Adapting directly from overrated modern source materials is what's bringing down comics films

Inverse recently argued that direct reliance on certain source material for making a comics adaptation has only hindered such films, with Supergirl being the latest casualty:

In the early days, these movies were far more willing to bend comic book lore to the will of the screenwriter and director – the original Blade screenplay from David S. Goyer, rewrote the character’s origins — created by Marv Wolfman — to be set in America instead of London, a change that quickly made its way to the page, and many other superhero films took their own liberties with the source material as well. But now that the genre has become one of the most prevalent in Hollywood, these franchises have started plumbing the depths of canon with more intentionality, directly adapting iconic storylines and using that sense of “accuracy” as a key part of the marketing…a strategy that has earned mixed results. In the case of this year’s Supergirl, a movie currently being met with middling reviews and a disappointing start to its box office run, part of the criticism has been a lack of fidelity to the Woman of Tomorrow storyline that it’s predominantly based on. But here’s the thing: This criticism could’ve been avoided wholesale if the DCU hadn’t made that adaptational choice such a major factor in the writing and promotion of the movie.

I would just like to note that Goyer's a very overrated writer himself, and I'm not forgetting the time he made repellent remarks about She-Hulk over a decade ago, and the story where he depicted Superman throwing out his USA citizenship. Goyer may have proven a worse comics writer than a movie writer. With that noted, there's certainly an interesting point made here that decades ago, filmmakers had the creative license to build a story that stood on its own, wasn't based directly on any particular story or back issue, but drew certain ideas seen in the stories for developing a screenplay. Now, in an era where creative freedom's been all but taken away, they're almost literally obligated to adapt overrated modern miniseries that most film critics aren't willing to admit was hardly worth the effort compared to the films, and that is problematic.

And if there's a flaw in this article so far that needs to be addressed, it's that Blade first debuted in 1972-79's Tomb of Dracula series, becoming an ally to the main vampire hunting protagonists (Quincy Harker, Rachel van Helsing, et al). That series was set in the UK, and Blade did not have any kind of series at that time; he just made guest appearances in various series up to the early 90s, and if he got a series by that time, it may have been published under a brief imprint called Midnight Sons. So you know that Inverse's writers are again proving to make insufficient effort to do the math and connect the dots. Mainly because they perpetuate the sugarcoating of Tom King's miniseries, along with another error:

While there are quite a few other problems the film faces, it’s hard to ignore that its narrative issues stem from the decision to straightforwardly adapt Woman of Tomorrow in the first place. And at first glance, that seems like a strange takeaway – it’s a critically acclaimed storyline, and for years comic book fans have wanted to see films adapt iconic story arcs more directly. However, there’s a reason Woman of Tomorrow works on the page in a way the filmed version never could: it’s a story that operates as a deconstruction of Kara Zor-El and the unwavering optimism she has represented throughout her existence as a character. Exploring her buried grief regarding the destruction of her homeworld and her refusal to end a life takes on a new significance because she’s spent over 60 years of real-time storytelling suppressing her pain and upholding her golden rule – directly adapting WoT as Kara’s first DCU outing misses the metatextual nature of why the book works within the decades-long lineage of Supergirl as a comic book character.

That’s not to mention the ways in which the film outright changes certain elements of the story. In the book Krem is a despicable mass-murderer, but the fact that Ruthye and Supergirl banish him to the Phantom Zone instead of ending him forces him to reckon with his own failings as a human being and grow to feel genuine remorse for his crimes – making him a slaver and a trafficker almost demands he meet his end because a moviegoing audience truthfully just has a different tolerance for that kind of debauchery. Kara slaying him by the end fits a character who’s evil in a nastier way, but it also compromises the original intent of a story that’s ultimately about Kara and Ruthye preserving their own innocence and refusing to beat Krem in a way that validates his violent worldview.

So they're saying "deconstruction" is entirely acceptable? Sigh. Another serious mistake, right down to how they claim fandom wants to see more direct adaptations of anything. It all depends, and besides, whenever DC and Marvel produced miniseries past the early 2000s, they were some of the worst tales ever to litter the landscape. Also, I seem to recall that, when Batman caused the Joker to fall to his death from a helicopter in the 1989 film, that was done without any moralizing coming before or after. Even Superman 2 from 1980 didn't seem to do anything like that. Even the 1st Spider-Man movie from 2002 depicted the burglar who murdered Ben Parker falling to his death after Peter injured his hand to disarm him of the handgun. So if the new Supergirl film does wallow in heavy handed moralizing over whether to kill a repulsive villain, and ends with the Maid of Might jettisoning her earlier stance, isn't that another mistake in-screenplay?

Also, where do they get the idea a movie audience is more open to the idea of superheroes obliterating the worst of criminals, or that a comics audience isn't? All that does is suggest, on the one hand, that either/both are absurdly hypocritical, and it only makes for a more divisive situation.

Anyway, John Nolte at Breitbart's spoken about how the Supergirl film's sunk big time in 2 weeks:

Between production and promotion, Warner Bros. sunk around $250 million into Supergirl, which puts the break-even number at around $450 million, which means we’re looking at losses in the hundred million range, not to mention the damage done to the overall DC brand.

James Gunn’s Superman was not a very good movie, but it was good enough, good enough that people were willing to see what came next from his rebooted DC Universe. Supergirl is a drain on the one thing a successful franchise requires, and that’s goodwill. Next up, later this year from DC, is something called Clayface, which no one asked for.

We’ll see.

No, we won't. The spotlight on villains got out of hand in its own way, and it's a poor example of what to emphasize. Interesting there's no news so far that they may want to adapt characters like the Silver Age Atom to the silver screen, because that in itself could have clever potential, as could possibly a shape-shifter like Metamorpho. But under overrated filmmakers like Gunn, it's always possible such possibilities for adaptations could be as totally botched as the Supergirl film. Also, I don't think in the original comics, Superman and Supergirl had to be within the range of a yellow sun solar system proper in order for their powers to work. It's just that when within the confines of a red sun system, their powers were nullified, and I think there were times when red solar radiation was used as a plot point in at least a few pre-Crisis Superman stories as a way to portray a weakness in sci-fi terms without his being in a red sun system proper. One more reason this new live action movie is clearly theater of the absurd.

And in the end, once again, it's a terrible shame Supergirl's been subjected to such injustices and indignities as a comics creation, along with a movie adaptation. The sad result of only so much corporate neglect and mismanagement. But who knows if the box office receipts will convince the studios to allow screenwriters and directors more creative license to build a story they think is worthwhile? Even then, it'd require creatives who aren't heavy handed ideologues, and they're sadly in short supply in modern Hollywood.

Biased interview with Supergirl screenwriter

Variety interviewed Ana Nogueira, the screenwriter of what now looks like a total botch job for a new take on Supergirl in movies. It may have been written prior to the official release of the film, but does have what to ponder, and shake heads at in disbelief and sadness. First:

Nogueira, an actor and playwright-turned-screenwriter, was originally tapped to pen a “Supergirl” script when Warner Bros. was developing the movie as a spinoff of “The Flash.” But when James Gunn and Peter Safran were named co-CEOs of DC Studios in 2022, they decided to take the DCU in a different direction — and brought Nogueira along for the ride. In fact, they were so enamored with her take on the Supergirl story — both in its original iteration and her revised pitch, based on Tom King’s “Woman of Tomorrow,” which follows Kara and a young alien girl named Ruthye (Eve Ridley) on a quest for vengeance — that Nogueira will also pen DC’s upcoming live-action “Teen Titans” movie, as well as a “Wonder Woman” film.

Notice how this sham of a trade journal's perpetuating the use of a masculine term, "actor", instead of "actress"? Well that's another problem with this day and age of Orwellian vocabulary, and it's very insulting to the intellect as much as it is to women. That aside, what was so awesome about a tale originally penned by a writer as awful as King, they just had to adapt that? And if the screenplay for Supergirl is that bad, I hesitate to think what a TT and WW movie will be like under her scripting. Now, here's what they say about the addition of Lobo to the story:

Lobo, the cigar-smoking alien bounty hunter played by Jason Momoa, was originally in the “Woman of Tomorrow” comic, but got cut from the story. Take me through the decision to add him back for the movie?

So that was brought to me. [Gunn and Safran] were like, “We want to do ‘Woman of Tomorrow,’ and we want you to find a way to put Lobo in. We think Lobo has a place in this.” I think their thinking was we know Jason Momoa is interested in this, and how can you turn that down? He’s so excellent in it, and you have to find a place when somebody is willing to go there. But at the same time, it also makes sense, because it’s intergalactic. It’s hard to bring Lobo to Earth — he’s always taken place in outer space — so they’re like, “This is an opportunity to bring in this character that would be hard to bring in.”

I knew Tom King had based the comic on “True Grit,” but originally, Lobo was the bounty hunter and Kara was the girl. Then he was like, “That doesn’t quite work.” He flipped it, and he brought in Ruthye. But when I was trying to bring in Lobo, I was like, “There is a third character in ‘True Grit’: Matt Damon’s character,” so if we follow that structure, there’s still room for this guy who is like a frenemy to the two of them. And Lobo is the ultimate frenemy.

