Monday, July 27, 2020

Week of 07/27/2020


The CW’s Superman Problem
As fans of my column and as readers of my “Hero Corner” website know, I am a longtime fan of the DC Comics character Superman.  This goes all the way back to when I was a child.  His was the first comic I read.  And I have read some of his greatest stories, including his crossover encounter with Spider-Man, his fight with the legendary Muhammed Ali, his Red Superman-Blue Superman imaginary story, his original marriage to Lois Lane (on Earth-2), the legendary “Crisis on Infinite Earths” miniseries, his farewell story and his rebooted origins by John Byrne, and, of course, his brutal death and return, and all of the more recent activities.
I also know that that Warner Brothers really hasn’t done him too many favors of late.  “Superman The Movie” and “Superman II” were probably the best representatives of Superman on the big screen, with “Man of Steel” following behind them.  “Lois and Clark: the New Adventures of Superman” was good, but not great.  “Smallville” was a ten-season disappointment.  It would be years after that before the CW network would give us another Superman.  If anything, Warner Brothers did Superman justice in the animated world than they ever could in live-action.
Now, thankfully, there will be another Superman TV show.  “Superman and Lois” will air on the CW network in the start of 2021.  The series will feature the title characters along with their two sons and the stresses surrounding raising children while still keeping secret the fact that their father is Superman.
For this commentator and longtime fan, Superman’s fulltime return to the small screen couldn’t come any sooner.  Yes, Tyler Hoechlin’s version of the Man of Steel has been around since 2016, and, before that, Superman was seen only in vague details for the pilot episode of “Supergirl” in 2015.  But he wasn’t considered a regular in the CW universe.  It would take his participation in the “Elseworlds” crossover in 2018 to convince CW execs that he should be brought in for more.
But now that Superman is a fixture of the CW “Arrowverse”, especially after their version of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, they have some problems with the character that will need some serious fixing in time for his new series to launch.  And most of those problems have a name: Supergirl.
The most obvious problem that has been pointed out by others is that many of Superman’s villains have already been co-opted for Supergirl.  Live Wire, Maxima, Silver Banshee, Metallo, Maxwell Lord, the Cyborg Superman, Agent Liberty, and Lex Luthor were all known Superman villains that were turned into Supergirl villains for her CW show.  While Superman has a pretty impressive rogues gallery and wouldn’t necessarily run out of villains, to have someone like Lex Luthor – who carried a specific hatred of Superman for years – suddenly be a nemesis for Supergirl is a pretty big stretch.
But it’s a little bit more than just co-opting villains.
By the time we see his actual debut in the first episode of Season 2 of “Supergirl”, Superman is already established as Earth’s greatest superhero.  He has years of experience fighting menaces on Earth and beyond.  But by the end of that season, we see him being sidelined.  First, he’s seen as being weaker to his cousin.  Then when he does join in the season’s climactic battle, he’s only on the periphery of the fight.  He’s nowhere to be seen in the following season, when he clearly should have been stepping up to help against Kryptonian menaces like Reign.
During the “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover, Supergirl makes a threat to the Reverse Flash that if she dies, Superman would go after him.  The Reverse Flash, who is supposedly from an alternate future, counters by saying that he’s already fought Superman and won.  This further digs in the idea that this version of Superman really isn’t “super”.
