Top 5 Favorite Long Form TV Series

This is a new category, brought on by the fact that we are certainly in the midst of a Television Renaissance as the medium has grown and expanded to now include shows that are longer than a mini-series but still have an ending, however nebulous it may be. These “Netflix” shows are really just the next phase of what cable networks like HBO and Showtime have been doing for twenty years now. The difference is that, instead of willingly placing oneself apart from the rest of the content providers (“It’s not TV…it’s HBO”) now everyone is on a level playing field thanks to a more egalitarian distribution system. This competition has been the best thing for show creators, the networks, and the fans, as amazing shows with oddball premises that wouldn’t have found a voice in 1998 are now among the most eagerly anticipated events of 2018. And a lot of these shows are horror and fantasy and science fiction and sometimes a mix of all that and more.

Cancer: Bedside Manner

We saw two oncologists, a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, and seven or eight nurses of various levels of competency since the diagnosis. Not counting the local doc and his nurse who first put us on this path.

House and Wilson. Whatever you do, DO NOT
Google their fanfic. Trust me on this. 

We have also watched 8 seasons of House, starring Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard as Gregory House and his oncologist colleague, James Wilson. Here’s what our take-away is: the pretend doctors, even the made-up, grouchy-pants ones that are written so as to be assholes, still have better bedside manners than most real doctors.

There’s a reason for this: in fiction (or more specifically in this case, in TV shows and movies), it’s necessary for the audience to understand what the plucky schoolteacher or the recently widowed father of a really bright little girl is going to have to face in fighting this terrible disease. So the pretend doctor outlines in very simple language what’s going to happen in act two (and maybe act three or act four, depending on the narrative structure). This is also done to introduce conflict and tension into the story, which will be ratcheted up, stair-step style, as the story progresses. We get the blow by blow from one or more of the supporting characters; “She’s having a seizure! That can only mean... it’s spread to her brain!”

What We Mean When We Say “Super Hero Fatigue”

Nothing quite sets me off like the phrase “Super Hero Fatigue.” It’s a passive-aggressive way for movie reviewers and online content providers to turn their nose up at a genre that they either don’t like, don’t get, or some combination of the two. I’m not unsympathetic; we’ve all gotten fed up with a trend or a fad before the media, or your little sister, or the world was ready to let go of it, and we’ve all suffered through “the Spring Break song” of the year or the Twilight Saga or whatever it was with a mixture of benign hate and stoic indifference. I get it.

But if you don’t stop talking about super hero fatigue, I’m going to sock your nose. 

When you talk about “super hero fatigue” you may mean that you’re bored with the movies, but what I hear when you say that is, “I want these movies to go away.” Well, I don’t. If you don’t like them—if they aren’t for you—that’s fine, whatever, go peddle your ducks elsewhere. But to my mind, they’ve only really been good for, what, 9 years, now? Not even a full decade? Why do you hate fun? Who hurt you? And why would you waste good ink complaining about it when there’s hundreds of other movies, obscure and neglected, that you can champion as only a hipster can?

Now that you know what this blog post is going to be about, feel free to chalk it up as one of those “Old Man Yells at Cloud” posts. Or just skip right down to the end and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. You will be wrong, of course, and do you know why?

I did the math. I’ve got the numbers. I have data, you smug bastards. So let me explain to you folks—many of whom are under the age of 35—why you need to stop kvetching about the Super Hero Movie Genre and let us Generation X folks have our moment.

My Thesis
The modern comic book movie didn’t officially begin until the year 1999 with the premiere of The Matrix. While it was not connected to a comic series or based on established characters, the visual effects in the film handily duplicated the fast-action and ballet-like fighting that was a staple of comic books. The “Bullet Time” effects in particular showcased key scenes before, during and after their execution, mimicking a “panel” in a comic.

Note: I did not include Blade (1998) in this calculation because, while Blade’s comic book origins are well-established, he is a vampire who hunts vampires. His speed and strength did not need any further explanation. The movie going audience understood that from the get-go and so no additional story was needed to justify his “super powers.” Nevertheless, Blade does count as a comic book movie, as we’ll later see.

Special effects, and in particular computer-generated effects, have been a staple of the movie industry since Jurassic Park in 1993. However, it took nearly a decade to create computer-generated imagery that was able to meet the rigorous demands of a super hero film. Even movies that were deemed mediocre as films boasted incredible special effects and images that were simply not possible prior to the 21^st century.

Of course, that didn’t keep Hollywood from trying. The 20^th century has some of the best-and worst-super hero movies and television shows to ever exist. And I should know. I watched all of it. Yeah, that’s right, all of it. Look, I was an early and avid fan of super heroes. I was reading comics at the age of 5. Collecting them by age 8. And—here’s the kicker—I was born in 1969, which puts me at ground zero for everything that was to come along and, little by little, improve with each try. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that if you were born anytime after 1960, then you probably feel as I do, if you’re as big a fan of comics and super heroes as me. If you were born in the seventies, you’re probably on board with me. But if you were born in the mid to late 1980s...you may just be the person I’m talking to when I say, “shut up your flapping food hole” about Super Hero fatigue.

I Made a Chart
You can download a PDF of my full chart here.  It took me a while to put together, since this is not my strong suit. But I wanted to back up my feelings, my impressions, and my memories with some actual hard data points. So there it is, in its full glory, if you’re so inclined. Also, I graded every single super hero movie and project from A to F. That's what we're all going to fight about. I just know it. So go ahead and download it now and look it over and get ready to tell me why I'm the biggest idiot the world has ever produced because I didn't like your favorite movie from 1997. For the rest of you, I’m going to skip ahead and talk briefly about what I uncovered.