From the panning reviews I've read so far, it looks like Lobo's only in the film to look "cool", and little else. Also, there were times in the comics of the past 4 decades where Lobo traveled to Earth, so I don't understand what's the point of this tommyrot. Besides, if they want to take creative liberties to depict Lobo journeying to Earth, they could've if they'd wanted to. That said, what's appalling in the comics is how Lobo was characterized post-Crisis, as some kind of leftover from the Soviet Union who led to the deaths of his fellow citizens on his home planet. This is why it would've been far better to leave him characterized as the Velorpian adversary he began as in the 3rd issue of Omega Men in 1983, pre-Crisis. Because how does his post-Crisis characterization truly count as a "hero"?

The film is about two young women learning to save themselves — and each other. But they also save all these other girls who’ve been kidnapped by the Brigands. How did that come to be?

So, that is not in the comic. I put it in for very boring writer reasons: in the comic, there’s this central planet where there’s been this horrific act in the past — essentially a genocide, an ethnic cleansing — and you find out that Krem was in some way involved. What’s really important about this is them coming and seeing loss that is not perfectly reflective of theirs, but just that deep pain that these girls have been through. And we also had to see that Krem is just like a total POS; that this guy is somebody that we are going to want to see meet a certain end. But I needed it to be something that was happening in the present and not the past, because in the comic, you can jump around to the past, but you can’t do that here. I needed something to feel really immediate, like there was saving to be done now.

I also wanted it to be something that specifically put our girls in jeopardy, so that they would be a target. Because otherwise, I don’t know why the Brigands would come after them. So, it’s those silly, boring writerly things that then end up leading to a larger plot. And it just tracked for me that the Brigands are an all-male race: What do they need?

Better scripting to portray them as convincing villains, and how interesting she admits, in a way, that the end result is boring. That aside, what are the chances the premise she wrote involving the "central planet" is another negative allusion to Israel and the USA, just like in the previous Superman film?

Also, if history items matter, prior to the official opening, Inverse wrote about how the Girl of Steel came to be in the Silver Age, and it also says:

It’s ironic that, despite the impetus of his origin story being his existence as the “Sole Survivor of Krypton,” Superman hasn’t been that in quite some time. Over the years DC Comics has slowly increased the number of Kryptonians who survived the destruction of their planet: General Zod was one of the first, debuting in Adventure Comics #283 in 1961, and since then they’ve added the entire city of Kandor (a population of thousands that accidentally avoided the destruction of Krypton when they were shrunken down and put in a glass enclosure by Braniac), H’el (a Kryptonian clone created by Superman’s father), and even Jor-El himself, transported through time by the machinations of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan (a creative decision that surely sent psychic shockwaves down Alan Moore’s spine).

Interesting there's no objective description given of what was also a recent take in the past decade on characters from the Watchmen, one that was quite pointless.

In her earliest stories, Supergirl resides at Midvale Orphanage under the secret identity of Linda Lee, only using her powers to aid Kal-El sparingly because he didn’t want her revealed to the world until she’d mastered them. Eventually she’s adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, makes her debut as Supergirl to the world in 1962’s Action Comics #285, and graduates from high school as Linda Lee Danvers; after her college years, Linda relocated to San Francisco and took up a variety of different jobs in her off-time from superheroics, including serving as a TV news camera operator, student counseling, and even acting. The 1970s was arguably the biggest period for defining Kara as a character – along with her relocation, she also received her first major villain: Nasthalthia “Nasty” Luthor, the stubbornly loyal niece of Lex Luthor who made it her mission to discover the secret identity of her hated enemy, Supergirl.

Kara’s popularity made her a mainstay in Superman lore, earning her two solo comics as well as appearances in other Superman books, but 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths brought her character to a shocking and tragic end. Years earlier, in an attempt to reconcile the canon inconsistencies that naturally arose from decades of different writers, Kara Zor-El and the Superman of the 50s through the 80s were retroactively labeled heroes of the reality Earth-One, while the original Golden Age Superman of the 1930s and his cousin (more on her later) hailed from Earth-Two – Crisis on Infinite Earths was an attempt made by DC editorial to totally erase the Multiverse, having felt the concept ultimately created more problems than it fixed. The reality-destroying villain of Crisis, a being known as the Anti-Monitor, posed so great a threat that heroes were recruited from multiple alternate Earths to stop him; in the battle, Kara Zor-El was fatally wounded while trying to save her Superman, and when the story concluded with the establishment of a new, singular DC Comics timeline, Kara’s existence and sacrifice were erased for decades.

You can reasonably wonder why they didn't draw ideas from the Silver/Bronze Age history for Kara instead of a shoddy miniseries by an overrated writer who spends too much time writing up contrived takes on trauma. Interesting they admit it was tragic that editorial had to mandate Kara's demise in COIE, and took such a casual approach to the whole notion any character who's supposedly a burden should go nowhere but into the grave. But seriously, it's disputable the Multiverse literally made things confusing when it's 2 or more dimensions involved, and even Marvel's had their share of parallel worlds. The article also brings up Earth-2 counterpart Power Girl's history:

After CoIE, Power Girl was folded into DC’s new Prime Earth, with a fresh backstory that presented her as the long-lived descendant of an Atlantean sorcerer. Naturally, this was a disappointment to fans, so when 2005’s Infinite Crisis (a direct sequel to the original) resurrected the concept of the Multiverse, Power Girl’s origin was again retconned to reveal that she had actually always been the Supergirl of Earth-Two, and had somehow survived the destruction of her original reality; this has remained her consistent backstory to this day, a tragic recontextualization that makes her a refugee of both Krypton and Earth-Two. Adopting the name Power Girl to differentiate herself from Superman (and stand on her own with the appearance of yet another Supergirl), Kara Zor-L’s presence in pop culture has largely been relegated to countless jokes about the overtly sensual nature of her costume, but on the page she’s an incredibly intelligent and authoritative character in her own right, with years of experience as a superhero that make her a stark, mature contrast to the frequent depiction of other Supergirls as impulsive teenagers.

And here, I'm not sure fandom was ever "disappointed" with the retcon for PG, so much as with how Infinite Crisis was such a repellent tale begun with a prelude story that forcibly killed Blue Beetle Ted Kord. IIRC, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, the character created by Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duursema in 1982, was the father figure in the retcon, and funny the writer didn't take the time to make that clear. The post-Crisis retcon to PG was tame compared to what came about when Identity Crisis did in 2004. As for PG being intelligent, isn't that thanks to the best writers? Another example of how they don't have what it takes to credit whomever they thought did the best jobs in characterization when given a writing assignment. Who knows, the Inverse writers probably wouldn't even credit themselves if they got the job!

It wasn’t until 2004 that the grandmother of Supergirls finally returned, receiving a rebooted origin in the pages of Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman series. Her initial post-Crisis origin involved Kara (chronologically older than Kal) being sent away from Krypton at the same time as her cousin, with space shenanigans delaying her arrival for decades and causing her to meet her younger cousin in adulthood while she has the appearance of a 16 year-old girl; later comics revised this by once again having her home of Argo City survive Krypton’s original destruction, only for her parents to send her to Earth before Argo City is forcibly integrated into the Bottle City of Kandor by Braniac. Her first appearance on Earth sees Kara train with Wonder Woman and the Amazons before she’s kidnapped by Darkseid who plans on making her one of his Female Furies — after being saved by the combined might of the Trinity, the new Supergirl goes on an odyssey of self-discovery around the world, encountering Power Girl, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League before she’s transported to the 31st Century where she temporarily joins the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Since her post-Crisis debut in the early 2000s, Supergirl has gone through a few more reboots and reimaginings, but most of them use her 2004 origin as a launchpad to integrate her into whatever new confusing company-wide reboot DC Comics is going through at the time. Across 70 years and multiple different characters holding the mantle, Kara Zor-El has remained one of the most popular characters in the Superman mythos, growing far beyond her initial conception as a “female Superman” to become a character with a vast library of stories in her own right, including her brief time as a Red Lantern as well as the recent Woman of Tomorrow arc the movie is based on.

Gee, doesn't this prove how unsuccessful DiDio's supposed caring about the character was in the long run? The company wide crossovers, which they didn't bother to clearly mention, were another problem that sunk the return of Kara Zor-El, not to mention the disgraced Eddie Berganza. Some could reasonably say the heavy-handed allusions to sexuality in the 2005-11 series could reflect how corrupt Berganza was, and he definitely helped bring comicdom down the horrid levels it's at now. And here we also have an example of no objective view taken on what stories were written up in the past 2 decades, not even the Red Lantern tale that spun out of the awful Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern. At least they admit what came since was confusing, though they don't mention it was just plain uninspired as a result of DiDio's forced darkening of the DCU.

Now onto a few more reviews of this sad catastrophe. Here's what a Forbes writer says about the film, and this one is absurd in its own bias regarding the source material:

I have not read the Tom King source material that inspired this story, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but I know it’s considered quite good and brilliantly drawn and inked. Supergirl is neither of those things. A dull blend of Guardians and an attempt to be Mad Max, but shot with increasingly ugly special effects that have been plaguing many blockbusters and layered on top of a script doing the original source material, and its actors, no favors.

