DC Studios Movies and Streaming Series Discussion

Saw Superman again and I get it a bit more now. It's kinda like if the first Iron Man movie had Hank, Janet and Black Panther operating already. I like where it sets the DC Universe moving forward.

Feels like the message should have been revealed as a fake. Terrific didn't need to comment on it - or is mad because Lex ends up smarter than even him - but that reveal would have triggered the ending better. Also, just makes more sense - and then the ending has even more punch because the montage is an active choice, not reactive.

What got me on the rewatch is that all the connective tissue that felt missing is actually missing - but the scenes connect in a way I haven't seen before in that we catch all of them already in progress. Relationship already in progress - Lois interviews Superman - Lex storms his fortress. Their interview was published between scenes. The payoff of each scene kinda is happening "between panels" as it were and the movie assumes that what the characters just said/did happened. And this is kinda accurate for most of the film. It fast-forwards the narrative in a way I don't think fully works or is necessary, but I don't hate it.
 
I love the “already in progress” nature of the new DCU. I’ve got Captain America: Civil War on in the background while I work out right now, and I’m struck once again what a shame it is that introductions (both to the audience and to other characters) happen under such contrived forced-conflict situations that are just kind of a bummer with characters like Spider-man. One of this Superman film’s greatest strengths is that the metahuman phenomenon is far from new, relationships with other heroes are pre-established for the most part, and even crazy mad science is shrugged off with “yeah, that weird science shit just kinda tends to happen in this world of gods and monsters”. Like it’s weird and reckless that Lex has a pocket universe, but it doesn’t seem completely out of the ordinary for mad scientists to do Grant Morrison shit in this world. I dig that. There’s so much baseline wonder baked in to the whole concept: rather than dragging down the material to make it more “grounded”, Gunn just elevated the whole universe to embrace comic-book whiz-bang from the jump. I love it.
 
AceofKnaves said:
I love the “already in progress” nature of the new DCU. I’ve got Captain America: Civil War on in the background while I work out right now, and I’m struck once again what a shame it is that introductions (both to the audience and to other characters) happen under such contrived forced-conflict situations that are just kind of a bummer with characters like Spider-man. One of this Superman film’s greatest strengths is that the metahuman phenomenon is far from new, relationships with other heroes are pre-established for the most part, and even crazy mad science is shrugged off with “yeah, that weird science shit just kinda tends to happen in this world of gods and monsters”. Like it’s weird and reckless that Lex has a pocket universe, but it doesn’t seem completely out of the ordinary for mad scientists to do Grant Morrison shit in this world. I dig that. There’s so much baseline wonder baked in to the whole concept: rather than dragging down the material to make it more “grounded”, Gunn just elevated the whole universe to embrace comic-book whiz-bang from the jump. I love it.
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This. So much this. My favorite part about the whole thing. Exactly like picking up a comic book for the first time and it's the middle of a story. I felt like I was 6-7 years old again and my Dad had just given me $5 to buy some twenty cent comics off the spinner rack at are favorite convenience store (true story). I have been reading them ever since. I had a huge smile on my face after it was over. Can't wait to see it again.
 
Metahumans have existed in the DCU for 300 years.

Which means I want THIS as a movie:

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And I'm going to keep asking until I get it.

I can be an annoying little shit when I want something (Ask anyone that works at Hasbro) so brace yourselves.
 
Sgt. Stinky said:
This. So much this. My favorite part about the whole thing. Exactly like picking up a comic book for the first time and it's the middle of a story. I felt like I was 6-7 years old again and my Dad had just given me $5 to buy some twenty cent comics off the spinner rack at are favorite convenience store (true story). I have been reading them ever since. I had a huge smile on my face after it was over. Can't wait to see it again.
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I was six years old, too. My grandfather bought me my first comic book in 1964.

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Great post!
 
All three of the “Justice Gang” are JSA legacy characters. I’d say the JSA is an absolute lock as an in-universe concept, and they’d be fools not to drop some 1940s JSA-“mystery men” content. I don’t think Gunn is a fool.
 
Seems like he went with a JLI type vibe with them too. Conflicted B listers not exactly in harmony with each other.

