Braving the gauntlet of Big Two events, off-the-radar indie releases, and a non-stop avalanche of movies, television, and other things that are bad for you is DoomRocket’s HOT PRESS. This week: bidding farewell to The Flash, my first Hate read, another Bloodlines dispatch, and other things.
by Jarrod Jones. I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately for work, which isn’t the worst way to earn a buck. (It is, however. the best way to develop a soggier midsection.) One thing I’m almost sure I won’t miss in my declining years is this deluge of superhero shows we’ve been sifting through since the advent of Arrow back in 2012. There are signs that the bloom is off that particular rose and withering further: Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has said the company will scale back budgets for Disney+ Marvel output, a blessing on its own. And Iger’s statement coincides with the death knells for another superhero tv franchise, The CW’s Arrowverse.
The most popular show from that line is The Flash, at long last coming to an end this season. I’ve said the network’s fondly held Arrowverse should have packed it in after it pulled off its low-budget TV version of DC’s continuity-rejiggering Crisis on Infinite Earths in 2019. But its innate pluckiness and just-vocal-enough fanbase on social media have kept it running on fumes.
Since then, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow has bowed out with a bit of dignity (in its eighth season, and you can read my many thoughts on that show here), Naomi showed up too late to the game, and a chaotic between-seasons recasting of its lead hamstrung Batwoman. Arrow wrapped things up after Crisis, while Supergirl, much like the rest of the Arrowverse, couldn’t justify its existence with increasingly abysmal ratings. In fact, most Arrowverse tv has operated on a sub-millions viewership for some time now, with little sign of improvement on the horizon.
The Flash hit the lowest ratings of its 9-season run this month, so its cancellation might be a mercy. If the Arrowverse ever had a unified vision for itself — which it definitely didn’t as the franchise went on — The Flash might have had the good sense to run off into that good night at the end of Crisis. (What a victorious closing of a seasons-long circle that might have been.) It didn’t; even as it hemorrhaged longtime cast members like Tom Cavanagh and Carlos Valdes, The Flash kept apace with its reliably chirpy seasonal sprints until COVID hit in 2020 and threw its production off-track.
COVID wasn’t the culprit behind The Flash‘s dip in overall viewer interest. The show had hit a rut (which arguably began back in Season 3) so mundane that it never managed to find a second wind energizing enough to overcome it. TV critics frequently diagnosed its many issues, but the brain trust behind The Flash likely felt that things were fine as they were. So it continued its course to diminishing returns. It’s been brutal to watch.
I recently rewatched all of The Flash Season 1; something about the series’ impending finale made me want to revisit a season I’ve told people is some of the better television I’ve seen, superhero or otherwise. It holds up remarkably well. There are a couple of indicators late in the season that suggest the show could fall into a grind if its showrunners lost interest in the material (which they soon did), like those treacly “hallway pep talks” that became a laughable trope and its sitcom-ass depiction of its character’s daily lives (I wish a Crisis would remove any memory I have of CC Jitters). Perhaps the most egregious thing about Season 1 is that too many of its “villain of the week” episodes were disposable. Go ahead, tell me who the villain was in Season 1, Episode 2 without looking it up.
But there’s an emotional resonance to Season 1 of The Flash that couldn’t be repeated in future seasons, try as the show so plainly did. There was no topping Cavanagh’s Reverse-Flash, even though so many full-throated attempts were made. (We hardly knew ye, Zoom, Savitar… um… Godspeed… oh, who else…) Perhaps it was a bit of lightning-in-a-bottle for The CW that they landed an appealing and enthusiastic cast from the jump, a working formula courtesy of Arrow and then-DC CCO Geoff Johns guiding the arc of this debut season. Its premiere energy was so pure that The Flash could have easily been a one-season wonder and been remembered fondly for it.
That’s not how franchise television works, though, and so The Flash continued from Season 1 at the mercy of its critical and ratings success. I’m glad I sat through this debut season once more because it reminded me of why I was so into this show in the first place. I rooted for Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and gobbled up Cavanagh’s simmering villain turn (best post-Ledger live-action supervillain, I’m telling you). Its dauntless experiments with time travel and alternate realities still feel fresh and invigorating, the chemistry between its cast even more so.
I have learned to appreciate The Flash all over again. More poignantly, I learned to remember the show for what it was, not what it became — or, as my Primetimer editor Danette Chavez so adroitly put it, I can now remember how it lived, not how it died.
