"Long Live The Legion!"

I remembered that Chloe was supposed to have forgotten Clark's secret but I forgot that she had been abducted by Doomsday! And anyone reading this blog will have seen Smallville years ago and forgotten the sequence of events.

The Legion are great! I remember their first appearance in Adventure Comics. Metafiction: in Smallville, the Legion has never heard of Chloe Sullivan. Well, they had never heard of her before.

The Legion ring that Rokk gives to Clark is just for time travel so he should not be able to use it to reverse events as he does in "Infamous." Either do time travel well or don't do it.

Smallville: Infamous

OK. I realize that I have accidentally skipped over the "Legion" episode, which is probably why I am having a problem with continuity. However, if what Clark does with the Legion ring is time travel, then he should coexist with his younger self when he travels to the past. And, if it is not time travel but literally rewinding the rest of the universe around him - this has happened before in Smallville -, then it is even more absurd.

Smallville has had good dramatic situations with the main characters but it did not need Maxima and does not need "changing the past."

Smallville: Requiem

An excellent version of the Toyman, connected to both Ollie and Lex. It is appropriate that Lex watches the Toyman through the eye of a doll.

Lex devises a diabolical plan to keep Clark and Lana apart. Lex himself is apparently dead at the end - killed by Ollie although the suspect is Schott.

Queen Industries and Luthorcorp have merged. It is amazing how much can happen before Clark becomes Superman.

I still think that there is an inconsistency. Chloe had been made to forget about Clark's abilities but now knows about them again.

Inconsistency?

Is there an inconsistency in Smallville, Season 8? Clark has brought it about that Chloe no longer remembers that he had special abilities. However, in "Power," he discusses his abilities with Chloe and she remembers them.

Lana is now super-powered and restarting her relationship with Clark? She has been super-powered before but we know that the relationship cannot last.

Although Clark will become Superman, he will not become either of the two current screen versions of Superman. There is one in the feature films and another in the Supergirl TV series.

Comics In Prose Fiction

Copied from here.

Some characters in novels must read comics. Stieg Larsson tells us how the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo got her nickname, "Wasp," but David Lagercrantz tells us instead that she named herself after the Marvel Comics Wasp.

In Alan Moore's Jerusalem, a boy growing up in Northampton in the 1960s reads about:

Iron Man battling Kala, the Queen of the Underworld;
Spiderman fighting the Vulture;
Superman and Batman meeting when young;
the Skrulls;
the Human Torch;
Starro the Conqueror;
the Baxter Building;
Avengers Mansion;
the Fortress of Solitude.

He reads Strange Tales, Fantasy Masterpieces, Fantastic Four and Thor with "Tales of Asgard" by Jack Kirby.

I remember the Skulls, Starro and the regular Superman-Batman team-up in World's Finest Comics.

The Red And Blue Blur

(Clark Kent, reporter, undercover as a cop.)

In a novel by Elliot S! Maggin and also I think in pre-Crisis comics, there were reports of a mysterious "Smallville Angel" preventing accidents and disasters before Clark went public as Superboy. In a later continuity, when Clark had not had a "Superboy" period in his career, there were nevertheless unconfirmed sightings of "the Superboy" running very fast around Smallville.

In Smallville, there is a Red and Blue Blur before there is a Superman in Metropolis. The Blur and the Green Arrow are two vigilantes. Clark's cop partner gives him the standard "badges versus capes" argument that has been familiar since Watchmen.

This post has referred to maybe five continuities:

a novel;
pre-Crisis comics;
post-Crisis comics;
a TV series;
a graphic novel.

Smallville: Bride

Zod and Faora's son, Doomsday, abducts Lois Lane's cousin, Chloe Sullivan, from her wedding to Jimmy Olsen at the Kent farm. Before the abduction, Lois discusses her feelings towards Clark with her ex, Oliver Queen. Tess Mercer, illegitimate daughter of Lionel Luthor and half-sister of Lex Luthor, was on the island with Oliver. Of these eleven characters, only three were specially created for Smallville although all the relationships between the characters have changed.

In Arrow, Shado, Shado's father and a version of Fyres were on the island with Ollie.

Addendum: I should have mentioned Lana Lang who, like Ollie, tracks Lex and shows at the wedding. There is a sense of important events occurring again.

Smallville: Early Season 8

Who works on the Kent farm now that Clark is living there but commuting to work at The Daily Planet in Metropolis?

Who mailed the Crystal to Clark?

Where is Lana?

Where is Lex?

Where will Kara look for Kandor?

I had some questions about Faora but they have been answered here.

Smallville: Toxic

Smallville: "Toxic" gives us the Smallville versions of:

Ollie on the island;
what happened to Ollie's parents.

Ollie survived for two, not five, years on the island, then there were other people there, totally different from any other version. Much later, when he knows Clark in Metropolis, Ollie is given evidence that Lionel Luthor had murdered his parents.

Luthorcorp owns the Daily Planet but why does the Luthorcorp CEO base herself in the Planet building instead of in the Luthorcorp building?

