The Use of Bad Comic Book Science, I Thought We Were Past This

I have never really been a big fan of DC Comics or their related properties. I generally am aware of them, but I don't go out of my way to watch their stuff for the most part and when I do, I normally find my views to be justified. I just do not enjoy most of what DC puts out there. In past posts I have talked about some of the DC-related elements that I do not like and why.

Every so often something DC-related surprises me.

I am a huge fan of Watchman and I understand why it is such a big deal. Neil Gaiman's Sandman is just so incredibly well done. I liked Batman Begins, the only good movie of that trilogy, as The Dark Knight is one of the most overrated films ever.

And thanks to my son, I got into the new Flash TV show and Supergirl. While neither fully breaks away from the flaws of DC, they a least were different and had interesting characters and plots that I enjoyed. And while the Flash is insanely overpowered and they tried to pull Supergirl down power-wise, they soon gave that up and let her get as overpowered as the concept always is, I was able to ignore those flaws and just look at the basic storyline. After all they never let themselves sink to the worst level of bad 'science' that we often see with DC. Yeah, the Speedforce is questionable and in Supergirl a small rock can be spread to contaminate the whole Earth with lethal levels of a substance, so you have to over look a lot of rational thinking to enjoy them, but at least they never did the really lame flying real fast around the world to turn back time...

Now for the big crossover event for this year, Elseworlds. It started off interesting. Switching around The Flash and Green Arrow led to some interesting and amusing confrontation. It had some character growth in it, having both of them have to look a themselves from a different perspective.

So it was off to a good start that had possibilities.

Then we get Batwoman forced into the story where she does next to nothing, just walks around saying 'hey look at what the next show we're working on will be.' And Gotham just felt like a city that should be allowed to die. There was nothing there to convince me it was a city I wanted to see get saved or watch any adventures happen in.

This is followed by introducing Arkham Asylum into the world... My guess is the diehard DC fans loved it, as there were names all over the place that I am betting were Easter Eggs that I just didn't get. Which is fine, but there were other elements that really bugged me. Way too easy for the prison break to happen. Throw one switch and all hell breaks loose. Then why would they store dangerous weapons in the basement of a mental institution for the most dangerous of criminals? I was really thrown out of the story there. Then at the end of it all, they let the one guy keep his nice gold mask. No, you don't lock them up still in their costumes.

But all of that is just annoyances compared to the big final battle and the 'risky' solution they come up with.

So the Flash is to run around the world as fast as he can in one direction, while Supergirl flies as fast as she can in the opposite direction and they know, they know without a doubt, that this will somehow slow time down... What? Seriously, WTF? No, just no. Big No. This is stupid on so many levels. And they are going to do this, a task which somehow Green Arrow has foreseen will kill them both, because, well... Yeah, that's going to do something...

When they got to this point in the story, where they throw out this truly idiotic plan, they also have nothing else to the plan, all it was 'we going to risk our lives to slow down time, and then you guys do something, and bad guy gets defeated.' Seriously, at the point they started running and flying, there was nothing set to how the others were going to bring the bad guy down. Both Superman and Green Arrow would have been affected by the slowing of time as far as we knew. Now after the two heroes go to throw their lives away in a plan that is not really a plan, with nothing having been shown that would actual save the day, Green Arrow goes and makes the deal that allows him to be able to stop the bad guy during the slow down. This is AFTER the process of slowing time down has started, so if he didn't do this the Flash and Supergirl would have died (Or so we have been told) and the villian would have won, all becuase there was no actual plan made before they took off.

I cringed at how bad this 'solution' was. It had bad science and logic at every stage, huge gaps in plot followed by forced risk to the characters, as they did something truly pointless.

I fear for where the shows are going to go now. If we're going to get the worst aspects of DC storytelling now, then there is no point to keeping up with it all. I may have to drop the shows, as it would be painful to have to watch such piss poor storytelling week after week.

Will This be the Greatest Spider-Man Movie to Date?

When I first heard they were working on an animated Spider-Man movie I thought "Okay, might be fun," but really did not think of it as anything big.

The trailers came out and I thought "Okay, this looks better than I was expecting," yet I was still not taking it too seriously. I had little faith they were going to do anything special with it. I figured it would be just another attempt at Sony Pictures getting their money's worth from having the rights to Spider-Man cinematic universe. They have been so hit or miss with what they have done with it so far, I was not seeing a full animated movie as being promising from them.

So now on Rotten Tomatoes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has 62 reviews and is at 100%. Now that is a truly rare event.  Normally by 62 reviews there are a few who didn't like a movie, no matter how good it is. Several reviews call it the best animated movie of the year, which is saying a lot. A Sony Pictures animated film is getting better critical attention that anything from Disney and Dream Works... Okay, maybe this is going to be a much better film than I thought. I had originally planned to hold off until it made it to DVD, but now I'm thinking I'll have to see it in the theater.

For those who don't know, I'll give a quick explanation of what the Spider-Verse is.

In Marvel comics, there are an endless amount of alternate dimensions and from time to time their basic characters get to explore these alternate realities. Well a few years ago Marvel did a huge comic book event where they explored a great deal of alternate versions of Spider-Man/Woman/Pig/Monkey/Robot. Many had been introduced before, but there was also a huge batch of fully new ones such as Spider-Punk and fan favorite Spider-Gwen. It was a lot of fun and I felt a well done story line. The concept is that there are 'Spider-totems' in the various realities as part of a greater balance.

Right now they are running a follow up story with some new Spider-person created for it. Not as epic as the first one, but it has so far been fun.

Now the main character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is Mile Morales, who was an established Spider-Man well before the events of the original Spider-Verse. In the comics there was an alternate world called the Ultimates Universe, which was what the Avengers of that world were called. In that reality Peter Parker was the original Spider-Man, but ended up dying. In the aftermath Miles Morales ends up taking up the identity. After various big, cosmic events that rearranged realities, that universe has been merged with the main Marvel Universe and Miles Morales is Spider-Man, but the original Peter Parker Spider-Man is still doing his thing as well. So we now have two heroes calling themselves Spider-Man running around and some times teaming up.

From what I have seen, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is not going to follow any of that though. While it is clearly using the characters and the basic concept, the story appears to be fully its own fresh take.

Right now the plan is to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in the theater to see if it does live up to the reviews. I'm sure I'll enjoy it no matter what, but there does seem to be some high expectations being placed on it now.