The Heroes Creed

Variety is reporting that production on The Flash, starring Ezra Miller, has been pushed back to late 2019. That means the film will not be in theaters until 2021 at the earliest.

In releasing that information, Variety also hinted that Warner Bros./DC Comics may be moving forward without Henry Cavill as Superman and Ben Affleck as Batman. I'm not sure whether Cavill's schedule is conflicting with him suiting up as The Man of Steel again, or what. Affleck is currently undergoing rehab. There's not been any word on a sequel to the 2013 Man of Steel film, or any further on Cavill as Superman. Affleck's solo film as Batman has been in development for some time now.

Here's what concerns me about this whole thing. Warner Bros./DC Comics has been trying to "Marvelize" these icons. Make them more relatable by giving them angst, and maybe, real-world problems. It works for Peter Parker to have issues, complications and stress that are either compounded or lifted by The Amazing Spider-Man. What about a carefree millionaire-philanthropist-playboy? King of Atlantis? Amazon Princess?

Smallville imagined Clark Kent growing up trying to define himself. We got to see what made him a Man of Steel. My problem with that show was that in addition to the mistakes he made, He somehow landed a job as a crack, star reporter at The Daily Planet without a college education. There seemed a number of fumbles along the way. I say that with fervent passion: I loved watching that show with my boys after bringing them home forever from Ukraine.

I get that it makes sense to be real, and human and show how a person picks themselves up and moves on after making a mistake. We're not really doing that very well in real life, though, are we? Just look at James Gunn. Fired, and seemingly unforgiven, by Disney for a mistake he made years ago that he admitted, regretted and apologized for.

My concern is more for Affleck, and then, Batman.

I remember once hearing Clayton Moore talk about how they acted in public, off screen of The Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger had a creed that the actors themselves followed.

"Kids nowadays aren't so quick to worship heroes. The world is a lot more complicated; we don't seem to believe in absolute good and evil - white hats and black hats - anymore. It's fashionable to think of virtue and honor and bravery as naive, outmoded emotions. Deep down, I believe that people still cling to those ideals. When I first appeared on television as the Lone Ranger, Jay Silverheels (Tonto) and I used to do a lot of public appearances. Years earlier, when George W. Trendle created the Lone Ranger for the radio, he gave his writers a code of behavior that the Lone Ranger and Tonto must live by. Jay and I were heroes to millions of kids, and to avoid disappointing them, we lived by Trendle's original rules."

- Clayton Moore

There is a story that the late Jay Thomas told on The Late Show with David Letterman. Every Christmas, Letterman would have a decorated tree with a giant meatball on top. He would invite Thomas on the show to knock the meatball off with a football. Thomas would throw the football to knock the meatball off. Then he would tell the story of working in radio and doing a life broadcast, or remote, at a car dealer with Clayton Moore. After the live broadcast, Thomas was Moore's chauffeur to the airport. Thomas' car was cut off in traffic by another motorist. Thomas chased him down and confronted him. The driver scoffed, asking Thomas who they would believe. 

I get chill bumps when Thomas relates how Clayton Moore, in full The Lone Ranger costume rises out of the backseat of Thomas' beat-up Volvo and tells the motorist in his deep, rich baritone, "They'll believe ME, citizen."

I want my superheroes and my actors who play my superheroes to be more like THAT.

Let's expect more, and stop settling for less.    

CBS And Super-Heroes

Variety us reporting that CBS is developing DC Comics' The Secret Six for live action. (You can click Secret Six to learn more about the origin and history of the team.)

That's awesome!

The first thing that popped up into mind was, Remember that one time CBS aired Supergirl before it went over to the CW? Ha!

