Geek Punditry #168: Blake’s Five Favorite MST3K Experiments

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A few weeks ago, RiffTrax surprised us all with their annual Kickstarter – not for a live show, as is usually the case, but to fund four new episodes of their parent series Mystery Science Theater 3000. At the time I wrote about three movies that I thought were worthy of the MST3K/RiffTrax treatment, and since then…well, they aren’t using any of my suggestions. There’s no accounting for taste. But the Kickstarter ended with a whopping $2.7 million, far in excess of the project’s stated goal of $20,000 (although it’s quite likely that they significantly undershot how much they actually needed to ensure that the Kickstarter would hit its target). Since then, they’ve released several videos of things like the set construction, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy playing with their old pals Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo, and the requisite “thank you” videos to everybody who is thrilled to see Mike Nelson returning to the Satellite of Love.

“We’ve got Kickstarter Sign!”

With these four episodes coming later this year, lifelong MSTies like myself are returning to the classic episodes and recruiting new fans to our friendly little family. And as so often happens, I’ve seen a lot of people asking online which classic episodes are the best to use to introduce a new viewer. Honestly, I’m not sure if there IS any specific episode that’s “best.” It’s not like an X-Files where there’s a specific mythology that has to be followed. Even when the Sci-Fi Channel mandated they include a story arc, they did it in such a way that the individual episodes still stood nicely on their own. The basic format of a host and two robots watching cheesy movies and cracking jokes about them is pretty universal, and you either dig it or you don’t. 

That said, there are certainly episodes that I like more than others, and that’s what I’m here to talk about today. I’m not calling these the best episodes, I’m not even saying they’re the best episodes to draw in new viewers, but I want to talk about the five episodes that I mark as my favorites from the classic era of MST3K in the 90s. The three criteria I use to make these judgments:

  1. Riffability of the film. There are a lot of terrible movies out there, but just being bad doesn’t automatically make a movie RIFFABLE. Sidehackers, for example, is an episode that I would rank relatively low on a full list of episodes just because the film itself (although awful) is too bleak to be truly funny. A really riffable movie has a delicious blend of goofy effects, lousy acting, and a sense that everybody involved was making this film under duress. Also, generally speaking, comedies aren’t great for riffing. If a movie is INTENDED to be funny and it’s bad, that means it’s…well…not funny. A movie that’s NOT trying to be funny is much more ripe for the plucking. That said, there ARE exceptions, as you’ll see in one of my choices.
  2. Quality of the riffs. This is the bread and butter of MST3K – how funny are the host and the bots as they toss their quips at the screen? This is perhaps the most subjective of my criteria, as the writers of MST3K proudly have never made an effort to make every joke accessible. There are a lot of jokes that are relatively obscure, making oblique references to history or to pop culture artifacts that are relevant to them but not necessarily to every viewer. The attitude of the writers has always been that not everybody will get every joke, but the RIGHT people will get the jokes that are for them. So judging the quality of the riffs is often predicated on just how many of the jokes in that specific episode are jokes that land with YOU. I think this is probably why so many people rank the Hamlet episode so low, whereas I love it.
  3. The host segments. Although not quite AS vital to the quality of an episode as the riffs themselves, the host segments are the spine of the show. They tell the story – inasmuch as there is one – of Joel or Mike and their respective Mads. This is where they really get to play around and have fun. Sometimes the segments are related to the movie they’re watching, sometimes they aren’t. But some of the best moments in the show’s history come from these host segments.

Finally, just a note here: as I said, my five favorite episodes come from the classic TV era of the show, the episodes starring Joel Hodgeson and Michael J. Nelson. This should NOT be construed as me saying I didn’t like the most recent seasons, those that aired on Netflix and the Gizmoplex starring Jonah Ray and Emily Marsh. Each of them had real gems of episodes that are very much worth watching. But this is a case of nostalgia bias. I’ve loved the Mike and Joel episodes for DECADES now, and as good as Jonah and Emily could be, it will be a long time before any of their episodes could match the classics in my heart.

So here they are, my five favorites, in no particular order:

Pumaman (Season 9, Episode 3)

But just WAIT until the James Gunn reboot.

This deliciously goofy movie was made in 1980, part of a small glut of low-budget superhero flicks made after the success of Christopher Reeve’s first Superman film. It stars Walter George Alton as a paleontologist who is told – after being thrown bodily out of a window by Migel Angel Fuentes – that he is the latest reincarnation of the Pumaman, a demigod tasked with guarding the Earth by a race of aliens that were worshipped as gods by the Aztecs. Fuentes has been searching for him (by chucking potential candidates out of windows) for some time, and he needs him to step up and embrace the mantle of the Pumaman – khaki pants and all – to defeat the evil Dr. Kobras, played by Donald Pleasance, who I have to imagine took this job while wishing he’d had a better contract offering profit sharing for Halloween.

This movie is absolutely abysmal. Alton is the least-convincing superhero with the worst costume possibly in the history of cinema, and when you stop and wonder how many innocent people plunged to their deaths in the quest to FIND the Pumaman, you have to wonder if it was even worth it. (The answer is yes, it was, because it gave us such a delectably bad movie.)

The riffs, as well, are on fire. Amidst ponderings about Donald Pleasance and speculation that Fuentes’ character would be better taking on the bad guy himself rather than relying on the Pumaman, we also get one of my favorite running gags. Whenever there’s a film with an overwritten, invasive, inappropriate, or just plain lousy musical score, the bots will often start making up lyrics to fit it. Even now, as I type this, I’m casually humming along and thinking of Crow T. Robot singing, “Pumaman, he flies like a moron…”

Finally, the host segments. There are some classic bits in here – Mike wanting the “dry look” like the guy in the movie, but offending the hairstyling nanobot and getting more than he bargained for, Pearl Forrester throwing a ball in her castle only for no one to show up, and Kevin Murphy (usually Tom Servo or Professor Bobo) playing Roger Whittaker at the end. I can watch this episode again and again.

I Accuse My Parents (Season 5, Episode 7)

“Well? ARE you happy in your work?”

This Joel-era gem attacks a 1944 film about a young man (Robert Lowell) who spirals into a life of juvenile delinquency, largely due to the neglectful and borderline abusive nature of his relationship with his parents. The movie is framed with Lowell’s character in court, defending himself against criminal charges, and blaming his parents for his own poor choices. This was a heavy-handed morality play about the importance of parents and their children relating to each other. An important message, sure, but like so many hamfisted movies and TV shows, it delivers its point in such an over-the-top, melodramatic way that it’s impossible to take seriously. And when it’s impossible to take it seriously, that’s when Joel and the bots step in. The riffers make great meat out of the overzealous nature of the performers, latching on to the Robert Lowell character’s early essay contest win and milking it as a running gag. One of my favorite riffs in this one is Joel, as the “mother,” casually asking her husband “Do you think he’d ever accuse us?” after he storms away from one of their moments of casual cruelty. 

Host segments? How about Servo wanting to become a “real boy” by painting himself silly putty pink? The Mads inventing a cake mix that can “instantly” produce a stripper-in-a-cake, but realizing far too late the problem with such an enterprise? Or my favorite bit, Gypsy reenacting a night club scene from the movie as Crow and Tom play waiters and Joel plays the various nightclub patrons with the help of a pencil mustache and some shoddy wigs? Gypsy was such a delightful character in the early years, so simple and earnest, and whenever she was allowed to play along with the boys’ shenanigans, it was great fun. 

Hobgoblins (Season 9, episode 7)

The prequel to The Babadook was weird.

I didn’t realize until I sat down to make this list just how many of my favorite MST3K episodes came from so late in the original run. This one, Pumaman, and honorable mention Hamlet are all late-series gems that prove they hadn’t lost their steam even nine years in.

This Rick Sloan clunker from 1988 is one of a series of post-Gremlins movies that tried to capitalize on a pack of scary, little monsters. In this one, a bunch of teenagers find the Hobgoblins, aliens that have been kept under wraps at a movie studio for decades, who have the ability to cause their victims to hallucinate their fondest wishes. Those wishes turn to nightmares, though, as the Hobgoblins slaughter them. The premise could actually make for a legitimately scary movie, but the characters, the nature of their hallucinations, and the Hobgoblin puppets themselves are so silly that there’s no way to take them seriously.

To be fair, though, this is an instance where I don’t think there was ever any real intention to be taken seriously. Hobgoblins was an attempt at horror/comedy, much in the same vein as Gremlins, only much stupider. It’s the rare exception to the rule that mocking a bad comedy doesn’t make for a good riff. In this case, the riffs are usually in the vein of making note of just how terrible the characters are, cracking jokes as the Hobgoblins themselves, and many, many comments about the sheer Eighties of it all. (Mike famously sings at one point, “It’s the Eighties! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!”)

