News Superman & Lois Ordered to Series at The CW

Yeah. Every thing you said there was completely wrong. That was the initial introduction to the character. You do understand a story requires that introductory piece?

 

Good God in Heaven.

Look, man, you're entitled to like what you like and to vomit your trademark unhinged vitriol about what you don't, but Black Lightning's supporting cast is as exemplary as everything else about the show. Ditto the villains. There's not a weak link among them, whether we're talking the characters or the actors. To a man and woman, they're charismatic and compelling as fuck, and a consistent delight to watch.

 

Yet here he is, 80 years later, on his 5th live series and after a ton of movies.

 

Sure, but all of those series and the movies had more than just Superman doing Superman stuff. Most of them have been pretty evenly split between Superman stuff, and non-hero stuff with Clark dealing with job related stuff, or personal drama with Lois and the rest of the supporting cast.

 

Yep.

Superman is about a lot more than "doing Superman things" (which, in the context of kirk55555's typically nuanced and insightful comment, would seem to be limited to flying really fast and punching really hard). Yes, Superman is in part a power fantasy. But Superman is also a romance, a drama, and a comedy. He's a fable, a myth, and a parable. He's one of the biggest, broadest, most versatile palettes in popular culture, which is why he's known in every corner of the globe and still around after 82 years. The notion that a family drama can't also be a good Superman story is frankly asinine.

 

I haven't read any of the recent comics, so Superman as a family man is going to be new to me, and that new take on the character is something I'm very curious about.

 

It has worked very well in the comics. Marriage and fatherhood are very natural fits for the character.

 

I guess it depends on what you call Superman stuff. Use of powers is part of it no doubt, but not even close to all of it. Superman doing strong things could be the Hulk. But Superman's personality--his upbringing, is what makes him a hero. His personality is vital to what I would call Superman Stuff.

I think Lois and Clark captured the character very nicely, even with fewer special effects. The cartoon, in my opinion, is the best version which combined it all.

Superman as a family man CAN work, but it requires a lot of good writing.

 

That wasn't the introduction, it was the entire show. A guy with a shitty family is forced to give up what he should be doing, goes back to it because he has to and then has to deal with literally everyone he knows being either evil or moronic (or sometimes both, like everyone that works at the school that he works at), and the few people who know he's BL constantly try to force him to quit, which is one of the worst fucking tropes in superhero stories like this. Also, there is some drama about him being a teacher in a shitty school that blames him for everything (even though he's the only good teacher there), and one of his shitty daughters might have his powers. The character of Black Lightning being decent can't save the show, it just means I liked seeing him in Crisis and remembering that he's pretty good, taken out of the context of his show.

There isn't a single good supporting character or villain on that damn show. It doesn't even have any real villains, because Black Lightning didn't have any notable villains, and the writing is garbage, so its not like they're going to be able to do anything with the z-list bad guys that Black Lightning fought in his rare solo comic adventures. At least shows like Arrow and Supergirl could steal some villains from other heroes, Black Lightning is stuck with shit like Tobias Whale and Tattoo Man.

Its like I said, Black Lightning desperately wants to be Luke Cage, but without a good supporting cast or a villain like Cottonmouth, and while stuck with having to use BL's shitty kids, its just a terrible pile of crap that doesn't work at really any level.

Well, I wouldn't be talking about "insightful" if I were you, because you completely missed the point. "Superman doing Superman stuff" doesn't mean he literally just does the action/rescue parts of the job. I meant it in the context of their being a balance between the Clark stuff and being superman. So, there needs to be a good amount of Superman related action/adventure, unlike in Smallville or the horrible Lois & Clark, to go along with Clark's civilian life. Also, the show needs to be about him, not a sitcom focused on Lois or a shitty CW Teen drama about their fucking kids.

Thinking that a Superman show should focus on, or even have teenage characters in the cast is moronic. We got teenage Superman, it was called Smallville and it finished off the teenage bullshit less then half way into its run and got much better when the teen drama was gone. I just want to see the adventures of Clark Kent/Superman doing his thing as the focus character of his own show, and that is what we haven't gotten in live action since 1958 and apparently won't be getting from this crappy version, since CW just had to have another teen drama on its lineup.

 

You've described maybe the first half of the first season. By the end of the season Thunder is a costume wearing hero and Jennifer is well on her way to becoming Lightning. Furthermore you completely miss the social commentary about Black life in the U.S. which is pretty nuanced for a CW show. Maybe the show is just too mature for you.

Regardless your opinion on the subject lacks any sense of objective credibility and using your opinion on Black Lightning to pre-judge your opinion on Superman and Lois lacks any credibility as well.

Thanks for playing though.

 

Wow, no doubt. BL is very much its own distinct entity, even after being folded into Earth-Prime. It's the Milestone to the other shows' DC, as it were.

 

Or an Outsider at least...

 

So. Much. Yawn.

 

I've been thinking about this "poster" and why is it so dark and the characters so stoic? Just curious what it's trying to communicate, it seems at odds with what I would think the series would be.

 

^When I first saw it, I noticed more that they didn't stand facing each other, but slightly facing outward. Smallville did similar promo posters in its later seasons. I personally would have liked something more like the old L&C promos. In fact, I'd actually love for them to do a reenactment of the classic L&C launch promo:


But you're right, the mood of that poster is certainly dark and somber. Hopefully that's not reflective of the show itself.

 

I try not to read to much into those kinds of posters, especially this early. I think most of those are usually put together by marketing departments without any real input from the creators.

Yeah, I think BL is just to deep for Kirk, he seems to hate anything that is more complex than a good guy punching a bad guy.

 

Which is why I gave that L&C poster as an example that it used to be better. The L&C poster actually shows off the romantic focus of the TV show by putting the actors in close contact to one another, playing with the iconic image of the \S/ revealed under the ripped open shirt of Clark, and it has the actors' faces showing actual emotion, both demonstrating the playfulness of the show and the inherent sex appeal of the character set-up.
In contrast, the Superman & Lois poster, as well as those Smallville posters from the later seasons, shows Dicky McGeezacks. Wasn't much of a problem for Smallville, as that show had already established itself by the time they used posters like this to promote it:

Plus, SV had already an iconic promo poster for its first season.

But Superman & Lois is just getting started. The released poster basically says: "It's these characters", but it says nothing about the show. And even with the characters, you only know that's Lois Lane because she's standing next to Superman.

 

Well, to be fair, it's not as if they can just call the actors in to pose for a photo shoot with everything shut down. The publicity team probably had to do the best they could working from home with existing images.

 

^That's probably it, considering the Berlanti shows usually do very good promo posters, especially the DC shows. But you still would think they'd have images of the two of them with actual facial expressions. And making the background so dark certainly didn't help the mood.

 

I actually gather the show is going to contain some darker and more serious elements than one might have anticipated:

Spoiler

Info from various sources suggests the show is going to try to tackle the social and economic decline of Middle America, through the lens of Smallville. (Reportedly, Lana's "local hero" husband is a drunk, and their teenage daughter has attempted suicide.) It will take some skillful writing to pull it off, but I think it could be very interesting to deal with such themes in the context of a Superman story, a character who is so closely tied to a bucolically idealized version of America's heartland.