Most of you know that modern super heroes debuted in 1938 with the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics. Batman followed in 1939, and Captain America and Wonder Woman came after that in 1940. Most of you know about the Golden Age of Super Hero Comics, and you may even know about the Silver Age and the creation of Marvel Comics in 1961 with The Fantastic Four, followed quickly by The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man.  

Marvel and DC continue to rule the roost when it comes to super heroes and their related properties. There have been (and continue to be) other publishers of comics, but it’s hard to topple characters who’ve been around for 60, 70, and 80 or more years. One thing I found interesting was that the 1940s and the 1960s, both times of great interest in comic book super heroes, each had their own attempts to capitalize on that success in movies or TV.

The 1940s were the era of the serials, or “Cliffhangers,” wherein a story was broken up into weekly chapters, each running around 15 minutes, and exhibited as part of a larger Saturday matinee program. These serials were sometimes re-edited into feature length films. The special effects for these cliffhangers was shoestring, at best, but the stunt work and action were often top-notch.

The 1950s gave rise to atomic age science fiction, and also opened up circuit distribution for independent film companies and “packagers.” Thus, quality varied widely, with some of the movies skirting the edge of outright exploitation.

Television was a fixture in the 1960s, and when Marvel came along, it saw an opportunity not on the silver screen but on the little screen. As early as 1966, a number of animated properties were developed—aimed at kids, of course—featuring the Marvel super heroes. The 1960s also continued the Science Fiction trend, but new fears were creeping into the zeitgeist. Planet of the Apes is the standout from this decade. Also, the studio system was breaking down.

The 1970s were essentially the end of the 1960s. Some speculative films were out, but there were more Godzilla movies than super hero fare on the big screen. It wasn’t until Star Wars changed the game in terms of what could be done onscreen that things started to change—but not until the 1980s. However, Marvel—perhaps emboldened by its success with animated properties, made the bewildering decision to take some of its beloved characters and turn them into lackluster live-action properties. Only Donner's Superman (starring Christopher Reeve) in 1978 could save us from such mediocrity, and set the bar so high that it became the standard for decades on How to Make a Super Hero Movie.  

1980s were a heyday for fantasy films, embracing the new technologies created by ILM such as blue screen technology and optical compositing as soon as it was invented. Most of the time, the technology was badly applied, or worse, applied quite well to bolster terrible films. Marvel never really got its legs under it, doubling down on projects like Incredible Hulk TV movies and trying to launch David Hasselhoff as Nick Fury. DC didn’t do much better, with the Superman films rapidly declining in quality, each one dumber than the last. Again, a last minute save by Tim Burton invigorated Batman for a new generation. 

Never forget. This is why we fight.

The 1990s tried their hardest to deliver, but the technology was just out of reach of the subject matter. To make matters worse, decades of bad super heroes, campy super heroes, and corny super heroes had muddied the waters. The nadir of this era was the much maligned and rightly so Batman and Robin, an intentional salute and celebration of the 1966 Batman TV show that everyone tried so hard to overcome. That the show has found a new audience now is not the point; there are finally enough interpretations of Batman in the zeitgeist that a super silly Batman isn't the only thing drawing water, nor is it the only view of super heroes out there. Back when it was the only note anyone could blow on a horn, it was tiresome in the extreme. The independent comics produced a  few exceptions, such as The Mask, which made the rubbery computer animation work for it, and The Rocketeer, which matched nice special effects with a sincere attempt at getting the character right, made the failures around it that much worse. Only the quantum leap forward with CGI at the end of the decade made what came next possible.

The 2000s can inarguably be considered the new Golden Age of comic book movies, now that technology finally caught up to the rigorous demands of the stories being told. However, the old modes of storytelling and the insistence on telling the same kind of super hero story—now a mash-up of the Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) plot would continue to plague many of the projects for most of the decade. When Iron Man started the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, it put into place one of the most ambitious world-building and franchise building exercises ever attempted on such a large scale, and it paid off handsomely.

2010 to 2017 is not a complete decade, but I would go so far as to argue that today’s comic book movies and television shows have supplanted the comic book themselves in terms of the place they occupy in popular culture—as a mirror of the times, and also as a reaction to current events. This is especially true in the politically-charged decade of the 2010s. The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe only highlights the ongoing struggles of Warner Brothers to get its proprietary DC Universe characters on the big screen.

My Methodology
First, I counted only the Marvel, DC, and Independent movies and TV shows that were based on actual comics. There were a couple of exceptions, as you’ll see if you look at the PDF above. Mostly for multi-media properties such as The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger, and The Phantom. It was only a few extra numbers, as you’ll see. I also only counted TV shows once, even if they were on for multiple seasons.

I left off animation because it would have ballooned the super hero list. Also, because 95% of the animation was aimed at children. There’s a separate metric for that, in that all of that kiddie fare drove the discourse down and made super heroes infantile and their fans man-children for much of the 20^th century. But that’s not what I was looking at. For what it’s worth, I did choose to count the live-action Saturday Morning Shows like Shazam! and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl. I’m nothing if not capricious.

Then I went back and counted all of the movies and TV, aimed at American audiences, that were super heroes who were not actually comic book based. This is where stuff like The Greatest American Hero (1981-83) got counted. M.A.N.T.I.S. (1995). Heroes (2006-2010). Hancock (2008). You get the idea. 