The best of the host segments in this one play off of just how bad the movie is. For instance, Tom and Crow try to flee from the movie during the opening credits. Later, Crow sets up a crisis hotline for people who have been subjected to the movie Hobgoblins. As the film gets worse and worse, Mike and the bots try to sneak out of the theater and put up some cardboard cutouts that sing a painfully cheesy song about the Hobgoblins to cover their escape. It’s all good stuff.

Santa Claus (Season 5, Episode 21)

The REAL question is how she can knit with no hands.

Both of the hosts of the original era got a Christmas episode. Joel’s was the legendarily bad Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, but I actually prefer Mike taking on Rene Cardona’s 1959 stinkeroo Santa Claus. In this Mexican movie, Santa Claus sits in his cloud-based castle and watches the Earth through a series of creepy and disturbing devices as his helpers – a legion of children from around the world whose parents don’t seem to notice they’re missing – prepare for his Christmas Eve journey. On this particular Christmas we see Pitch – a minion of Satan that comes right off a can of Underwood Deviled Ham – target a young girl named Lupita. As he tries to tempt her to be naughty, Santa sets out to save her.

This is ostensibly a children’s movie, but it’s hard to imagine a child watching it and not being immediately terrified of how disturbing Santa’s workshop (the most famous of his many “homes and offices”) actually is. From a computer with a giant human eyeball and lips to a sleigh driven by reindeer who look and move like animatronics from the world’s cheapest amusement park, it’s baffling that this film ever made it out the door. Naturally, this is perfect fodder for Mike and the bots. Much of the humor comes from mocking how disturbing all of this is and questioning Pitch’s credentials as an actual agent of the damned. 

The host segments are Christmas-themed as well, such as a concert by the metal band Santa Kläws, a Nelson family reunion for Mike (with the wrong Nelson family), and a gift exchange where we get to see just how far in advance Gypsy plans these things. I pull this episode out and rewatch it nearly every year at Christmastime. 

“Manos” The Hands of Fate (Season 4, Episode 24)

This is what Martin Scorsese means by “cinema.”

Perhaps the most infamous MST3K episode of all time, “Manos” The Hands of Fate (the quotation marks are part of the title) is a 1966 contender for the worst movie ever made. Written by, directed, and “starring” Harold P. Warren (the quotation marks are mine that time), this film is about a family on a road trip who get lost on their way to a lodge and wind up asking to stay the night at a creepy house tended by a misshapen man named Torgo (John Reynolds), who takes care of the place “while the Master is away.” The Master, of course, shows up, and things are excessively creepy not because the film succeeds in being frightening or atmospheric, but just because it’s particularly icky.

This film is legendary. Allegedly made when Warren made a bet that he could make a movie on a barebones budget, the movie was filmed with a camera that couldn’t record longer than 32 seconds at a time (not a joke or an exaggeration , people) and had no audio recording capabilities, so ALL the voices had to be added in post-production. It is astonishing that it is even physically possible, when making the thousands of creative choices involved in the production of a motion picture, to make the WRONG decision literally every single time, but Warren apparently pulled it off. The movie (justifiably) fell into obscurity until MST3K found it in 1993, and since then it has risen from the ashes to become a cult classic.

Having a film this bad, obviously, gives the riffers plenty to work with, playing with the quality of the production, or lack thereof. One of Joel’s best quips, for example, is “every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.” The host segments are particularly hilarious, as they mock the excessive driving scenes in the movie, and Mike Nelson (before becoming the MST3K host) pops in as Torgo delivering a pizza. You want to know how bad this movie was? Dr. Clayton Forrester actually APOLOGIZES to Joel for sending them “Manos,” admitting that he may have gone too far this time. 

It’s a masterpiece.

We could do this all day, friends, but there are only so many pixels on the internet. These are my favorite MST3Ks as of when I write this list, but if I came back and made a list again a week from now, it very well could change, adding the likes of Hamlet, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, Time Chasers, The Beginning of the End, or any of the Gamera or Hercules films. How about you – which episodes of MST3K are on your upper tier? And how psyched are you for the RiffTrax experiments? 

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 is 119 percent psyched for the RiffTrax experiments, by the way. Since you were asking. 

Superman Stuff #12: Reviews for March 4-18!

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Geek Punditry #167: Mish, Mash, Consolidation’s a Smash

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The bidding war is over, and after a protracted tussle over the fate of the grand old movie studio called Warner Bros, the winner – shockingly – seems to be Paramount. Over the last few months we’ve watched as Warner Bros, which of course has expanded far beyond being a movie studio to being a full-blown media empire, was put on the market. We saw it get snapped up by Netflix, we saw as Paramount entered the game with a hostile takeover bid, and we saw them continue to sweeten the pot until Netflix stepped back and threw in the towel. And now, pending government approval and all sorts of other rigamarole that will tie things up for a while, it seems as though Warner Bros will become another star on the Paramount mountain.

One big, happy family.

Feelings about this are…complicated, to say the least. Generally speaking I’m not a fan of the massive media consolidation we’ve borne witness to this century. Fewer players in the game means less competition, and fewer outlets for fewer voices. And sure, we live in an era where anybody can theoretically build an audience and a following using social media, but in practice, the big companies are always going to have an edge. Even when a new player comes along – an A24, for example – they’re going to have an uphill battle when it comes to staying relevant next to the likes of Disney, Sony, and whatever this new Paramount/WB hybrid will be called once it’s all over.

That said, if it HAD to be between Netflix and Paramount, Paramount is the company I feel will be better for people who want movie theaters to survive, no matter what Netflix claimed. And if it’s happening whether we like it or not, I’m not in the mood to debate it. I would rather talk about what’s going to happen when the properties of these two corporate monoliths are under one roof.

What’s going to happen when Warner Bros – the company that owns DC Comics, DC Studios, the Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, Harry Potter, and countless other properties – is folded under the umbrella of the company that controls CBS, Star Trek, Nickelodeon, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? This is going to be mostly speculation, of course – I’m the first to admit that I don’t know anything. But I’m going to throw out some ideas and discuss some concerns about what’s going to happen. And keep in mind that all of this is dependent on how long it takes for the deal to be complete, as well as how long it takes for existing licenses and deals to expire, so I can’t really put a specific timeline on any of this. 

“Let’s call it PARAMAX.”
“For the last time, Curtis, NO.”

One thing we CAN be sure of is that there’s going to be a change in the respective streaming services. Paramount has already indicated that eventually they intend to fold HBO Max into their existing Paramount+. When this happens, one can only hope they don’t decide to double the price on whatever the remaining service will be. Furthermore, I really hope that they use the technology behind HBO Max, because of all the major streamers I’ve used I’ve found Paramount+ to be the buggiest and most annoying. Honestly, if I didn’t love Star Trek so darned much I would have abandoned it entirely.

What content will there be, though? Warner Bros has had a terribly frustrating habit of sending out some of their properties, including movies and TV shows that were once on HBO Max, to other streamers like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and most recently Tubi (which picked up a gargantuan selection of WB cartoons). I would like to believe that Paramount would be smarter with its properties than Warner Bros was, but I would be kidding myself. Remember, Paramount+ was launched (originally as CBS All-Access) with the promise that it would be the home for everything Star Trek. Then they cancelled Prodigy after one season and Netflix saved season two, but now that deal has expired and it can’t be found anywhere. What I’m getting at is that both of these companies can be pretty boneheaded about what to do with their legendary properties, so having a singular service – whatever form it winds up taking – will be no guarantee that you can find everything you want under one roof.

Over in the Comic Book Collecting group I help moderate on Facebook, a user asked if we thought that the Ninja Turtles – now that they’re corporate siblings – would be added to the DC Universe. This is something I find particularly unlikely. Although DC has a proud and storied history of absorbing the superhero characters of other defunct publishers that they’ve purchased, the Ninja Turtles are too valuable an intellectual property in their own right to make them part of a different one. It’s the same reason that Disney never made Anna and Elsa from Frozen an official part of the Disney Princesses merchandise line – they make too dang much money on their own to mash them together with everybody else.

That said, although I do not foresee a future in which Donatello becomes the new leader of the Teen Titans or anything, I think that being under the same corporate umbrella will make crossovers easier and more likely. It’s happened before. The Turtles have had four separate comic book crossovers with Batman, one of which was adapted into an animated movie, and they’ve freely crossed over with dozens of other properties over the years – Ghostbusters, Strangers Things, Masters of the Universe, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Naruto, and that’s just off the top of my head. Having them cross paths with the Justice League is in no way out of the question. Heck, having them cross paths with Bugs Bunny isn’t out of the question.

“Dude, our dad is like, a bat without wings! We could be cousins!”