Growing up primarily in various rural areas and small podunks, I rarely had access to small-press comics that didn’t belong to one of my more worldly friends (or their even more urbane older siblings), so Peter Bagge’s Hate has long been a blind spot. Shame, too; the laconic slacker vibes of Buddy Bradley would have been received by teenaged me (circa 1997) with open arms.
I stumbled across Hey, Buddy! A Hate Collection Vol. 1 at a local bookstore recently and, recognizing my folly for not seeking out the squiggly lines of Bagge before, snatched it up at once. I’m markedly older and a long ways away from my chain-smoking rebel years, but Buddy Bradley still speaks to me in a way that makes me wince fondly at my disastrous twenties. Like Buddy, I’ve also moved to opposite ends of the country just to try it on for size and enjoyed cheaper rents for the trouble. (Though the $450 Buddy says he pays for a four-bedroom with a balcony in Seattle made my eyes water.) I’ve had crummy roommates and good roommates (hell, I’ve been a crummy roommate and a good roommate), I’ve had profound romantic relationships and bad ones, and, mercy, did I enjoy my libations and cigarettes. I like Buddy because I’ve been Buddy.
I read Hey, Buddy! in bursts and attempted to savor the flavor for as long as I could. Turns out Bagge’s strip is sugar for my eyes, a time capsule for the cultural primacy of Gen X, with all the flanneled shirts and mod revival fashions and affected irony that came with it. So I devoured this book faster than I wanted to, and naturally, I’m reading it again. Hate strikes me as a strip that will reward that kind of behavior; Bagge’s Seattle is wiggly and severe in its rendering, but it’s a lived-in place colored by freaks and oddballs who have good ideas, bad opinions, likes, dislikes, beer preferences, etc. And besides, his wiggly lines and black-white compositions are gorgeous to look at, and Bagge’s lettering and font work is in a class of their own. Hate is a strip that belongs to a singular voice, one imbued by personality and experience.
Hunting down more Hate has become a priority for my future used bookstore dives — but if any of you pals have a line on some cheap Hate back issues, I’d appreciate it if you dropped a dime. I need more Buddy!
– I’ve been spending my off-hours getting DoomRocket back to strength, working with my team and recruiting new writers to make sure we’re putting out more quality reviews ‘n’ such every two weeks. (No more of that “once monthly” crap, what was I thinking.) Presently, we’ve got some good stuff for you to read: there’s Arpad Okay’s first REQUIRED READING feature of the year concerning Nicole Goux’s Rituals; new DR contributor Brandon Hayman’s review of Vault Comics’ Godfell #1 is worthy of your gaze; my review of Patrick Kindlon and Paul Tucker’s coke-fueled tennis ogn Stringer is ready for consumption, too. More exciting stuff is coming your way soon; stay tuned.
– The filmography of James Gunn has been a subject of exploration this week, not just for work stuff but in anticipation of the imminent release of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. This might be the first time I’ve been physically energized to see a new Marvel product in ages — since infinity War, probably. I’m intrigued to see if any of the Phase 4/Phase 5 doldrums, compounded with the years that have passed since Guardians Vol. 2 (2017!) and Gunn’s fracturing from Marvel Studios, has dulled any of this franchise’s shine. It’s the last thing Gunn’s doing for Marvel; I want this to be good, so, so bad. (I need to believe the man’s growth as a filmmaker bodes promising things for Superman: Legacy.) I’ll be knocking out a review of the movie for DoomRocket, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Note: For part one of this series, click this. Part two? This. Here’s part three, and if you also want to read our fourth burst of Bloodletting, right here.
THE ISSUE: New Titans Annual #9 (“Outbreak, Part Five.”)
THE TEAM: Paul Witcover and Elizabeth Hand (writers); Malcolm Davis (penciller), um… Gross, Badger, Leigh, Baker, Campanella, George, Albrecht, Garzon (inkers); Patricia Mulvihill (colors); Tim Harkins and Albert De Guzman (letters). Edited by Frank Pittarese and Rob Simpson. Published by DC.
THE GIST: New Orleans has more than Mardi Gras to contend with this year: Lissik and Pritor, two of the Bloodlines aliens currently invading Earth, have descended upon the Big Easy to snack on some human just as an offshore oil refinery descends into catastrophe. The Titans arrive with all their interpersonal baggage to fight a battle on two fronts that leads them to Anima, the latest New Blood in the Bloodlines pantheon.
