Superman Stuff #31: July Reviews

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It’s time once again for a healthy helpin’ of reviews. Here are most (if not all) of the Superman-related comics that hit the stands in July, beginning with an anniversary special.

Action Comics #1100
Title: Mission Failure/Superman Meets Superboy (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writers: Mark Waid & Joshua Williamson
Art: Skylar Patridge, Ryan Sook, & Daniel Sampere
Main Cover: Ryan Sook

Action Comics turns the big 1-1-0-0, and it doesn’t look a day over 872. But the Reign of the Superboys continues here with Clark “Superboy” Kent facing the time-travelling villain Epoch, powerless, with his time-tossed allies from the Justice League missing. Even without powers, though, he proves his mettle, and he’s soon reunited with the Leaguers to finish the mission that started all this – finding the Superman who’s been missing since the end of DC KO. I guess this is technically two stories, but the creators put them together so seamlessly that you don’t even realize it until you get to the credits on the last page. It’s a great little tribute to the character, though, showing Superboy glimpses of his future and culminating in a grand reunion. It does, however, raise a few questions, including a glimpse of a Legion of Super-Heroes that doesn’t quite seem to gel with the reboot that Joshua Williamson is writing in a few months. Curiouser and curiouser. 

The other creative teams of the current Superman comics are also in on the fun, contributing a few more back-up stories.

Title: Game Night
Writer: Sophie Campbell
Art: Dan Mora

The regular Supergirl writer and Superman team up for this story, in which we check in on Lois Lane and the rest of the family during Superman’s absence. The first thing I noticed about this story is that I probably should have read the other Reign of the Superboys finales before this one, because it seems to spoil certain things. Ah well. The important thing here is that we finally get a confrontation between Conner Kent and Superboy-Prime, whom you may remember KILLING Conner back in Infinite Crisis, way before his current redemption arc. It’s a confrontation I’ve been waiting for, honestly, and although it was a little abrupt, I was very amused that Campbell managed to sneak in a little self-deprecating humor via Prime’s fourth wall awareness. I do like jokes like that.

Title: End of Reign
Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Lucas Meyer

The final story in this issue is a neat little adjunct to the El Caldero story that’s happening over in Superman Unlimited. We get a little history of the country that’s building on the riches of its Kryptonite deposits, as well as a couple of chilling revelations.

Overall, the issue works fairly well in advancing and tying together the storylines that have been happening in all of the assorted Superman titles, and the upcoming Kingdom of Zod crossover looming between the four titles (a real one this time, not a thematic one like Reign of the Superboys), it feels perfectly timed.

Superman #40
Title: Prime Time: The End (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Art: Dan Mora
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Superboy-Prime vs. Manchester Black is not what I expected to be the faceoff of the year, but this arc has been fantastic. With Prime trying his hardest to redeem himself, Manchester Black is hoping to use Prime’s unique status and awareness of his existence in comic books to give himself an upgrade and make the whole DC Universe as nasty and edgy as him. 

This.
Issue.
Rocked.

It’s not just the fight, as good as it was. It’s the heart of the story behind it. Those of us who remember Prime’s first appearances back in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths have probably always felt a pang of regret that a character who seemed to have such potential would fall as far as he did. Williamson has done the impossible – he’s done the hard work to take a character who seemed indelibly tarnished and bring him back from the brink, making him sympathetic, even likable again. The Superboy-Prime in this issue may not truly be worthy of the S-shield that he wears, but he’s trying again. He wants to be. And that’s important.

What’s more, the battle between the two of them hinges on a meta-commentary about the state of comic books and comic book fandom as it exists today. It has something to say, and even the page where Prime gives us a speech doesn’t feel preachy or unearned. It’s a magnificent thing.

We also get a catchup with the rest of what Prime is now calling his own supporting cast, including Witchfire, and I can’t believe how much I hope we get to see these two together again. Prime even hints that it’s coming, but not before Supergirl swings by to pick him up for the upcoming crossover. Ah, a Kryptonian’s work is never done.

If you had told me a year ago that the Superboy-Prime redemption arc would be one of the best things to happen to comics in 2026, I would have thought you were crazy. But even without Superman appearing in this arc, Williamson has made it about Superman and who he is and what he means, and I love that so, so much.

Supergirl #15
Title: Hero of Kandor Finale (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer, Art, & Main Cover: Sophie Campbell

It’s the final battle for the fate of Kandor. Supergirl and Luminary face off against the Black Flame and – although I don’t want to spoil anything – I WILL say that, once again, Conner Kent’s presence here was completely superfluous. More than ever, I’m convinced that Campbell was asked to shoehorn him into a story that he didn’t belong in so that they could market this book as part of the “Reign of the Superboys.”

That said, once you get over that little hiccup, it’s a great finale. The ending comes naturally, playing off the character work that Campbell has been putting into this series since issue one. And while Luminary does something here that feels hopelessly naive, I can’t argue that it doesn’t feel appropriate to the character and the path that she’s been taking, so I have to respect that. 

This issue also seems to set up a new status quo for the character and the title, although whether it’s going to be a long-term arrangement or something that’s done away with after an arc or two remains to be seen. I hope it sticks around at least for a little while, because there’s an interesting dynamic that I would like to see played with here. Although I worry that the whole thing might be derailed right off the bat since next issue is going to kick off the whole Kingdom of Zod crossover with the other books, so just how much Campbell is allowed to explore this new dynamic remains to be seen.

Superman Unlimited #15
Title: Save Yourself (A Reign of the Superboys tie-in)
Writer: Dan Slott
Art: Lucas Meyer
Main Cover: Taurin Clarke

At the end of last issue, the truth about the time-tossed “Superboy” was revealed – he’s actually Ultraboy, son of Ultraman of the Crime Syndicate, who was trapped in the same volcano as Jon and tortured the same way. This issue, as Kryptonite threatens to overrun Smallville, the rest of Team Superman (namely Steel, Superwoman, Krypto, and Lois) try to save the day, while Batman and Robin join Tomorrow Man to face an Ultraboy who’s going out of control.

Lots to like here. Again, without giving away how the story ends, Slott pulls a very Superman-like play here, demonstrating that Jon – like his father – has the ability to see the inherent good in anybody, and will fight to bring that good out whenever possible. The confrontation between Damian and Ultraboy works well too. True, the Bat-family in no way suffers from a lack of exposure, but having Damian as part of this story actually makes sense. It doesn’t feel shoehorned in like some Bat-appearances. Jon is his best friend, and he’s taking this whole thing very personally.

One spoiler I WILL let through – I’m surprised but happy that Jon seems to be holding on to the Tomorrow Man name, at least for the time being. I never liked it when they took to calling him “Superman,” not because of the character himself, but because I really hate the modern practice of having multiple people running around using the same code name. I can accept it for the Green Lanterns, as that’s really more of a job description than an actual code name. And I’ll let it slide for the Flash, because how to do you tell any of those guys that they need to step down? Everybody else? Get yer own name, sparky. Anyway, “Tomorrow Man” works just fine.

Dark Knights of Steel II #1
Writer: Tom Taylor
Art: Otto Schmidt
Main Cover: Yasmine Putri

The original Dark Knights of Steel is one of the series that convinced DC it was time to bring back the Elseworlds imprint in the first place, so it’s nice to see that this sequel brings that universe into Elseworlds proper. This isn’t purely a Superman story, mind you, but the main thrust of this universe hinges on the Superman family: Jor-El and a pregnant Lara came to a medieval Earth together. Then…stuff happened. Look, just read the book, okay? There’s a nice little recap page here that tells you the high points of the original series and lets us jump to the main story: the three kingdoms of the League (Metropolis, Amazonia, and the Kingdom of Storms) are planning to defend themselves from an imminent threat by the shape-shifting creatures from Mars. A day of happiness for the three kingdoms turns to tragedy when a treacherous attack from beneath the seas reveals yet another kingdom – and leads them all potentially to war.

Tom Taylor does a great job of bringing new readers up to speed here. I’ve mentioned before that I wish DC Comics would include “previously” pages the way Marvel typically does, but it was really helpful here (I haven’t read the original series since it concluded in 2023 and, frankly, I needed the refresher). There’s a bit of expansion of the world here, but mostly what we get is a reminder of where the major players were at the end of the previous series (specifically Kal-El, Diana, Bruce, and Arthur), with their stories being reestablished and pushed forward incrementally, until the scene at the end changes everything. It’s a great way to begin a sequel, and while I would still recommend anybody interested in this series read the original first, if for some reason you can’t, this book will give you everything you need to know to jump in.