Just because I don’t think the Turtles will be part of the DCU, though, that still raises the question of who is going to publish them. The Turtles have been licensed to IDW Publishing for many years now. So have other Paramount properties, most prominently Star Trek. And just last year, IDW launched a new IDW Dark line of horror comics, including several series based on Paramount properties such as The Twilight Zone, Event Horizon, A Quiet Place, and Smile. I don’t know exactly how long those contracts have left, but once Paramount owns one of the Big Two comic book publishers, will they really want to continue licensing their properties to one of the…Fluffy Five? I need better nicknames.

“Move? We just GOT here!”

It’s possible that Paramount would move the comic book licenses for their properties over to DC, but it’s by no means certain. After all, DC hasn’t done a ton of licensed comics in recent years, aside from the occasional crossover or a book based on one of their current corporate siblings. They’ve published Star Trek before, of course, but that was nearly 30 years ago, and there hasn’t been any indication that they would be interested in doing so again. And even now WB properties have had recent comics published by companies other than DC, such as Cartoon Network comics published by IDW or the current Space Ghost and Herculoids comics produced by Dynamite. 

And recent comic book history has made it quite clear that sharing a parent company isn’t necessarily a guarantee of comic book consolidation. When Disney bought Marvel Comics in 2009, they ended the Disney Comics license that Boom! Studios had. Then when they bought Lucasfilm in 2012, they pulled back the Star Wars license from Dark Horse and gave it to Marvel. They did the same with Aliens and Predator when they bought 20th Century Fox. But although Marvel has produced a lot of Star Wars, Alien, and Predator comics, Disney has ALSO licensed Star Wars out to other publishers again, first IDW, and then back to Dark Horse, with their respective series co-existing with the Marvel books. Marvel has also done precious little with the classic Disney characters – a few What If? one-shots mashing Mickey Mouse and friends with Marvel superheroes, and a few Uncle Scrooge comics. But at the same time, Disney kept farming those characters to other publishers as well. Dynamite currently has the license to Disney Afternoon books like DuckTales, Darkwing Duck, and Gargoyles, as well as other properties like Lilo and Stitch, Disney Villains, and – most recently – the Muppets. As for the classic Disney comics, after being moved to IDW (they are in this licensing mix a LOT), they vanished for a few years, only to come back last year at Fantagraphics. In fact, last fall I walked into my comic book shop and bought new comic books starring Scrooge McDuck from three different publishers at the same time.

I guess that made Fantagraphics, Dynamite, and Marvel the Three Scrooges. Ah? AAAAAAAH?

The melding is far from certain, is what I’m getting at.

What about some of the other properties the different companies hold? How will they be affected? Paramount+ isn’t the only streamer they own, they’re also the controlling company of what is possibly my favorite streaming app, Pluto TV. Pluto has on-demand content, but it also has 24/7 channels dedicated to dozens – perhaps hundreds – of individual shows and genres, most of them owned by Paramount: channels dedicated to Star Trek, I Love Lucy, classic sitcoms, game shows, and tons of other things. Not everything on Pluto is owned by Paramount (they also have channels dedicated to Mystery Science Theater 3000, RiffTrax, and the Universal Monsters, for instance), but I don’t think you can currently find any WB properties there. Could we see channels with all-day streams of the Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Babylon 5, DC Cartoons or the live-action DC superhero shows? I have to admit, of all the theories I’m throwing around, this is probably the one I feel most likely to happen in the near future. It just seems very much like the kind of thing Paramount is likely to do. Although – like everything else – how SOON it might happen would depend largely on the current licensing deals they have in place, what rights exactly those existing deals entail, and when they expire.

If all of this sounds confusing…well, that’s because it is. The merger of two of the biggest media companies in the world is an enormous endeavor, something with so many moving parts that I can’t even wrap my head around it. And we just don’t know how it’s all going to shake out in the end. 

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 kind of likes the idea of a SpongeBob/Animaniacs crossover where Squidward just rapidly loses his mind over the Warner Brothers and the Warner Sister.

Superman Stuff #11: Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #16

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A recurring theme during the original “Year of Superman” was just how awful so many of the silver age comics made Lois look over the years. I’m sorry to tell you, friends, that Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane is another prime example of this kind of bold storytelling. 

The first story is “Lois Lane’s Signal-Watch” with art by Kurt Schaffenberger with an unknown writer — although frankly, I wouldn’t want credit for this one either. Lois asks Superman a fairly reasonable question: why hasn’t he ever given her a signal watch like Jimmy Olsen’s, seeing as how she’s even more likely to get into trouble than Jimmy is. Superman initially balks at the idea, but softens and gives her a watch for her birthday. Almost immediately, Lois starts using it for ridiculously frivolous reasons: fixing the broken heel of her shoe, loosening a zipper that’s gotten stuck, and helping her out of a revolving door that won’t turn. Superman is understandably frustrated and warns her not to use the watch again unless it’s an emergency, an admonition that she takes so seriously that when she is later kidnapped by bank robbers (it must have been Tuesday) who are going to blow her to smithereens with a bomb, she STILL refuses to call for help.

This story is seemingly fashioned for the sole purpose of making Lois look like an idiot. Even the synopsis on the DC Universe Infinite app seems to recognize it: “Superman gives Lois a signal watch, and she drives him crazy calling about stupid things.” That’s the official synopsis.

“The Mystery of Skull Island” (Schaffenberger again, with art by Robert Bernstein) is a little better. Perry White sends Lois and Clark undercover, pretending to be a maid and butler for a reclusive horror movie actor who, recently having returned from his honeymoon with a wealthy heiress, has shunned any attempts at an interview by the press. Ethics aside, at least Lois doesn’t seem like a total moron in this story, as she and Clark find it increasingly odd that the wife doesn’t appear to be around in the mansion. Lois starts to suspect the actor is a modern-day Bluebeard, having murdered his wife for her money, and disguises himself as his wife’s ghost to shock him into confessing his crime. This may be one of the best stories Lois has in this era of the comics. She’s still headstrong and foolhardy, but at least she doesn’t come across as vapid or stupid like she does so often.

“The Kryptonite Girl” wraps this one up with yet another story of Lois not listening to Superman, written by Jerry Siegel himself with art by ol’ reliable Kurt Schaffenberger. He brings by a collection of alien artifacts for Jimmy and Lois to photograph for a Planet article, but warns them not to touch any of them, a warning that Lois heeds exactly as well as any three-year-old listens when you tell them to stop licking the floor. Something in the artifacts seems to give Lois the ability to emit Kryptonite rays from her eyes, an ability she is unable to turn off. When Superman discovers this, he treats Lois with the kind of dignity and respect we’ve come to expect from the Man of Steel. 

The end of this story is one of the absolute WORST tropes of the era: when it is revealed that Superman actually orchestrated the whole thing to “teach Lois a lesson.” It’s the kind of story that makes BOTH characters look terrible. These are the stories that the Superdickery website was built upon, and you can’t really blame ‘em. 

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 #166: The Hype Machine

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Social Media, for all its faults, occasionally has moments that get people genuinely, legitimately excited, and fans of the TV series Firefly have been experiencing such a moment for the past few weeks. Two of the show’s stars, Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk, host a podcast called Once We Were Spacemen, and the social media feeds for the podcast have been teasing us like Bettie Page visiting an aircraft carrier. The feed has been sharing videos, one every few days, of Fillion visiting one of his Firefly co-stars, and every time they have essentially the same conversation:

CO-STAR: Oh, it’s you.

FILLION: Yes it is.

CO-STAR: Does this mean it’s time to do the thing?

FILLION: Yes. It’s time to do the thing.

If “The Thing” turns out to be an MLM, we riot.

And then the video ends, usually with the two of them doing a sort of ironically “creepy” nod at one another. Fillion has shared a video with each of the remaining regular Firefly cast members: Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Sean Maher, Jewel Staite, Adam Baldwin, and finally, Tudyk himself. Only the late Ron Glass has been (sadly and inevitably) absent. And as you can imagine, the fandom is going WILD.

Even if you’ve never watched Firefly yourself, if you spend any time in geeky circles (and if you don’t, why the hell are you even reading this?) you’re probably aware that it has become the poster child of brilliant TV shows that got screwed by the network. Firefly got only one season of 13 episodes (aired out of order), plus a theatrical movie (Serenity) that ostensibly condensed the stories that had been planned for the never-made second season into a grand finale. Despite the show having the kind of brevity usually reserved for British television, and the fact that children who were not yet born when the finale movie came out will be old enough to vote this year, the fan base is loud and vocal. It is highly unlikely that anybody in the past 20 years has publicly asked the question “What’s a cancelled TV show that deserved another season?” without somebody – probably multiple somebodies – saying it should have been Firefly. It has lived on through the sheer power of the fans and their love, not to mention a healthy (but not obscene) amount of toys, merch, novels, and comic book continuations of the universe.