Oh god, is this such a groaner. I've seen some of the art from the original GN, and it's some of the most dreadful, uninspired to come down the pike in the past decade, making Kara look very unappealing and sexless. Let's also not forget how King makes too much of a habit in his writing of relying on trauma themes, and coupled with that, it's exactly why the story makes for a most awful wellspring. Something tells me that, even if the reviewer did read the GN, he'd still be "diplomatic", which is pretty odd for somebody working as a professional reviewer to begin with. And yet, something also tells me that, if the screenplay were based on the writings of 20th century scribes like Otto Binder and his successors at the time, the reviewer would've been far less kind, as though relying upon a more optimistic vision in itself was a crime. And if so, that's very appalling, because it would compound the perception modern reviewers have a grudge against optimism.

There's also another review worth pondering, on 411 Mania, reminding everybody of one of the most decidedly rotten details about the previous Superman movie that's followed up on in Supergirl:

Unfortunately, Supergirl continues an ill-advised plot thread, first introduced in Superman, involving Superman’s parents. The last movie shockingly revealed that Superman’s parents sent him to Earth to conquer it and subjugate the human race.

The revelation is certainly a unique narrative choice, differing from past, more traditional interpretations of Jor-El. However, Superman failed to meaningfully flesh out that detail. Supergirl continues that plot thread to some extent, but it still doesn’t work. Basically, the new DC Universe opened a huge can of worms and has no idea how to deal with it.

It reminds me that 2 decades ago, when Dan DiDio, Eddie Berganza and Jeph Loeb launched the post-2004 take on Kara Zor-El in a new solo book, there was a storyline in issue 16 co-written by Mark Sable where it looked like Kara's father was doing terrible wrongs, which, if the following synopsis at Grand Comics Database is correct, was disgusting, because it claims Kara was forced to kill her mother and her father sent her to kill Superman?!? Well that was abominable, and so too was the premise for Jor-El in Gunn's Superman film. As a result, that's why, if Kara kills Krem in the new Supergirl followup, it not only reeks of moral hypocrisy, it perpetuates some of the most embarrassingly bad storylines to emerge when DiDio was still holding DC hostage to his whims. Also, note the continued use of "revealed", instead of "established", and that illogic is very grating.

Anyway, John Nolte at Breitbart's announced that this new take on the Maid of Might has become a global fiasco:

Supergirl didn’t just flop at the box office this weekend; it is a flop of epic proportions, an abysmal failure that will be remembered only as a failure.

With a disastrous $38 million domestic opening and an even more humiliating overseas take of $30 million, Supergirl is a bigger domestic flop than The Marvels ($46 million), The Flash ($55 million), Black Adam ($67 million), and Morbius ($39 million).

Supergirl’s global opening gross is just $68 million, which means it’s worse than notorious flops such as The Marvels (110 million), Morbius ($84 million), Birds of Prey ($81 million), and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom ($80 million).

Get this: Supergirl’s global is not much better than Madam Web ($50 million) and Blue Beetle ($43 million).

The production and promotion budget for Supergirl is right around $250 million. That makes the break-even number at $450 to $500 million. Supergirl will be lucky to hit $200 million worldwide. Warner Bros. is looking at massive losses. [...]

Well, it certainly didn’t help as the hype machine kicked in that Supergirl star Milly Alcock — who has all the charisma of a sidewalk and the body of a 14-year-old boy — started opening her mouth about how she’s a victim of sexism and Supergirl is queer.

From what I've read of the movie to date, it doesn't sound like there's any love interest or romance in it, quite a contrast to how Kara hoped to find love with a boyfriend in the Silver Age stories. And that's another of the biggest problems with modern movies - PC mandates shun any chance of romance.

In the end, of course it's very sad the result is a movie that adds insult to injury 42 years after the failed Supergirl film of 1984 starring Helen Slater. Now, for all we know, it could take decades until they try again, and for all we know, even then it'll probably wind up being a case of "3 strikes and you're out". Sometimes, ever since the failed adaptation of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski in 1991, I've wondered if filmmakers and studios are deliberately making these lady-starring action epics bad in order to taint the source material. The new Supergirl movie could sadly be another hint at that.

More signs it's looking bad for the live action Supergirl film

The reviews are in, and according to Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart, even leftist trade journals like Variety are appalled with the new live action take on Supergirl, describing it as follows:

Even the left-wing Hollywood press is turning against Warner Bros’ new summer superhero tent pole, Supergirl, calling the film “super-horrendous” with the “worst script” ever.

The review by Variety’s Owen Gleiberman was quite negative ahead of the film’s worldwide debut coming up on Friday. The Hollywood newser ripped the film as “pretentious” for it’s “punk rock attitude” that is “cringe.”

Gleiberman dismissed the film, writing, “here’s the key thing to know about Supergirl, the second outing from James Gunn’s DC Studios: The entire movie thinks it’s ‘punk rock.'” And that, Gleiberman says, is “cringe.”

“The film introduces us to Kara Zor-El (Milly Alcock), who rather than being the spunky Supergirl of legend, saving earthly lives in a primary-colored spandex suit, is an interplanetary drunk in a Blondie T-shirt (how punk rock!), bopping from one arid dystopia to the next,” Gleiberman explained.

What's additionally troubling is how the Girl of Steel's depicted as a drunkard, which Culture Mix talks about some more:

Supergirl spends most of her screen time in the movie being drunk, nearly drunk, or hung over. There are multiple scenes that are meant to make Supergirl into some sort of sad superhero emo girl, who uses alcohol because she’s got inner demons about being an orphan. It’s supposed to make her look sympathetic, but her repetitive drunkenness gets tiresome to watch after a while.

When it's that heavy-handed, something is definitely wrong, right down to how they're forcing Supergirl into the darkness, instead of offering an optimistic vision of a woman who could overcome any trauma she suffered and find happiness again. If this film lacks a sense of humor to boot, that's another major error. And the filmmakers may have screwed up with the following plotlines as well:

A trio of Sklarian raiders (played by blue-costumed Clara Rosager, purple-costumed Heather Agyepong and red-costumed Alice Hewkin) suddenly invade the bus because they want to steal Ruthye’s sword. A massive fight ensues, Supergirl suddenly exerts her superpowers (because she’s on a yellow light planet), and somehow she’s able to get these Sklarian raiders to tell her where Krem is. He’s on a planet where kidnapped girls are being held captive to be forced into marriage to men. For a superhero movie aimed at families, this pedophilia/child trafficking storyline is quite disturbing and might be inappropriate for viewing by children of a certain age.

Similarly, the movie has some murder scenes that are unsettling and sends hypocritical messages about revenge killings. Several times in the movie, Supergirl gets preachy with Ruthye, by lecturing her to not be consumed by vengeful anger because it will rot her soul. Supergirl literally tells Ruthye that killing Krem won’t be the answer to help Ruthie’s emotional pain.

And that’s why it’s a letdown to see what happens to Krem, because it’s the complete antithesis of Supergirl’s moralistic lectures. Why go to the trouble of having Supergirl hold herself up as taking the “high ground,” when she stoops to the level that she does by the end of this movie? The end fate of Krem is just lazy and formulaic. This movie is really trying to be a superhero version of “Mad Max” meets “Game of Thrones,” but the nihilistic themes in “Mad Max” and “Game of Thrones” just don’t work in a “Supergirl” movie.

There's 2 things that can be said about the above: one, the chances the plotline with slave girls is a metaphor for Islam's support for child-trafficking are very slim. Two, if murder scenes are what the screeplay is built upon, that too is pretty alienating. Let's also recall James Gunn, who's one of the producers of this film, turned out to have made some very offensive jokes among other horrific deeds in the past decade, and also injected a repellent metaphor for Israel into last year's Superman film, which is why he's unqualified to explore the aforementioned themes in the movie. At the end of this review, it also notes that:

Don’t expect any mid-credits or any end-credits scenes to hint how this story might continue, because there are no mid-credits or end-credits scenes in “Supergirl,” probably because the filmmakers ran out of ideas for this underwhelming superhero movie. And there’s no better example of how far off the mark “Supergirl” is than the fact that it isn’t until about 80 minutes into this 108-minute movie before Supergirl is seen in her full iconic superhero costume. “Supergirl” spends so much time trying to prove that Supergirl has an identity crisis, the entire story loses its way in its own identity crisis that falls short of what a great “Supergirl” movie should be.

Ah, that's got to be another huge mistake the scriptwriters made: they take forever to show Kara donning her costume - which looks pretty dull in terms of color here - and only so much time depicting her as a drunkard, while her powers oscillate between stronger and weaker in ways that don't avail. The filmmakers also made the unpardonable error of adapting the script of the overrated Tom King's miniseries, and if that's how it's going to be, you can't be shocked when things go into freefall. A leading error in the film's making has to be that the screenwriters didn't have the creative autonomy to develop their own story free of editorial mandates. And it looks like we'll be seeing the sad results soon at the box office.

Once again, as in 1984, the Maid of Might and her creators (Otto Binder and Al Plastino) have been done a terrible injustice. With the worst part being that the filmmakers - and even modern comics writers - are unlikely to apologize for what they've led to, no matter the box office results.

Since when was Supergirl always stuck in Superman's shadow?

The Conversation wrote a sugarcoated item about Supergirl and the upcoming movie, that rather predictably takes no objective view of the Maid of Might's history:

Since her official debut in 1959, Supergirl has struggled to emerge from the shadow of her cousin, Superman. So it’s a bold move that the second cinematic release in the newly rebooted DC Universe will be Supergirl.

