Smallville: Arrow

I see why someone thought that the Arrow TV series had spun off from the Smallville TV series. Smallville Season Six introduces Oliver Queen over two episodes, then introduces him as the Green Arrow in an episode called "Arrow." He disguises his face not with a mask but with dark glasses that do the job properly. He has credible trick arrows and an arrow-line that resembles the bat-line. His equipment is made of an untraceable alloy. Such questions were never asked in the original comics.

His line between right and wrong is drawn in a different place from either Clark's or Wayne's - although we have not met the Gotham City vigilante yet. The Luthors are still playing devious games and Lex is still not trusting Lionel. Lex thinks that Lionel is fooling the Kents, which cannot be true.

I first encountered Green Arrow in a comic book in the period 1956-1960 when I was at boarding school in Scotland. That story was set in a jungle so, generalizing from a single instance, I thought that the jungle was GA's habitual environment. Then I learned that he had an urban environment where he really was "just Batman with arrows" as Roy Thomas had Robin say to Speedy at an All-Star Squadron meeting.

The Smallville Green Arrow does not catch bank robbers - or hospitalize them, like Frank Miller's Batman - but steals expensive jewellery that had been bought on the black market. Thus, he makes his own moral judgments about breaking the law - and is in fact a thief. Like Kent and Wayne in Miller's Dark Knight, Clark and Ollie disagree but keep each others' secrets. The spirit of Watchmen still haunts superheroes.

Smallville: Wither

I did not really get the plant femalien theme of this episode. For me, the high point of the episode was the social event with so many DC characters casually meeting and interacting:

Oliver Queen;
Lois Lane;
Lex Luthor;
Lana Lang;
Martha Kent.

I was told incorrectly that the Arrow TV series spun off from Smallville. However, googling reveals that these two series are different continuities. We can dig it either way as long as the continuity question is clear. The continuities are differentiated by Star City and Starling City and by different actors for Ollie.

The Ollie of this episode of Smallville still needs to perfect his archery. So far, Lex is making more sense as a straightforward guy, and good for Lana, than Clark.

Smallville: Sneeze

Even Clark can work so hard that he becomes tired and ill. Right. We need more of this, e.g., logical deductions about his limits.

Oliver Queen! And not behaving as we expect! Lionel comments on Oliver's bad acting when told that Lex has been abducted. Lex and Oliver were at boarding school together. This makes Ollie older than Clark, which fits with the comics. Ollie comes from old money. Smallville began with Lionel reading a Daily Planet headlining the disappearance of the Queen Industries CEO. We know that Ollie learned his archery during that disappearance and we see that he has perfected it by now. He is tracking down super powered beings. Lex, no longer possessed by Zod, does not fit the bill but someone else who was in that warehouse does. Ollie will be able to fund the JLA.

Clark's dishonesty with Lana continues to absurd levels. He will not tell her how he knew in advance that Lex would be possessed. She suspects rightly that Clark now has ulterior motives for trying to help Lex. She is also learning that security measures are necessary when living with (the American equivalent of) royalty.

Clark learns how to use super-breath! The Zod Squad used super-breath against Metropolitans in Superman II. In Alan Moore's Marvelman, Liz Moran read comic books so that she could research Mike's powers and he looked bewildered when she asked if he had super-breath!

(We had to show Ollie but I wanted Chloe as well - and I suppose Clark deserves an appearance.)

Addendum: How could I forget Lois begins her reporting career her even if only in the Inquisitor? It would be possible to make a very long list of elements of the Superman mythos as they are introduced in Smallville.

Worlds And Words

I copied this post from Poul Anderson Appreciation because it mentions Miracleman and Smallville:

SM Stirling, "Shikari in Galveston" IN Worlds That Weren't (New York, 2003), pp. 63-148.

Science fiction writers show words changing their meanings in the future. In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, Jack Havig, time traveling to his future, meets a young woman who, when asked what she does with her time, replies that she jokes a lot. An amateur comedienne? However, when she and he share a picnic with no one else present, she announces that she had figured they could joke after eating but why not before and after?