Until now, this is as official as it got.

And that fanbase, which has been crawling up the walls since 2005, is now on pins and needles, DESPERATE to know what the hell Once We Were Spacemen is hyping up.

The podcasters have promised that an announcement will come this Sunday, March 15th. They have also debunked a few of the more prominent theories: it’s not a convention appearance, a podcast, or any sort of crossover episode. (This last theory seems mostly based on the fact that Fillion and Baccarin, who are both currently the stars of cop dramas, made a joke about that fact in the video they made together.) So if none of that…what is it?

Obviously, the wish of fans everywhere is a full-scale revival of the series in some form. Firefly was owned by 20th Century Fox, which means it was part of the gargantuan IP package absorbed by the Walt Disney Entertainment Conglomerate and Shadow Government and Dried Plantain Concern back when they acquired the Fox assets a few years ago, so any such revival would most likely be on Disney+. People are asking if there will be a new movie, a miniseries, an animated series with the original cast providing the voices…frankly any of those would be welcome. The question is whether Disney would actually devote the resources to produce such a thing. Disney – especially in the content produced exclusively for their streaming service – has been kind of scattershot over the last few years, with shows and movies given the greenlight, produced, killed, buried, and occasionally becoming successful against all odds, with little rhyme or reason to any of it. Would they see Firefly as a valuable enough property to bring back in one of these forms?

It’s not impossible, but I don’t think it’s a slam-dunk either.

Remember, these are the people that smothered the Willow revival in its sleep.

So if it’s not that, and it’s none of the theories that have been debunked so far, what could it possibly be? More toys? Books? Comics? A Doctor Who-style audio drama? The thing is, fans would enjoy any of those things, but would they really be worthy of the amount of buildup that we’ve been given over the last few weeks?

This is what I’m concerned about, frankly. The whole purpose of the OWWS videos has been to build up hype and excitement, and clearly it has worked. Browncoats (the term for Firefly fans, similar to Trekkies) have been buzzing at a level I haven’t seen in years, and people are flocking to Hulu to rewatch the original series. But with THIS level of excitement, if it DOESN’T turn out to be some sort of a revival, I’m really worried that the level of letdown will cause this shiny fandom ship to crash. 

There are few things that will crush a fandom’s spirit more effectively than feeling like the payoff doesn’t match the buildup. A lot of fans of the TV show Lost, for example, abandoned their faith in the series because they felt as though the finale didn’t provide enough answers to the show’s many mysteries. I happen to disagree, by the way; I felt like the final season gave us all the answers we actually NEEDED, and those questions that remain unresolved are okay that way. But whether I felt letdown or not, it’s undeniable that a LOT of people did, and that hurt. The same goes for the highly divisive ending for the sitcom How I Met Your Mother, which ended in such a way that a lot of fans (I include myself this time) felt somewhat cheated, that the story we’d been told for nine seasons was not building up towards what we thought it was. Both of these shows do still have devoted fans, even all these years after they went off the air, but virtually any conversation about either of them will include somebody griping about the ending.

It’s like they made a bet as to whose finale could piss off the most people. They both won.

For a less soul-crushing example, let’s look at Quentin Tarantino’s film(s) Kill Bill. I’m going to give you a very minor spoiler here, but I can’t imagine anybody who is concerned about it hasn’t already seen the movie. Tarantino decided during production to release what was intended as one film in two volumes because of the length, and the first half built up the identity of Uma Thurman’s character, referred to simply as “The Bride,” as a secret. The character’s actual name was not revealed in volume one. Some characters called her “B,” which we took to be an initial, or perhaps a reference to her status as, naturally, “the Bride.” A few times she was referred to as “Kiddo,” as well, a simple nickname. The one time a character actually said her name out loud, it was bleeped out, a sound effect that is virtually unheard of in the profanity-laden universe of Quentin Tarantino.

So speculation started to build. What was her name? Why was it being played as such a secret? Was she going to be revealed as having a link to another character in Tarantino’s world? A historical figure? Someone from pop culture? 

Nah. When the reveal finally came halfway through volume two, it fell flat on its face. Her name, as it turned out, was “Beatrix Kiddo.” Friends call her “Bea.”

Hey Quentin, if it’s one movie, why did I pay to see it twice?

It wasn’t enough to ruin the movie, mind you. All things considered, I still enjoy the film(s) quite a bit, although I still contend Tarantino demonstrated that he doesn’t understand Superman in the slightest. I just feel like it was a mistake to build up the secret that much for something that, in the end, turned out to be of absolutely zero consequence.

And that’s the fear I have for the big Firefly reveal. I want a revival, I can’t lie. I’m hoping that we’re going to get the news that there’s going to be a new movie or TV series that picks up on the adventures of the Serenity crew, and I really want there to be a good explanation for how Tudyk is involved, because…reasons. 

If you want to punch me for including this screenshot, that’s how you know you’re a true Browncoat.

I would have welcomed a new comic book or an audio drama or any of the other possibilities. But after the way it’s been built up, I’m very worried that anything less than a revival will be met with a resounding “meh” from the fanbase and the project – whatever it is – will lose support it would have had otherwise.

Hype is kind of a necessary evil in the entertainment field. We’re not talking about food or clothing, or anything essential for life. Entertainment is, by its very nature, a luxury. So in order to get somebody to choose the entertainment that you have made as opposed to any of the other millions of possibilities out there requires you to get them interested, get them excited. Hype is a skill in and of itself – a skill that I, it should be mentioned, possess in roughly the same amount as my skill as a prima ballerina. But just because I suck at hype doesn’t mean I can’t recognize it, and recognize when it’s gone too far.

I really hope that it hasn’t gone too far in this case. I really hope that, when the announcement is made, the fans that are buzzing on the internet will explode in excitement rather than spiral in disappointment. Will it be a big damn heroes moment? Or will we be shot down like a leaf on the wind?

I guess we’ll all find out on Sunday.

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. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He is, in fact, a leaf on the wind. Watch how he soars. 

Superman Stuff #10: Supergirl: Wings

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Obviously, I decided against doing a full-on “Year of Supergirl,” because I’m smart enough not to subject myself to that kind of regimented schedule twice. That said, with Kara’s movie coming out in just a few short months, I do intend to start peppering my regular reading with more of her stories more often, and for this week’s “Superman Stuff” I decided to revisit the 2001 Elseworlds one-shot Supergirl: Wings, written by J.M. DeMatteis with art (including a lovely cover painting) by Jamie Tolagson.

This book seems to be inspired by the late, legendary Peter David’s run on Supergirl, in which the Matrix version of the character sacrifices herself to save a young woman who was seemingly beyond redemption, an act of selflessness which bonds the two of them together into a spiritual being that David calls an “Earth-Bound Angel.” Wings removes the “Earth-Bound” part of that, starting with a multitude of the Heavenly Host, the “Shining Ones,” looking down upon the poor, struggling humans. Two of those Shining Ones include Matrix and Zauriel (the angel from Grant Morrison’s JLA run). 

Matrix is an Amenlee, one of the angels tasked with caring for human souls. But Matrix has become disenchanted with humanity, put off by our more negative qualities, and finds herself struggling to find herself – especially in her dealings with a woman named Linda Danvers, who has lost her own Guardian Angel and seems to be spiraling down a dark path. The story of this Elseworlds is actually pretty close to what David wrote in the mainstream Supergirl comic of the era, honestly. What sets it apart and makes it an Elseworlds is that DeMatteis leans more heavily on the spiritual side, more so than even David did. It’s odd to see a mainstream comic book that wades this heavily into matters of faith, with elements that are reflective of both Christian and pagan practices that all come together into a bizarre tapestry that includes the likes of the Spectre, the Phantom Stranger, Aquaman, and a very different Clark Kent.

DeMatteis does a lot of exploration in this book, delving not only into questions of the soul, but also about the search for self. Early in the story, Matrix bemoans the fact that – unlike humans – the angels such as herself have no free will and are only tasked with carrying out the will of the Presence (or God, as they sometimes call “hir”). But that doesn’t really track, does it? If she truly had no free will, how would she flirt with rebellion, how could she contemplate abandoning her post and abandoning humanity at all? Despite what she says, the Angels’ lot is painted less like that of people with NO free will and more like people with limited options, struggling to content themselves with the task appointed to them. The metaphor is heavy and, despite being no angels ourselves, it’s not hard to sympathize with Matrix as she explores just how trapped he has come to feel with her role in the universe.