In order to give these numbers some meaning, I used the combined Fantasy and Science Fiction genres to help “classify” them, since they have, up until very recently, been considered part of that genre (well, sometimes they get placed in action/adventure, but I maintain that the special effects needed to get super heroes to work on film is equal to an F/SF film, so this was a more accurate grouping).  I looked at the number of “real” or Top Shelf (Marvel, DC, etc) movies and TV shows by decade, and compared them to the number of Non-Marvel, DC, etc. movies and also F/SF movies by decade to generate a percentage within that larger group. Here are the results of that.

Super Hero Movie Stats

YEARS By Decade	Marvel, DC & Indy films	Other “Super Hero” films	Other F/SF films	% BY DECADE
1940s
	14	1	37	36%
1950s
	6	2	164	4%
1960s
	3	1	115	2.5%
1970s
	7	5	123	5%
1980s
	11	7	196	5%
1990s
	24	16	194	11%
2000s
	33	5	190	17%
2010s
	48*	4*	159*	29%*

* an ongoing statistic. Tallies are not final.

Interpreting the Data
I deliberately pushed “Other Super Hero” films into a separate category because, almost without fail, they only added to the signal to noise ratio in getting good and true representations of these characters onscreen. In retrospect, I should have included another column for animated series, as it’s very important from the 1960s on, as keeping the characters (albeit simplified) in the public eye. But what I’m driving at here is this: Condorman did nothing to sell the public on the idea that super heroes were anything other than kiddy fare, played for laughs. And that was released by Walt Disney. Captain Nice, another live-action Saturday morning Yuk-fest, was even more stupid. This all relates back to the Batman TV series, of course. It was played for laughs and it was so incredibly successful, so fast, that they couldn’t monetize it fast enough. It was a legitimate pop culture phenomenon. And because it was so successful, that’s the well Hollywood went back to for a full decade when Super Heroes came up. That’s why Doc Savage looked the way it did.

That’s not to say that the major comic book companies didn’t shoot themselves in the foot, either. For decades prior to the premiere of X-Men in 2000, Marvel comics fans groaned every time a new TV series or movie was announced, because they just Couldn’t Get It Right. Ever. In some cases, it was like they weren’t even trying. The Incredible Hulk was popular, for what it was, but it really bore no resemblance to the comics. There were no super villains, nothing to really set The Hulk in the Marvel Universe. Ferrigno in green body paint was expensive enough. And he stormed through Styrofoam walls, broke balsa wood tables, and even pushed cars around with his Hulk-like strength, but it was a far, far cry from “Hulk Smash.” Later, in the 1980s, they revived the Hulk for TV movies co-starring Thor and Daredevil, and they were the sorriest, most inane versions of the characters I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen them all, even the pirated unreleased TV pilots and movies that have been shelved over the years because they sucked so bad.

And What about DC? They were defined by the success of Superman (1978) and Batman (1989), this is true, but no one ever brings up Swamp Thing (1981). Or the appallingly campy Legends of the Superheroes (1979) TV special, hosted by Ed McMahon. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman was initially as great as something with a nineteen-dollar special effects budget could be, but as quick as they could, they brought her into the modern era, where everyone wore pantsuits, and all of the aliens were from a future or a planet that used crystals and a lot of lycra. No, there’s enough blame to go around. By the 1970s, the ’66 Batman TV show was in syndication, and it was a daily dose of high camp caped crusader tomfoolery, and we all watched it, because we had no other options, but we also all wondered why Adam West and Burt Ward were nothing—at all—like the Batman and Robin in the comics. 1970’s Denny O’Neill/Neal Adams Batman was solving murders. Adam West was doing the Batusi in the What a Way to Go-Go. Talk about a disconnect.

At first glance, it sure does seem like the number of super hero projects has increased. I think it’s interesting to note that in terms of percentages, 2010 and 1940 are the closest in comparative sizes, and I think this is due to a similar rise in interest. Comics are no longer hermetic and inaccessible. Super heroes are everywhere, and they function, more or less, like how they work in the comics. This is a huge leap forward, and one that may contribute to the decline (and maybe even the death) of American super hero comics as the characters move into this new storytelling medium en masse.

These are good numbers to look at, but there’s one more number, very important, that I want to talk about. Here’s where we venture, and quite correctly, into “You Young Kids” territory. I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves, for now.

Number of Top-Tier Super Hero movies prior to 2000: 65
Number of SF and “other” super hero movies combined, prior to 2000: 861
Percentage of Top Tier Super hero films prior to 2000:  7.5%
Number of Top-Tier Super Hero movies after 2000: 81
Number of SF and “other” super hero movies combined, after 2000: 358
Percentage of Top Tier Super hero films after 2000:  23%

What we have here is not only the establishment of super hero movies as a genre, but also a clear line in the sand for people born from 1960 to 1985 and people born after 1985. It has a lot to do with when you started consuming super heroes. If you were born after a certain age, you just aren’t in a position to understand why it’s important to Generation X that we now have cool movies that don’t insult anyone’s intelligence and that millions of people are interested in and oh yeah, also star Captain Freaking America. You don’t understand, and I don’t know that you’ll ever have the empathy to do so.

A Tale of Two Marks
To prove my point, I’m going to create two identical Marks. Mark from Earth-1 and Mark from Earth-2. For clarity’s sake, I will eschew with the standard time deviation that is problematic with the multiverse and make Earth-1 Mark older than Earth-2 Mark. I know that there’s a small percentage of DC comics fans who’s heads just exploded, but I don’t care. This isn’t for them.
Mark from Earth-1 was born in 1969. He was born at a time when there wasn’t Cable TV, and there wasn’t VHS recorders (and certainly not any DVD players). Mark really likes super heroes, and thankfully, there’s plenty of them around. He just has to ride his bike all over to the four or five convenience stores, drug stores, and super markets that each have a limited selection of Marvel and DC comics. Earth-1 Mark has to smile politely when his grandparents bring him a handful of “funny books” to read; stacks of Archie and Ritchie Rich that do nothing to satisfy his itch to leap tall buildings in a single bound and save the world from the mad menace of The Joker.