Absolute Superman #21
Title: Moon Fall (Reign of the Superman Finale)
Writer: Jason Aaron
Art & Main Cover: Rafa Sandoval

The epic battle between Superman and King Shazam comes to a conclusion this issue. With Superman and Hawkman facing the former Teth-Adam on the surface of the moon, their allies back on Earth are taking care of other business, particularly seeking retribution against Talia Al Ghul. 

With a serialized story like this one – like most modern superhero comics, really – the end of an arc needs to accomplish two things. It needs to tie up the story that was told over the course of the previous however many issues in the arc, and it needs to lay the seeds for future storylines. Aaron really handles them both well here. The battles against King Shazam and Talia both come to very satisfying conclusions here, and while conclusions are indeed had, they’re the kind of the conclusions that open more doors than they close. A new threat looms on the last page, and Jimmy and Lois both experience shifts in their personal status that lays the framework for more stories in the future.

Superman himself, meanwhile, ends this issue in something of a darker place. Although Kal-El continues to be the bright spot in this Absolute world, as this issue reminds us quite adroitly, most of the people he’s surrounded with are darker than the versions we’re used to seeing in the main DC Universe. By the end of it, it feels as though that’s taken its toll on Superman, and that’s a logical place to bring this arc to a close. 

Adventures of Superman: Book of El #10
Title: So Say the Dead
Writer: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Art & Main Cover: Scott Godliewski

The members of the House of El face off against Kryl-Ux. Tamarind lies in the balance, and I can’t lie, I couldn’t care less. Ten issues now, we’ve been drifting through a future that has failed to engage me. It’s the same ol’ problem – the reset button is looming, and the idea that this will ultimately be a story of consequence will not take hold. 

In an Elseworlds story, you think about the fate of the alternate reality that you’re dealing with. Here we’re dealing with a world that feels like it’s going to vanish as soon as Superman returns to his proper time. If that DOESN’T happen, then this whole thing will be invariably relegated to an alternate timeline, in which case it STILL will have no consequence. It would be different if I was interested in these characters, if I cared about them, if I felt like they mattered but…I just don’t.

I honestly feel bad being so negative about this book. I know other people are enjoying it, and I would never want to take that away from them, but I simply can’t see it. I don’t get what – if anything – I’m supposed to care about here. Maybe once it’s over, maybe once the final issue hits and the story can be viewed as a whole, I’ll feel differently. I sincerely hope so. But for the time being, all I can really bring myself to do is wait for the end. 

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #53
Title: Warlords Conclusion
Writer: Mark Waid
Art: Adrian Gutierrez
Main Cover: Dan Mora

Our heroes’ epic journey to Skartaris comes to a conclusion this month. Tyrant Rex has not only ensorcelled Batman and Superman’s minds, but he has stolen Superman’s powers and distributed them among his minions, leaving Robin and Warlord to take them on. This whole story really has been sort of a Robin spotlight. He’s the one who has worked hardest to forge bonds with the people of Skartaris, he’s the one who has to step up with his mentors stolen and pulled to the other side of the chessboard. The story is a nice look at the young man who will eventually be the Nightwing we know today. There isn’t much action going on with either Superman or Batman here, but I don’t mind that. Seeing him get the spotlight is a nice change of pace that still fits well into the framework of this series.

Superman: Father of Tomorrow #3
Title: Machinations
Writer: Kenny Porter
Art & Main Cover: Danny Earls

Having spent years sharing Kryptonian technology to improve life on Earth, Jor-El is beginning to feel pushback from people who feel like he’s going too far. Lex Luthor, as usual, being the most fervent adversary to the House of El, decides to seek magical help from the Tower of Fate. And General Sam Lane is putting together his own team to deal with the problem.

Such as it is.

I feel like the wheels are starting to come off this story a bit. The basic premise is fine – Jor-El is the one who comes to Earth rather than Kal-El. Traumatized from watching one world die, he decides to make his adopted home better by sharing the technology of his planet of birth. The idea that doing so somehow stifles humanity is the core of the conflict. The problem is that nothing in the story actually sells the idea that Jor-El’s shared technology is doing any damage. As presented, the world seems to be a demonstrably better place. Maybe I’m missing something, but the worst thing I can find anyone saying about this altered world is that despite the fact that Jor-El has improved medical technology, hospitals still aren’t free. And as much as it may enrage some people to hear this, that ain’t enough for me to accept that a fascist regime is taking over.

At one point, Martha Kent suggests that Jor-El is behaving like a parent who is doing everything FOR a child rather than teaching the child HOW to do it. Is that actually true? The Kryptonian technology is everywhere, and presumably SOMEBODY out there is manufacturing and maintaining it. Even Superman Jor-El can’t possibly be doing it all HIMSELF, so logically we have to assume that humans HAVE learned how to do it. The message of this book is collapsing rapidly, and barring some sinister secret that Jor-El is keeping that will be revealed in a later issue, I’m not sure how to reconcile the point the author is trying to make with the world that he’s presented us with. 

Supergirl: Survive #2
Writers: Ethan S. Parker & Griffin Sheridan
Art & Main Cover: Rod Reis

After the destruction of their homeworld, Kara and Kal-El are found by a new Corps made of Lanterns of every color. Their safety is short-lived, though, as Lobo and a squad of Czarnians are out for the baby, thirsty for the bounty of a survivor of Krypton. 

I mean, with Lobo as the big guest-star in the Supergirl movie, it’s not surprising that they would bring him in here as an antagonist for this series. And the way he’s being used is pretty logical, making sense for what would happen in a world of this nature, where there are two known survivors of their planet’s destruction. What I’m really interested in, though, is what’s up with the Lanterns. The first issue gave us hints that there was more to the death of Krypton in this world than we were being presented with, and this issue’s conversation with the Guardians of the Universe pushes that narrative forward, spooling out a little more of this mystery as we go along and making me all the more curious as to what the real story is here. This story may be labelled as a Supergirl story, but like some of the best of the modern Elseworlds, it feels like there’s an entire universe here worth exploring, and lots of other characters and corners that are going to be worth looking into and playing with.

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest 2026 Annual
Title: The Hero Trap
Writer: Mark Russell
Art: Clayton Henry
Main Cover: Dan Mora

It’s Father’s Day, and Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne are having lunch with their respective adoptive fathers when a Justice League alert summons them away, leaving Jonathan Kent and Alfred Pennyworth to bond without them.

As a writer, Mark Russell is hit or miss with me. Sometimes I feel like he’s indulging in soapbox writing that starts to get tiresome, but on a story like this one, he knocks it out of the park. The story drifts between the heroes trying to solve the supervillain plot du jour and the conversation between the fathers, and it’s obvious to everyone that the second part is the most important. This is an emotional issue, it’s a story about fatherhood and what exactly that means, especially for fathers of particularly extraordinary sons. But while stories like this one often neglect the other half of the narrative, Russell has a clever trap laid for our heroes and some really entertaining moments as they struggle to puzzle a way out of it. Neither the superhero side nor the fatherhood side of the story is neglected or damaged by the other, giving us a story that’s an absolute joy to read.

Title: Date Night
Writers: Mark Waid & Tyrone Finch
Art: Pat Boutin

Regular World’s Finest writer Mark Waid teams up with Tyrone Finch for this issue’s back-up story, “Date Night.” A spat between Bat-Mite and Mr. Mxyzptylk leads to Bruce Wayne taking Lois Lane on a date to the state fair while a disgruntled Superman is forced to watch from afar. This one is…okay. It’s a silly, lighthearted story with no real stakes, as we all know that Lois will ultimately wind up with Clark Kent and that any flirtation with Bruce by necessity won’t go anywhere. There’s nothing wrong with a strange little story like this one once in a while, but it kind of pales in comparison to the main story in this book. 

Superman 2026 Annual: Year One Thousand
Title: The Return of Superman & Legion Found
Writer: Joshua Williamson
Art: Eddy Barrows & Yasmine Putri
Main Cover: Eddy Barrows

As we all know by now, Superman went missing after taking on the mantle of King Omega at the end of DC KO. In Action Comics #1100, he was found by his Justice League teammates and his own younger self, because time travel. This annual tells us the story of what happened in-between, which means it’s that rarest of animals in this day an age: an annual that’s actually relevant to the ongoing story. 