Tolagson’s artwork is really perfect for this series, a style that evokes the likes of Mike Mignola, leaning on the fantasy elements and downplaying any trace of the superhero. Some pages call to mind the likes of Sandman or Fables, while others seem to be pulled from books like The Demon or Books of Magic. 

Were this to be published today, it would probably be part of the Black Label line. It doesn’t have any overt R-rated elements (no sex, no language, relatively minor instances of violence), but the concepts and the themes brought to the page are extremely heavy and far deeper than your standard superhero book. It’s an interesting companion to David’s Supergirl, and a story that ultimately lands on a place that feels hopeful and uplifting. Matrix’s story feels familiar, not only like it’s something that we’ve seen on the page before, but like it’s something so many of us have lived through at one point or another. It’s a very different kind of story, and all the more remarkable for it.

I’m definitely going to spend more time with Supergirl this year – part of me even wants to do a whole-series read of the David run, but I don’t know if I can spare that kind of time. But for a taste of a very different look at Supergirl, this is an intriguing sample. 

By the way, folks, I’m always open for requests. If there’s a specific comic book, TV episode, animated feature, or anything else regarding Superman or his extended family that you’d like me to discuss in this space, just let me know. 

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 #165: I Like What I Like

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Last week, for the first time in the three years since I started writing these “Geek Punditry” blogs, I missed a post, but I think you’ll forgive the reason. Thursday, while I was still brainstorming possible topics for pop culture effluvia to talk about, I got a phone call from my father to tell me my grandmother had passed away. It wasn’t a shock – she was 94 years old, after all – but just because something isn’t surprising doesn’t mean it isn’t painful. My grandmother was one of the most important people in my life, and I’m sure you’ll understand why I just wasn’t in the right headspace to go into some sort of lighthearted analysis over an episode of SpongeBob or something the next day.

I’m still not in that headspace, not really. On the day you read this we’ll be having her funeral and saying goodbye, and I’m still not in the mood to do any serious kind of dissection of the kind of stuff I usually write about here. But I didn’t want to go another week without a Geek Punditry, so I decided instead I would just spend this week’s post talking about a few things I’ve read or watched recently that I enjoyed. These are just short, capsule recommendations for pieces of media that have pleased me in some way, and that’s really the reason I started this feature in the first place. I wanted to talk about the things that I love and share them with other people. 

So here we are, just a few short suggestions for things to watch or read.

DC KO

DC Comics’ latest crossover event (they have so, so many, the Big Two publishers) ended this week, and it ended in a spectacular fashion. In DC KO, the Justice League discovered that Darkseid – who had been presumed dead since 2024’s DC All In Special – was not, in fact, dead, but coming back more powerful than ever. The only way to stop him would be for one of them to claim the Heart of Apokalips, a powerful, sentient artifact that has been supercharged with Darkseid’s “Omega Energy.” Claiming the artifact would give the holder the power of the “King Omega,” and make them a match for Darkseid, capable of resetting the universe as they see fit. In order to claim the power, though, the heroes would have to prove themselves worthy of it by fighting one another in a tournament across the entire multiverse. And it gets even worse when the villains get wind of the plan and worm their way into the tournament as well.

The premise – and I’ll be the first one to admit it – is absolutely preposterous. It sounds like the setup for a video game or the kind of story a kid whips up in the backyard as an excuse to have all of his toys fight each other. It’s an excuse for huge, over-the-top fight scenes pitting hero and against hero (and occasionally villain), to transform our characters into variants of themselves from other parts of the multiverse, and to give them new, temporary costumes that will look really dandy as action figures and other merch. There was even a one-shot spinoff where they fought characters from OUTSIDE of the DC Universe, including Red Sonja, Vampirella, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Homelander from The Boys. It was an enormous, bloated, insane cash grab.

And damned if I didn’t love every minute of it.

For one thing, superhero fans love a good fight scene. It’s just inherent in the genre. And having the heroes fight one another is the kind of thing that fans like to bicker and debate – who would win in a fight between the Flash and Green Lantern, for example. But to explain why friends and teammates would fight one another usually requires some sort of contrived coincidence, mistaken identity, mind control, or other overused trope. DC KO bypasses all that and makes the contrivance the whole plot, and somehow, that made all the difference. Why would Green Lantern fight the Flash? Because they know that the only way to save the universe is for ONE of the heroes to beat all the others in a fight, so they’ve gotta give it their best.

But it didn’t stop there. Although KO was structured as a series of fight scenes, the writers still managed to do some excellent character work. There was a series of one-off issues in December featuring some of the marquee matchups: Superman Vs. Captain Atom, Harley Quinn Vs. Zatanna, Cyborg Vs. Swamp Thing, and perhaps the most personal of them all, Red Hood Vs. the Joker, the man who killed him that one time. And in each of these issues, the fights and the choices the characters made delved into who they really were and what they really wanted. Was it an excuse to see Superman and Captain Atom throwing down in a way that they usually don’t do, needing to hold back in fear of annihilating a city or something? Absolutely. Did it say something real, important, and powerful about who Superman is as a character? Dang right.

The series ended this week in a way that I found quite satisfying as well, taking a step towards meta-commentary about what the DC Universe actually is and where its soul comes from. And people who know how I feel about the DC heroes will not at all be surprised that I loved the conclusion this story drew. I felt great about what I read, and I’m looking forward to the next act of the larger story DC is telling (of which KO is, evidently, the end of Act I). 

Pluribus

I know I’m behind on this one, but in my defense, I don’t have Apple TV+. I do, however, have a friend who has given me access to his Plex server, and he’s got Pluribus on his system, which means that I get to watch the newest show by Vince Gilligan, the man behind a couple of shows called Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. I’m four episodes in to the nine-episode first season, so I’ve still got a ways to go, but I’ve seen enough to be confident in saying that Vince Gilligan has got to stop hoarding all the awesome, because it’s not fair that one man gets to create one of the best shows on television THREE TIMES IN A ROW.

I’m not going to say very much about the story of this show. I think it’s the kind of thing that works best if you don’t really know much going in and just let the surprises hit you one at a time. In fact, prior to watching the show all I knew was:

  • The show is science fiction (and although he’s best known for crime dramas, don’t forget that Gilligan cut his teeth in the industry as a writer for The X-Files)
  • It stars Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn in the lead role (and she is FANTASTIC)
  • Gilligan made some statements about how much generative AI sucks while promoting the show (which has turned out to have some thematic resonance, but nothing plot-relevant, at least not as of episode four)

Although it is sci-fi, Pluribus has a lot of the same DNA as Gilligan’s other two acclaimed series. The shows are all about deeply damaged people who are pushed into a situation that quickly grows out of their control and they’re forced to make morally questionable choices for the sake of survival. Tonally, I think it’s similar as well. Although Pluribus is probably the most serious of the three series, it still has a lot of moments of dark comedy that help you make your way through it. 

Basically, if you like what Vince Gilligan has done so far, you’re going to like this too.

Miracle: The Boys of ‘80

I am, as most people who know me will tell you, a total sucker for the Olympics. I love the games, and I spent the better part of two weeks recently absorbed in the snow and ice of lovely Milan and Cortina, rooting for Team USA. And to feed the hunger for people like myself, Netflix recently dropped a new documentary, Miracle: The Boys of ‘80. This film is all about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team and the journey that led to the moment called “the Miracle on Ice,” when they managed to defeat the highly-favored Soviet Union in the semifinal round of the games. 

The Miracle on Ice is a story that, of course, has been told many times. This isn’t the first documentary about it, and Disney even made a narrative film about it starring Kurt Russell, Miracle, that was pretty good. But this particular film tells the story through the eyes of the players and people involved, mostly through interviews with them as they detailed the path they took from the inception of the team – a ragtag band of underdogs that couldn’t have been more dramatic if they’d been hired by a studio casting director – all the way through the games. I recently made one of my “LitReels” about the concept of sports as storytelling. I think the reason that sports are so important to a lot of people are because they are, in fact, stories that we attach ourselves to, as much as any book, TV show, movie series – even history and religion are important to us (I believe) because of their value as the stories that we internalize. This is a fine documentary that does a fine job in telling one of the greatest stories in the history of American sports.

There you go, friends, a few things to dig into between now and next Friday. Hopefully by then I’ll be a little more coherent, a little more capable of finding a topic to do a deep dive. Until then, be good to each other, and let the people you love know 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. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. 

Superman Stuff #9: Reviews From Feb. 11-25

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Once again, it’s time to look into the reviews of some of the Superman-related comics that have dropped in the last few weeks, including some pretty massive events. Let’s get right to it.