Earth-1 Mark is eight years old when Star Wars premieres in 1977. Up until that time, he’s been watching cartoons (of course) and Wonder Woman on television. He’s also been watching Shazam! every Saturday morning. Most of the time, their super heroics are about this same; I can’t count the number of car bumpers they both lifted up to prevent criminals from just driving away from them.

But all is not gloom and doom for Earth-1 Mark. Even though he doesn’t have the streaming Internet, or even cable, he has regular TV and radio. On the AM stations, at night, he can listen to old time radio programs like The Shadow. He’s got Power Records, actual comics with actors speaking the lines. Those are pretty cool, and do not shy away from the subject matter. And on TV, he’s privy to just about every super hero program from 1940 to 1968. Shows like Batman ran in the afternoons, after school. He watches all of it, including the Saturday morning cartoons like Batman and The Super Friends, and Space Ghost. Even after Star Wars debuts, it take years between projects. There is no Internet to instantly spread the latest rumors and gossip; just controlled press releases that state Superman II is now filming and will be premiere in 1980. Three years away. 

You were supposed to protect us from this, Stan! We

trusted you! How could you let this happen? Do you

have any idea how much shit we took for this stuff?

Earth-2 Mark? He was born in 1985. He also loves comics. His mom takes him to the comic book shop every week to buy his latest books. He still has to avoid the other kids who might make fun of him, but there are other people his age who also go to the comic book store, and they band together, like Sand People, to hide their true numbers.

In the meantime, Earth-1 Mark can tide himself over with The Incredible Hulk, on TV, and watch Bill Bixby turn into Lou Ferrigno twice each episode. He can watch Spider-Man, on TV, climb up walls and shoot nylon cord out of a webshooter the size of a disco ball and watch it magically curl around a bad guy to tie him up. He can watch Captain America, on TV, drive a motorcycle while wearing a giant blue helmet and throw a clear plastic shield around like a Frisbee.  He can watch Ed McMahon yuk it up with third-rate comedians in ill-fitting super hero Spandex, on TV. And he can deftly avoid the bigger kids in school who love to make fun of him because comics are stupid and for babies and nothing in the larger media is proving the bullies wrong at this point.

Earth-2 Mark is 6 years old when Jurassic Park comes out. It’s the first time he’s been thrilled and terrified at a movie, because the dinosaurs looked so very real! Later, in his early twenties, he’ll decry the animation as clumsy and stupid, but for now, he’s duly impressed. Mostly, though, he’s into Batman: The Animated Series and the X-Men cartoons.

Earth-2 Mark’s dad took him to see Batman Forever but he didn’t remember it, so he rented the VHS tape and rewatched it at his home. All of his super hero movies are on video tape, and he can watch them whenever he wants to, now. But the movie he really remembers seeing in the theater was Batman & Robin, and it blew his young mind (he watched it years later, as an adult, and was bummed to find out that it didn’t hold up, not in the least). He also saw Spawn that same year by sneaking into the theater, and it was super cool, because he got Spawn #1 and it’s now worth $20 and it’s only going to go up after the movie comes out, right?

When the first X-Men movie drops in 2000, Earth-2 Mark is in line. And he comes out of it energized. Finally! He thinks. We’ve been waiting for, like, ten years for this. It was stupid of them to wait so long. They could have and should have done this years ago. In fact, they should have done X-Men instead of Blade. Now, if only they’d put Colossus in the next X-Men movie...
Now it’s 2017. Earth-2 Mark is 29 years old. He’s been to college. He’s gotten a degree in general studies. He now works for an online content provider, and he writes pithy and succinct think-pieces about popular culture. But he’s bored, now, because they still aren’t making the movies he wants them to make, and he’s so fed up with all of these super hero movies, because, come on, this is so 1997, people, amiright? I mean, it was fun when I was younger, but after watching 12 Years a Slave, he simply cannot go back to movies that don’t elucidate or instruct in some meaningful way.

When Captain America (Finally) Throws His Mighty Shield
Okay, that’s enough of that. My point, in case you missed it, was this: for my generation, super heroes on film and TV were rare, hard to access, and nearly always not worth the terrible effort it took to find it in the first place. For so long, the special effects necessary to sell these stories was sorely lacking. When the special effects got better, efforts to translate the material suffered because of the prevailing attitude that comics were either A. Stupid; B. Infantile; or C. Both. The only thing people could do was to try and duplicate the success of the Batman TV show, with terrible results every time.

I really cannot stress to you just how bad all of it was. And I’m not saying, “compared to now,” either. I mean, bad back then. Case in point: Captain America.

I love Captain America. He’s one of my all-time favorite super heroes. Cool character, cool costume, cool powers, cool friends, cool everything. I was a seventies kid, and the bicentennial was huge. I had a copy of Captain America’s Bicentennial battles. I had the Captain America and the Falcon Power Records Book and Record set. I had the Captain America pocket books full-color reprint. Cap was my guy.