Smallville seems to be treated as a suburb of Metropolis. We have already been told that, from a high enough point, the city is visible from the town, like looking into the future.

From Starling City And The Island Back To Smallville And Metropolis

On dvds, I have gone from Arrow, Season One, final episode, to Smallville, Season Eight, episode 1. On the island, Ollie kills Fyres who had killed Shado's father.

In Starling City:

the good guys switch off the Undertaking device just in time but there is another device;
Ollie saves the Glades but not the East Side of the City;
Glades residents loot before escaping;
Moira is arrested;
Martin Merlyn has been publically exposed by Moira and defeated by Ollie - but is he arrested or does he escape?;
Ollie and Laurel are back together;
Tommie dies saving Laurel.

In Smallville:

the scenery and action make it look more like a feature film than a TV episode;
the Martian Manhunter gets Clark's powers back for him but loses his own but they will have to return;
with Lionel dead and Lex missing, there is a new acting Luthorcorp CEO;
Chloe has lost her healing power but gained enhanced intelligence (?);
there are versions of Ollie and Dinah different from those in Arrow;
there is a proto-JLA, as in the DC movieverse;
this JLA is Ollie, Dinah, Clark, Arthur Curry, Cyborg, Bart and the Martian Manhunter;
they are saboteurs/terrorists to Luthorcorp;
Clark leaves the farm and starts at the Planet but is not yet in costume.

Arrow: Season One

The Hood can be Oliver Queen or John Diggle. It seems that there was no Black Canary before there was a Hood. Despite his almost super-heroic strength and martial arts skills, Oliver meets his match in Merlyn who becomes the fifth person to know that Oliver is the Hood. Oliver thinks that he will hang up the Hood after preventing the Undertaking and therefore gets back together with Laurel. I have yet to watch the last episode.

I first encountered Green Arrow in a comic book and Blackhawk in a cinema serial, both in the 1950s. Now there is a Blackhawk security firm in an Arrow TV series. There is also a Coast City, Central City and Bludhaven but there might not be a Metropolis since Supergirl, and therefore also Superman, is in a different universe.

Arrow

Mike Grell's Green Arrow became a killer whereas the vigilante in Arrow kills from the beginning, having learned it on the island.

Both the masked vigilante of Gotham City and the hooded vigilante of Starling City are strong, fast and skilled enough to defeat any number of opponents without apparent effort. This puts them in a category intermediate between heroes and superheroes.

In Smallville and Arrow, flashbacks to years ago show the actors as much younger. Is this CGI?

The third last episode of Arrow Season One shows the Queen's Gambit departing and Merlyn's instrument of ethnic cleansing arriving.

A Changing Origin Story

Originally, Oliver Queen learned archery on a mesa but later it was changed to an island.

The Longbow Hunters summarized the island origin story and introduced two new ongoing characters, Shado and Eddie Fyers.

The Year One Annual put one other person on the island.

GAY1 put a lot of other people on the island; Ollie lied when he said he was alone.

Arrow put a different large group of people on the island, including among them Shado and a different version of Fyers. Shado teaches Ollie archery. Arrow also made Queen's motivation more like that of the Batman. The hooded archer vigilante is an avenger, not an adventurer. He is fulfilling his dead father's last wish and is targeting a list of named criminals, not crime in general. The Batman's only specific target was Joe Chill. In Arrow, Queen goes straight to a hood without a mask but nevertheless conceals his face.

Origins And Essences

Superman has to be strong and fast and to wear a recognizable version of the familiar costume. Flight became an essential power very early. I do not think that an extraterrestrial origin is essential. In Smallville, Clark Kent could be a meteor freak.

The Batman has to:

see his parents shot dead in front of him at the age of five;
train hard for twenty years;
be inspired by a bat flying through the window;
dress like a bat to fight crime;
hang out in the Cave -

- but why did Joe Chill not kill the witness, Bruce?

Wonder Woman has to be a super-strong Amazon.

Aquaman has to be amphibious and strong and fast under water but not necessarily Atlantean.

The Flash would be nothing without speed but his top speed can vary a lot.

The Martian Manhunter has to be a Martian with unusual powers.

Oliver Queen:

has to get off a yacht and onto an island where he will learn archery and survival skills;
falls and swims or is thrown and floats or escapes in a lifeboat when the sabotaged yacht sinks;
is alone or very far from alone on the island;
is self-taught or taught;
in the Year One Annual, escapes from one island only to land on another;
in Arrow, returns to a complicated family scenario that did not exist in previous versions.

Three Alan Moore Quiz Questions

I am making a long reach here but why not?

(i) In which two works does Alan Moore adapt the song-title, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," in different contexts?

(ii) In which two works does Alan Moore invent different although related meanings for the letters, "N.F.," which, in British politics, stand for "National Front"?

(iii) In which two works does Alan Moore refer, in different ways, to 1984?

Clue: of these six works, five are comic strips and one is a prose novel, of which Moore has so far written only two. Because of the preponderance of comics, I have posted these questions on Comics Appreciation rather than here where I am currently discussing Moore's prose fiction.