NEW BLOOD: Anima is Courtney Mason, impetuous youth, fan of Bikini Kill, cool sister, and hero-in-waiting. As I’ll get into later, Court’s debut issue is agonizingly chaotic to read, so it’s difficult to parse what Court can do, power-wise — she gets bit by an alien and gets powers afterward; that’s standard Bloodlines stuff. Here’s where things get sticky: we discover that she’s also inhabited by an entity called “the Animus,” which allows her to knock the superhero Pantha around a little bit and send Lissik and Pritor packing by the issue’s end. After reading through this issue, how she did it and what the hell “the Animus” is, remains a mystery to me.
Luckily I keep an older edition of the DC Comics Encyclopedia for such moments. Its synopsis for Anima and her origin story contradicts some of what happens in this annual. For instance, it describes Court as a runaway; while she does take off with her little brother and her dad’s gold card (because her dad is busy with a catastrophic spill at the oil refinery he works at), there’s no indication here that Court intends on staying away from her family to make her own way in life.
The Encyclopedia also says that Lissik’s bite “unleashed the Animus, a creature within Courtney that can absorb the spirit essences of the living and the dead,” which helps. But! Following Lissik’s bite, Courtney is surrounded by a strange pink mist emanating from a mass grave, and it’s implied that the absorption of those mists stirs the Animus, so who can say. Perhaps the Animus required a triggering of Court’s burgeoning metahuman ability, maybe it has something to do with Court’s hippy-dippy mother (who is established off-panel), who can say.
Courtney would enjoy the longest solo series of any of her fellow New Blood brethren. Anima ran for sixteen issues, which I also own and should read sometime to make sense of who she is and what she’s all about. After this clunky debut, however, I might need a minute away from Anima.
BEST BIT: Tough call. I appreciated the L7 and Bikini Kill shouts. Let’s get into what doesn’t work.
WORST BIT: With the Titans bickering back and forth, the aliens developing their own animosities (Lissik has gone rogue!), and Anima making her big debut, this is a busy issue. It’s a tough one to read, too: Davis’s panel work clashes against Harkins & De Guzman’s letter layouts something awful. The word balloons don’t flow in a manner that clarifies character interactions, which makes this annual-length issue a real slog to read through. Also, I’m not sure that Witcover and Hand’s prose bona fides are a snug fit for the comic format; there are some fleeting character details and literary flourishes here and there (especially when things go supernatural), but the continuity demands of an ongoing team book wreak havoc over what this writing team wants to accomplish.
FUN FACTS: Roy Harper’s new (if short-lived) purple-‘n’-blue look first appeared in New Titans #99; Roy also adopted a new moniker, Arsenal, to go with his fresh duds and bad attitude in that issue; I don’t recall Pantha saying “Grrr” every time she speaks in other New Titans issues, but she does it here, and it’s really stupid; Swamp Thing makes a surprise appearance in this annual, though he sticks around for three panels before wisely sauntering off to a better comic; Lissik and Pritor, our Bloodlines baddies for the issue, take on edgy 90s humanoid villain forms in this issue, and they’re wonderfully awful; Anima would live on in the pages of The Multiversity: The Just #1 (maybe Grant Morrison was a fan?).
DOES IT RIP? Not even a little bit. Visually, New Titans Annual #9 is a nightmare to look at, even with Mulvihill’s attempts to imbue this with some interesting color. The presence of eight (eight!) inkers indicates that this issue was behind schedule and DC’s editors called all hands on deck to get it out on time. Davis’s pencils suffer because of this; the Continuity Comics vet has done solid action work (check out his Hulk 2099 stuff), but here his work is at the mercy of whoever’s inking him at any given moment. That visual clash, compounded with a disharmony of page layouts and lettering direction, make Anima’s big debut a proper mess.
NEXT UP: Superman Annual #5, wherein Gemir and Venev take in some Metropolis fine dining, Lex Luthor II attempts to cut a few incriminating loose threads, and the Cyborg Superman meets the New Blood called Myriad.
That’s all I got for this week. Read any good comics lately? Drop them in the comments or write me: ja****@********et.com.
More HOT PRESS:
HOT PRESS 2/16/23: Top Ten, quick thoughts on that Flash trailer, and the devilish DC debut of Argus
HOT PRESS 1/26/23: New Superman, a DoomRocket Update, and more Bloodlines
HOT PRESS 8/11/22: The Netflix-Sandman is here, and Bloodlines bleeds once more