There's two things I like about this story. First is that it's a DC Comics property. Let's set aside as painfully obvious that Warner Bros./DC Comics have absolutely no blueprint, map or plan in bringing their characters to live action. Their stated plan is to do the exact opposite of whatever Marvel is doing. This goes back to 2008, when Marvel rolled out the first Iron Man film; and, as time went on, released information that everything was connecting and connected in a larger Cinematic Universe. Your mileage may vary; but, it has been brilliant, and enjoyable. Each film over the last ten years has built to the next to where we are now on the precipice of Captain Marvel and Avengers 4! DC, doing the exact opposite could work. Unfortunately, DC has seperated most of their properties into television and film universes. Now there's possibly an even bigger splinter between the CW's Arrowverse, the streaming Titans, and now CBS' Secret Six. Grant Gustin should have been The Flash in the Justice League film. #CyborgIsATitan. Instead of the Justice League film we got, we should have gotten Starro as a villain or an adaptation of JLA: Liberty and Justice.

But, like I said, let's set that aside. We could argue all day. Let's just agree to disagree.

The second thing I find interesting is that CBS is developing a DC Comics live action super-hero series.

Being a geezer, I remember when The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Nicholas Hammond from The Sound of Music was on CBS. There were only three major networks at the time. The series looked nothing like the late '60's cartoon or the comic book. It lasted thirteen episodes over two seasons. Take as long as you need with that. Most series have a season of twenty-two episodes. CBS aired thirteen episodes from '77 to '79. CBS aired two Captain America television films and a Dr. Strange television film. The network picked up Wonder Woman for two seasons after ABC cancelled the series. To be fair, Wonder Woman, a DC character, was set during World War II; and, like most of the super-hero shows on at the time not named Batman, looked nothing like the comic book inspiration. Even contemporized on CBS, it still looked nothing like the comic book. And it was still a DC Comics character (rimshot! "Hiyo!")

The most successful super-hero series on CBS was The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. Like The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hulk looked nothing like the comic book or cartoon series before it. Kenneth Johnson said on The Incredible Hulk Season One box set that he had just finished reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and based the series on the chase between Javert and Veljean. It looked more like an updating of David Janssen's The Fugitive, with Gerard chasing Dr. Richard Kimble. The Hulk lasted eighty-two episodes across five seasons. NBC aired the three reunion television films in the early '90's.

So, it will be interesting to see what becomes of Secret Six. Will it look like the comic book? Which iteration will it be?

The ultimate question is this: How long will it last on CBS before it A) Goes to the DC streaming service; or, 2) merges with the CW Arrowverse.

Honestly, since Supergirl started on CBS and then moved to the CW, I am surprised that CBS is developing another comic book series.

NEW Teen Titans

On Monday, The Nerdist broke a story about the line-up for TNT Network's Titans series, based on the DC comic book team Teen Titans. The line-up was revealed as Dick Grayson's Robin; wheel-chair bound Barbara Gordon - who may be Batgirl or Oracle - Hank Hall's Hawk and Dawn Granger's Dove; the Rachel Roth Raven from Geoff Johns' run on Titans and Princess Koriand'r of the planet Tameran, Starfire. Titans, on TNT is said to be drawing heavily from the Marv Wolfman and George Perez era, The New Teen Titans. Warner Bros. has declined comment on the story revealing the line-up. Here's the thing, though. This line-up isn't really representative of the Titans. It may very well be the line-up, bringing together different eras through the characters. It just feels like something is missing.

First off, it's very bird-centric. That's the most obvious thing that jumps out at me. "Huh! They're almost all birds!" Robin, Hawk, Dove, Raven, Batgirl. Starfire is the only one that can actually fly, though. It's also very Bat-centric and Gothic. Robin, Batgirl and Raven all fit that very mystic, gothic Batman-family genre. It's also a very volatile team. Hawk, Starfire and Robin are known for the serious "warrior" mentality. This isn't a very well rounded line-up. My first reaction was, Where's Donna Troy's Wonder Girl? Where's Mal Duncan? Where's Lilith? Where's Gar Logan's Beast Boy? I'm assuming that they're not going to be anchored down with Garth's Aqualad. Wally West's Kid Flash is probably licensed to the CW's The Flash series. Roy Harper's Arsenal is on Arrow. I have to confess that I'm not watching Arrow, so I don't know if Mia Deardon is part of the cast. That would mean that Speedy would be completely unavailable to the series. Supergirl is scheduled for CBS, and there's been talk of crossovers with The Flash and Arrow on CW - which is a pretty interesting concept - but no mention in The Nerdist story about a crossover with Titans. Yet.