So when I found out there was a clilffhanger serial, featuring Captain America, and made during the 1940s, when it was cool to punch Nazis, I spent years tracking it down...and when I found it...ooh boy. It’s not good. Dick Purcell? Really? It’s just not. Cliffhangers are kind of cheesy and bad, but this poor sap in the cap suit didn’t even have a shield! I mean, Come On. How hard is that? There's nothing in the serial that is unique to Captain America. He could have been called "Bund-Puncher McGurk" and it would have made zero difference to the plot or the story. 
Thankfully, in the 1970s, there were these old limited animation shows (and I do mean limited) featuring the Marvel Super Heroes. One of which was Captain America, which came with a nifty theme song that I know you’ve heard people sing before. These cartoons were done in the mid-sixties, at a New York studio, with crude animation and clumsy voice acting, but the art for the cartoons was taken directly from the comics themselves. They look almost exactly like the Motion Comics of today.

This was not cool. Not even during the heyday of
Evel Knievel Fever. It sucked and we all knew it.

In the late 1970s, these two Captain America TV movies were shown, starring Reb Brown (don’t ask me) and featuring a Captain America who drove a motorcycle with a giant clear plastic shield that snapped onto the front of the bike like a windscreen. To promote cycle safety, Cap also had a giant blue motorcycle helmet with white wings painted on the side. Not even Christopher Lee as the bad guy makes these things worth watching. They are wrist-slitting awful.

By then, Stan was in Los Angeles, ostensibly heading up Marvel Entertainment, making movie and TV deals for all of us True Believers and telling us about it in his monthly column in the comics. That lasted until the early 1990s, but by then, we had the direct market and some comic book magazines that kept us up-to-date on the latest gossip—like the brand-new Captain America movie coming out!

Featuring an Italian Red Skull, a rubber suit that looked okay, until Cap turned his head and the molded rubber ears that were part of the mask he wore flattened against his head and looked ridiculous. This Cap is untrained, and flown into battle with one mission, holding a solid shield (thank you!), and he promptly gets kidnapped by the Italian Red Skull and strapped to a rocket that drops him into the Arctic Sea and freezes him. He’s thawed out in the modern world, only to find the Italian Red Skull is still alive, and they have one more fight and Cap wins.

Did I mention to you that this movie wasn’t originally released in America? It was so bad, it ended up going straight to video—right about the same time that Roger Corman’s Fantastic Four movie was being shelved for sucking so bad.

So, there’s Captain America’s media history. One of the easiest (you’d think) characters to pull off: no flight, no crazy powers like eye beams or weather control. Just running, jumping, punching, and throwing a shield—stuff that special effects could have and should have been able to pull off since the early 1980s.

That’s why Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) is such a big deal. Not only did they get all of the little stuff right—the running, the jumping, the punching, and the shield—they spent a shit-ton of money making Steve Rogers look like a 98 pound weakling for the first third of the movie. When Cap throws his shield and it ricochets off of two bad guys and knocks them out, it looks exactly like how he does it in the comics. Chris Evans plays him like a conflicted Boy Scout, which is Cap all over from the 1960s to the 2010s. And the Red Skull was German, and a Nazi. Don’t ask me why it took so long. But understand this: I never thought they’d do it. After seeing them trying, and failing, so often, from the age of 7 to me in my early 40s, I just didn’t think they’d ever do it right. Not until Iron Man in 2008. Until then, I had zero hope.

By then, it was clear that the Geeks had Inherited the Earth. And apparently, what we want is good comic book movies and TV shows. Is that so wrong? We’d been denied them, all while the rest of you got romantic comedies, westerns, gangster movies, war movies, and love stories. And we had to take what we could get, because no one took comics seriously for decades. But there came a point when comics weren’t stigmatized. It started in the mid-to-late 1980s with the publication of a number of comics and graphic novels aimed at adults rather than kids.

Somewhere in the mid-to-late 1990s, comics stopped being popular culture’s whipping boy. By then, it was okay to like comics, and the movies that came out, while of widely varied quality, at least looked and behaved like comic book super heroes. It wasn’t until members of Generation X started making these movies that they underwent a tonal change.

Post 2000 super hero movies are still a mixed bag, right up until 2008, when Marvel dropped Iron Man on an unsuspecting world. The birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was one of the most ambitious experiments of all time; make six super hero movies just so you can make a seventh one. Planning that far ahead was backwards thinking to the rest of Hollywood, but it worked like a charm. And judging from the box office numbers, it continues to work.  

Most of us old-timers chuckle at how the fortunes have reversed. There was a time that we preferred the DC movies and hated everything Marvel threw at us. Those days, thankfully, are long gone. But it’s worth noting that our interest hasn’t waned, just because we’re older. There’s still a lot to answer for. Decades of mistreatment, in fact. Even if we scrape off the first seven years of the 21^st century (throwing out Spider-Man and X-Men along with Elektra and Catwoman), even if we just start keeping score in 2008, that’s just ten years of jaw-dropping sights and sounds, stuff we never thought we’d ever see—such as an actual Captain America movie that wasn’t completely stupid—ten years, compared to, what? Thirty to forty years of insulting our intelligence, denigrating something we love almost unconditionally, mishandling the characters and concepts that have sustained generations of fans, beloved characters that are larger than life and mean something personal and sacred to so many folks...four decades of Hollywood screwing it up and making it worse.

This is our time. We earned these movies, with our money, with our loyalty, with our hearts. We kept these flames alive, and we kept the comic book industry afloat, and we championed these things to our friends, our family, our boyfriends and girlfriends—to anyone who would listen. It cost us social currency, relationships, arguments and fights—scars we carry to this day in one way or another. This is our hard-earned and just reward, in this new Era of Geek Culture.

