and comic books. But this kind of interactive storytelling speaks to me in the same way it did when I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. Seeing the trailer for the Superman Experience hit me that way too. Will I make it there to experience it myself? Absolutely not. Does the fact of its existence make me happy?

It sure does.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #170: This Is How We Do It-Project Hail Mary

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Admittedly, I’m a few weeks late on this. In my defense, I needed to wait for a day when my son was in school but my wife and I both had off, a convergence of scheduling that happens with approximately the same frequency as the appearance of the 17-year cicada. But yesterday, while Eddie was at school, Erin and I took in Project Hail Mary, and it’s exactly the story we all need right this very minute. 

That’s right. Extreme sports.

In “This is How We Do It,” I break down a piece of storytelling that I find to be exemplary with the intent of describing what it does so well and, more importantly, HOW it does it that well. As such, it’s almost impossible to do so without spoilers. So if you haven’t seen the movie Project Hail Mary or read the novel by Andy Weir and you want to remain spoiler-free, you should probably skip over this column. If you’re up to date, great. Let’s talk about just what makes this movie in particular exactly the sort of storytelling we need right now, and why the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Project Hail Mary – both the novel and the movie adaptation starring Ryan Gosling – tells the story of a desperate mission to save Earth’s sun from a microorganism called Astrophage that is causing it to dim. Gosling’s character, Ryland Grace, is the only member of the mission to survive the trip to a neighboring star that seems resistant to the Astrophage. Once he arrives, he encounters an alien whose own world is also being impacted by the menace, and together with the alien he dubs “Rocky,” Grace begins the search for something that can save both planets.

To begin with, the film (with a screenplay by Drew Goddard and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) follows the novel very closely. Both the book and film utilize a dual timeline, with Grace and Rocky’s mission intercut with flashbacks to the events on Earth that led up to the mission. The in-story excuse for this is that the hibernation has diluted Grace’s memories and they’re slowly coming back to him. Functionally, however, this is a good excuse to avoid telling the story in strict chronological order, which would have the audience going through about a third of the book or movie on Earth TALKING about the mission before it actually begins. While the backstory is necessary and compelling, it wouldn’t really be the most exciting way to get the movie started, and ricocheting between the past and present is an excellent way to tell the audience what they need to know while still getting to the most exciting stuff right up front. 

This, for instance, would not have been the best place to start.

The changes to the story are minimal, and most of them are done to soften Sandra Hüller’s character Eva Stratt, who is in charge of the project and in the novel comes across as slightly more willing to do underhanded stuff in pursuit of the survival of the human species. Most of those edges are sanded off for the movie, with one major exception that I’ll get to later. A few other sequences are left out, but nothing that damages the story. The other big change is a scene that’s added towards the end that returns to Earth to show the mission is successful – success that is more implied in the novel rather than shown outright.

Structure explains how the story is well-told, of course, but that doesn’t explain what makes the story itself good. The movie shares a lot of DNA with Andy Weir’s previous novel-to-film adaptation, The Martian, which is another favorite of mine. Both of these are outer space dramas with a healthy dose of comedy about a single human astronaut trying to survive in unprecedented conditions. Neither of the stories have what one would consider to be a traditional antagonist – there is no “bad guy” in either. Both of them presume a world in which a spirit of cooperation spreads amongst the human race in defiance of a problem caused by nature. The thing that differentiates the two stories most is the sheer SCALE of it all. The Martian is the survival story of a man who is accidentally left behind on the planet Mars when his space mission is forced to abandon the planet. The only person whose life is in jeopardy is Mark Watney, and the fact that virtually the entire world is willing to come together to get him home is wonderfully inspiring. In Project Hail Mary, though, the stakes are raised dramatically: rather than a single person, all life on TWO planets will be lost if Grace and Rocky can’t find the solution to the Astrophage catastrophe. 

Elmo may hate this guy, but you’ll love him.

Speaking of the solution, that’s another thing that Weir is exceptionally good at: he talks about several high concepts – both real science and science fiction – in a way that is accessible and understandable even to a bozo like me who still stares at the refrigerator wondering how it knows to turn the light off when I close the door. Sure, the movie doesn’t make me feel like a scientician, but it tells me what I need to know in a way that is mostly comprehensible. Some of the math, I admit, goes a little over my head, but in those cases I’m willing to just nod and accept that Weir’s calculator is accurate and whatever he says those numbers mean is, in fact, what those numbers mean. The point is, these are stories where the science is not an obstacle, and in a world where it seems like people want to abandon these kinds of concepts, that’s more important than ever.