And then it hit me. The genius of the Marv Wolfman-George Perez era of The New Teen Titans. Maybe you realized it a long time ago.

Victor Stone, codenamed Cyborg, is probably one of the greatest new characters in the history of comic books. He is so important, that he replaced J'onn J'onzz, The Martian Manhunter as a founding member of the rebooted Justice League. He's gone from having cybernetic parts to actually having Boom Tube technology from Jack Kirby's New Gods. With Cyborg as part of the Justice League now, the shift is from science fiction to science technology. The Justice League was very science fiction. Superman, Green Lantern, The Martian Manhunter, all alien in nature. A good majority of the adventures the Justice League had in the Silver and early Bronze Ages were in space. They moved their headquarters from a cave, like Batman's, to a satellite orbiting the Earth. Since the end of the Space Age, and the mothballing of the US Space Program, science fiction and aliens are not that big a deal anymore. But science technology is.

That's why Cyborg was an awesome New Teen Titan. It's pretty confusing that he's still part of the animated Teen Titans Go! series and yet has been added into the Justice League, first through Smallville, the Justice League comic book reboot and is part of the Superman sequel. During the Wolfman-Perez era of New Teen Titans, Vic's adjustment and his personal life was an ongoing sub-plot. He was angry over being handicapped and he was bitter toward his father. How he coped made for some great stories. Plus his friendship with Gar Logan was pretty cool. The pair were a super-hero Odd Couple. From what I've read of the rebooted Justice League - which is just a few issues past the six issue secret origin arc - Vic's Cyborg feels like the odd man out. He's supposed to be the core of this new Justice League just as he was the New Teen Titans. He's taking the place of The Martian Manhunter, who for years maintained a psychic link between all the members. Now, it's a communications link. I don't think I'm the only Titans fan that wishes Vic was back at the kids' table.

In addition to Wolfman and Perez's Cyborg, they created Raven and Starfire. They complimented the gizmos and gadgetry. Raven brought mysticism, and Starfire brought science fiction to the team. The New Teen Titans greatest enemies was Raven's father, the demon Trigon. Another rogue was the charismatic cult leader, Brother Blood. Both were in Raven's mystic wheelhouse. Blackfire, another Titans foe, was Starfire's sister. The Titans fought a couple of alien races bent on recapturing Starfire and enslaving her home planet.

What didn't work in the first two incarnations of Teen Titans was straight-forward super-heroics. The Classic Teen Titans were written by old dudes that were on the wrong side of the generation gap. The stories and dialogue showed that they were trying but really had no idea what young people in the '60's were like. A lot of the stories put the Titans in situations where they took a stand against adults. Forgettable villains like Mister Twister and Ding-Don-Daddy turn the Titans into something like a Beatles movie or a Beach movie with Frankie and Annette. The Titans greatest foe of the Bronze Age was Dr. Light, who was only practicing on them, so he could take on the Justice League. He turned out to be a pretty lame adversary.

I feel sorry for the creative teams that have come after Marv Wolfman and George Perez. They really did something unique. They took the team and made it something more than just a super-hero comic book about hitting bad guys. As a fan, it's hard to see what Dan Jurgens and Geoff Johns have done and what Wil Pfeifer is doing, without comparing it and becoming nostalgic about "the good old days". It's gotta suck when an announcement is made like The Nerdist, featuring the Titans line-up for TNT and see the line saying that the show will rely on the New Teen Titans era of the '80's. Sure, that's pretty much the era that any fan is familiar with.

I'd like to see a live actions Titans series or film that mirrors the great stories that I've enjoyed. Something that encompasses the three new characters that Wolfman and Perez created. Something that involves technology, mysticism and science fiction.

That would be pretty cool. Who knows, maybe these are the characters that can do that. What do you think?