Shortly after the end of the tournament, Superman discovers that the death of the Time Trapper (whose powers have been added to his own) has left the timestream in turmoil, and something is using that chaos to feed on the destruction being created in its wake. In his attempt to repair the damage to the timeline, Superman finds himself once again encountering Darkseid’s Legion, but a very different Legion than he’s met before.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the Legion was coming back in their own title, written by Joshua Williamson. As great as he’s been as the Superman writer, I was a bit put off when the description of the book made it seem like the Legion was being rebooted YET AGAIN. (This would be at least Legion Version Six, depending on how you want to count.) But I do have faith in Williamson, and this issue makes me feel like that faith is justified. Without getting into spoilers, it feels as though this newest reboot is part of the story, and that the previous iterations of one of my favorite teams are not being shunted into Comic Book Limbo after all, but may indeed have a part to play. I hope that’s right. I guess we’ll find out when Legion of Super-Heroes #1 hits in a few weeks.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review

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Four movies in, I think I may be ready to declare the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies the most well-written superhero series of all time. You can make arguments for other, individual movies being better than any of the movies in this series, but in terms not only of consistent quality, but character growth, there’s nothing that compares to what’s been done with Holland’s Peter Parker over the course of four films.

Homecoming was about what it means to be a hero. Far From Home was about being your own kind of hero. No Way Home was about the COST of being a hero. And now, in Brand New Day, we see a story of a young man trying to find a new life after having paid that cost. 

The thing about Spider-Man is that, more so than any other superhero (yeah, even Batman), he exists in a self-imposed state of constant sacrifice. It is simultaneously his greatest moral strength and his great tragic flaw. He made a mistake once that cost somebody he loved their life, and because of that he will give of himself – physically, mentally, emotionally – until there’s nothing left to give and then some if that is what it will take to save somebody else, ANYBODY else. No matter what level of the multiverse you find yourself on, that’s who Peter Parker is. 

After the events of No Way Home, he is convinced that the only way to protect those he cares about is to live a life of isolation and loneliness. If nobody is allowed to get close to him, after all, then nobody can be hurt BECAUSE they are close to him. And the film does not flinch from showing the toll that this takes, portraying him as a sad, broken character who seems to have no desire in life other than to use Spider-Man to save as many people as possible. (This is actually one of the few qualms I have about the movie – there’s nothing to indicate that Peter Parker has any sort of job or source of income to justify the impressive tech he uses in this movie, let alone something as simple as the rent on a Manhattan apartment.) But we see all of this in the first ten minutes. The story really begins when a new adversary arises, someone who takes Spider-Man’s interference in their plans personally, and he finds his old friends getting caught in his web again.

Yes, of course the pun was intended. Give me some credit here.

Anyway, director Destin Daniel Cretton (who also directed Shang-Chi and some episodes of Marvel’s Wonder Man) paints Holland’s character as someone who is desperate for companionship but afraid to reach out for it, and it’s that sadness that fuels the film and – ultimately – leads to an ending that is more sweet than bitter. After all of the lessons that he’s learned in the previous films, it seems there is at least one lesson left to learn: that he doesn’t have to do it all alone. Hell, even Jon Bernthal’s Punisher takes a turn to be more of an ally than he’s ever been in the comics. (Interesting note: I have to watch the movie again to be sure, but I’m 99 percent certain they never actually call Frank Castle “Punisher” in the course of this movie.) 

Let’s talk about Sadie Sink for a minute. As I mentioned in this week’s Geek Punditry, Sink’s character was the big question mark going into this movie – everybody knew she was going to be in it, but nobody knew WHO she was playing. This didn’t stop theories from flying, of course. Without spoiling anything, the reveal as to what character she plays wasn’t as huge a shock as it could have been. The role she was playing in the story, however, was VERY surprising. If you had told me ahead of time that she was playing THAT character in THAT particular way, I would have had a lot of apprehension about what was being done to a classic Marvel character. I think that may be part of the reason for the secrecy. Shrouding her role in mystery helped prevent a knee-jerk reaction from people and allowed them to see the actions of the character in context, which make things far more sympathetic and understandable, and leaves you excited to see where she turns up next.

As for the movie’s place in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would say it has minimal reliance on earlier films but maximum potential for future ones. Despite the appearance of other Marvel characters – the Punisher, the Hulk, and so on – the story does not heavily rely on knowledge of any previous Marvel project other than the first three Tom Holland Spider-Man movies. Assuming you’ve seen those and have a general awareness of who the Hulk is, you’ve got everything you need to watch and enjoy this film. On the other hand, there are several seeds planted in this movie that I fully expect to see bear fruit in the future, not only in future Spider-Man movies, but in other Marvel projects as well. 

It’s going to be really hard to displace No Way Home as my favorite Spider-Man movie. The sheer thrill of that one, the emotional punch of seeing all three Spider-Men together, the beautiful way they brought closure to the other two while still telling Tom Holland’s story…it was a magic trick that’s going to be difficult to replicate. But Brand New Day doesn’t try to top it, it’s telling its own story in the new world that NWH left Peter Parker with. And it does a fantastic job of it. It’s respectful to the characters, the actors all bring their A-game, and you’re left feeling that Spider-Man’s story is far from finished.

What more could you ask for?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. 

Geek Punditry #186: The Great Sadie Sink Mystery

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The newest Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, hits theaters today, and with its release we’re finally going to get the answer to the question that has plagued fans for a year now: who the heck is Sadie Sink playing?

My guess? The Hulk.

The cast includes the usual trio from the previous Spider-Man films: Tom Holland as Peter Parker, Zendaya as Michelle “MJ” Jones-Watson, and Jacob Batalon as Peter’s best friend Ned. We also know that another pair of MCU stars – Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner and Jon Berenthal as Frank Castle – are along for the ride. But when it was announced that Sadie Sink was joining the cast, Marvel was uncharacteristically catty about what role she’s playing in the film. The move was intended, of course, to get people talking and speculating, and it worked.

Sink is best known as Max from the Netflix hit Stranger Things, but she’s branched out into other TV and film work as well, most notably playing Brendan Fraser’s daughter in the movie that finally got him his Oscar, The Whale, so she’s definitely got the acting chops to join the MCU. But without knowing exactly which role she’s taking, speculation has run rampant. One of the most popular theories has been that she’s going to be Jean Grey, officially ushering the X-Men into the MCU. The Fox X-Men are going to appear in Avengers: Doomsday and probably its sequel Secret Wars, but the MCU is going to bring in their own version of the mighty mutants in a couple of years, and Sink would be a great choice for Jean Grey. 

And she would have a LOT of costumes to choose from.

Theory Number Two is that Sink is actually going to be Mary Jane Watson, the original character that everybody has assumed Zendaya is representing in the MCU. It would be a sneaky trick, to be sure, to pull that kind of switcheroo, but I think it would also be kind of disrespectful to fans of Zendaya’s character, not to mention Zendaya herself. And let’s be honest, she’s kind of a big deal these days – I don’t know if Kevin Feige would want to get on her bad side.

Both of these theories, it should be pointed out, seem to be predicated on the fact that the two characters mentioned, like Sink, happen to be redheads. It’s not the best reason to cast somebody, but it’s not the worst either. That said, we can float other possibilities based on the same criteria. For example: Angelica Jones, aka Firestar, would be an out-of-the-box choice. Firestar is the rare Marvel character that didn’t originate in comic books, but rather in a cartoon show, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Since migrating to comics, though, her interactions with Spider-Man have been minimal, associating more with the New Warriors, Avengers, and X-Men, in that order. 

From there the list of significant redheads starts to run thin – Pepper Potts and the Black Widow are both spoken for in the MCU, and Thor’s half-sister Angela is available, but no matter how good an actress she is it would be difficult to picture the petite Sadie Sink as a Viking warrior goddess. Medusa appeared in the short-lived Inhumans TV show, and as much as I’m sure Marvel would prefer we forget that existed, I don’t see Sink taking that role either. After that I would have to start flipping through the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe to find further candidates, and I don’t think Marvel would put that much effort into characters that obscure.