They may not all be good, and some of them aren’t. But this is a relative and highly subjective criteria we’re talking about, here. Take the worst Marvel Cinematic Universe movie you can think of—whichever the worst one in your mind is. Now, go compare that to anything that came out in the 1970s and 1980s. Go on, do it. I’ll wait. Pick the worst DC movie of the last ten years and go compare that to anything in the 1990s. See if it suddenly, magically, doesn’t start to look amazing and wonderful, by comparison.

See, it’s all relative. And it should be. We’re talking about a sub-genre of fantasy and science fiction movies, here. As popular now as the spy genre was in the 1960s or the western was in the 1940s and 1950s. It will very likely slow down on its own, due to economic pressures and interests, since Hollywood has a time-honored tradition of self-sabotage and over-saturation. But for right now, Super Heroes are only about one fifth of the overall number of fantasy and science fiction movies being released in the last ten years.

So, how about you let us have this moment and stop trying to take it away?

Defending The Defenders

Netflix recently dropped The Defenders, which is the culmination of four other Marvel TV shows spread across five seasons. If this were a comic book series, it would be akin to the Summer Annuals, where all of the stories converge and everyone gets together to team up against an enemy that they can’t handle solo.

If this sounds like how The Avengers movie came together, well, that’s kinda the template. And while the results weren’t quite the same, overall, The Defenders works very well for what it is, if not for what it’s supposed to be. It’s shorter than the other series by a full four hours (making it seem more like an event) and it resolves character’s ongoing storylines and sets up future seasons nicely.

Granted, the show is not without its detractors. The online chatter was varied, with some folks doubling down on Iron Fist being a “thundering dumb-ass” (thank you, Stick, for that colorful phrase) and others claiming he’s “not as horrible” when paired up with other heroes. Some folks took issue with Jessica Jones, for reasons I still don’t fully understand. A lot of people had a problem with The Hand, the criminal empire who resurrected Elektra and is the main adversary in The Defenders.

Still a great many more tried to watch The Defenders without having seen all of the Netflix series that preceded it. I think this is where a number of complaints came from, and their subsequent bafflement is, as a result, somewhat out of place. Of course, the Netflix shows aren’t for everyone; if this Age of Media Super Heroes has taught me anything, it’s that everyone brings their own baggage to these shows, and the spectrum of opinions around them are so wide and varied that you have no choice to chalk them up to subjective personal tastes and not as any kind of objective criteria or metric for quality.

I think that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most ambitious and inarguably most successful of the various world-building exercises, and the Netflix shows are doing something equally as interesting, and they aren’t being talked about in toto. In short, Marvel Studios tried to do with Netflix series what they successfully did with The Phase 1 of Marvel movies that culminated in The Avengers. And like that Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the Marvel movies, the sub-plots and background Easter eggs are just as important as the main storylines in each movie.

Astute movie-goers and life-long comic book fans now know that all of the glowy bits and bobs that have appeared in various movies are now about to make glorious comebacks at Infinity Stones in the massive and sprawling two-movie epic, Avengers: Infinity War, which starts in 2018. But the Marvel universe is not all cosmic happenings and Earth-shaking events. Crime continues apace in places like New York City. And this is where the Netflix shows come in.

Why The Defenders is Better Than You Think

What makes the Netflix shows different is that the focus is not on the heroes so much as it’s on the villains. This is specifically true for the Hand, which ran through three of the five series, but in general, it’s the villains that rank higher than the heroes in Netflix’ storytelling structure. Let’s briefly consider the five seasons that went into The Defenders

Daredevil

Season 1 was, at first glance, all about Matthew Murdock and his troubles with the Kingpin, Wilson Fisk, played with incredible verve and intensity by Vincent D’Onofrio. And a lot of the first six episodes are all about Fisk, with Murdock and Daredevil (not yet in costume) relegated to sub-plots. The momentum changes about halfway through when it’s revealed that Fisk is doing some things at the behest of a sinister and secret organization that, among other things, employs ninjas, runs drugs, and uses a stylized dragon for a symbol.

In season 2, with the Kingpin out of the way, Daredevil (aka “the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” which is a much cooler name) is free to concentrate on The Hand, and even as he’s making those overtures, here comes the Punisher to distract everyone. Meanwhile, the Hand have built a building on the block they bought from Fisk in Season 1 and are digging a hole. Oh, and they have more ninjas, and made it clear that they were taking over the Asian drug cartels in the wake of The Kingpin’s incarceration.

Jessica Jones

This series did a better job of splitting its time between Jessica Jones and her contemporary situation and the past tense threat of Kilgrave, the Purple Man, and what he did to Jones. Jones is a stand-alone series, with tie-ins through Claire, the nurse, and also serving to introduce Luke Cage and partially explain his back story. But the Purple Man dominates the series from the first episode, driving the narrative and with good and terrifying reason, as the series repeatedly demonstrates.

Luke Cage

Continuing from Jessica Jones, this series intentionally establishes itself as being separate from the rest of the Netflix series. Harlem, in specific, is not Hell’s Kitchen, and Luke Cage is adamant about taking care of his corner of New York City and not much else. But the series managed to get a number of past, present, and future villains on-screen and all cued up for later development, which was impressive. That Luke Cage’s backstory is tied to Diamondback’s origin helps double up on the flashbacks and keeps the episodes flowing.