DC KO #4
Title: Trial By Absolute
Writers: Scott Snyder & Joshua Williamson
Art: Javi Fernandez & Xermancio
Main Cover: Javi Fernandez

The Final Four have made their way through all comers, but before they can turn their attention to one another, four new combatants have entered the fray. Tainted by the energy of Darkseid, the combatants will be forced to fight the Absolute Universe versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman – as well as Booster Gold who has been possessed by Darkseid himself.

This event has promised us one throwdown after another, and there’s no way to argue that it hasn’t lived up to that promise. This issue is perhaps the most high-octane, brutal battle yet. The fight between the four remaining heroes and villains with their Absolute counterparts is scripted and drawn with incredible energy and brutality, but at the same time, Scott Snyder has not skimped at all when it comes to character and story. In fact, there are multiple twists in this issue that catch you off-guard and send the story spinning into new, unexpected directions. At the same time, the twists all fit the characters – a great twist is one that is a surprise without violating what you already know about the world you’re reading, and Snyder pulls that off. 

For people who are into Superman (know anybody like that?) seeing “our” Superman face off against the Absolute Kal-El is one of the high points of the issue. Neither character is disrespected or nerfed in respect to the other, but there’s also no room for any doubt as to which of the two is the original. I am slightly disappointed at just how the Absolute characters were used, however. Similar to the surprise guest stars from the Boss Battle one-shot, the Absolute heroes are in and out rather quickly. It’s not even clear as to when, exactly, this story takes place in the Absolute timeline – Superman seems to know Batman here, whereas in their respective comics, they haven’t met yet. Although there’s definite promise here for future brushes between the two worlds, it feels like this encounter will mostly be a footnote for the Absolute characters, even as it sets up the conclusion for the Final Four.

I know I’m being deliberately vague here, by the way – I suppose it’s clear that Superman is one of the Final Four (as it should be) but I’m trying to avoid spelling out who else is in that group in case anyone is trying to remain spoiler-free. Considering just how this one ends, though, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep that up for the finale. So if you’re reading along with these reviews, I would highly recommend being up-to-date with DC KO when I drop my thoughts on issue five. Whenever that might be.

Superman Unlimited #10
Title: Die Laughing Part Two
Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Mike Norton
Main Cover: Dave Johnson

Intergang has set its sights on Metropolis’s new mayor, Perry White, and they’ve contracted the Prankster to take care of the problem. But Oswald Loomis’s nephew is trying to step into his uncle’s role and take over the family business, and the NEW Prankster isn’t quite as funny as his predecessor. 

This is a solid issue. There’s something up with this new Prankster – in these two issues he’s appeared we never find out his real name, and there’s no explanation for his bizarre powers, something Uncle Oswald has never had. I feel like this is just part of a coming, larger story, even as these two issues work perfectly well as a couplet. I also like how a big part of the middle of this story isn’t about the power of Superman, but rather the investigative skills of Clark Kent. Not to say that Superman is entirely absent, but we see more Clark than we often do these days, and I appreciate that.

We also get a quick interlude with Jon, who’s been setting up the new Daily Planet office in Smallville, only to get an ominous warning from an unexpected source. Even more so than the Prankster stuff, this is explicitly setup, especially since DC has revealed their “Reign of the Superboys” initiative that’s going through all of the Super-titles after DC KO ends. If you didn’t know, Jonathan is going to take the reigns of this title for an indeterminate amount of time, and it looks like the groundwork is being laid here.

I’m still really digging Mike Norton’s Superman. I love the way his character works, with the kind of strong lines and clean character work that made so many of the Triangle Era artists stand out, and I hope we see more and more Superman from him in the future. 

Superman #35
Title: Life Secrets (A DC KO Tie-In)
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Art: Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira, Julio Ferreira
Main Cover: Dan Mora

The final instalment of this title’s DC KO storyline runs with the conclusion of issue #4 and leads straight into #5. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the storylines that’s been going through this book turns out to be crucial to the conclusion of the crossover. But that’s not the one that works best. 

We’re following two intertwined threads here. First, the Doomsday/Time Trapper is reeling from the events of issue #4 and trying to gird himself for what must come next. After all, at least part of him is the creature that was created eons ago for the express purpose of destroying Darkseid, and it may be time for that charge to finally come due. Meanwhile, Lois and Superboy-Prime continue their faceoff with Darkseid’s Legion, and it is this latter part that is particularly revelatory. 

From the moment he was introduced in this title, we’ve been building a redemption arc for Prime, and it gets center stage in this issue, where he is faced with choices that he’s made before and is given an opportunity to make better choices this time. I’m not in the business of giving out spoilers, but it should be pointed out that when “Reign of the Superboys” takes over the Superman titles next month, DC has revealed that Prime is going to be the start of this title for the time being. 

There’s also a great face-off between Lois and Darkseid’s Saturn Girl. Just like prime, this series has hinted that the dark Legion may not be completely beyond hope, and that hope spot is further explored this month. I’m really anxious for the final issue of the crossover to drop…which I guess will be today as you read this. Holy cats, why are you reading this blog instead of DC KO #5? Have you lost your senses?  

Action Comics #1095
Title: Pressure
Writer: Mark Waid
Art: Patricio Delpeche
Main Cover: Ryan Sook

The adventures of Superboy in Action Comics continue, although Clark actually takes a back seat this issue. Last month, on a camping trip, Pete Ross happened to spy Clark Kent going into action as Superboy. This issue is Pete’s story, as he struggles with this knowledge and wrestles with whether to confront Clark with what he has learned – and ask why his best friend would ever keep such a secret.

I adored this issue. Mark Waid, human comic book encyclopedia that he is, is doing a phenomenal job of mining the classic tales of Superboy to bring the drama to this series. In the Silver Age this was the status quo – Pete knew that Clark was Superboy (even learned it the same way as he did in Waid’s story, if I’m not mistaken) and chose to keep that knowledge to himself. But as was so often the case with those Silver Age tales, there wasn’t an awful lot of thought given to the implications of this sort of thing. How would Pete feel about learning his best friend was keeping such a gargantuan secret? Doesn’t Clark know that he can trust him? Does anybody else know? And why would Pete choose to keep what he’s learned to himself instead of talking to Clark about it? 

The answer to that last question is because it was the Silver Age, and if anybody in a Silver Age DC story had the ability to have a rational adult conversation about anything 95 percent of the stories would have ended on the second page. But Waid actually finds a way to justify Pete’s actions, draping his decision in a metaphor for a real-world issue and presenting it in such a way that makes perfect sense and somehow makes all of the characters – Pete, Clark, even Lana Lang – come across as behaving in a mature, emotionally intelligent way. How often could you say that back in the 50s? 

Supergirl #10
Title: My Bloody Valentine
Writer: Sophie Campbell
Art: Joe Quinones
Main Cover: Sophie Campbell

It’s Valentine’s Day, and Kara has a date with the mysterious, long-haired, tattooed boy of her dreams. Her friends Lena and Luna, however, are following along, sensing something is amiss. 

After last issue’s slight misstep, this one is more of what I’ve come to enjoy about this series. The “date” is mostly a setup for this issue’s fight scene, but Campbell isn’t having a fight just for the sake of a fight. In the midst of battle we get some good character moments and the ongoing storyline of Kara and her friends (particularly Lena Luthor, in this case) continues nicely. Lena made a mistake in the last issue for which she’s trying to mend fences, and while this issue doesn’t patch everything up in a neat little bow, it also doesn’t cause some insurmountable gap between the friends like books that lean on melodrama are wont to do. Kara and Lena both some some real emotional maturity here, which is particularly funny when juxtaposed against the “date” scene, which works mostly as a parody of gooey Silver Age romance comics tropes.

I have to point out, though, that the recent run of holiday issues is starting to strain credulity a little bit. Literally half the issues of this series have been holiday stories at this point (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and now Valentine’s Day) and while comic book time is naturally elastic, it does have its limits. As this issue begins, Lena and Luna are going to visit Kara on Valentine’s Day to try to make up for their screwup at the New Year’s Eve party – so it’s been six weeks since they spoke to one another? Nobody has made any effort to patch things up before now? I’m willing to forgive, because this really is a great book, but I’m crossing my fingers that next issue’s story (part of the “Reign of the Superboys” initiative) won’t be a visit to show us how they celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Kandor. 

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #48
Title: Day For Night Part One
Writer: Mark Waid
Art: Marcus To
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Once again, Mark Waid has been let loose in his favorite playground, the DC Universe. In this issue we leave behind our pals Superman and Batman and instead visit their arch Earth-3 counterparts, Ultraman and Owlman, as they begin plans to expand their Crime Syndicate to unprecedented levels, with world conquest as their goal. 