Gotta be ONE of these, right?

Having this conversation with my wife, she tossed out my favorite theory: maybe they’re just screwing with us and Sink is going to be a redheaded version of Gwen Stacy. I would actually applaud that level of trolling, were they to go in that direction. 

All that said, I know that several of you reading this already know the answer to this particular mystery. I’m publishing this column on Brand New Day’s official release date, and there were two successful days of preview screenings. I personally know several people who’ve already seen the film, most of them in the Comic Book Collecting group I help moderate on Facebook, and the comments have been highly positive. Nobody, as of this writing, has spoiled the mystery for me, and I appreciate that, since I’m not going to be seeing it until tomorrow morning.

The thing is no matter who Sink is playing, I have to admire the way Marvel Studios has played this particular bit of casting. I complain a lot about how nobody in the entertainment industry is capable of keeping a secret anymore. Trailers give away the whole movie, comic book solicitations give away the endings of storylines before they’re published, and casting surprises are virtually nonexistent. Somebody in that same comic book group I mentioned said not long ago that they hope the upcoming Man of Tomorrow movie will have cameos by Batman and Wonder Woman, and I had to say that I seriously doubt that they’d introduce two such important characters that way – certainly not without making a big deal of who they cast in the respective roles.

No way they could keep news this great under wraps.

But Marvel has turned Sink’s casting into a way to generate buzz. She’s even gotten into it herself. Earlier this week a video was released on the official social media channels where Sink teases the fans by confirming two roles she’s definitely NOT playing: Spider-Man and Aunt May. Now this COULD go wrong – if it turns out she’s playing, for instance, J. Jonah Jameson’s secretary Betty Brant, that would be quite a letdown. But assuming she’s a significant character, somebody who has the potential to be a major player in upcoming Marvel franchises, then they’ve played their game very well.

The game will be over soon, of course. With the movie in theaters I have no doubt her role will soon be common knowledge. I’m just hoping I can continue to dodge spoilers for another 24 hours. I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if, in the next week or two, they release a new trailer that prominently features Sadie Sink in her new role as Squirrel Girl. (Or whatever.) But they’ve kept the surprise this long, and I both appreciate and respect that.

“They’re NEVER gonna figure out that I’m Willie Lumpkin.”

Credit where credit is due.

Oh, and if you HAVE seen the movie and know the answer to the original mystery, do us all a favor and keep it to yourself a little while longer. We haven’t all seen it yet. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. 

Superman Stuff #30: Blake’s Superman Shelves-Assorted Action Figures

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Today we’re going to take another trip to the Superman Shelves, the semi-regular feature in which I take you on a tour of some of the many, many pieces of Superman toys and collectibles in my collection. In previous installments, we’ve looked at my Superman LEGOs and various toys featuring Supergirl. This time out, we’re going to look at some of the assorted action figures that line my shelves.

We’re going to start today with some of the in-package figures in my collection. For the most part, these do not go on display, mostly because I don’t have a good way to display them at the moment. I’m not a fanatic about keeping toys in the box, but certain ones (particularly if it’s not a reclosable box) stay in their plastic bubble as a display piece.

The top two figures in this collage are both of the Christopher Reeve Superman. On the left is a retro-style Spin Master figure, and next to him is a DC Comics Multiverse representation. (I’ve also got the Michael Keaton-style Batman from this line.) Below that we’ve got one of the McFarlane “Page Punchers” – figures packaged with a comic book. This one is from the first issue of the 2016 “Rebirth” era of the comic. In the middle is a Spin Master black suit Superman based on the 2015 Lois and Clark miniseries, and at the end is one of the new line of MEGO Heroes replica figures. I definitely don’t have the original.

This next trio are old-school figures: a McFarlane Super Powers Superman in the style of the Fleischer Cartoons, a bendy figure in the same style (that one is out of his box), and a retro “First Appearance” Superman from the sadly defunct DC Legion of Collectors series. I miss that line – getting a box of DC collectibles every other month with no idea what was coming was a great thing.

Here are some of the smallest figures that I have. The top row are all figures from the Mattel “Imaginext” line of toys for younger kids. Don’t worry, I did not steal any of these from my son. I am consistently impressed, though, at the wildly diverse characters in that line – it’s not 200 different versions of Batman. Well…not JUST 200 different versions of Batman. Here we have Superboy-Prime, a Kingdom Come Superman, and Bizarro. The two figures beneath them are steel Mattel figurines from the Dollar Tree – a classic Superman, and the same figure in a black costume, part of a larger set of Justice League figures.

This next set of figures are all based on last year’s David Corenswet Superman movie. Your basic figure comes first (still in package), followed by a Krypto “Mini Chomper.” Next to them is a Thrilljoy figure, given to me as a birthday present by my brother. Thrilljoy is a relatively new player on the market and seems to be making moves to set itself up as the next Funko – in fact, I believe the company was founded by former Funko executives. On the bottom row is a 12-inch David Corenswet figure (my son has an identical one, which he insisted on bringing with us to see the movie), and in the corner is the three-inch four-figure set from the film, which included not only Superman, but Ultraman, the Engineer, and Mr. Terrific. 

These two tall guys are a Noble Collection Bendable figure (which has come out of his package since I took this picture) and a 12-inch “New 52”-style Superman that I got in a gift basket from my dear friend Owen years ago when I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. There were other Superman things in that basket too, some of which will turn up in later pictures, and a towel that my son now uses. Owen is a great guy.

I call these guys “the Cosplayers.” McFarlane Toys did a line of “action figures” that were really more like slightly articulated statues for Warner Bros’ 100th anniversary a couple of years ago. I got the Bugs Bunny-as-Superman from that line, as well as Sloth from the Goonies recreating that epic moment from the end of the movie. Also in this set is the Neca Ben Cooper Superman costume figure. I love this line of toys, even though this is the only one I own – action figures of kids wearing the classic Ben Cooper Halloween costumes of my youth. There are lots of other ones. My brother gave me this one, too.

Two more from McFarlane: this replica of the old Supermobile, with an out-of-package Super Powers Superman to pilot it.

Then there’s this little oddity from their Qubi line – cubes that “transform” into figures. It’s weird and neat. I got my wife the Harley Quinn from that line, and I’ve got my eye on the Supergirl…

Let’s finish up this tour with two of my favorite pieces: the most unique toy in my collection and the oldest toy in my collection. Back in 2008 Disney launched its own line of vinyl figures called “Vinylmation.” There were hundreds of different designs that were wildly popular for a few years, then kind of faded away. But one of the most popular things in the line  were blank figures intended to be customized into whatever design you wanted. My sister, who is far more artistic than I am, made this Superman Mickey Mouse for me for Christmas one year. It’s still got a place of honor on the shelf.

Finally, this guy here is a MEGO Pocket Heroes Superman. I had one of these figures as a child, and it was one of my favorite toys. I played with it all the time. The thing is, I never knew what action figure line it came from. I have no memory of receiving the toy, it was just kind of always THERE. This preceded the original Super Powers figures, and once those came out, that was sort of the standard for DC figures for many years. I never forgot the old toy, though, and I spent years wondering what it was and where it came from. Then out of the blue, just about a year ago, someone in a Facebook group shared an old advertisement for the MEGO Pocket Heroes (the ad, and some further information about the series, can be found here at the MEGO Museum Galleries website). I immediately recognized the figure as the one I’d played with as a kid, and as it originally came out when I was just two years old, that kind of explained why I didn’t remember its origin. Once I finally had a name for the figure, finding one on eBay wasn’t terribly difficult. I even got a case just for this guy. He’s not particularly expensive, especially in this condition, but he’s a piece of my past that I was absolutely thrilled to have returned to me.

Okay, I think that’s enough for today. Still plenty of other stuff on the Superman Shelves to share with you (I haven’t even touched on the Funko Pops yet), so there’ll be more coming soon. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #185: What I Mean By “More”

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One of the messages I always try to impart here in Geek Punditry is that if there’s one thing every fan wants, it’s more. I believe that and I stand by it. However, there are a lot of people – unfortunately, these are often the people in charge of deciding what projects are actually made and which ones are not – who don’t understand what that means, and we saw a perfect example of that this week via creator Felicia Day.

They’re back, baby!