Iron Fist

After two seasons of worldbuilding featuring a person of color and a woman as the lead, and with both of these shows getting rave reviews, Iron Fist had a lot to live up to, and it failed, almost from the get-go, mostly by not being “the thing that people wanted it to be from inside of their heads.” This is not quite fair to fans, but it’s really not fair to Iron Fist, who has, in the Netflix series, been reimagined by Marvel Studios as a real novice and not at all the cool and interesting character from the comic books. See “thundering dumb ass” above. Pacing problems that were somewhat overlooked and forgiven on Daredevil were now the primary focus of everyone’s ire. No one, it seemed, was particularly interested in Iron Fist’s agonizingly slow “Year One” story, and most of the fault for that was laid at the feet of showrunner Scott Buck. But the series dropped the other shoe on the Hand’s grand plot, which was essentially muted in Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

If we are keeping score, I would rank the series in order of my preference thusly: Luke Cage, Daredevil Season 1, Jessica Jones, Daredevil Season 2, and Iron Fist. I'm going to write more about this in a future blog post, but let me again remind all of you over the age of 40 that, had any of these series--oh, to hell with this--had Iron Fist, as is, been available to us prior to the year 2000, we would have lost our collective minds at how good it was. So, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water just yet. I'm still slightly amazed that we're even talking about five TV shows that include Power Man and Iron Fist among them. There is no way--NO WAY--that my ten year old self, twenty year old self, and even thirty year old self, ever thought we'd be having this discussion to begin with. I want you all to keep this in mind as you continue reading. 

This brings us neatly to The Defenders. All of the connective tissue from the other Netflix series is in place; the lawyers, Night Nurse, and most importantly, the street-level sensibility. The Marvel movies frequently take to the air to give you a bird’s eye view of the action, but the Netflix TV shows do just the opposite. They plant the camera at ground level and let you look up as someone scurries over a fire escape. Or they pin you into hallways (where Iron Man and Thor would have a hard time maneuvering). In these series, bullets can kill. Knives can cut. The stakes are much closer to us. That’s why a woman with super strength or a black man with invulnerability is such a big deal.

And that’s why The Hand is such a big deal, as well. Or Kilgrave. Or Cottonmouth, or Diamondback, or any of the other corrupt politicians, drug pushers, real estate moguls, and criminal organizations with their own selfish agendas to enact. This sentiment was best echoed in Spider-Man: Homecoming, and make no mistake; the Vulture’s salvage operation is right at home with the Marvel Knights (can I just go ahead and call them that, for crying out loud?)

A perfect example of what a super hero
battle might look like from the bystanders
point of view, from Kurt Busiek and Alex
Ross' seminal work, Marvels.

This “looking up” perspective, first used brilliantly in Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s Marvels mini-series, is kind of blasé’ now in comics, but for television, it’s perfect. After all, who among us can’t relate to the destruction of a skyscraper in downtown New York City? That’s a big deal, and it should be. The scale is smaller than the movies, because in some ways, it has to be. These heroes, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, are saving lives, one person at a time. And the shows make a point of showing how that matters, how it impacts people, a community. This is something that the large-scale Marvel movies can’t quite dwell on, not in the same way that the TV series can. And it’s a positive.

In the Mighty Marvel Manner

Another positive is that The Defenders sticks ably to its comic book roots, and especially the “Marvel Storytelling” method. To wit, two heroes find themselves on opposite ends of the same problem and they have to fight before they realize they are better off working together. But just because they are working together doesn’t mean they are automatically friends, or that they even like each other. This staple of Marvel comics culture is perfectly encapsulated, more so than the first Avengers movie, and runs through the whole series. Everyone sticks to their guns, too, right up until circumstances force them to do otherwise:  Luke Cage is helping a single family out; Jessica Jones is trying to clear one case; Matt Murdock is doing lawerly stuff to keep from beating people up; and Iron Fist, along with Colleen Wing, are chasing their tails.

 

The Defenders gets the group together and talking in a way that should make comic fans happy. Jessica and Matt Murdock have a moment (several, actually) that sets up her working for him in an official capacity at some point down the line, a plot device straight out of the comics. Jessica and Luke Cage reconnect, wedging the door open for further romantic entanglements (in the comics, they have a child together). And last but certainly not least, Luke Cage and Danny Rand, aka Power Man and Iron Fist, square off in a couple of sparring matches, verbal and otherwise, that are satisfying for all of the Danny Rand haters out there (insert your own, out of whack reason here), and perfectly set off their unlikely friendship.

Bring on the Bad Guys

Once they have established the hero’s need to cooperate, we get more information about The Hand, and in this series we see they are very similar to DC’s League of Assassins by way of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. This isn’t plagerism, as they are both drawing from the historical Assassins to make their ancient mythic karate people, but it is very clear that, if the extraction of the dragon skeleton destroys New York City in the process, c’est la vie. That’s a hell of an omelet to make for the breaking of the eggs. I’d had to calculate their profit/loss statement at the end of the year.

But it’s also not surprising in that The Hand wears a corporate face, and their members all wear Armani suits, and in all other ways exhibit the outward appearance of corporate culture. One of the things Iron Fist drove home (admittedly, repeatedly and often ham-fistedly), was that some corporations care more about profits than people. It’s not an accident that the bad guys in Luke Cage are politicians and developers. Ditto Daredevil. These street-level heroes, these champions of the underdog, are fighting the 1% for the other 99%. It’s the villains that we need to pay attention to in these series, not the intricate details of each character’s origins. The fact that all of them are shown in flashbacks emphasize that. Super strength and invulnerability matter less than the suckers and shitheads trying to poison us. That’s the focus of Marvel’s Netflix series.

It’s not clear if the gang will reunite for another event. But we do know that all four Marvel Netflix series are moving forward from here. Daredevil Season 3 is confirmed. Jessica Jones Season 2 is filming now. Luke Cage Season 2 is about to start up again. And we presume that Iron Fist Season 2 is getting a major overhaul and a tonal shift. This would be possible, now, thanks to The Defenders, specifically how the show ended.