Milly Alcock first appeared as Supergirl in the epilogue to Superman (2025). Her Supergirl is a brash “party girl” – an immediate contrast to David Corenswet’s squeaky clean rendition of Superman. Based on the comic book Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2021) by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, she is a traumatised character, dealing with the destruction of her home planet of Krypton. “I have no people,” Supergirl laments in the trailer.

Well that's the problem: it's based more on the overrated King's story than a screenplay that could stand on its own. Might I also add I don't find the posters showing Supergirl wearing a trenchcoat appealing? The sunglasses may be cool, but the coat ruins everything. And I don't think Supergirl was always in Superman's shadow as they say, if only because there were times in the past where she did have solo adventures printed. The problem is the publishers didn't always see her as the storytelling vehicle she could be if they wanted to invest in serious merit-based writing. And the article has a pretty big goof in the following:

However, Supergirl was not always so introspective. The character and her alter ego, Kara Zor-El, first appeared in 1938, to cash in on the popularity of Superman. She was a preppy teenager who played a supporting helpmate role, allowing Superman to display his paternal side.

Publishers DC Comics also flirted with the concept of Superwoman. A 1943 story had Superman’s girlfriend, reporter Lois Lane, dream that she was Superman’s female counterpart. In her book Supergirl: Contemporary Feminist Reboot of a Hapless DC Comic Helpmate (2022), Batya Weinbaum suggests this moment reflected the “changing position of women in wartime”. In a 1947 story, Lois Lane, Superwoman! from Superman issue #45, Lane is convinced she has superpowers, only to discover she is the victim of a ruse where Superman is using his influence to simulate the experience. This prompts her frustrated exclamation: “You men who try to keep women weak and defenceless – I hate you!”

Lane may well have been addressing the DC editors who published her adventures. In his cultural history of comic book heroines, comic book historian Mike Madrid outlines an excerpt from 1950s-era DC Comics’ editorial policy which reluctantly accepts stories featuring women, but only if the female characters are “secondary in importance”.

Somehow, it's hard to believe a company that readily published Wonder Woman all these years would have a problem publishing anything with a lady in the lead. Either way, they did have some impressive lady co-stars created at the time, and who went on to see better writing as time went by. Also notice the hilarious goof in the year of debut, which is actually Superman's, not Supergirl's, which was originally early 1959.

As for what Lois Lane was written telling in 1947, well, that could easily describe the situation decades later, when men and women alike who had lenient views on discrimination led to the publication of Identity Crisis. Yet that sees no mention in this puff piece, and that's the considerable weakness here. As is the following "explanation" why Kara Zor-El was originally terminated in Crisis on Infinite Earths:

Whereas Superman (played by Christopher Reeve) was introduced in 1978 by the same producers with a daring rescue of a plummeting helicopter, Helen Slater’s Supergirl performs an aerial ballet and frolics with woodland creatures. In comics, Supergirl fared even worse. The character was killed off in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, partly because of her threat to Superman’s unique status as “the last son of Krypton”, and partly because of the film’s disappointing box office takings.

Excuse me? What kind of monumentally stupid explanation is that? The staff may have wanted to establish Kal-El as the last Kryptonian at the time. But that doesn't make Kara a "threat" to said status. What the writer says is disgusting, and undermines any valid lamentation he's making, though he's right the editors used the film's failure as a justification, which is also sick. And then he adds insult to injury when he says:

In comic books, however, death is never permanent. Kara Zor-El and Supergirl were resurrected in 2004 in The Supergirl from Krypton. There was an attempt to add nuance to the character, with a greater emphasis on the trauma she suffered from witnessing the loss of her home planet. But this was rather undermined by various revealing costumes clearly designed to satisfy the male gaze.

And this inherently wrong because? Even years before, there were times when Kara Zor-El was drawn as quite a fashion plate, and the bare midriff costume was actually introduced around the turn of the century, at the middle of Peter David's run on the new take on Supergirl (I think Leonard Kirk was the artist), which was developed out of a character who first appeared in 1988. The real reasons to complain are that no concrete story accompanied the reintroduction in the Superman/Batman title published at the time, or even the solo title that followed, and that a very bad man accused of sexual misconduct was in charge of editing, that being Eddie Berganza, who was only fired from DC in 2017. If there's a valid complaint to make about fetishizing in what he oversaw, it can be blamed on Berganza, and also writer Jeph Loeb. Oddly, when Kara was reintroduced at the time, the figure as drawn by Michael Turner wasn't so busty, if at all. As for the costume, if there's anything wrong with it, and possibly has been for a long time, it's how it was long-sleeved, which makes it look silly. The article, interestingly enough, notes that the TV show starring Melissa Benoist appears to have followed up on the PC view of Supergirl's outfits:

In the pilot episode she finally strikes out on her own with the dramatic rescue of an airliner, assuming the mantle of Supergirl. In a show that employed several female writers and became known for its positive representation of LGBTQ+ issues, problematic topics such as Supergirl’s infantilising name and costume were directly addressed.

Kara refuses to wear revealing versions of the costume from the character’s comic book past. In discussions with her employer, CatCo Worldwide Media CEO Cat Grant, she is told: “I’m a girl. And your boss. And powerful. And rich, and hot, and smart. So, if you perceive Supergirl as anything less than excellent, isn’t the real problem you?” Significantly, Grant is portrayed by actor Calista Flockhart, known for the Ally McBeal series – a show that sparked debates about feminism and women in the workplace in the late 1990s.

Well if all they care about is putting down even creators with more common sense, along with pushing an agenda that did more harm than good, those are just some of the reasons why it's regrettable the Maid of Might's potential has suffered ruin for years. The TV show became increasingly political, and that's why it's more an embarrassment than a classic today. At the end:

The 2021 comic book Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow follows the young alien Ruthye Marye Knoll, who recruits Supergirl to seek revenge after her father is murdered. The story is told from Ruthye’s point of view, the fractured narrative lending the story a fatalistic quality. The narration also emphasises the mythic quality of Supergirl, “who lost everything and kept walking”.

It remains to be seen how closely the film will follow the philosophical source material. Meanwhile, in the pages of the latest DC comic book, writer and artist Sophie Campbell has returned to the brighter tone of the 1960s version of the character, merged with the sensibilities of the 2015 television series. The many interpretations of Supergirl continue to reveal the character’s durability and versatility.

If memory serves, the writer of the latest series is really a man with the name Ross, and it sure is ironic somebody who claimed earlier the outfits in post-2004 Supergirl were a problem suddenly makes no such arguments when somebody of "Sophie Campbell"'s standing is helming the new series. Predictably, no objective view is taken of King's overrated story either, and that takes away any impact this puff piece might've had.

Since the new movie's also a subject, Polygon says the director, as much as the screenwriter, did draw "inspiration" from both King's story and what the assigned screenwriter turned out:

"I very deliberately started with the script that Ana wrote," Gillespie says, "and I put together a lot of visuals around that coming from the script, trying to make something that I would be excited about and that had this grit and flavor of the Supergirl character, Kara." [...]

"After that, I went back and visited Tom King's Woman of Tomorrow and took some images from that," he says, "but I didn't want to start there because I didn't want to just do the comic book."

Unfortunately, that's just what he did nevertheless, and borrowing even remotely from something that pretentious doesn't help a bit. Nor did injecting feminism into the narratives of the TV show or even the comics themselves avail, but that's certainly a moot point by now. It remains to be seen what the box office results will be for this new Supergirl movie, and based on how it's crafted, I'd rather stay home and read the comics I own instead. These articles are just more examples of stuff that ultimately doesn't help the Maid of Might's reputation at all.

DC desecrates Wonder Woman for "pride month"

Warner Todd Huston at Breitbart informs that for their latest, pointless "pride month" special, DC's included a transsexual pseudo-Wonder Woman, using a previously created character to put in the costume:

DC Comics has announced the introduction of a transgender version of Wonder Woman for Pride Month.

The plot of the upcoming Justice League Dream Girls – A DC Pride Event #1 comic follows the company’s transgender character, Nia Nal, aka Dreamer, as she and several other characters enter into an alternate reality where Nia, not Diana Prince, had become Wonder Woman. [...]

The character first appeared on TV in 2018 — but not in the comics. Transgender actor Nicole Maines first portrayed Dreamer on the CW’s Supergirl TV series that aired from 2015 to 2021. The character finally made the switch to comics in 2021 — also in a DC “Pride” event issue — after Supergirl was canceled. [...]

Along with comics writer Jadzia Axelrod, actor Maines also helped to write the Wonder Woman switch issue, according to reports. [...]

DC has turned several of its top stars into queer characters over the last decade.

In 2023, DC issued a line of comics in which Alan Scott, who is the Green Lantern, turned out to be gay. But the comic flopped hard and sales were dismal.

The year before that, DC’s attempt to make Superman’s son, Jon Kent, into a randy bisexual character also flopped and was cancelled after only 18 issues.

DC has also pushed a list of their long-standing character into the LGBTQ+ theme, including Midnighter and Apollo, Batwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and the Tim Drake version of Robin.