Felicia Day, sometimes called the queen of the internet, rocked Kickstarter this week with her project to create a reunion movie for her webseries The Guild. Back in 2007 Day, frustrated that she wasn’t getting the kind of roles that she wanted, decided to write and star in her own series and release it on that “Internet” all the kids were talking about. Her series, The Guild, was a story about members of an online roleplaying game (kind of a World of Warcraft with the numbers filed off) who decided to meet in person for the first time. The dynamics between the six wildly disparate members of the Guild made for some great character drama in the midst of a delightful awkward and relatable geek-centered comedy series. The show ran for six seasons and a few spin-off comic books, and is still warmly regarded. 

So it’s not a surprise that when Day announced her plan to bring back the entire original cast to make a reunion movie for the show’s 20th anniversary, the fans turned out in droves. The campaign launched on July 21st, three days ago as of this writing, with a funding goal of $1.5 million. In just that short amount of time it has SHATTERED the goal, currently sitting at $3.5 million with 28 days left to go. Day reports that it is the fastest movie project to achieve funding in Kickstarter history, proving without a doubt that the fans of this property haven’t gone anywhere and that they want – as I always say – more. 

Which made it even funnier when Day said that the reason the project is getting made in the first place is because of some studio exec who didn’t get it. According to Day, the impetus for the movie happened when she was called into the office of a studio executive who wanted to discuss bringing back The Guild. The executive – who, like the studio they worked for, remained nameless – evidently floated the idea of making a new series that was relevant to “modern” gamers with a younger cast. And Day, showing the same steel that led her to make the series in the first place, decided that the only way a Guild reboot would be done right would be to do it herself.

And this is what I’m talking about. When I say that fans want “more,” I don’t just mean that we want the name of a beloved IP slapped on to a generic product. We want more of the things we loved in the first place. What made the original Guild so delightful were the characters, the performances, and the story that was so ridiculous while still being so relatable. Different actors? Different characters? Even if they were excellent performers with a solid story, they would already be starting from a deficit because they wouldn’t be what the fans were looking for.

For example…

When a reboot is attempted, perhaps the easiest way to make it fail is to make it without any regard for what made it popular in the first place. We’ve seen it time and again. To use a controversial example, let’s talk about the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. Although Leslie Jones will insist to her dying breath that anybody who didn’t like it is simply a misogynist, that’s a cheap way to dismiss legitimate criticism and ignores what the fans have been saying since the day it was announced. It’s not that we didn’t want to see female Ghostbusters, it’s that NOBODY wanted a continuity reboot. We wanted to continue the adventures of the characters and the world that we fell in love with in the 1980s. If the 2016 movie had simply been framed as a sequel, a new team of Ghostbusters coming up decades after the original retired, they could have used the exact cast and it would have been much better received. In fact, the heartwarming reception to Ghostbusters: Afterlife seemed to prove just that. Not only was the main character in that film female, but also a kid, and the fans loved it because it was part of what we already loved. 

 It’s not always possible to just bring back the cast in its entirety the way that Felicia Day is doing, of course. Harold Ramis – Egon Spengler from the first two Ghostbusters movies – had passed away by the time the 2016 movie was made. But Afterlife made him a staunch presence in the film, even if the actor himself could not be there. It was perhaps the way the movie served as a tribute not only to the actor but to the character himself that was (at least partially) responsible for the film’s success.

By contrast…

We can play this game with any number of reboots, both good and bad. Top Gun: Maverick was a success because the engine the story was based on came from a beloved character from the first film – Anthony Edwards’ Goose. He couldn’t appear, of course, because the character died in the original, but his presence – along with Val Kilmer’s final role – was what made Maverick successful. Mad Max: Fury Road was a smash hit because the world that George Miller created with the originals allowed for a bit of reinvention. The idea is that each movie is a different story about a “folk hero” in a post-apocalyptic world, so if there are contradictions or discrepancies, they are easily explained away. The device allowed for a reboot that kept the flavor of the original but was not only commercially successful, but also critically acclaimed.

On the flipside, you have things like Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four movie, where the director famously told the cast NOT to read any of the comic books it was based on, and resulted in perhaps the worst comic book movie ever produced by a major studio. (And I’ve seen enough of them that I feel comfortable making that statement.) The 1998 Psycho remake tried to go in the other direction – not only trying to stay true to the original, but making an almost shot-for-shot remake. The result was a movie that only served to remind everybody that a remake was utterly unnecessary. 

I could bring up Star Wars here, but I have no desire to spend the rest of my summer dodging assassination attempts from both sides.

I do my best not to dismiss a reboot or remake entirely just because it is, in fact, a reboot or remake. It is possible to do either one of them successfully, and although there have been plenty of terrible ones, there have been great ones as well. But creative success always seems to start from the same place: do the people making this new version understand what it is that made the original a success in the first place? If they do, they’ve at least got a fighting chance. But if they don’t…well, what even is the point?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok.  

Superman Stuff #29: Incomplete Classics II

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Once again, today we’re going to look at a few of the older Superman comics I rescued on a trip to an antique mall a few weeks ago. Let’s start with a trip back to 1977, then bounce forward a couple of years. 

Superman #314
Title: Before This Night is Over, Superman Will Kill!
Writer: Martin Pasko
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inker: Dan Adkins
Cover: Neal Adams & Curt Swan

As I mentioned last week, picking up comics from bargain bins is a gamble, because you often will get an incomplete story without knowing it until you sit down to read. Such is the case here – the story starts right off with a child begging Superman not to kill his “dog,” only for next page to reveal that the boy is suffering from an alien germ called “Journalist’s Disease” which has apparently been plaguing Metropolis at least since Lois Lane caught it back in issue #311. (A four-issue arc? Rare at this time.) The “dog” is, in fact, an alien creature called Jevik that Superman believes is responsible for the disease. Jevik was sent by another alien – a pirate named Amalak – whose attack is intended as some sort of revenge against Superman as the last son of Krypton.

There were a LOT of aliens who hated Krypton back in the day. I wonder if James Gunn’s movie was on to something.

Anyway, Superman has a way to cure the disease, but needs equipment from the Justice League satellite. Arriving there, he finds Amalak, who claims to have killed Flash, Green Lantern, and Supergirl, and engages our hero in a final battle. 

The story as a whole is interesting for two reasons. First, there’s the alien Jevik. Aliens in comics past often fell into one of two categories: either they were basically human, save for skin color or an odd extra growth and maybe some sort of racial superpower, or they were so bizarre that one can’t even fathom how such a thing could have evolved. Jevik falls into the latter category. Superman’s description of his life cycle is so strange that it makes almost no sense. Fortunately, making sense is by no means a requirement to enjoy a story of this nature.

The other thing that is noteworthy is how infuriating the last page of this issue is. I’m gonna spoil it for you here, because I want to talk about how mad it made me and I can’t do that without telling you what happens, so if you’re trying to remain pristine on a 49-year-old comic book, skip this. After Superman has engaged the cure to Journalist’s Disease and its many victims are on the mend, Clark Kent visits the recovering Lois Lane in the hospital. Shattered at the fact that he almost lost her, Clark asks Lois to marry him. She says she will – IF he will confess to her, right then and there, that he is Superman. And he says he can’t do that and walks away, leaving them both heartbroken.

It was the 70s, I get it. At this time period, the status quo was God and nothing could change. But Mr. Pasko – you expect me to buy that Clark Kent was willing to marry Lois Lane, but was not willing to tell her his identity? 

And look, I know that 15 years later Clark would propose to Lois before she knew he was Superman, but the idea there was that he wanted her to love CLARK, and he would tell her the truth after they were engaged. There was never any doubt that he WOULD tell her. You can say that it may still have been problematic, but this? This is just absurd.

Loved it. Five-star issue.

Superman #366
Title: Revenge, Superman-Style (Story 1), Perry White’s Superboy Scoop (Story 2)
Writer: Cary Bates (1), Bob Rozakis (2)
Pencils: Curt Swan (1), Kurt Schaffenberger (2)
Inker: Frank Chiaramonte (Both)
Cover: Ross Andru & Dick Giordano

An amazing thing about comics of this era is just how much time they spent recapping the story so far. This issue gives us no fewer than four pages to set up the story and recap what happened in the previous issue: Clark Kent is taking another week off work at WGBS-TV because Superman is needed on a mission in space that he fears he may not return from. Supergirl, meanwhile, is worried about him because last issue she was manipulated into attacking him as a plot by what they assume is the Superman Revenge Squad, and he’s off to fight them on his own. He disguises himself as an alien and allows himself to be “discovered” by the Revenge Squad, claiming that Superman recently thwarted him as well. 