And then, by the time we get to the “Elseworlds” crossover, while we do see Superman take a more active role in the special and working with Green Arrow and Flash, the special ends with Superman officially being “semi-retired” so that he and Lois could stay on Argo City for the duration of Lois’ revealed pregnancy.  This essentially takes Superman out of consideration for yet another year and puts Supergirl in the forefront of world affairs.
Then there is “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, where Superman is finally brought directly into the crossover, and he’s basically regarded as a secondary figure.  This is a character with leadership qualities being pushed aside by Supergirl, White Canary, Flash, and even Brandon Routh’s Superman from “Superman Returns”.  Even his position in the final battle shows how bad that he has been sidelined.  This is far, far, far different from the Superman who took charge in the original comic miniseries, the one who summoned every hero in all of history and led them to challenge the Anti-Monitor.
So for all this time, we have a Superman that has been sidelined, rendered weaker, and had all of his greatness and even many of his villains co-opted for Supergirl.  It might be “okay” as long as you focus all your attention on Supergirl and you have no plans whatsoever to show Superman ever again.  However, with the CW about to launch “Superman and Lois”, and with the lead actress of “Supergirl” being pregnant, possibly delaying the start of her new season even further, the CW have hamstrung the greatest superhero of the DC Universe.
Even worse is this little faux pas... it was established in the pilot episode of “Supergirl” that Superman was around for at least a decade before Supergirl made her debut.  It was inferred that Batman had been around almost as long.  And the same in the world that Black Lightning comes from.  He was a hero who gave it up to become a father to his two daughters, who are now grown-up and heroes themselves.  All three have been merged into the new “Earth-Prime”... and yet at the end of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, the President of the United States makes her public address to the nation and says that the Green Arrow, Oliver Queen, was “the first” superhero.  Superman, Batman, and Black Lightning were around as heroes before Oliver Queen was old enough to party, and yet Queen was “the first”? 
Someone in CW-land have some serious ‘splaining to do about that.
Let’s get brutally honest here... the CW has once again done a serious disservice to the Man of Steel.  First was how they created a non-Superman in “Smallville”.  Then in introducing Superman in the Arrowverse, only to then sideline and gradually neuter him in favor of his cousin.
The lack of classic villains can be easily remedied.  Like I said, Superman has no shortage of bad guys and gals to go after, and he can even pursue some of the other Arrowverse villains for a while.  A more pressing matter is the damage to his character.  Superman is a born leader, the original symbol of hope, and the original encourager of bringing out the best in people.  These are things that need to come out in the new series, and to do so heavily.
This longtime fan of the character hopes that the CW will do right when it comes to the new series.  There is a reason why Superman has endured for almost a century.  It’s more than just having superpowers.  It is the character of the man that has those powers and uses them to help others instead of himself.  A man of humility and also of leadership.  It is time that we have a series that brings that kind of character back to the forefront.