(15 Mar: Also relevant is Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors.")

In Neil Gaiman's sequel to Alan Moore's Miracleman, "London" means an event as "Hiroshima" does to us and "Kidding" has become a swear word because of what the Kid did in London. (Alan Moore had asked, "What would someone with Superman's strength and speed but not his scruples do?" He then answered this question with extremely detailed instructions to a comic strip artist.)

In SM Stirling's "Shikari in Galveston," a Bengali trader surprises us by telling Eric King that the local savages "'...are a clean people...'" (p. 80) Clean? King has just complained of sweat, squalor, smoke, sewage and stink. However, the trader's use of the word "clean" does not refer to hygiene. He spells it out:

"'From the time of the Fall.'" (ibid.)

King understands:

"King nodded...that was one of the fundamental distinctions in the modern world, between those whose ancestors had eaten men in the terrible years after the hammer from the skies struck, and those who hadn't. The only more fundamental one was between those who still did, and the rest of humanity." (ibid.)

And I am certain that the use of the word "clean" would be extended in precisely this way in those circumstances.

Tomorrow there will be a family outing for Mothers' Day (we have two mothers in the household) so maybe not much time for posting. Before turning in this evening, I have had to stop reading Stieg Larsson in order to post and must now stop posting in order to watch Smallville. Retirement, as expected, is an endless choice between enjoyable activities.

Smallville: Zod

Season Six begins so the world is in a chaos that is inherited from the climax of Season Five but will be resolved by the end of Episode One.

Chloe Sullivan makes history by introducing Clark Kent to James Olsen. Thus, Clark meets Jimmy long before starting to work at the Planet. But it was always turning out in the comics that characters had had contact before we thought they had.

This version of the Phantom Zone has a physical area. The fortress is dead but Jor-El, or some other Kryptonian presence, is still affecting Lionel, Lex has acquired some Kryptonian tech and a phantom, probably Zod, has been released on Earth. It used to be that a physical body became a phantom on entering the Zone and reverted to physicality on leaving it. Also, a phantom was like a "ghost," an insubstantial, transparent version of the body, whereas these phantoms resemble winged demons.

Lex has no memory of possession by Zod, thus no knowledge that Clark is Kal-El. It still makes no sense that possession of Lex's body by Zod's phantom gave Lex's body Kryptonian powers. Lana now knows of Krypton but has no reason to connect it with Clark. Complicated. Unnecessarily so.

Smallville: Oracle And Vessel

The Oracle is Lionel and the Vessel is Lex. The Fifth Season ends. Why does each Season have to end with a cliff hanger, especially when it is not clear what is going down? Zod has possessed Lex? it looks more as if Lex has acquired Kryptonian powers. And how could that happen?

Jor-El calls Fine the Brain Inter-Active Construct. I think this is the first time that the name "Brainiac" has appeared? And is this the second version in which Brainiac is a Kryptonian artifact? Clark is finally working with Lionel against Lex.

Since Jonathan Kent died, he has reappeared three times:

in a video;
in Clark's Near Death Experience;
as imitated by the metamorph, Brainiac.

Smallville: Fade

I thought that Graham's meteor power was teleportation, then that it was teleportation plus invisibility but it was just invisibility. Another guy who learns Clark's secret and dies. As in HG Wells' The Invisible Man, when the other characters know that an invisible opponent is present, then they know where to aim their blows or bullets.

How does an invisible man see? If light goes through him, then it is not reflected on his retina. Scenes from Graham's pov inform us that he sees in black and white - so the issue of his sight is partially addressed.

Clark knows about Lex and Lana. Lex tells Lana that he is trying to find Fine but he is secretly communicating with him.

Chloe gets her first front page story on the Planet. Will she still be working there when Clark and Lois are? Lois wonders about meeting her equivalent of Jonathan Kent. Lionel starts a return flight from Singapore when Graham nearly kills Lex but remains off-stage. We don't know why he grabbed his head and wrote something at the end of the previous episode.

Metropolis has become a familiar setting.