Random Happenstance

I'm working late all this week, which isn't helping my mood at all: I'll probably be used to that schedule just in time to go back to going in early. But I've been a little sad lately, anyway.

First up, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Arrow have returned, and I caught the first few episodes of Gotham and the premiere of the Flash. Flash may be my favorite so far; while my girlfriend's worried if Ollie and Felicity get together it'll ruin the show.

Gotham is well made, but would it have been so hard just to do a Batman show? As is, like any prequel, it's a little limited since you know certain characters are going to be alive later; and while I'm watching football I keep seeing the commercial where young Bruce asks Gordon if Gotham can be saved. Gordon either gives a blisteringly naive and optimistic yes, or outright lies to Bruce; I kinda wish he'd admit no, probably not. Since we know Gotham City is still a corrupt cesspool of crime by the time Batman shows up, we know Gordon isn't going to make a lot of headway, so the show could become an exercise in Gordon banging his head against a wall.

(Incidentally, I'm not sure how old Bruce is supposed to be at this point, but it feels like he should've started seriously training by now. It would be pretty easy for him to sell that to this gruff version of Alfred, as not feeling safe and wanting to get back to a secure place.)

Anyway, four TV shows based on comics, that's great. None of them have a comic I'm interested in reading right now. That seems like a problem. I think Marvel's working on another S.H.I.E.L.D. book, and I've read a couple of Scott Snyder's Batman, but it hasn't completely won me over. Still, the comics seem like an afterthought anymore, don't they?

Another example: Bleeding Cool had a post with Chris Claremont explaining how the X-Offices can't create new characters right now, because the movie rights would go to Fox instead of Marvel/Disney. This is also why Marvel is allegedly dropping all support for the Fantastic Four, with Fantastic Fourever: rumor has it certain execs don't want to do anything to support a movie from a rival company, but the X-books and Spider-Man are too successful to cut out. FF isn't. I was wondering if Wolverine's death wasn't somehow related to that: I read Wolverine #12 the other day and wasn't really impressed.

Still, I was more disappointed with Chris Claremont's Nightcrawler #7, with plot by Marguerite Bennett. Kurt mourns the death of Wolverine, which would be fine; except we all know damn well Wolvie's coming back, probably sooner rather than later. This isn't the writers' fault, they're kind of in a corner: if Kurt laughs off Logan's death (especially since Kurt himself returned from the dead recently) it's a little too meta and it undermines any drama the Wolverine writers may have been able to wring out of it. You could take the angle of Kurt not believing it, or being convinced that Logan would return, and no one else believing him: DC did something to that effect with Red Robin after Darkseid "killed" Batman. Or, you can take the hit, and do an issue of Nightcrawler explaining how awesome Wolverine was. It does give artist Todd Nauck an opportunity for a greatest hits tour of X-history; he ought to get a pretty penny for some of those pages!

So, I kinda feel like, I don't know: too much of seeing how the sausage is made, I'd guess. Still, we'll look for something more optimistic tomorrow.