I love seeing the home of the Revenge Squad here. This isn’t a group of five or six bank robbers from Metropolis, friends, it’s a legion of evil aliens that Superman has thwarted time and again. They’ve got their own whole alien base. They even make a giant statue of Superman that they daily force to melt by shouting how much they HATE it. George Orwell would approve.

The aliens show off their various techniques to train while one of them secretly scans the newcomers brainwaves to make sure it’s not a trick…and he passes. What? How can this BE? The narrator even asks the same question. Unfortunately, the answer to that seems to come in issue #367, which I don’t have.

There’s a back-up story, though! A tale of “Superman: The In-Between Years,” which was a serial from that era that told stories of Superboy after the death of Jonathan and Martha Kent but before he began his career as Superman in Metropolis. In “Perry White’s Superboy Scoop,” the boy of steel has gone AWOL. Cities all over the country are claiming that he’s moved into town as various disasters are averted and crimes are thwarted anonymously. As people wonder where he’s gone now that he’s left Smallville, Daily Planet reporter Perry White is determined to prove that the kid has taken up residence in Metropolis. Clark Kent, of course, IS in Metropolis, attending college and carrying out good deeds in secret – deeds like saving Perry White from a mob boss. 

Both Clark and Perry catch wind of the fact that some mobsters Perry recently reported on are meeting a rival gang from Gotham City in a baseball stadium, and both seek it out. Superman stops the gangland shooting and Perry White realizes that, despite the hail of bullets the two gangs unleashed upon one another, they were all knocked UNCONSCIOUS rather than killed. He demands Superboy show himself, and…well…he does. Pretty soon the Planet is formally announcing that Metropolis is the new home of Superboy.

Huh?

Okay, I can SORT OF buy that Superboy wanted to play his location close to the vest after leaving Smallville. Maybe he hadn’t totally settled on Metropolis as his new home yet. But first of all, these are the stupidest gangsters in history, so intent on shooting each other that none of them noticed the teenager in blue tights or the reporter with a camera taking pictures of them while they were standing on the baseball diamond of an otherwise empty stadium. And worse than that is Superboy just basically shrugging and giving Perry the scoop. There’s no change of heart, nothing that makes him sure that Metropolis will be his home, he just throws his hands up in the air and announces he’s in Metropolis now. Perry had no proof, just another freak occurrence such as those that had been happening since Superboy went into hiding. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Another timeless masterpiece.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

I Hate Telephones

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If you and I have ever had a conversation on the telephone, and during that conversation you started to get the impression that I was uncomfortable and wanted to hang up…you’re right. I absolutely, without question, wanted to hang up. Please don’t take this personally. It’s not you. It’s that I – like 90 percent of the population of the industrialized world – hate talking on the telephone.

I hate talking on the telephone. And you know what? So do you. Just admit it.

It wasn’t always like this, you know. There was a time in my life – it was brief, somewhere between the ages of 13 and 19, I believe — when speaking on the telephone was a welcome diversion, being the only way to communicate with my friends outside of school. But email and, later, texting gave us alternatives to the telephone that were quicker and typically got us right to the point of whatever the discussion actually was, freeing us from the cord that shackled us to the wall or those afternoons where we would lie on the couch trying to find something to do to occupy our limbs while carrying on a conversation about who liked who in 8th grade social studies class.

This is not to say that there are no irrelevant text messages, of course. I would estimate that only 4 out of every 976,217 messages actually carry any information of significant consequence. But the fact that those messages only take seconds of our time rather than the minutes – with the threat that it may grow into hours – of a telephone call make such things far more palatable.

There’s also the fact that, as you get older, the odds of any telephone call being made to impart GOOD news erode dramatically. When my wife and I started dating we were in a long-distance relationship, and would often – nightly, even – have long conversations on the telephone. Since we got married and closed the geographical gap between us, I can count on one hand the telephone conversations that haven’t involved injury, illness, the death of a loved one, or catastrophic mechanical failure. That’s not just her, either. Virtually everybody I talk to on a regular basis – via text, as God intended – would never dream of actually calling on the phone unless it was Bad News. The ONLY phone calls we get anymore are Bad News, or “Potential Spam,” which is just somebody calling with the hope of infecting you with Bad News. Even if the call isn’t Bad News, it’s usually neutral at best. The closest thing to Good News I’ve gotten via telephone call in the last year is my son’s speech therapist calling to tell me that she’s going on vacation and has to cancel his appointment next week. 

We used to spend hours choosing our favorite songs to use as a ringtone. Now I’m afraid to use a song I enjoy as a ringtone, because I know that I’ll start to associate it with things that cause me anxiety, and the work of Mr. John Williams should never do that to anybody.

Then there’s the fact that when a phone conversation runs out of things to talk about, you are left awkwardly stumbling for some way to continue. Both people on the phone are concerned that it will seem rude of them to end the conversation, so you continue to babble about things of virtually no consequence just because you don’t want to cause offense. This problem is rarer when dealing with somebody else in person. When you’re interacting with another human being face-to-face, there is almost always some other legitimate reason for you to interact other than the conversation itself: you’re watching a game together, you’re at work, you’re buying a new pack of liners for your air fryer. When this happens, when the conversation begins to lull, you can always turn to whatever the reason is for your interaction in the first place: I can’t believe they threw a flag on that play, we should probably put a pin in this task and come back around to it after the holidays, and whaddaya MEAN the coupon is expired? 

Conversations that do not come with that sort of built-in justification for talking to a person can be chalked up to “hanging out.” In those cases, you’re either doing it with somebody who you are so comfortable with that you need no further justification to speak (such as my wife) or you can deal with it the way we do in the South, namely by slapping yourself on the knees and saying, “Welp, I shouldn’t take up much more of your time.” This last maneuver IS possible on the telephone, but without the knee slapping providing a visual cue, it’s a more complicated maneuver to execute.

So if you’re part of that tiny 10 percent of people who actually enjoy talking on the phone, I implore you, think about why you’re calling before you dial. Is this conversation something that can be dealt with in a text message or two? Is real-time verbal conversation actually NECESSARY? And if you decide that it is, that’s fine. But try to remember that not everybody feels that way, and don’t take it personally when you can hear their palms make contact with their jeans and they start the next sentence with, “Welp…”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok.  

Geek Punditry #184: Finding Freddy

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The news hit like a scream, jolting you out of a peaceful sleep: Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to do a reboot of the historic slasher franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street. This shouldn’t come as TOO big a shock, of course. The culture of the entertainment business is absolutely OBSESSED with intellectual property – they would much rather take something that was popular at one point and try to resurrect it than put in the work to cultivate anything new. And to be honest, I don’t even object to the reboot in principle. Of all the horror icons of the 1980s, Freddy Krueger is probably my favorite. It was going to be done sooner or later; it’s just a question of whether or not it will be done the right way.

“Didja miss me?”

And that brings us to the real difficulty in doing any kind of Nightmare reboot: finding a new Freddy Krueger. The reason that Freddy is my favorite of the icons is that he’s the most unique – a nasty sense of humor, a quick wit and a menacing tone of voice that isn’t present in most of the other slashers of the era. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or Leatherface can be entertaining, but they’re all masked, silent killers. That’s not to say that they don’t have personalities of their own or that some performers aren’t better than others, but because of the nature of what those characters are, it’s far easier to accept a new actor putting on one of those masks than somebody else playing Freddy.

But Robert Englund, the actor that made Freddy who he is, is 79 years old. Although he’s still a working actor – in fact, he’s poised to play a major role in the upcoming sequel to the classic Behind the Mask – he has made it quite clear that he just doesn’t feel capable of the stunt work and long, torturous hours in the makeup chair that playing Freddy requires anymore (although he HAS said he would be willing to return to voice the character should there ever be an animated version of Nightmare). This won’t be the first time that Freddy was recast, of course. In 2010 there was a remake starring Jackie Earle Haley as the “Springwood Slasher.” That movie turned out to be something of a train wreck, though, and although most of the fans will concede that it wasn’t Haley’s performance that was lacking, they would also rather wipe the slate clean rather than be reminded of it.