Well this is more than enough reason to practically avoid advertising in their comics, based on how they're desecrating even so much as the costume of an iconic figure, putting a politicized, badly created character in the outfit. And they keep doing it despite how rock bottom sales have been for all these repeated shovings down the throat, which they also refuse to stop keeping canon. Some can reasonably ask if the new Paramount ownership intends to let DC keep receiving funding if all they care about is wasting it on propaganda that's not selling. But chances are just as possible they won't take any steps to make DC quit, so we can only hope. The best to hope for at this point is if Paramount ownership will close down the publisher, which would probably be the best thing to do for now. And even then, they don't belong under a conglomerate ownership.

The whole pride month propaganda's been going on too long, and what's also aggravating is how this is what they consider a big deal, not holidays from foreign countries like Thailand's Yi-Peng lantern festival. All this LGBT propaganda only underscores the stunning lack of creativity now dominating the mainstream.

Mandalorian movie now a certified flop, and new Supergirl movie may be next

John Nolte at Breitbart recently spoke about how the Mandalorian and Grogu film has thudded harder in its 2nd week:

Back in 2018, when Solo: A Star Wars Story was bombing, it grossed $29.3 million in its second weekend, which represented a collapse of 65.2 percent. After ten days, its total gross was just $149 million.

The Mandalorian and Grogu’s second weekend gross will land at right around $23 million, which will put its ten day gross at around $135 million.

The Mandalorian will be lucky to cross $175 to $200 million domestic.

We’ll see what the overseas number looks like, but $450 to $500 million is the likely break-even number. Solo died off with $393 million global. The Mandalorian will be lucky to hit $300 to $350 million.

So, yeah, Disney’s groomers are looking at a massive loss.

Tee hee.

Gee, how will Disney blame the fans for this one? In the past (and even though pretty much every Star Wars fan loves the female-led Rogue One), we’ve been slandered as sexist for hating on Disney’s Skywalker sequel trilogy. Well, The Mandalorian is led by a guy. We’ve been smeared as homophobic for hating all the queer shit in Solo (pansexual, robot-humping Lando). Well, as far as I can tell, the Mandalorian character isn’t queer.

Disney will never blame itself. So what’s left…?

You gonna blame it on Star Wars fatigue when there hasn’t been a Star Wars movie in seven years?

It is pretty fascinating how, when the last of the previous trilogy left theaters, so too did pretty much anything else SW-related. The excitement of the SW franchise, alas, is gone, and the Mandalorian movie's proven it by now.

In addition to the above news, Nolte also brought up the overall costs of the Supergirl film's production, and how the box office prospects don't look good:

Tucked away inside the far-left Deadline’s free ad (“Supergirl Advance Tickets Go On Sale Before DC Pic’s June 26 Opening”) for the upcoming Supergirl is the real news: this sucker cost $175 million to produce.

From here, the math is pretty simple. Add at least $75 million for promotion (that’s me being generous), and what we have here is a price tag of a quarter of a billion — with a “B” — dollars.

That puts its break-even number somewhere between $450 to $550 million. Early tracking says that’s not happening.

Quite laughably, Deadline writes: “Supergirl we hear cost $175M net before global P&A spend with breakeven at $315 global box office.”

You catch that? The “breakeven at $315” million??? Really, breakeven is $315 million off of a $175 million production budget that doesn’t even include promotion costs?

Yeah, no — no way.

But that’s the magic of being a major studio in a corrupt media world where everyone wants access and your advertising — the more your movie costs, the lower the breakeven number. Yep, Democrats sure got it good.

Already, early box office tracking for Supergirl is not good. As we get closer to the late June release date, these numbers could go up or down, but as of now a $47 to $65 million domestic opening is expected. That is less than half of Superman’s $125 million opening in July of 2025, and Superman only grossed $618 million global. Warner Bros. and director James Gunn insist Superman still made a profit. Color me skeptical.

There's only so many "blockbusters" today that could seemingly make millions and still not turn a profit, or not make enough money to fully cover all the productiona and promotional costs. Even so, it's a shame anybody should spend so much money going to theaters for all these modern films that're little more than special effects-flooded junk. In the end, what I certainly think is that it's a terrible shame Otto Binder and Al Plastino's wonderful Silver Age creation for building up the Superman family will be done another injustice, easily worse than the 1984 film starring Helen Slater. Sometimes, it's better for some classic creations to just remain on the printed page, where it can be much more relaxing as a reading experience than as a movie.

Actress playing Supergirl continues to damage her reputation

According to John Nolte at Breitbart, the actress playing Supergirl in this summer's new live action adaptation (based on Tom King's writings, no less) is continuing to alienate the audience, going so far as to attack "Christian dads":

Anyway, after starting this fight back in March, Little Miss Entitled-Fake-Trailblazer is now responding to the criticism she desperately sought by ridiculing “Christian Dads.”

“I guess women know that this is just how it’s always been, unfortunately,” Alcock said of the criticism over her retarded comments back in March. “And it’s from a lot of people whose profiles have no photo, who are burner accounts. Or someone’s name and then ‘Dad of four, Christian,’ which is hilarious to me. But I mean, whose opinion do you really care about? If you’re pissing the right kind of people off, you’re doing OK.”

Man alive.

Okay, it’s not all her fault. She’s pretty young and was even younger when fame arrived a few years ago with HBO’s House of Dragon. Fame warps you, especially at that age, and especially in a Hollywood that no longer stops its young stars from imploding like this. Sure, Mickey Rooney was an unholy terror in real life, but his public persona was so expertly managed that he became the biggest movie star in the world for a few years.

There’s only one commodity that makes you a movie star, and that’s goodwill. Denzel Washington and Sandra Bullock are still major draws in their dotage. Why? Because we like them.

If Supergirl flops, and its insufferable star sure seems determined to make that happen, Hollywood’s going to call us sexist, aren’t they?

Alas, yes. Alcock's taking everything from bad to worse by repeating a mistake potentially dozens of performers are making - spouting divisive political rhetoric before the official release of the film in question. And what's additionally angering is how Otto Binder and Al Plastino's Silver Age creation, the Maid of Might, is once again being done an injustice, perhaps worse than what the 1984 Supergirl movie did, all for the sake of a divisive screenplay coupled with equally divisive politics, and its star goes so far as to insult religious and fathers.

Let's be perfectly clear. I am as big a fan of Supergirl as of Superman, but I'm not going to watch a film whose star goes galaxies out of her way to alienate more than half the audience, which has become a sad staple of quite a few would-be rising "stars" in over a decade. Besides, with a screenplay relying entirely on what a modern awful writer like Tom King concocted back in the comics only confirms the filmmakers weren't seeking to build a merit-based story. If the new film fails, I'm not going to feel one bit sorry. All I'm sorry about is how the past work of late veterans like Binder and Plastino was desecrated for the sake of only so much modern propaganda, now culminating in shoddy movies that don't do any favors for the creations either.

Update: World of Reel says the financial estimations for the film aren't good:

The question now is whether “Supergirl” can continue that momentum. However, forecasts from Box Office Theory currently predict a domestic debut between $47M and $65M, putting it somewhere between “The Marvels” territory and “Black Adam,” which opened to $67 domestically.

“Supergirl,” which opens June 26, 2026, is squeezed between several major family blockbusters, including “Toy Story 5,” “Minions & Monsters,” and Disney’s live-action “Moana.” However, the main issue surrounding the film is that the marketing campaign simply hasn’t generated much excitement. That softer buzz has fueled concerns that the movie could either emerge as a modest performer or become one of the summer’s bigger disappointments.

Notice how Superman is heavily featured in recent promotional material for “Supergirl,” despite the character reportedly only having a cameo role in the film — that’s Warner Bros. trying to play it safe.

I wonder how Dwayne Johnson feels about his Black Adam "vanity project" after at least a few years? Even at a PG-13 level, the whole approach was one of the most repellent a film of that sort could employ, and such a shoddy film is best forgotten.

Update 2: Breitbart's John Nolte has followed up:

Supergirl is the second title to arrive from the rebooted DC Studios, which is run by writer-director James Gunn. The first title was 2025’s Superman, and despite the desperate spin and a sequel already in production, Superman did not do all that well at the box office. A $619 million global take when the production and promotion budget easily exceeded $300 million is barely breaking even.

Additionally, James Gunn’s Superman took no real hold in our cultural imagination. It’s just kind of … there.

The next test for Gunn’s vision of the DC Studios Universe is Supergirl, and if it bombs, as is projected here, Gunn’s position overseeing this reboot of some of America’s most popular superheroes could end pretty quickly, especially when Paramount takes over the studio in the upcoming merger.

From where I sit, besides making a mediocre Superman movie, Gunn’s choices have also been bizarre. Later this year, Gunn’s company will release Clayface, a movie no one asked for. He also gave us two seasons of The Peacemaker before it disappeared without a trace. Next up is Lanterns, because the Green Lantern is so widely popular.

And now he’s turned Supergirl into a drunken strumpet and cast a mouthy harridan as his lead, who is already out alienating the fanbase (guys) by pre-blaming this potential flop on us male sexists who can’t deal with female heroes, even though Pam Grier and Alien’s Ripley character are now iconic and still embraced by men everywhere.

By Clayface, do they mean another Batman rogues gallery member? I'm not wasting money on yet another movie spotlighting a villain. Even the Flash's adversaries wouldn't a good example for a film focus. Seriously, I hope this whole obsession with flooding the market with superhero films galore will come to an end soon, because it's long become boring, and the sources the screenwriters draw from are some of the worst around. There's no need for them anymore.