No idea how you guys remember your 1st comic and all that. I have very early memories of specific comics for sure but no way of knowing what came when exactly. Occasionally I remember my first X-Men comic or something
 
PanchaMaestro said:
No idea how you guys remember your 1st comic and all that. I have very early memories of specific comics for sure but no way of knowing what came when exactly. Occasionally I remember my first X-Men comic or something
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Right, same. I can definitely say my first X-Men, but first of all time? Definitely an Amazing Spider-Man or Star Wars but that's as down as I can narrow.
 
I can remember my first comic book very clearly because my grandfather bought it for me and I loved that man. He probably bought it to give me something to do and if that were the case it worked. I spent hours looking through it. He lived in a very small town in rural Indiana (It was a really just a four way stop with a gas station/convenience store) and he knew that the lady who worked at the gas station had comics. For some reason, and I don't know why, she kept the comics in a box under the front counter. She pulled out the box and showed us what she had. There were a whole bunch of DC's (Legion, Lois Lane, Sgt Rock, Superman) some Harvey's, Gold Key's and no Marvels. Marvel had horrible distribution in those days. I didn't see my first Marvel comic until about a year later and it was X-Men.

I just remember that after I got that Justice League issue I had to have more comics. Everytime my family when into a drugstore or grocery store after that I made a bee line right for the spinner rack. That's how I learned to read.

My grandfather was a full blooded Frenchman who was born late in the 19th Century in a small town in France. He had my mother late in life. My mother read comics too as a little girl in the Golden Age. Grampa never understood comics, he just didn't see the appeal. But he knew we loved them and that was all that mattered to him.
 
I have all these splintered memories of “first comics”: Hulk and MODOK in the desert, Batman and Superman fighting stalactite-creatures, Iron Man facing down Iron Monger, then the whole Star Wars Marvel run and Secret Wars got dropped on me by my uncle along with Batman vs the Incredible Hulk, and Wolverine crucified on that cover at some point. Then The Dark Knight Returns, as it came out, also from my uncle. Then in ‘88, when I was 10, it was the absolute deluge of Batmania and especially the “elevated” books it spawned like Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, then years of Bat-books and Hama’s later-but-still-brilliant GI Joe run, then Death and Return of Superman and Knightfall, along with Spidey books starting from McFarlane’s run and X-Men/Uncanny/Wolverine starting from adjectiveless #1. And any damn horror comic I could get my hands on, ESPECIALLY old 70s Tomb of Dracula back issues. That mostly carried me through high school, then in college it was all about prestige Bat-books, Morrison JLA and such, then dropped totally out of Marvel after Disassembled and Civil War and went HARD into broad-spectrum DC before nu52 dropped me out entirely after years of picking up the lion’s share of mainline DC superhero books, like fuck I even have every issue of “Countdown to Final Crisis” somewhere.

This Superman film definitely took me back to when I was reading stuff like “JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice” and a ton of characters were just around and the world was absolutely used to various Crises and it was like “dammit it’s Despero AGAIN” and everyone had pre-established relationships and you knew Batman was gonna be in the corner being grim until it was time to do cool stuff and everything just sort of flowed along, for better or worse. When a pack of known supervillains showed up, you didn’t really need to know much beyond “ohhh fuck that’s some kind of Injustice Gang I guess, things are gonna get wild”.
 
I can't remember all the ones that I bought for that $5 54 years ago but one stood out and I read it first and still have a copy of it today. The Brave and The Bold #88 featuring Batman's team-up with Wildcat. It was actually only fifteen cents. I also had a Spider-Man w/ Ka-Zar in it. Can't remember the number but it was twenty cents as Marvel was five cents more at the time. This was in 1971. The Brave and The Bold 88 began my life long obsession with Batman and to a lesser degree Wildcat. I always favored the more human characters without powers from day one after reading them. Man I miss those days sometimes. I went home with a big paper sack full of comics. My Mom looked at my Dad and was like "How much did you give him!?" :ROFLMAO:
 
First comic was this Fantastic Four bought at a gas station whilst on a road trip to I-forgot-where (maybe Florida). I was young.

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Somehow, it was incredibly nostalgic to read about everyone else's first comic.

I took a roundabout path to reading comics. I was first introduced to superheroes in Batman: The Animated Series. I was probably four or five then. I was hooked on superheroes for life. The toys, too. I had every weird, unnecessary Batman variant.

Years later, I started watching Spider-Man: TAS or X-Men: Evolution, I can't remember which came first. That led me back to more toys. Marvel Legends, this time. My first comic was Uncanny X-Men 133 because it was included with ML3 Wolverine.
 
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