Why is it so hard to imagine somebody else as Freddy Krueger? Other iconic characters have been recast in the past. In fact, for some characters it’s outright expected. There have been six official James Bond actors, and when one retires nobody questions IF the part should be recast, but only with WHO. The same thing goes for Superman, Batman, and several others. Granted, there are always people who are adamant that “their” version of the character is the only one, but that’s a really narrow minded point of view. It’s fine to say that Christopher Reeve is your favorite Superman – I ain’t here to argue with you – but to say that he’s the only one who should ever be allowed to play the character is absurd. 

“You fellas have room for one more?” — David, being unfailingly polite.

On the flipside, Marvel fans love to point out that only one actor has played Wolverine in live-action movies, Hugh Jackman. These fans always forget the necessary caveat with a statement like that: “So far.” 20th Century Fox got extremely lucky with Jackman, casting an actor who had the physicality and personality to make the character work for DECADES, not to mention a willingness to keep returning, even after “retiring” once. But had he decided not to come back at the time that they were planning the soft reboot of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the character would almost certainly have been recast along with Cyclops and Jean Grey. And now that the X-Men are finally joining the MCU, everybody knows it’s only a matter of time before somebody else puts on that pointy mask of his. 

This particular problem, this permanent association of a role with a singular actor, is a product of the film era. On stage, there is no presumption that a character will be forever associated with a single actor, no matter how good they are. I think the reason for that is that every theatrical production is a unique experience, something that cannot be reproduced (barring filmed versions of the stage play, of course). That ethereal quality is one of the things that makes theater magical. Movies, however, feel more permanent. If you go into ten different theaters with live performances of the same play, it will be different every time. If you go into ten theaters showing the same movie, it won’t change. If it were possible to go into a theater and watch the same live performance of a play forever, people might still be adamant in saying that Julie Andrews is the only person who could ever play Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady rather than immediately associating that character with Audrey Hepburn from the film. 

It would have been a different movie, but you can’t tell me it wouldn’t still be good.

But as so often happens, Eliza Doolittle leads us back to Freddy Krueger. Now that Paramount has announced their intention to move forward with the new film, the question of who should play Freddy has to be asked. And I’m going to say something that may or may not be a hot take – you tell me. If the person suggested is an actor you are aware of without having to look them up, they’re probably the wrong choice for the role. This is a case where we need an actor that can be fully immersed in the character. Putting Tom Holland (to throw out one truly terrible suggestion) in the makeup will not give us Freddy Krueger, it will give us Tom Holland cosplaying as Freddy Krueger. And this isn’t a knock on Holland’s acting abilities, it’s just that he’s too well-known for us to completely lose ourselves in the character.

The best choice for Freddy is probably somebody that nobody reading this has ever heard of before, someone who can embody the character and whom we’ll all accept without the baggage of previous roles or celebrity personality. The cult of celebrity isn’t as powerful as it once was anyway, after all. There are few faces in Hollywood that are guaranteed to open a movie on their own anymore, and those that ARE in that club are highly unlikely to consider the Freddy role. Besides, horror as a genre has never been as obsessed with that as the rest of the industry. That’s not to say that horror fans don’t have their favorite actors – we’ll line up for the likes of Kane Hodder, Jamie Lee Curtis, or Robert Englund himself. But we’re JUST as likely to throw our support behind a movie that has nobody we recognize if the premise, writing, and acting are good enough.

One of the biggest hits of the year was Backrooms, a horror movie based on a creepypasta, of all things. The biggest name in the cast is Chiwetel Ejiofor – a fine actor, and a great addition to any cast, but nobody looking at his filmography would call him a horror icon. The closest thing in the movie to a horror “star” is Mark Duplass of the Creep franchise, but even he’s hardly a household name. 

“Wait, is somebody saying I should play Freddy?”

All of this is to say that while horror fans DO show up for certain names, there are a lot of other reasons they go to the movies too. And in a case like Freddy Krueger, it’s far more important to get somebody who can play the role than it is to get somebody the audience recognizes. What Paramount should do, if they’ve got any sense at all, is cast as wide a net as possible, find the best Freddy out there, and then build the movie around his performance rather than his number of social media follows. 

Do they have that kind of sense? We can only hope so. 

If they do it right, maybe in a couple of years it’ll be hard to get to sleep again. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. For more discussion of casting, go into any Dungeon Crawler Carl group on Facebook, ask who they think should play any given character in the upcoming TV show, then hide under a desk.

Superman Stuff #28: Incomplete Classics

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As I’ve mentioned many times, whenever my family takes a trip I like to do a little nerd shopping. Not only do I hit up comic shops whenever possible, but if I can find used bookstores, antique malls, or anything else of the sort, my wife knows that I’m going to want to immerse myself in some back-issue diving. There’s some relationship advice, folks, marry somebody who is willing to be patient with you when you’re elbow-deep in old copies of Donald Duck. 

The interesting thing about doing this is that you never quite know what it is you’re going to find. I like the bargains, the dollar bins, the unsorted pot of gold at the end of the comic book rainbow. Sometimes you get complete sets. Sometimes long runs. But more often, I find, you get utterly random issues that don’t necessarily have anything else to do with anything else in the box. I always like to grab the weird comics when that happens, things that I’ve never heard of before, stuff that I’ve heard of but maybe have never read…and, of course, when I come across a Superman comic that I haven’t enjoyed, I rescue it from the bin.

Of course, this approach to collecting comes with a major complication – not knowing what I’m looking for and not even always knowing what I’m getting, Because I like to approach it this way, I often get incomplete stories. While it’s true that comics of the past were rarely serialized to the extent that they are today, even in the 70s and 80s it wasn’t unusual for a storyline to run for two or three issues, and at the time it was virtually unheard of for them to be labeled as such on the cover. 

When that happens, when I read a comic that’s only a chunk of a story, I don’t necessarily feel like it’s fair to give it a full review. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun to talk about it, though. For example, a few weeks ago on a trip to the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, we hit an enormous antique mall where I scored several cheap Superman books, virtually all of which turned out to be only a part of a story.

Bet you wanna know what’s going on here. Sucker.

Action Comics #507, for example. The lead story in this issue is “The Miraculous Return of Jonathan Kent” by Cary Bates and Curt Swan. Younger folks might not remember this, but until the John Byrne Superman reboot in 1986, most versions of Clark Kent’s adoptive parents had passed away by the time he began his career as Superman. So I’m sure you can imagine Clark’s shock in this 1980 comic when Jonathan shows up to visit him in Metropolis as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Clark is dumbfounded, of course, but is even more shocked when he discovers that Lana Lang, too, thinks it’s perfectly natural for the late Jonathan Kent to be there. Whooshing off to Smallville, Clark can’t find his father’s grave or any other evidence that he died – in fact, there is a preponderance of evidence that Jonathan has been alive and well in Smallville all this time. Superman even finds letters (people used to do that before email) written to Jonathan FROM Clark, in his own handwriting. How is such a thing possible?

What a great question! I assume the answer can be found in Action Comics #508. I didn’t get that issue, though, so I can’t be entirely certain.

Bet you wanna know how this started. Sucker.

Adventure Comics #455 from 1977 has the opposite problem – it’s the end of a story that began in the previous issue. In “I Can’t Go Home Again” by Bob Rozakis with art by Juan Ortiz and Vince Colletta, Superboy begins the issue in outer space looking down on a Smallville that seems to have been somehow inundated with Kryptonite. Although (in this Pre-Crisis era) Kryptonite is harmless to humans, Superboy is trapped outside of town, and a recap of last issue tells us that although he’d captured the Kryptonite Kid, thinking him responsible, the real culprit is Lex Luthor. Superboy switches back to Clark and tries to confront Lex, even though the Kryptonite has left him as weak as a kitten. It goes as well as you might expect, and let’s all be grateful that Pete Ross knew Clark’s secret, even if he didn’t want Clark to know that.

The story isn’t bad, but it makes me want to go back and read the first part which – needless to say – I don’t have. It probably also goes without saying that neither of the books I’m hoping to read are available on the DC Universe Infinite app. I’ve written before about how irritating it is that the “infinite” app has such huge swaths of comics missing from its catalogue. By what measure can we call it “infinite” if there are hundreds of comics featuring Superman that aren’t included in the database? (To say nothing of the missing comics featuring Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and all the rest?) I get that digitizing old comics takes time and money, but it’s been an embarrassingly long time since there were any more older comics added to the app.

