“That Wonder Woman looks nice enough!”
Forget grimdark Batman v Superman, the real DC crossover to watch this week is “World’s Finest”!
It’s no secret that a lot of superheroines are depicted in a highly fetishized fashion, and it often doesn’t even suit their personality. With the recent release of 50 Shades of Grey, I thought I’d have some fun with the concept.
This is a great time to be both a comic book and television fan, as there are no less than four comic book-based TV series currently on the air, two new and two returning, with many more on the way. So who’s doing it best?
Well, Arrow still has the lead, picking up the pace that its incredible second season left off with, followed swiftly by The Flash which, to overuse the cliché, truly hit the ground running. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s giving them serious competition though, as its more focused and driven second season is a marked improvement over the first. Meanwhile, newcomer Gotham is drawing its fair share of valid criticism, as it still seems to be struggling to find its legs, but I believe it shows enough potential to catch up to the rest eventually.
Let the DC films take note, because Arrow is showing them how it’s done. It’s unabashedly and quite successfully adapting all sorts of characters, without worrying about gritty realism, or underestimating the audience. Its world is barely 2 years old and it’s already populated with the likes of Green Arrow, Black Canary, Arsenal, Deathstroke, Huntress, Deadshot, Brother Blood, Solomon Grundy, and the Flash, who’s already spun off into his own promising show. In that regard, this one TV show got much closer to rivaling the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of world-building than Man of Steel and the other DC films even hoped for, and it did it much faster. If Arrow and The Flash continue to live up to and even exceed expectations, this is the live-action DC Universe I’m investing in.
Arrow really does seem to be at the forefront of a new age for live-action comic book adaptations. Comic books, being serial in nature, are a perfect fit for TV. They’re also quite popular and lucrative, which is why most of them end up as movies instead. But in this post-Arrow world, people seem to be realizing the potential of superheroes on television. This fall, we have Arrow, The Flash, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, Gotham, and Constantine, and the year after that, we have four new Marvel shows on Netflix. Something tells me we wouldn’t be so lucky if it weren’t for Arrow.
P.S. Salmon ladder… ‘raising the bar’… geddit? I sure have outdone myself! /sarcasm
P.P.S. For those who haven’t seen the show, the monologue in this comic is supposed to reflect Oliver’s opening monologue on the show.