Waid is building out Earth-3 quite a bit here, introducing versions of DC heroes that I’m pretty sure have never showed up in a Crime Syndicate story before (although I could potentially be wrong about that – I’m certainly not the walking encyclopedia of comic book knowledge that Waid is). There’s a particularly amusing sequence that really puts the relationship between Owlman and Talon (his Robin analogue) into focus. All of it works up to a nice last-page surprise that seems poised to set up the rest of this arc. As per usual, I’m very excited to see where this is going to go next. 

Adventures of Superman: Book of El #6
Title: The Warworld Engines
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Art: Scott Godlewski
Main Cover: Scott Godlewski

This issue we at last return to Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra, Superman’s adopted children, who disappeared back in the first issue after Superman was abducted to the future. We also come across another clan wearing Superman-like sigils, while our hero is battered and beaten down.

I’m trying, guys, I REALLY am trying to get interested in this book, but it’s just not working. Having left behind the Green Lantern stuff (although future covers seem to indicate we’re not done with it yet), we’ve gotten back to Superman vs. Warworld, which was an era of Action Comics that, if I’m being honest, bored me stiff. Despite his power, “cosmic” Superman stories rarely work for me. The character is all about heart and how he deals with people, and throwing him into deep space against all-powerful entities and sci-fi clans that think he’s just a legend…it’s too far from the things that make me keep reading Superman comic books. It just isn’t connecting with me, no matter how much I wish it was.

New History of the DC Universe: The Dakota Incident #1
Writers: Joseph P. Illidge, Stephanie Williams, Morgan Hampton, & Nikolas Draper-Ivey
Art: Valentine De Landro, Carlo Pagulayan, Stephen Segovia, Jason Paz, Fico Ossio, & Edwin Galmon
Main Cover: Diego Olortegui

Strictly speaking, I don’t feel obligated to review this book the way I do many of the other Superman appearances. He shows up in this book, but his appearance is brief and it’s not his story. That said, I liked this book quite a lot and I wanted to talk about it and it’s my own blog – dammit – so I’m gonna write about this if I want to.

Spinning out of last year’s fantastic New History of the DC Universe miniseries is this one-shot focusing on the heroes of the Milestone universe. As the previous NHOTDCU explained, the Milestone heroes (versions that are fairly close to their original incarnations from the 90s) have always existed in the current incarnation of the DC Universe, but they all vanished from the public eye after something referred to as the “Dakota Incident.” This issue delves into their history, showing the reader just how they fit into the DCU, and the events of the incident that led to their departure.

I’m impressed at how relatively easily they worked the characters into the DC Universe while still keeping their original stories mostly intact. There is one element that’s added to link the origins of many of the Milestone heroes to the DC Universe proper, but that addition doesn’t really change anything about who they are or how their adventures unfolded back then. The issue also places a heavy emphasis on Static, holding him up as perhaps the most significant of these characters. That makes sense – he’s certainly the most well-known and popular Milestone character among the general public (by virtue of his old cartoon show if nothing else), but it also fits with the character of Virgil Hawkins very well.

For fans of these characters, especially the original versions, this issue serves very well to integrate them into the DC Universe, explain their absence, and – most importantly – set the stage for their return. It’s already been teased in various places, not the least of which is the last page of this issue, and I am very much looking forward to seeing the heroes of Dakota rise 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!

Superman Stuff #8: Digital MIA

blakemp Superman Stuff , , , ,

Sometimes people ask me, “Blake, have you read every Superman story there is?” And I smile and laugh because I can totally understand why they might think such a thing. I’ve got a whole shelf of Superman toys and knicknacks, I own approximately 97 Superman shirts, socks, and other assorted articles of clothing, I spent an entire year of my life reading or watching a different Superman story every single day, and although I do not personally HAVE a tattoo, if I ever were to get one, you can probably guess what image I would choose. So you may be surprised when I tell you that the answer to the question “have you read every Superman story?” is a definitive NO.

The thing to remember, friends, is that despite my age, Superman is considerably older than me. Earth’s greatest hero is coming up on his 90th birthday in two years, and I am not quite there yet. There are mountains of Superman stories that were published before I was born. And to be certain, I’ve read a lot of them. His first appearance in Action Comics #1 has been reprinted frequently, as have many of the most popular and memorable stories, stories that introduced important characters and concepts, and so forth. But the truth is, there are a lot of Superman stories – especially from the Golden and Silver Ages – that have never been reprinted. In this day of digital comics, one would think that it would be simple enough for DC to put them all on their DC Universe Infinite app, to which I subscribe and use almost daily. But if you go into the archives and start poking around, you see massive swaths of comics that simply aren’t there.

There are reasons for that, of course. It’s NOT as simple as just pushing a button and putting them online. Many of those comics, especially the older ones, have never existed in a digital form. They were drawn, colored, and printed on paper before the advent of computers, and to digitize them today would require someone to take the old prints, scan them in, and remaster them into a readable format, and that is assuming copies of the books are available (which is often not the case with Golden Age comics, especially the more obscure ones). If there are available copies it’s not an impossible task – a great many classic comics have been preserved this way – but it IS a time-consuming and sometimes expensive task, which is why those older comics that ARE available digitally are the ones that are the most popular and most significant.

All that said, I wish that DC would put more effort into preserving their older comics. On a whim, I went through the app and looked at the assorted Superman titles to see which ones have missing issues, and the results are, frankly, alarming. Of the 904 issues of Action Comics Vol. 1, DCUI lists 463 of them available digitally. (Actually, that number isn’t exactly accurate, as the 463 includes annuals and specials that DC places in the run of the main title, but the number is close enough to make my point.) As of when I checked the app on Feb. 23, the following issues of Action Comics are unavailable digitally: 106-251, 253-266, 268-283, 285-307, 360-363, 377-456, 458-520, 522-551, 560-582, 603-617, 627-642, 653-658, 660, 663-668, and, bizarrely, 729. 

It’s interesting to note which books ARE available as well. There’s an enormous hole at the end of the Golden Age and beginning of the Silver Age, stretching almost completely from 106 through 360. In that run there are only three issues that pop up: issue #252 (the first appearance of Supergirl), issue #267 (an early Legion of Super-Heroes story with the first appearance of several key members), and issue #284 (I have no idea what makes this issue special enough to warrant inclusion). 

Left: Worthy of digitizing.
Right: Somehow, NOT worthy of digitizing.

Also missing are most, but not all, of the Action Comics Weekly run, from issues #601-642. For those who don’t know, at this time DC experimented with changing Action from a monthly title starring Superman to a weekly anthology book with several ongoing stories, of which Superman was only one of them. What’s bizarre to me is that they have issues #618-626, which I have to assume contains some serialized story they deem significant enough to include. 

Speaking of anthologies, it should also be noted that the early Golden Age issues of Action are incomplete. The series was originally an anthology before Superman (or his spin-off characters, like Supergirl) eventually took over the entire book, for but many of those anthology issues, ONLY the Superman story is online. Granted, that’s probably the part of the book of greatest interest, but that still leaves huge gaps in DC history. The same is true for the other Golden Age anthologies that are remembered mostly for their main character, such as the Batman stories in Detective Comics or the Wonder Woman stories in Sensation Comics. 

Reading this period is going to be like rolling the dice.

I kept looking. Volume 1 of Superman is missing issues 25-27, 29, 31-33, 44-75, 77-121, 132-232, 239, 243-247, 249-256, 258-265, 267-304, 309-337, 339-364, 366-409, and 416-422. That series didn’t end there, but the title was changed to Adventures of Superman, which is missing issues 580-581, 599-607, 610-638, 640-641, and 643-649. During that time, the book ran concurrently with Superman Vol. 2, which is missing a relative few issues (178-185, 188-203), and Superman: The Man of Steel, which seems to only be lacking 121-129. The baffling thing is that these three titles, along with the post-Weekly era of Action Comics, were part of what fans fondly recall as the Triangle Era, that period in the 90s and early 2000s when the four Superman titles fed into each other week to week, essentially making one glorious serial. Anybody attempting to read this era in its entirety on the app will find bizarre and baffling gaps in the story. 

These are the main Superman titles, of course, but the spin-off books have fared little better. Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane ran for 137 issues between 1958 and 1974. Of those, only issues #1-21 and, randomly, #93 are available digitally. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen ran for 163 issues before the title was changed to Superman Family and it became an anthology with stories featuring assorted characters in the…well, the title makes it clear. Of the original Jimmy Olsen run, we have only the first eight issues, then issues 133-148, the seminal Jack Kirby run on the title. The series continued as Superman Family from issues #164 until it was cancelled with #222, but the only one available on the app is #182, again, for reasons I can’t fathom.

Finally, let’s talk about the Superman team-up book of the late 70s and early 80s, DC Comics Presents. This series has fared much better than many of the others we’ve covered here. Of the 97 issues in the run, only three are missing: issue #47, which guest starred He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and is therefore no longer available to DC due to licensing issues, and issues 70 and 71, which guest-star the Metal Men and Bizarro, respectively, and don’t seem to have any particular reason they should be discluded. 