Also, there is ample evidence to suggest that eventually we’ll see the Power Man/Iron Fist team-up we’ve all been hoping for, as they were some of the best comics in the 70’s and 80’s. Especially now, with those two characters serving as excellent foils for one another. Also, now that Misty Knight is, um, off the police force (I guess), we would all love a Knight-Wing Investigations series. Or combine both ideas. Perhaps it’s where Iron Fist Season 2 is headed.

You can’t watch The Defenders without having seen the other series first. Some say you can, but trust me, you can’t. Not without experiencing some information gaps, some character and plot motivation that runs through the majority of the Netflix series, and also some connective tissue that makes The Defenders hang together. Whatever you might think about it (and you will, I have no doubt), it’s well-constructed and dovetails nicely together, much like the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Obviously, your mileage will vary, but if you are enjoying Marvel’s massive multi-media experiment, and check your pre-conceived notions at the door, you’ll enjoy Marvel’s The Defenders even if it’s not greater than the sum of its parts.

Blue Bloods is My Blue Kryptonite

Netflix dropped me a line that the new season (last season) of Blue Bloods was available: Season 7, for those of you not keeping up. Seven seasons of this show, with the Season 8 waiting in line. For the few of you who don't know about this, here's the bullet description from TV Guide:

A New York crime drama focusing on a multigenerational family of cops that includes the city's police commissioner, his two sons and his retired father.

It's on CBS, and they are known for doing pretty good cop shows. And while I generally like police procedurals, I was initially interested because Tom Selleck is in the show, and I think he's an under-rated actor who gets judged by his mustache too often.

So I started watching it, and found it to be very problematic, for a number of reasons. As of the end of Season Seven, I find they have not solved nor addressed any of my concerns. They are as follows:

1. Donnie Wahlberg? I know he's found another career, Post-New Kids on the Block, as an actor, but I cannot...CAN NOT...let that go. I want to, desperately, but I look at him and it all comes rushing back, a technicolor MTV stream of consciousness nightmare. "The Right Stuff," indeed. Oh, and on the show? Donnie plays Danny. It's like they weren't even trying.

2. I can't get over how much Bridget Moynahan looks like the missing Judd sister, after Ashley. It's not fair, I know, but there it is.

3. The much-lauded "Dinner Table" scenes, where the show's weekly conflict is spelled out for anyone who hasn't managed to pick up on it yet, and all sides of the issue are discussed, but never really solved. Not unless that solution involves...(see next)

Steve Schirripa as Anthony Abetemarco
and Bridget Moynahan as Erin Reagan.
This is the "will they, won't they" couple
I'm rooting for. Make it happen, CBS!

4. The Cops are Always Right. I know, the show is called Blue Bloods, not Doing the Best They Can Bloods...but that's the eternal defense they play on the show, all the time. We're not perfect, but we're doing the best we can. Maybe the Reagan family, led by Patriarch Tom Selleck is, but we see in every episode people who aren't so good, or are introduced to a situation where someone cut a corner, or did it wrong, or didn't do anything at all.

5. Any grievance against the police is always framed from a position so extreme, it's by DEFAULT the "bad guy" or the antagonist scenario. For example, a woman was mad because her son got killed and the cops haven't caught the shooter. So, her solution is to ambush the police commissioner and scream at him for not knowing the details of the case. So much so, and with such vitriol, that we're programmed to not like her, because, HEY, LADY, he lost a son, too!

Oh, and sidebar: the first two seasons dealt with the aftermath of the eldest Reagan son dying at the hands of a crooked cop. After that, the series' harder edges were considerably blunted, and even though the show makes lip service toward dealing with Black Lives Matter and NYC protests (in stories "ripped from the headlines," presumably), the shows are so overwhelmingly PRO-COP that even the legitimate grievances seem extreme. It's almost a pity party, because "no one understands what they go through." On a cop show. Where they always get the bad guy. And have hot partners and great loving families. Methinks the lads doth protest too much.

6. For a show with built-in novelty of having a dad and grand dad who were around in "the good old days" when you could get free coffee and beat on suspects, to the upstanding youngest Reagan who has a law degree and passed the bar, but decided to be a beat cop instead so he could make a real difference (with the sister working in the D.A.'s office, and young kids for the "youth perspective") this show could do so much more with the format than have people simply yell at Tom Selleck, which happens nearly every episode. Oh, and no one likes the Reagans. As a family, in New York City, they get it from every direction.  I really want Selleck to shoot someone in season 8. Because they need killing. Quigly Down Under style.

It's a weak show, as cop shows, go, but there's something about it that makes me nearly compelled to watch every episode. It's a cringe-watch, to be sure, but I can't help myself. Maybe it's because they''ve managed to employ as many actors from The Sopranos and The Wire as possible; Maybe it's because for all it's faults, most of the characters are likable (yeah, even Danny/Donnie); maybe because I am hoping--to my own detriment--that the show will take a turn and come down on the side of Doing the Right Thing without making protesters look like screaming assholes that should be hosed down; maybe because I just like watching Tom Selleck drink bourbon and glower through a really tough decision; maybe because I'm hoping the Bridget Moynahan and Steve Schirripa (Erin and Anthony) are going to get together (forget "Jamko." It's not going to happen, and if it does, it'll ruin the show just like on Moonlighting).

Maybe it's just Summer, and I'm miserable in this heat. And as they say, Misery Loves Company.