I doubt that they’ll leap onto these two comics that I’ve mentioned here just because I happened to mention it – after all, I’ve been playing this particular song for a couple of years now and DC hasn’t made any real strides to start adding older comics again. But it’s something I find frustrating every time I open the app and look for a comic that turns out to be missing.

Not that this will stop me from picking up the random oldies whenever I come across them, of course. That, if nothing else, is part of the fun. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #183: Sharing is Caring

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A few days ago, my brother texted me a picture of a display in a bookstore, asking if I had ever heard of the books in question. The message didn’t go just to me, though, but to our family group chat, and before I had a chance to reply my wife chimed in with, “You’ve opened Pandora’s box.”

She wasn’t wrong. The display in question was of the books and merch from the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. 

Oh yeah, it’s back.

My brother doesn’t pay attention to the stuff that I post online, so I explained to him what I’ve been saying to you guys for several months now: Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series is a fantastic LitRPG, an engaging, exciting, hilarious, and remarkably well-crafted saga about a young man who survives an alien apocalypse and – along with his ex-girlfriend’s show cat Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk – is forced to fight for his life in the most twisted, violent, sadistic, and popular reality survival television series in the universe. I talked about those books here and on TikTok frequently while I was reading them, a quest that took less than two months to get through all eight massive volumes. My family apparently missed out on all of that, so take from that what you will.

Anyway, in the midst of this conversation my sister – who similarly had no idea that I became sincerely obsessed with this book back in April – said last year she mentioned to a co-worker that she listens to audiobooks on her commute to work, and DCC was immediately recommended to her. The DCC audiobooks, narrated by Jeff Hayes, have a massive fan base all of their own thanks to their high production values, the ease with which the story translates to an audio medium, and the fact that Hayes is really, really good as a narrator. Reportedly there were people who got upset at one point because Audible wasn’t crediting the narrator who provided the voices of the female characters, unaware that it was 100 percent Jeff. 

By the time the conversation had ended, my brother had taken the first book in the series to the checkout counter in the bookstore he was texting from and my sister had spent an Audible credit on the same book to listen on her drive to work. I am sitting off to the side, happy to know that I’ve helped bring more people into the Cult of Carl, and sincerely hoping that I am present the first time the two of them have a conversation about characters like Prepotente and Tserendolgor, because my brother won’t know how to pronounce their names and my sister won’t be able to figure out who he’s talking about by the spelling. 

You know you’d follow this guy into bee-yattle.

Which brings me to the point of this week’s column: I really love when I help other people find their way into the stories and fandoms I enjoy. Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I write things like this in the first place. If I enjoy something, I find it more enjoyable when I have people to share it with. So I write about why I love these things, I talk about what makes them so great to me, and I hope that in some small way I can help a few other people find their way to these things. I talk them up in real life too. My wife can attest to the fact that I have been none-too-subtlely trying to get her to read DCC as well, and although I often worry that I run the risk of hyping things too much, I know that if anybody on the planet can see and accept my childlike enthusiasm for what it is, it’s her. Plus, she’s the person I talk to more than anybody else, so I need her to know what I’m referencing when our son loses the remote control for the 13th time this week and I sputter, “You will not break me.”

It’s not like this with everybody. I’ve known people in the past who take it as a personal offense when something that they’ve enjoyed goes “mainstream.” It’s the nerd equivalent of the hipster who only likes obscure bands, then drops them as soon as they release a hit record. This attitude, this idea that if something has achieved recognition it has somehow become beneath you, is – I’m gonna be charitable here – bat-shittingly stupid. While it’s true that popularity is not a measure of quality, it’s not a red flag either. Bad things can be popular, sure. But there is still room in the universe for something that receives universal acceptance to also be a work of great value, not only in terms of sheer entertainment, but also informationally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Bluey, for example.

It’s been a minute since I used this as an example, cut me some slack.

Or Shakespeare. I go back to the Shakespeare well a lot, but that’s because it’s so all-pervasive in western society that the Bard usually provides an easy example, and also because Willie slaps. But people in the modern age tend to think of Shakespeare as some elevated, highbrow work of art, something that’s out of the reach of the common man. People in Shakespeare’s time, however, recognized his plays for what they were – awesome stories held together by decapitations, murder, and a level of sexual innuendo that makes RuPaul’s Drag Race look like Sesame Street. That’s WHY THEY’RE SO GOOD.

What’s more, if a fandom doesn’t grow, it dies. It’s not like Shakespeare was the only British playwright cranking out dramas at the turn of the 17th century, but he’s the only one that still exists in the public consciousness. Why? Because people keep sharing and talking about his work. He’s like My Little Pony in that way, among all the obvious others. Shakespeare – and all popular entertainment for that matter – only stays popular if it is shared. 

In the modern world, to be fair, there is a corporate element to popularity. The companies that control radio stations largely decide what the hit songs are going to be by virtue of deciding which ones will get the most airplay, and advertising can make you believe that you’re the only one who’s never watched a TV show. Every so often you’ll see, for instance, somebody on Facebook proclaim that they’re “part of the 1 percent of the population that’s never watched an episode of Game of Thrones.” That’s patently stupid, by the way – at the height of its popularity, Game of Thrones had approximately 44 million global viewers, which is staggeringly high, but it’s still at MOST about 12 to 13 percent of the population of just the United States. Even by the most generous metric, the MAJORITY of Americans have never watched it, so proclaiming that you haven’t doesn’t make you special, it just makes you a pretentious ass. On the other hand, the show DID become such a huge part of the national conversation for a while that it could FEEL as though everybody else was a fan, even if you weren’t.

But that kind of fame is fleeting. It lasts for a while, to be certain, but it doesn’t pass the test of time unless it garners actual fans, and fans who stick with it. If you’re old enough, you may remember back in 2011 when a girl named Rebecca Black was briefly the most popular thing in the world for her hit single “Friday.” You may also be realizing for the first time that you haven’t thought about her in 15 years. Reportedly, her parents paid a lot of money to have the track produced and dropped on YouTube, where it got pushed into popularity, but that popularity frittered away as quickly as it showed up. It’s a frequent pastime among people of a certain age to complain about modern entertainment and compare it to the “classics” of their formative years. The truth is, there was just as much crap back then as there is today, it’s just that the crap gets forgotten and only the stuff that actually builds an audience is remembered.

So if you’ve got a book series, a TV series, a comic book character, a movie, a band, or any other kind of entertainment that you love, it is in your best interest to see it become popular, lest it become forgotten. 

Half of you just thought, “Oh, HER.” The other half still have no clue.

Star Trek only exists today because of this. NBC cancelled the original series after only three seasons, and if the fandom had frozen at that point it would be just another footnote in television history. But the fans clung to it and kept it alive, and when it entered syndication it was introduced to new audiences that were never allowed to experience it the first time around. And there are plenty of other examples. When Charles Schulz launched Peanuts, it only appeared in SEVEN newspapers. Now, over a quarter-century after the strip was retired, Charlie Brown and Snoopy are still icons. Breaking Bad, one of the most acclaimed TV shows of all time, slummed it at the bottom of the ratings chart until it was added to Netflix. Cheers was on the verge of cancellation for the first few years of its existence until word grew and the show blew up into the cultural touchstone that it is.

And honestly, having other people to share things with is one of the things that makes fandom worthwhile. When I’m really into a book, a TV show, or a movie, I want to talk about it. That’s a lot easier if you’ve got other people who are into the same thing to talk TO. Otherwise, you’re just yapping into the wind, and apparently I do enough of that on a daily basis anyway.

Sure, there are toxic elements of any fandom. I’m not talking about those. People like that aren’t fans of anything, really, except for being assholes. I’m talking about people who actually love what they love, want to talk about those things that they love, and are looking for other people who appreciate those things. 

This is why you can’t be shy about the things you love. Wear that t-shirt, put the patch on your jacket, slap that bumper sticker on your car, and let everybody know how awesome your awesome things are. 

And if you want to talk more about Dungeon Crawler Carl, I’m right here. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Or Supergirl. He’ll talk about that, too.