I mentioned before how great the timing of the movie turned out to be. By that I’m referring to the fact that it was released just days before the Artemis II rocket was launched, sending human astronauts back to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. This is – I’m going to underplay it a little here – a big whoop. The fact that we’re finally going back to the moon, with plans to actually begin building a base there in less than three years – is magical. For folks my age (I identify as a Xennial, if you insist on putting a label on it), it’s as though at least ONE of the futures that we were promised during our youth is FINALLY starting to make a little bit of headway. But I’ve been completely dumbfounded by the sheer number of people coming out of the woodwork on social media decrying it as fake. 

“It’s all AI!” –That guy you went to high school with who breaks into abandoned houses to steal the copper wiring.

I pride myself on being accepting of different ideas, and I do my best to respect other people’s points of view and differences of opinion. I like to think I’m mature enough to understand that the fact that someone can interpret the world and arrive at a different conclusion about certain things than me, and that does not make them stupid or brainwashed or a bad person. But this is one situation in which I simply…can’t. I cannot fathom how anybody can sincerely believe this kind of flat-Earth, moon-landing-denying nonsense. (I know it’s not all sincere – there are plenty of trolls out there – but there are ENOUGH people who really believe it to make my eyes burn.) I feel like so many of these people carry around a highly undeserved sense of superiority, as though their beliefs somehow make them better than other people. And y’know what – even if they WERE right about the moon, thinking that this is a sign of some sort of higher evolution on their part goes against everything that a real quest for knowledge is about. It shouldn’t be about division, but about finding that universal truth.

That’s one of the other truly magical things about Project Hail Mary. The core of the movie is the friendship between Grace and Rocky, each the only survivor of their respective missions, who come together for a common goal. And when you unravel the threads of the story and look at how it’s all woven together, it should be abundantly clear that neither of them would have had a chance at success without the other. It’s Rocky’s technology that allows them to gather and breed the samples of alien bacteria that prove to be the predator of the Astrophage, but it’s Grace who discovers that’s what they are and breeds them in such a way that they can be useful – and that’s just ONE example of their cooperation. Throughout the movie, from the first moment that Rocky attempts to communicate by literally throwing a message in a bottle across the gulf of space to Grace’s ship, the story becomes a celebration of the wonder of discovery and cooperation. It grows from there, first with the two explorers coming into contact with one another, then learning how to communicate, then actually getting down to the mission. The story is a sequence of small victories, each one something to be joyful about, that eventually lead to the final triumph that we’ve all been waiting for.

Top three on-screen bromances: Bert and Ernie, Norm and Cliff, and now Grace and Rocky.

It is a testament to the joy of knowledge and the embrace of collaboration, even on a personal level. The one truly underhanded deed of Eva’s that remains in the movie is when she forces Grace, against his will, to join the space mission after an accident takes the lives of the original science team. It’s a bit worse in the novel, where it is revealed that Eva also deliberately causes his temporary amnesia, worried that if he has all his memories upon waking he may refuse to complete the mission. It should be stressed, by the way, that this is NOT done in such a way as to paint Eva as a villain – she clearly regrets the necessity of her actions, but truly believes that sending him on that ship is the only possible hope for the survival of the entire human race. 

The only reason she has to force him, though, is that when he is asked to do it willingly he is too consumed with self-doubt to accept the task. He sees himself as a coward. But the last thing he hears before being forced into his induced coma is Carl – an agent on the project that he has come to regard as a friend – telling him, “You know who you are.” It’s in space, in orbit around a distant planet, that Ryland Grace truly discovers who he is, and the depths of the courage he is capable of. 

That doesn’t happen for him on Earth. It doesn’t happen – sadly – if the other human astronauts had survived the journey. And it certainly doesn’t happen if there was no Rocky there for him to learn from. The film’s true climax comes after the solution to the Astrophage has been found, when Rocky and Grace have gone their separate ways, but Grace discovers that the bacteria they’ve found will destroy Rocky’s ship if he isn’t warned. The conclusion of his character arc comes when he decides to send his findings ahead to Earth, then gives up his only chance at going home in order to go back and save the alien. Grace proves, in the end, who he is, and we’re all the better for it. 

Project Hail Mary is a beautiful, uplifting, inspiring anthem to human courage and curiosity. It’s a story that puts the best of us on display, not by showing a clean-cut paragon who never makes a mistake, but by showing a relatable and flawed character overcoming those flaws for the greater good, for the sake of his planet, for the sake of an entire planet of other sentient aliens that he’s never even met…but most of all, for the sake of his friend. 

It’s beautiful. It’s art. It’s the kind of story we need so badly. 

So when you’re looking for a movie that makes you feel that there is good in this world, Project Hail Mary is where you should look. Because this is how you do it.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He wants a life-size Rocky to sit in his classroom. Somebody make that happen.