Monday, July 20, 2020

Week of 07/20/2020


KempTrump Endangers His State
Does the governor of Georgia really want to see his constituents die?
That’s the question that we have to seriously ask of Governor Brian Kemp, aka Governor KempTrump.
The state of Georgia was slow to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.  One of the last states to order “shelter-in-place” and the very first to demand the state “open up”.  Even Narcissist Trump commented that KempTrump’s decision to end restrictions may have been too soon.  And yet, KempTrump supposedly got the “blessing” of his orange lord and savior before public opinion shifted against it.
So, no surprise, Georgia is exploding with new cases of coronavirus.  More people getting sick.  More people going to the hospital.  More people dying.
And Governor KempTrump does nothing about that except “strongly urges” people to social distance and wear masks as he continues to tell businesses to go ahead and resume operations.  Go out and shop!  Go out and work!  Get your kids to school!  It’s all about the businesses, don’t you know?  It’s all about the economy!  Just wear a mask and practice social distancing.
Yeah, except that we don’t want to.  Because we Georgians are listening to the orange-skinned narcissist and his myriad of talk radio and cable propaganda cohorts who all say that this is a hoax, it’s less than the flu, it’s all a plot to make their orange lord and savior look bad, and it will all magically go away. We don’t want to wear masks, we don’t want to socially distance, we don’t want to stay home anymore.  We want to go out, we want to go party, and we want to be around our friends.
So when the local cities and counties are faced with this, faced with skyrocketing outbreaks and hospitalizations and deaths, and with a governor that seemingly just does not give one care about human beings and is only concerned with businesses, what do you expect them to do?  They’re going to take action.  They’re going to exact mask mandates and start rolling back the openings.
Except, whoops, that bring them directly in conflict with Governor KempTrump and his idea of reopening the state in record time.  You can’t go “forward” when all of these cities and counties are pulling back.
So Governor KempTrump did what he did before; he issued a new executive order that dictates that the cities and counties must follow his plans to the letter, no more and no less.
Now that would be reasonable if his “plans” were similar to his first executive order, which was to have a uniform shelter-in-place policy so you would not have one city be stricter and one being more lax.  Except these are not.  These “plans” fly in the face of the resurging numbers of coronavirus infections.  Governor KempTrump is forcing local governing bodies to ignore those rising numbers of infection and hospitalization and deaths and follow his reopening plans to the letter.
Oh, but it gets even worse... KempTrump’s new executive order singles out the City of Atlanta, whose mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, recently tested positive for COVID-19 along with her family, and declares that no municipality at all shall override his will.  He then follows up with a lawsuit – yes, a lawsuit – directed at Mayor Bottoms to essentially strip her of her local authority as mayor and to silence her from speaking about the subject.
And now, governor, you have a problem.
The first part of the act, the executive order, was within the scope of his power.  I don’t agree with it.  You will be hard-pressed to find any thinking human being agreeing with putting businesses over people.  But it is within his power.
The personal lawsuit, on the other hand, does not.
This is a tactic straight out of the playbook of KempTrump’s lord and savior, Narcissist Trump.  You cross that person, they sue you.  And they keep suing you and drag it out to infinity until you stand down.  And it should come as to no surprise that this lawsuit was filed right after KempTrump was visited by his lord and savior in Atlanta.
Now I’m sure you’ll probably say that this lawsuit is ultimately meaningless, that some judge will simply dismiss it later on.  But it has nothing at all to do with validity.  It’s about silence.  It’s about bullying.  It is about the governor of the state usurping the duly-elected mayor’s authority and forcing her into silence.  It is about the Governor of Georgia assimilating the office of Mayor of the City of Atlanta.  This is the go-to tactic of a malignant narcissist, and we’ve been seeing this happen in front of the world for years, and now it’s happening in Georgia with his orange-ass-kissing acolyte.
Let’s get brutally honest here... this blatant power-grab by Governor KempTrump endangers the citizens of Georgia, young and old.  And all to appease his lord and savior’s quest for economic prosperity.  He puts businesses over people in the fervent hope that he could bring an economic turnaround that would save Narcissist Trump’s re-election.  And in doing so, he does not care one whit about the people that of the state.
Oh, yes, he “strongly urges” people to wear masks to social distance.  But he considers a mask mandate “unenforceable”.  So is the law requiring people to wear seat belts, but I have yet to hear anyone say that it should be a reason to ignore it.  So are speed limits on the highways, which this commentator has seen people violate every single day on more than one occasion on Interstate 85.  But does anyone say we should ignore those because the police aren’t enforcing them like they used to?  The State of Georgia is fighting in court to impose the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the state’s history, but a mask mandate in a time of a global pandemic is “unenforceable”?  I call BS on that!
I will make this as plain and simple as possible: every single COVID-19 infection from this point on in the state of Georgia is the fault of Governor Brian Porter Kemp.  Every coronavirus hospitalization from this past week forward is on him.  Every death because of that pandemic from this point on is on him.  He could have stopped it.  He could have taken the steps to minimize it like many other governors and mayors are doing across the country.  He could have done what businesses like WalMart and Target and Kohl’s and CVS are putting in.  He didn’t.  He chose to put business over people.  He chose to put money over people.  Because of that, every case that could have been prevented because of his actions is on him, personally.
You want to take the credit for an economic boom, Governor?  Then you also take the consequence of putting money over people at a time of a global pandemic.  A pandemic that most of the world has been able to contain at this point because they did what you did not.  They responded early, swiftly, and they waited until their numbers were far better that ours before even thinking about opening up again.
And now it is up to your constituents, governor, to fend for themselves.  We know that we cannot count on you, and you will not let any other municipality to step up to do what you refuse to do.  We now know where your true fealty lies, sir, and it is not with the people of Georgia.