Let’s talk about this Raven CW show thing for a moment: You’ve already read about this over on the main site, right? The New Teen Titans Era character created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez who has vague emotional and teleportation powers as the subject of a post-Smallville DC superhero-based television show on the CW? It’s also been discussed recently here and here). I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to throw out there:
1) Raven is at first blush an extremely strange choice, given her relatively low Q-rating among DC’s pantheon of superheroes, especially when compared to the other character’s whose names have been thrown around as potential TV stars—Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Robin etc. On the other hand, I think that Teen Titans cartoon made her a relatively obscure comic book character who is probably better known by “civilians” than someone entrenched in the comic book world might expect. Also, hasn’t Smallville asically devolved into a show about random DC characters guest-starring, to the point where Clark Kent isn’t the draw so much as the people who appear with him? Couldn’t you choose pretty much any DC character to continue that format?
2) Did any of you—sales figures indicate that not many of you!—read 2008′s five-issue miniseries DC Special: Raven by Marv Wolfman and pencil artist Damion Scott? I read it mainly for Scott’s art, as I’m a huge fan of his work, but it was strikingly disentangled from Titans continuity and the DCU in general (I think Psycho Pirate’s mask was a maguffin in it…? None of it was terribly memorable, really), and, in retrospect, wasn’t too far removed from a pilot for a show about a teenager with dark magical powers.
3) You know that weird bird-in-profile icon silhouette that Raven could like, step into and fly around in or make the Titans disappear in and out of or whatever? (New Teen Titans was way before my time—what’s the term for that? Her soul self or some such?) That’s one of those things that seems very specific to a hand drawing on a piece of paper that would be impossible to replicate 100% accurately in live action and not look silly. They could always not do it of course, but as TV-ready as elements of the character may be, she does have at least one very comics-specific trait (Just like Starfire’s hair turning into a comet trail mapping her flight path just wouldn’t be the same off the comics page).
“Did you guys try chilling out and watching SAVED BY THE BELL?”: Writing at The Savage Critics, Abhay Khosla dabbles in self-promotion regarding next year’s Superman 80-Page Giant 2011 #1, which will feature a ten-page Jimmy Olsen story written by Khosla. It’s a typically smart, funny and substantially long piece, veering from from how the guy who wrote this fantastic takedown of Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1 in 2005 ended up writing for DC Comics a few years later to thoughts on Jimmy Olsen in general (“Only really Batman does more than Jimmy Olsen,” Khosla observes, regarding Olsen’s amazing versatility).
I guess it had to happen eventually, but I wouldn’t have expected it to look so good: Check out Adam Watson’s Seuss Wars images, which are, of course, Star Wars scenes drawin in the style of Dr. Seuss. I suspect links to the site will be popping up in several places, as I’ve already seen a couple, but this is the one I saw first.
Hmm, I think I liked Mask of the Phantasm better, but I can sorta see that: Noah Berlatsky on the best superhero movie of all time. Here’ s a hint: It’s almost 45 years old.
“For all Batman knows he buried the kid alive, like he did with Alfred that one time”: Cracked’s “5 Absurd Ways Comic Books Have Resurrected Dead Superheroes” includes Jason Todd’s return, which is one that makes less and less sense the more one thinks about it. And it didn’t make any sense at first.
December 6th, 2010 at 9:59 am
Raven has only worked for me as part of the animated ensemble. In the comics, she’s rarely memorable, has (like almost everyone else at DC) a convoluted backstory that has only made less interesting, and poorly defined powers even today. The cartoon was very successful in boiling down Raven to “creepy cute goth chick with anger issues and daddy issues” but even there she was rarely interesting outside of her interactions with the other Titans. There was some great stuff involving her and Robin, but that was based entirely on the framework of the show.
December 6th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Raven makes total sense if you look at it as “smallville / gossip-girl meets ‘medium.” It makes total sense for the approach that gave us the “Birds of Prey” TV show (was that what it was called? so unmemorable). And sense for the trendy “spooky/goth-YA” genre. And it either won’t ever get made or if it does, not last more than 2 seasons.
December 6th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I agree with Deco. The character of Raven fits in with the faux-Goth/horror Twilight type stuff that the CW’s audience eats up.