Pajiba gushes over Tom King's take on Supergirl

A writer at Pajiba gushed over the overrated King's comic starring Supergirl, "Women of Tomorrow", which is being adapted to the silver screen, sadly enough, by James Gunn and company:

My comic book reading has lapsed over the last several years, but I’ll still try to pick up things that I hear good things about and read them when I’m not exhausted and/or staring at the wall. One such comic book that I read somewhat recently was Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and y’all, it was absolutely incredible. The book, created by Tom King and Bilquis Evely, is a spectacular story about grief, revenge, and holding yourself to a pretty high standard because of the symbol on your chest.

We meet a Supergirl who is very similar to the one that appeared in James Gunn’s Superman, and, by that, I mean that she’s drunk. She’s getting drunk because, unlike her cousin, she was a teenager when Krypton exploded, so she had friends and loved ones and a place where she grew up that were all erased in an instant. She has memories of a homeworld that she will never see again. So, she travels to a part of the universe with a red sun and drinks to forget it all.

The story is filled with a lot of nuance, as Supergirl is then enlisted by a young girl to track down a man who killed her father. While Supergirl is hesitant at first, she eventually joins the young girl after her dog, Krypto, is hurt, and they learn a lot about each other and the cruelty of the universe. I was pretty excited to see that Gunn was touting the book as inspiration for the new movie, but after I read it, I was a little nervous because I don’t know if the movie will live up to the book.

What I don't get is why they think it's such a big deal to portray the Maid of Might as teenage drunkard. Also, if what Inverse tells says anything, a story that relies upon a bizarre hoax - that Krypto wasn't in serious danger to start with - isn't exactly doing much to create drama anyway. So how can the movie live up to the book when the book doesn't live up to real expectations, any more than modern storytelling for the flagship Supergirl? Also, Milly Alcock recently made things worse by stating in a Vanity Fair interview that:

Has the famously fickle Game of Thrones fandom prepared Alcock for the inevitable backlash she’ll face? “It definitely made me aware that simply existing as a woman in that space is something that people comment on. We have become very comfortable having this weird ownership of women’s bodies,” she says. “I can’t really stop them. I can only be myself.”

Somehow, it's unlikely what she says is based on what kind of horrific leftist propaganda came up in the past decade at the fairer sex's expense. What she's telling is little more than a cheap excuse to avoid challenging queries of what the Supergirl movie's merit will be like, and with a premise like alcoholism, seriously, I don't think it'll amount to much. Any potential political propaganda here will only perpetuate the misgivings. And she makes it sound like nobody ever wanted Supergirl created. Perhaps she should consider what kind of revolting mindsets were working at DC back in the mid-80s, who punished a fictional character instead of any bad writers and filmmakers who dampened Kara Zor-El's legacy as Superman's cousin.

One of the most irritating things about new stories like what King concocted is how a premise that was once considered better suited for a stand-alone indie comic is being forced onto corporate owned creations, and practically compounds why in the long run, conglomerate ownership did DC/Marvel far more harm than good. It's a real shame that here, when it was bad enough the Maid of Might got a poor screenplay foisted upon her in 1984, now Gunn and company are making things worse by adapting woke script for the sake of a newer movie, 42 years after the previous one. Conduct like this is exactly what discouraged me from looking forward to live action adaptations, and feel that, if famous comics creations need any kind of adapting, it should be in animation, but even there, they're obviously not immune to leftist propaganda tampering.

Update: here's what John Nolte at Breitbart has to say about the case.

Stamps based on famous comics and cartoon characters

The US Postal Service has an article about some special commemorative stamps they've developed, based on at least a few comics and cartoon characters in recent times, which includes the following:

• 1997’s Bugs Bunny featuring the animated rabbit leaning on a mailbox with a carrot in hand;
• 2006’s DC Comics Super Heroes, featuring portraits of Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Aquaman, Supergirl and Plastic Man in a 20-design pane;
• 2015’s Batman, featuring four versions of Batman drawn from different comic book eras, paired with four “bat-signals” that trace the evolution of his character; and
• 2016’s Wonder Woman, featuring four portraits of the Amazon princess from different comic book eras, emphasizing both her physical power and her sense of purpose.

Well at least this kind of venture is more appealing at this point than the artistic fiasco DC degenerated into by that time. But for all we know, even this could end up being craved by the speculator market, and that wouldn't be any better than how pamphlets are repeatedly bought by such decidedly misguided and embarrassing people for the sake of money, and in hopes the newer ones will actually make the same, which first brought down industry in the mid-90s.

Putting comics and cartoon characters on stamps can be creative, and might be preferable to some other forms of merchandise, but even that's no substitute for artistic quality in terms of storytelling.

Does Superman really "leave" his own comics that often?

A writer at Comic Book Club Live discusses how the Man of Steel seems to have quite a few moments where he's missing from his own solo comics:

While Superman launched the modern superhero era in Action Comics #1 and has been the hero of that title for almost all of its long run, the Man of Steel actually finds himself displaced — both in Action Comics and in the Superman comics titles more broadly — more often than most other heroes. And we’re gearing up for it to happen again with Reign of the Superboys, a big crossover event in which the various characters known as Superboy — but who aren’t actually Clark Kent — take center stage in a story whose title is lifted from Reign of the Supermen! (itself a story in which the Man of Steel was mostly absent).

To understand why this keeps happening, first, let’s take a look back at other instances when Superman disappeared from his own titles. Action Comics Weekly ran for over 40 issues, from Action Comics #601 through #642. During that time, Superman was no longer the lead feature in Action Comics, which became an oversized anthology featuring characters like Blackhawk, Green Lantern, Arsenal, and Nightwing. The experiment eventually ended and Superman got Action Comics back, leading into the “Triangle Era” of the Superman titles, during which time Action Comics, Superman, and The Adventures of Superman were joined by Superman: The Man of Steel to make a functionally-weekly story.

That wasn’t the last time Superman exited his own titles, though, and while Action Comics Weekly was seemingly an experimental proving ground for characters who didn’t have their own comic, later stories that took the Man of Steel out of his own comics were more narrative-driven.

The most famous example, obviously, was the stories that happened following 1992’s The Death of Superman. It’s also illustrative of why removing Superman from Superman works so well.

Say what? That's about as effective as saying that turning the Man of Steel into a crazy villain works so well. Sorry, but when it happens far too often - and potentially far more often than it does for Batman - then it doesn't work well at all. It only hints the writers don't know what to do with the star of the show, and would rather look for excuses to spotlight other characters in the star's main comics, rather than in their own separate miniseries or even paperback developed and sold on its own merits.

Interesting that Action Comics' weekly run of 42 issues was brought up, because while there were some stories there starring other characters that worked well enough, the Green Lantern stories almost single-handedly ruined everything. That was where GL's descent into horrible storytelling first officially began after his own solo book ended, as the assigned "creators" went miles out of their way to depict Carol Ferris in the Star Sapphire guise murdering Katma Tui, and if they were trying to make a statement about the South Africa republic's problems with racist apardheid at the time, they destroyed everything based on the bizarrely implausible way John Stewart was turned into a scapegoat: he recommends that Hal steal diamonds from a mine in South Africa, which goes against what Hal was written standing for, which is opposition to stealing. And then somehow, John gets blamed. If the whole idea was to comment on racial issues of the times, they totally botched it. And then, the Cosmic Odyssey special from 1989 made things worse by making John guilty of enabling a planetload of people to die. This is why it's actually despicable Action would be turned weekly, if any stories inside were going to be that bad, and alarmingly forced. Especially considering what other horrors awaited the DCU by the turn of the century. So, while stories featuring Nightwing, Black Canary and Deadman were okay, GL stood out as the rock-bottom feature of the lot, and the whole notion Superman would be sidelined for that is addtionally miserable.

That said, the Man of Steel wasn't literally absent from his own foremost book at the time. But based on how badly written GL's feature was by Christopher Priest and even Peter David, that's why it's a shame Action had to go weekly for that.

As for the Death/Return of Superman in 1992-3, what's so "famous" about that? As I've argued before, when the storyline got around to depicting the Toyman murdering Cat Grant's son, that's what really made it tasteless, and it also came at the expense of a crooked character whom I don't recall ever being portrayed as vile as the Joker before. If that's what the Man of Steel's being absented from his own comics for, no wonder quality went way south since. And what's so "narrative-driven" about all that anyway? It's laughable.

Anyway, this new crossover they speak of is decidedly another best avoided, and while it may not be surprising nobody's willing to insist universe-spanning crossovers have to stop, it's certainly disappointing. Superman should definitely not have to be sidelined because assigned writers may not know what kind of stories to give him, and the increased focus on villains has to stop too. It's no substitute for merit-based writing.

Supergirl movie in preparation will "clarify" a disturbing retcon in James Gunn's Superman film

The Direct says the Supergirl film currently in production is going to provide "clarification" on a very horrific retcon referenced in James Gunn's Superman film, which wasn't very successful, making one wonder why this PC take on the Maid of Might has to be put in production at all:

2026's Supergirl is confirmed to provide clarification about Superman's most controversial retcon regarding the titular Kryptonian's origin story. DC Studios co-CEO and Superman director James Gunn made a controversial change to Superman's origin by revealing the truth behind Jor-El and Lara's message. It turned out that Clark's Kryptonian parents sent him to Earth to enslave humanity and repopulate the planet with Kryptonian children.