“By the Power of Lawyers! YOOOU CANNOT REEEEEAD MEEEEEEEE!”

This is not a comprehensive examination, of course. I haven’t checked in on most of the annuals, specials, or miniseries, although it should be noted that only the first issue of the Superman: The Secret Years miniseries from 1985 is included, which is totally perplexing to me. Why bother to digitize ONLY part one of a four-part story? 

I should also note that this is not a problem unique to the Superman comics. If you go through the back catalogues of most DC books prior to the modern era, you’ll see similar gaps in the libraries of Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc. I also stopped looking after the New 52 reboot of 2011, at which point digital comics had become relatively common, and I feel mostly certain that everything one could reasonably expect to be available is so. But what I’ve laid out here should be enough to make it clear how big this problem is. 

Again, digitizing the thousands of comics that have not been scanned would be a daunting task. It would be time-consuming and expensive. Some of the books – such as the aforementioned He-Man crossover – would run into rights issues that prevent them from being reprinted or added to the app. Others may cause some sort of confusion in terms of royalty payments to the creators involved. And a few – a scant few, but a few – books have been deliberately left out because one of the creators involved would later go on to infamy for reasons entirely unrelated to their comic book career. (If you don’t know what I mean, look up who originally wrote the 1990 Green Lantern title and Justice League Europe and you’ll quickly discover why those books are mostly off the DC website and out of print.) 

And of course, DC Comics is a business, and it’s not likely that they will undertake all of these endeavors unless they see a profit in it. What would the profit be, then, in having employees spend thousands of hours scanning in and remastering the thousands of comics that are currently AWOL? Would they be able to sell enough collected editions to justify it? Would it draw in a mountain of new subscribers to the app? The honest truth is, even if it WERE as simple as hitting a switch that allowed DC to say “Every Superman comic ever is now on the DC Universe Infinite app!” it probably wouldn’t generate enough new users to fully justify the cost.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.

DC Comics is a business, sure, but comic books are an art form, and art should be preserved. And increasingly, in this modern age, digital preservation for older comics, books, movies, music recordings, and other works of art is proving to be the best way to make sure that it is available to future generations. Public domain helps with this. Once a work is available to the public, there are a lot of people who have a vested interest in seeing that it is preserved. The first Action Comics issues – and by extension, the first appearances of Superman – will enter the public domain in 2034. Every year after that, a new batch will be added to that list. If DC doesn’t do it themselves, eventually somebody else will make these classic books available. There’s a comfort to that, but it also begs the question of whether that’s what DC really wants. Is it actually in their best interest to keep these things buried until everybody ELSE can get their hands on them and put them out there for the world?

I’m not speaking objectively, obviously. I want very much for all these missing works to be available there for me to read here and now, although I’m willing to wait for DC to do it right…provided they’re actually doing it. In the earlier years of the app, DC had a relatively regular schedule of adding older comics to the library, but that has largely dried up. Every Wednesday DC adds the most recent NEW comics to the app, but the older back catalogue hasn’t had a substantial update in a very long time. It’s a shame.

And it’s time DC did something about 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. 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 #164: Archie Gets Small — And That Ain’t a Bad Thing

blakemp Geek Punditry , , , , ,

Time for an update on a couple of topics that we’ve talked about here in Geek Punditry before – both of which coincidentally have collided in recent weeks. Last August (in GP #138: Riverdale in Crisis) I wrote about how Archie Comics was changing its long-running digest program, and how that was just one of the many ways that the old stalwart publisher looked like it was in trouble. At the time, I postulated that one of the ways that Archie could possibly right the ship would be to partner up with another publisher to pull out of their dilemma. And because the laws of physics are universal and immutable, it turns out I was right. 

Coming soon!

In December, Archie announced a new partnership with Oni Press (publisher of such things as Rick and Morty and Adventure Time, among many other fine comics). Although it appears as though Archie is still publishing their own digests and one-shots, which is almost all they’ve done the last few years, Oni is going to release three new ongoing Archie series later this year: a new volume of Archie, a new Sabrina series, and a continuation of Archie’s popular horror line of titles with Archie in Hell. I’m back and forth on these. I’m more of a fan of the classic, traditional Archie comics than I am of the various attempts to modernize them over the past two decades, even though some of them (like Mark Waid’s Archie run) were done very well. I am, however, intrigued by the fact that this new Archie is going to be written by W. Maxwell Prince, creator of Image Comics’ incredible horror title Ice Cream Man as well as my favorite miniseries of last year, the decidedly non-horror Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum.

But more pertinent today is the fact that Oni is also going to release new archive and paperback editions of classic Archie stories. Earlier this week, they announced what some of those will be, including a hardcover edition of Tom King’s Archie: The Decision, omnibus collections of Archie: The Married Life, and a “definitive” edition of the horror title Afterlife With Archie. I just have to say, it is audacious as heck to produce a “definitive” edition of a comic book series that was never finished because the writer got distracted by working on the Riverdale TV show.

“So is the ‘Deluxe Edition’ going to have an ending?”
“HAHAHAHAHA! No.”

But that’s not all! Oni also announced three new collections of the “New Riverdale” comics from about a decade ago, reprinting the Archie, Sabrina, and Jughead titles from that era. And these New Riverdale collections will all be in their nifty and acclaimed Compact Comics format!

Hold on a second… “Compact Comics.” That sounds familiar.

Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?

Oh yeah! It’s familiar because DC Comics launched that format back in 2024. DC’s Compact Comics are a format just slightly larger than a mass market paperback book. The series was introduced in an attempt to grab readers who otherwise might not be in a comic shop or want to carry around a full-size graphic novel. (I talked about it in GP #119: It’s the Little Things, and I suggested future titles DC could give the Compact Comics treatment in GP #124: Compact These!) DC was the first comic publisher – in the modern era, anyway – to make a major push in this digest sized-market, and with books collecting anywhere from a single 120-page graphic novel to over 400 pages of a series for only $9.99, the line has become a smash hit. By the end of this year, DC will have 37 different titles available, ranging from perennial classics like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Kingdom Come to newer acclaimed series like Far Sector and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (The latter, coincidentally, happens to be the basis for this summer’s Supergirl movie. Funny how that works out, isn’t it?)

Now it’s true that success in any field of entertainment, comic books included, will inevitably inspire imitators, so once DC’s Compact Comics made a splash it was only a matter of time before other companies got into the game. Marvel joined the fray with their “Premiere Collection,” books that are slightly larger than DC’s and at a slightly higher price point ($14.99 instead of $9.99). Boom! Studios will also join in next month with the first “Compact Edition” of their popular Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series, also at $14.99. Oni, however, is even bolder than these two. Their Compact Comics line not only copies DC’s name, price point, and publishing dimensions, but even the trade dress is, save for the color scheme, almost identical to DC’s. Looking at an Oni Compact Comic and a DC Compact Comic, someone who doesn’t know anything about the respective companies could easily be forgiven for thinking they were released by the same publisher.

“Can I copy your homework?”
“Fine, but change it a little so the teacher doesn’t notice.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I really don’t object to any of this. I love the Compact Comics format and, as I’ve said before, I would be perfectly happy if this became the default collected format for most comic books. It’s more appealing to the casual reader, and provides an easier way to break into markets outside of the realm of die-hard fans, like drugstore bookshelves or airport shops. And as much as I dislike movie tie-in covers, DC could be forgiven if they were to release a print of the Woman of Tomorrow book with a photo of Milly Alcock on the cover and a sticker that says something like “the graphic novel that inspired the DC Studios movie!” Hardcovers, archive editions, and “deluxe” editions in the larger format are fine, of course, but if all you want is to read the story, you can’t beat this style. I am just amused by how flagrantly Oni ran with DC’s success.

As for the future of Archie – I’m very glad that they’ve found a partner to help them stay alive. And I hope that this first wave of books is enough of a success to justify future waves. As I said, the “New Riverdale” stuff isn’t really my bag, but in the future I would love to see more books in the Compact Comics format – classic Archie, of course, would be the bee’s knees. But I would also like to see some of the less traditional stuff, like Archie’s Red Circle heroes, the Mighty Crusaders – even the Impact Comics versions of those characters that were published (coincidentally) by DC back in the 90s but haven’t been seen since. 

Archie’s back library is vast and varied, even though the tales of the gang from Riverdale are their bread and butter. Having them in a good, readable, sharable format is a great thing. Here’s hoping this first wave is a huge hit so that we can all get more.

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. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He’s waiting for the Compact Comics version of Jughead’s Diner. Go ahead, Google it. It’s a thing.