Kryptonian Thought-Beast

Watched:  10/03/2021 Format:  HBOmax Viewing:  First Decade:  2010's Director:  Sam Liu Look.  This... should never have been a movie.  I know what DC/ WB Animation was thinking, but I have no idea what DC/ WB Animation was thinking. Winding it way back, in 1988 I would have been about 13 when I stumbled across The Killing Joke  as a comic book.  And, yes, at one point I had a first printing of the comic, which rises and falls in value on a regular basis.   It's worth noting - Moore and Bolland were commissioned to do the comic en route to the Keaton-starring  Batman  movie.  Moore now distances himself from the comic as he has all things DC.  It was, I assume meant to be something of the moment and to give people curious about Batman and the Joker and modern comics something they could pick up as a "graphic novel" at B. Dalton Booksellers.   This was the era just before 1989's Batman movie, and DC was...

Polygon recently ran an oral history of the New 52 effort from DC Comics .  It features then DC Co-Publisher, Dan Didio, as well as a number of writers from the era.  It's a fascinating article for a lot of reasons, in part because of what those interviewed considered success and good ideas, and it seems that at least one person seems to have some difficulty separating fact from fiction on a few points. A lot of talent - writers, artists and editors - seem to have turned down Polygon's request for an interview, some even citing that working on the New 52/ Nu52 was so unpleasant, they'd rather not talk about it.  So the number of voices that you'll see represented are minimal and probably well insulated from being seen as "difficult" or "willing to talk" by the current folks in charge.  After all, it's a tiny industry, and speaking out of turn even about deposed rulers can still label you as a problem. In my opinion, reading the article, it's ...

Well, that went better than expected.   If you watched, I invite you to jump into the comments. It's hard to wrap up talking about an entire season of a television show, but I can say without reservation that it was considerably better than I figured we'd get.  I've done some due diligence - I watched *most* of Smallville , all of Supergirl to date, several seasons of The Flash , about 2.5 seasons of Legends of Tomorrow , and plenty of crossovers between the shows.   The CW DC shows are great to watch on the elliptical when there's a shortage of O2 headed to your skull, but none of it's working on the level of Watchmen or name-your-prestige-show.   At this point, I've seen some remarkable comics adaptations on TV as well as the movies.  I'm still reeling from what Marvel has delivered on Disney+. I didn't mind that DC and CW were afraid to take on a Superman show.  After all, Superman should be a movie-level property, even if Superman has t...

Watched:  08/09/2021 Format:  HBOmax Viewing:  First Decade:  2020's Director:  James Gunn For more ways to listen Jamie and Ryan take on a hastily assembled mission to watch the rebooty sequel to the 2016 disaster, this time with a heavy dose of what they were trying to do in the first place - get that James Gunn vibe. A wild cast lines up as our anti-heroes take a Caribbean tour and DC throws yet more stuff at the wall, utterly unsure of what they're doing, but with the promise of a whole bunch of nonsense looking you in the eye. The Signal Watch PodCast · 157: "The Suicide Squad" (2021) - A Kryptonian Thought-Beast PodCast w/ Jamie and Ryan Music: Folsom Prison Blues , Johnny Cash People Who Died , Jim Carroll Band DC Movies and TV The Signal Watch PodCast · DC Cinema and TV

Watched:  08/02/2021 Format:  YouTube Viewing:  First Decade:  2010's Director:   Patrick Meaney Chris Claremont didn't invent the X-Men , but he did turn them from a middling Marvel team book that could have/ should have disappeared into a sprawling mythology with beloved characters that became a multimedia franchise (that Disney is probably losing a lot of sleep over how to properly exploit).  Chris Claremont didn't introduce me to comics, but he did write comics that hit me like lightning, over and over again, and made me a devoted comics reader - a habit that has lasted 35+ years. While everyone is still young and healthy, a documentary crew put together what is really a remarkable doc explaining what Claremont's X-Men was, why it was so unique in the world of comics, and what eventually broke it.  Including interviews from people who broke it, still totally unaware of what they did 25 years after the fact, still high on their own supply.