While some fans claimed that the message was clear, Superman made it clear that the message was genuine and authentic numerous times, with Gunn putting the final nail in the coffin by pointing out that it was real. The massive twist about Jor-El's message positioned the House of El in a precarious situation because it strongly indicated that Krypton is a society of potential conquerors. Despite that, Supergirl is the best project to provide clarification on that unexpected shift.

One could wonder if the new Supergirl film is also being made just to provide an "escape hatch" from such a repellent premise, assuming that's what'll turn out to be the case. But, if we can understand these pseudo-filmmakers correctly, it probably won't be the case. This is what Gunn's Superman film was all about? Making Kryptonians look horrific, and just as bad as the stand-ins for Israel/USA governments in the movie? Ugh. That's not something a true Super-fan does, and I'm not buying any claims made to the contrary after this embarrassment. It reminds me that almost 2 decades ago, there may have been a Supergirl story where it was implied Zor-El did something monstrous to children, all for the sake of making even Kara's newer origins look sordid, as though that makes her own premise inherently more appealing than the Silver Age origins. The article later says:

While Supergirl will likely not reverse the controversial retcon, it can further clarify the twist through Kara Zor-El's perspective. Superman established that Kara often wants to go to planets with a red sun to get drunk, and the reason behind this could be her resentment toward the House of El's ways.

So here, we're being hit over the head with a premise that the Maid of Might's an alcoholic, and must like to spend time in red sun solar systems because it would make it easier to succumb to the effects of drunkenness? Gee, what makes that appealing? Though maybe it could partly explain why actress Milly Alcock is photographed wearing a trenchcoat, because the planets in said systems she's traveling to are freezing cold. Sorry, but that's as unappealing as Tom King's own stories, and lest we forget that the movie in preparation is supposed to be based on his scripts. And look how they stick with the PC description of "revealing" instead of "establishing". That's equally unhealthy. And what next, will there come a screenplay where Supergirl's depicted as a drug addict?

Once again, instead of offering audiences a chance to be happy without strings attached, the filmmakers only give them reason to be sad, and continue to lecture everybody about what entertainment should be all about. It continues to be a very sad time to be a Super-fan.

A writer who's willing to highlight great Silver Age Superman stories

Here's a writer at ComicBook who's willing, unlike some others in mainstream, to take a look at some Silver Age Superman tales worth consideration:

The Silver Age is arguably one of the best periods in comic book history. Spanning from approximately 1956 to 1970, the era saw the creation of new characters and concepts that would go on to be iconic and important decades later, fantastic art, and the reemergence of superheroes after a time when such stores had struggled, thanks to societal controversy that blamed comics for juvenile delinquency. The Silver Age was also an era of absolutely wild stories, including those that put beloved characters in strange (and often hilarious) scenarios that can only be described as “quirky.”

This is especially true for Superman‘s Silver Age. Full of campy stories that often leaned into sci-fi territory, it’s an era that was often lighthearted, but is also one that deeply expands the Superman mythos. Silver Age stories introduced major concepts about Krypton, Superman’s powers, and even saw some of his classic villains start to coalesce into the threats they are today. It’s a great time to be a Superman fan — and here are seven of the greatest Superman stories from that era.

You can read the list and judge for yourself, and they're hopefully on their way to being reprinted in the DC Finest archive series in time. For now, interesting they also allude to the Fredric Wertham era, because while comics may not actually be blamed for causing delinquency today, many mainstream publishers have since exploited them for far-left propaganda, and simultaneously, there's been censorship occurring that Wertham would doubtless be proud of, for all the wrong reasons. Unfortunately, if such press sources were active during the 1950s, chances are they wouldn't utter a word against what Wertham led to, and they certainly are complaining about wokeness today that's ruined the Superman mythos. Viewed through that perspective, it's not a great time to be a Super-fan.

But when it comes to the older stuff from the Silver Age, yes, that's what makes it great to be a Super-fan. And again, I do hope more of that will eventually become available in dedicated reprint archives covering whole eras consistently. That makes it far easier to judge all the stories from an era where, while obviously not all was perfect, there was still plenty that could be better than what's seen today.

New Supergirl film in preparation follows predictable playbook of grittiness

Variety interviewed several film writers, including Ana Noguiera, who's penned the screenplay for WB's new take on the Maid of Might, and predictably, not only does this version take the Tom King route, as was to be guessed earlier, one could also say it puts the late Otto Binder and Al Plastino's original Silver Age premise on trial:

“Everyone read it as a genre script,” she says. “So I started getting called in to pitch on world-building fantasy and futuristic sci-fi.” One such meeting was with executives at DC Studios, who handed her a collection of comic books written by Tom King about Superman’s cousin, Kara Zor-El — better known as Supergirl.

While Nogueira doesn’t regularly read comic books, she is a big fan of superhero movies — but Supergirl hadn’t ever quite made sense to her. “She watched Krypton completely be destroyed,” Nogueira says. “I was always like, ‘I can’t get my head around the version of the character that is so sunny.’” King’s “rougher and grittier and edgier and funnier” approach, by contrast, leaned into Kara’s past. “When I read it, I was like, ‘There she is,’” she says.

I can't understand why she sees King's approach as "funny", since it's dampened by the emphasis on "rougher", "grittier", and "edgier". Also, if that's how she views the original premise for Supergirl, you could say the same thing about Spider-Man's premise, in which his uncle Ben Parker was murdered by a burglar, yet did Peter Parker let that totally dictate and dominate his entire emotional state going forward? In better days, Stan Lee and successors gave Spidey and his cast a sense of humor that helped tremendously, and if they'd followed the playbook Batman writers have particularly stuck with since Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, it would've been dreadful. I also hesitate to think what Noguiera would say about Starfire's premise as first seen in New Teen Titans, since Koriand'r was established as a victim of intergalactic slavery, sexual or otherwise, and as written by Marv Wolfman/George Perez, she didn't let it block out the ability to find happiness either.

The screenwriter also seems to ignore that in later stories during the Silver/Bronze Age (Action Comics 309), Supergirl and Superman discovered that her parents had survived any Kryptonite danger that prompted them to send her to earth from their breakaway colony of Argo, and her mom and dad, Alura and Zor-El, went to live in the bottle world of Kandor. Depending on one's perspective, that Kara's parents could've survived at the time could help alleviate any trauma she could've gotten from loss of family earlier. Not to mention that, by science-fiction terms, with Superman and Supergirl's ability to read books almost as fast as the Flash, Kara could read tons of books on psychology and figure out how to overcome trauma in seconds flat. But Ms. Noguiera apparently can't use her imagination.

What's also grating about this interview is that the same Hollywooders who believe sadness and trauma must be the answer to everything likely wouldn't consider what the victims of September 11, 2001 in New York, October 7, 2023 in Israel or even the Bataclan massacre in 2015 think, regardless of how they've led their lives since. That's one more reason why it's best to avoid whatever story planning they're brewing up. It's a real shame the Maid of Might's fared easily worse on the live action screen than the Man of Steel has, but regrettably, the seeds for destruction of all these Golden/Silver/Bronze Age jewels were surely in the works for much longer than thought, and now, it's impossible to look forward to what's being produced now.

College writer thinks comics movies feel like comics again

A writer at The Vidette of Illinois State University claims live action comics movies feel like comics again, and while the article's little better than most of these college publications, it does have some eyebrow raising parts:

Other films deserve to be part of that discussion, such as “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Captain America: Civil War.” While many of these films are of high quality, many don’t feel the same as reading a comic book. That probably sounds confusing at first glance, but let me explain.

Yes, these films have superheroes and feature events that are very unrealistic, but they do not make me feel immersed in the world very much. They just feel like regular movies that are carried by sheer star power, with the names of popular characters attached to them. They feel like they are just playing it safe for the general audience.

Don’t get me wrong, the general audience does matter because they contribute the most to the box office success of these movies. However, I want studios to allow directors to take creative liberties and make something as wacky or wild as the comics we love to read.

After all, these films are adapting stories where people who can fly are battling aliens, not exactly the most realistic. As a result, why would you not want to go bonkers with those types of ideas?

Well isn't that a surprise. Somebody admits live action's not the same as illustration and animation, and even I got that feeling at times watching what I did in the past, including the late Christopher Reeve's Superman films (though let me note that only the first 2 are good, and the other 2, along with the 1984 Supergirl film, were sadly botched). But perhaps more surprising is that the writer actually wants creative liberties taken with the movies. Depending how you view that part of the whole discussion, creative freedom, to say nothing of liberties, was all but taken away in the past several years for the sake of PC narratives. For Marvel, this mainly began with the Captain Marvel movie, which was based almost entirely on how Marvel mandated Carol Danvers be written since 2012, and was made even worse by forcing Islamic propaganda into a series starring a contrived successor to the role of Ms. Marvel. It's amazing any attempts to adapt such concepts to live action have largely been failures so far, and even one of the video games featuring the Muslim Ms. Marvel didn't fare so well. That shows the audience is not interested in lecture-laced propaganda.

