Supergirl, Flash, and TV's Beautiful Embrace of Comic Book Weirdness

I recently had the chance to catch up on season 3 of The Flash and season 2 of Supergirl on Netflix, both shows I have a ton of affection for, and neither of them disappointed. I felt The Flash bounced back from a relatively unfocused season 2 with a strong third effort, with Savitar serving as a much better Big Bad than Zoom, a guy whose over the top "I AM EVIL BECAUSE BEING EVIL IS GREAT" attitude should have worked better with me than it did because it was delivered by such a wooden actor. The general impression I got from many people was that Supergirl's sophomore effort was also weaker than her initial outing but I had to disagree. While the show certainly suffered a bit from the over-emphasis on Mon-El and the lack of Cat Grant, it more than made up for it with strong new characters like Maggie Sawyer, Miss Martian, and Lena Luthor. It also had the single best live action Superman we have had since Christopher Reeve. I could wax poetic for a long time about how great Tyler Hoechlin's Clark was, and perhaps at some point I will, but this is beside the point I want to make, which is these two recent seasons of Supergirl and Flash pretty much represent the culmination of the painfully slow process TV has taken in embracing all of the full-on bright, colorful weirdness that comic books provide.

This season of the Flash saw the multiverse and speed force name-dropped and utilized nearly every episode without even a word of explanation after previous seasons had established them. Multiple earths were visited and discussed with no one batting an eye. The Flash literally went to Gorilla City on Earth 2, where the always perfect Tom Cavanagh portrayed Harrison Wells-mind-controlled-by-a-malevolent-gorilla as he grunted the words "KILL OR BE KILLED! THIS IS THE LAW OF GORILLA KIND" and everyone in the room kept a straight face. There was a Mirror Master. The Music Meister instigated an entire musical episode. This was all before main villain was revealed to be a time-warped duplicate of Barry himself who was driven mad by eternal purgatory inside the speed force. Basically we've reached a point where I don't think there's anything comics Flash could do that couldn't also be done by TV Flash, other than hang out with his lucrative multi-billion dollar movie property friend Batman.

Supergirl, likewise, had not only the most faithful version of Superman shown on screen ever, it also heavily upped the amount of Martian Manhunter in full get-up (always a great decision), gave us a shape-shifting Durlan as President, and a Metallo inspired by the absolutely perfect Malcolm McDowell version from Superman The Animated Series. I am so happy they did not overthink Metallo as some kind of Iron Man suit or robot, they literally just gave us a British dude with cybernetic enhancements and a glowing green kryptonite heart. It was beautiful.



It hasn't always been this way. Who can forget when the first Superman movie gave us dastardly villain Lex Luthor's evil real estate scheme? Or Smallville's entire run of Let's Not Call Him Superman and also Here is Don't Call Him Aquaman in an Orange and Green Hoody? Heck, even Flash and Supergirl's father series, Arrow, would often attempt fan service by name-dropping DC heroes or villains while giving us watered-down, "realistic" versions of characters like Firefly, whom they changed from a guy that wears a bug suit while torching things because he fucking loves fire to a disgruntled fireman. Boo. This is not the worst example from that show either, as that would be turning Anatoli "KGBeast" Knyazev into a boring Russian mobster, a sin that was inexplicably copied in Batman v Superman. Dammit people, if you're not giving me a man in a luchador mask who has surgically replaced one of his arms with a cannon and talks like Yakov Smirnoff don't you dare call him KGBeast. Fan service cuts both ways. If you want to give me something from the comics just to earn my loyalty you'd better give me the actual thing, not some random dude with the same name.




ABOVE: KGBeast. Below: Rejected extra from the set of xXx: the Return of Xander Cage

 

 

You'll find no bigger fan of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies than me, but I have also been one of the biggest proponents that every hero is different and that the movies/tv shows featuring those characters should utilize the unique aspects of each character, rather than turning the lights off on everyone and demanding they growl like they have throat cancer. In the case of heroes like the Flash and Supergirl, bright colors, sci-fi weirdness, and over-the-top villians with glowing green hearts of kryptonite and cyborg arms are an integral part of the mythos, and these shows are great because they recognize that and celebrate it rather than try and mute it or run away from whatever they consider too "embarrassing" for a "serious and mature" take on the characters. If only we could get the minds behind the DC movies to embrace all of the color and weirdness that makes their universe better than Marvel in my opinion, we might finally see more movies that reflect that.