It's also surprising the writer's okay with unrealistic ingredients, which should make clear that, if it's okay for Japan to do surreal stuff, then it's okay for even Marvel to do the same, and indeed, despite much of the absurd, lecturing propaganda of recent, they did in past decades. All that matters is whether it actually does a disfavor to certain issues and events in real life.

But with that said, here's where the article begins to turn into a farce:

The most recent examples of this are James Gunn’s “Superman” and Matt Shakman’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

Watching both of these films felt so fresh as comic books were unraveling on screen in terms of action, dialogue and even how colorful the world was. A common critique that I have seen is that these films move quickly in terms of progressing the story.

While that is true, I do enjoy that these films embraced how wacky they inherently are. That element makes them stand out amongst the many comic book films that have been releasing lately.

Well sorry to say, but if the Superman movie for starters was supposed to be surreal, it ruined everything with its appalling political metaphor for real life, and the FF movie ruined everything with both the actor playing Mr. Fantastic and the sex-swap for the Silver Surfer, changed from Norrin Radd to Shalla-Bal. On the latter, let's be clear. If Shalla-Bal matters, it's entirely possible to write up a prominent role for her in a film like this without doing it at Norrin Radd's expense. Instead, the filmmakers discarded Stan Lee's actual creation for the sake of PC pandering that hasn't improved the fortunes of these latest live action adaptations.

Science-fantasy can certainly be a great way to explore all sorts of wacky ideas, but when you let real life seep in without taking an informed and rational approach, everything's ruined. If the studios making these films still intend to go ahead with sequels to Superman, for example, despite the mediocre box office results, that will be almost amusing, in a way, because it shows they don't want to admit they made mistakes. But it certainly won't guarantee what's to come will be any better than before from an artistic perspective.

Variety takes a confusing look at comic book "campiness" on the silver screen

Variety wrote a puff piece about the recent Superman and Fantastic Four live action movies, claiming they "succeeded" in restoring a "campy" approach to scriptwriting, which can imply a more cartoony form of storytelling that even the comic books of the past supposedly all subscribed to in every way. At the beginning, they sugarcoated the box office intake:

Summer 2025 was always going to be a critical season for superhero cinema. Fans and critics alike knew that the fate of Warner Brothers’ DC Studios depended on the success of James Gunn’s “Superman” and that “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” would launch Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the franchise saw wilting box office returns across Phases Four and Five. Fortunately, both movies garnered fan appreciation and performed respectably at the box office.

As has been previously reported, neither film has performed as well as hoped, and the failure of Variety's writer to provide clear sales figures speaks volumes. That can actually call into question whether fan "appreciation" truly applies, as a result.

The films could owe their successes to solid scripts, iconic characters and ubiquitous marketing. However, they also share a distinct quality that has evaded comic book adaptations over the past couple of decades. Both “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: First Steps” feel like… comic books.

Comic books are, of course, a broad medium that can vary from the action packed to the avant garde. They also offer bright colors, quippish dialogue, and cartoonish superheroes showcasing powers that can almost border on the absurd. This is what comic books came to be in their Golden and Silver Eras in the 1940s and 1960s, respectively, when heroes like Superman and Fantastic Four were making their earliest appearances on the page.

Despite this legacy, most superhero movies over the past two decades have kept a safe distance from such comic book associations. Certain elements of iconography carried over, but the tone has mostly been serious, toeing a delicate line to appease fans while also attracting general audiences of all ages and backgrounds. For this reason, movies like “X-Men,” “Iron Man,” and “Man of Steel” feel like comic book characters dropped into a real world, rather than existing in the cartoon settings of their source materials.

What they feel like is live action sci-fi fare, a product of a mindset that can't appreciate animation, where some of this stuff could actually come off more convincingly, if much of the USA didn't take such a condescending view of the art form, which all but led to its ghettoization as a "children's medium" for many years, and it wasn't until the late 80s when the Simpsons came about that animation at least was considered worthwhile for family audiences, if not adults. In the past decade, however, animation in the USA started becoming politicized, and when marketed at children, that's one more reason why animation remains otherwise unappreciated.

Earlier film adaptations of superhero comics were less shy about their characters’ campy roots. The 1960s “Batman” series was notoriously kitschy, yet it became a cultural phenomenon. Christopher Reeve’s “Superman” movies or Tim Burton’s “Batman” and “Batman Returns” were a bit less sardonic, but still retained cartoonish elements. Towards the end of the millennium, however, the camp had worn thin with Joel Schumacher’s “Batman Forever” and “Batman & Robin,” which were criticized for their childish takes on the caped crusader. When “Batman & Robin” flopped in 1997, it briefly scared off Hollywood from making movies with costumed heroes.

To revive the genre, superhero movies had to learn to take themselves more seriously. Accordingly, “Blade,” “X-Men,” and “Spider-Man” changed the tune. While these franchises have some cheesy moments by today’s standards, they marked a more realistic departure from the ’90s superhero style. This trend reached a zenith in 2008 with Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” an emphatically grounded superhero movie that garnered critical praise uncommon of the genre.

Although some films like “Man of Steel,” “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Thor: The Dark World” might have been criticized for being too brooding, a populist balance of humorous dialogue mixed with high-stakes action proved the genre’s tried-and-true formula worked. On the other hand, a few superhero movies, such as “Ant-Man,” “Shazam!” and “Guardians of the Galaxy,” might’ve offered more comedy than others, but they all still felt of the real world and made for the multiplexes rather than lifted from the panels.

In the 2020s, however, the superhero genre has arguably lost some of its popularity. While the tone and formula hasn’t changed too drastically, the movies do not earn as much money or inspire the same fanaticism. This year, however, “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: First Steps” represented a break with tradition.

Again, tell us about it. What hasn't changed - and is arguably the real issue - is the new obsession with divisive politics. It's practically what the Capt. Marvel movie built upon, and sure didn't do it a lot of good in the long run, seeing how The Marvels sequel was such a fiasco. Variety's writers, as expected, won't ask even the tiniest question whether far-left ideologies are helping the films' box office intake, and if they won't do so, they can't be surprised if any further sequels might garner less. Unless perhaps they're willing to tone down the horrid politics, perhaps?

Shortly after the above article, Variety also wrote the following:

This summer, though, the release of two vital, game-changing superhero movies created a kind of Christmas in July. With “Superman” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” DC and Marvel, the reigning studio factories of superhero movies, have brought off more than just a course correction. They have, in effect, started over, relaunching expectations for a bold new era in which comic-book movies become successful again by avoiding the addictive missteps of the past. Both films have connected with audiences the old-fashioned way: by merging spectacle and emotion, infusing their iconic characters with the kind of human relatability that got squashed in the superhero-overkill era.

Just as expected, no mention of divisive political metaphors, and how can emotion and spectacle work well based on that problem? What some people even now may not consider is that, despite all wishes for the contrary, the film industry is still pretty woke, and unlikely to change so easily at this point. What's so old fashioned about that?

That said, even two terrific flagship movies do not a revolution make. James Gunn, the co-chairman of DC Studios (and, not so incidentally, the writer-director of “Superman”), and Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, have both spoken of the new era they’re embarking upon in the abashed, let’s-own-our-failures language of recovering addicts. Gunn has vowed that he won’t put a superhero movie into production until it has a fully realized, well-carpentered script — the absence of good scripts, in the face of ever-more-bombastic onslaughts of CGI, being the most notorious feature of bad comic-book movies. And Feige has vowed that he’ll produce fewer films and TV spinoffs, and exert the kind of quality control that went out the window at Marvel as the studio went on its bender of more, and lesser, comic-book product. You deeply want to believe these two, because they sound like they mean it, and because anyone who cares about the future of movies has a vested interest in seeing Hollywood maintain a thriving and creatively disciplined blockbuster culture.

While it's been reported the Superman film may see a sequel or a Supergirl followup, if any planned productions go through, what's really grating is whether they draw from Tom King's writings. Any "emotion" in his stories is contrived and forced in the worst ways, is not organic, and all he cared about was taking apart what better writers of the past century built up. That's why I'll be steering clear of these films, because I don't want to put money into his pockets at the box office. Sorry, but, I can't believe those two.

I believe Gunn and Feige when they say they’re newly committed to quality control. The challenge they’re going to face is this: As their shiny new universes grow ever more complicated and multi, which is going to start happening in about five minutes, the new DC and Marvel are going to lose, by definition, the elemental, no-strings-attached quality that “Superman” and “The Fantastic Four” have. They’re going to become glorified puzzle pieces again, fitting into a larger more elaborate whole that…we once again stop giving a damn about? I’d be a cynic if I said that was destined to be true. I’d be a realist if I said there’s a very good chance it could be.

If they won't refrain from divisive political metaphors, then the writer's not being a realist, so much as he's shy about taking an objective viewpoint. And, no quality control anywhere. One of the main reasons all this wokery's gone on is because the MSM won't complain or protest. Why, there's only so much they refuse to take an objective viewpoint of for many years now, even back in comicdom. That's why, if the comics to film projects still don't take off, you can't expect them to recover so easily at all. Which might actually be good for comicdom itself. But until then, chances are we'll still have only so much going awry.

One more thing: I do think cartoonish action is quite fine in science-fantasy, provided that the cards are played right in development. But again, when divisive ideologies are even so much as alluded to in these comics and films, that demolishes the ability to truly appreciate what the tale is like.