Superheroes

Oh, BATWOMAN writers at the CW, why have you betrayed me? After weeks of supporting your show in the face of criticism, after numerous declarations that, "No, the show is not like that awful preview trailer, you should really try it," you go and stab me in the back by churning out an episode that is exactly what the critics excoriate the series for.

The episode, "Tell Me The Truth," finds Kate (RUBY ROSE) struggling with what to do about her former lover, Sophie (MEAGAN TANDY), who has revealed she knows Batwoman's secret identity and threatens to go to Kate's daddy and tell on her. What should Kate do? Continue to deny it? Bring Sophie into the circle of trust and hope that she can keep a secret?

It took six episodes, but BATWOMAN has delivered a one-and-done murder mystery that was both compelling and character elevating.

There's a new villain in town, who wears an executioner's mask and carries an axe. When he electrocutes a prominent Gotham City prosecutor, whose most famous case was the conviction of Jack Napier, aka The Joker, the GCPD fire up the Bat-signal, seeking help from the city's new bearer of the mantle. This infuriates Jake Kane (DOUGRAY SCOTT), leader of the Crows, and he vows to capture this killer before Batwoman (RUBY ROSE).

As the Crisis looms, Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) has been preparing the members of Team Flash for life without him. And key to doing that is...

...taking a beach vacation with Iris (CANDICE PATTON). Which means it's time for another episode of Everybody But Flash.

Realizing he will have to make difficult decisions as future team leader, Cisco (CARLOS VALDES) had developed the B.A.R.I. -- an AI system that thinks like Barry Allen to help him know the right thing to do. (Because a computer system that knows what The Flash would do in any given situation could never be used for ill intent in the wrong hands.) 

With the focus on Vibe and his new girlfriend, Kamilla (VICTORIA PARK), we learn something new about Cisco: that he hasn't told her he loves her, even though he's sleeping with her. Oh, that, and he's been sleepwalking lately.

If you haven't been giving BATWOMAN a fair shake, then you've missed out on what is a bone-chilling and disturbing episode, as we get the origin behind the death of Beth Kane -- and her rebirth as Alice. RACHEL SKARSTEN gets a chance to really shine as her character has a clandestine meeting with her sister, Kate Kane (RUBY ROSE), and we are taken back to how Beth survived the car accident -- fished out of the river but then kept captive by a sociopath and his young son with a preternatural gift for vocal mimicry.

The young boy is now a man, of course, and he is the "Mouse" (SAM LITTLEFIELD) that Alice has been looking for, freeing him from Arkham to participate in whatever plan it is she has concocted. They're friends, even though he's partly responsible for her captivity as a child, forced to use his gifts under duress in order to throw Beth's father (DOUGRAY SCOTT) off her trail.

There have been a few moments in the Batman mythos that have been truly memorable, have truly changed the landscape for the fans. (If you ask Robert Greenberger, there are at least 100 of these, but that's a review for later this week.) 

One such moment came in 1999, when a new animated series took Batman into the near-future; where Bruce Wayne (KEVIN CONROY) is a retired octogenarian, and Terry McGinnis (WILL FRIEDLE) as the latest heir to the mantle, in a New Gotham that has a whole new set of problems.

When we are introduced to the series, Bruce is wearing the jet-black, tricked-out costume. But his age is catching up with him, and his heart isn't holding up. When he finds himself grabbing a dropped gun to defend himself against a common thug, he's horrified at what he's doing, and seals up the Batcave for good.

In tonight's Halloween episode, the title is "There Will Be Blood" and there's a bio-restorative formula at play. What an opportunity to get an cameo from Swamp Thing that we... don't get. But, moving onward.

Flash (GRANT GUSTIN) is still resigned to the fact that he is fated to die in the upcoming Crisis in order for the universe to survive. In the previous episode, Flash tried to prepare the team for his inevitable passing by taking Killer Frost (DANIELLE PANABAKER) under his wing to teach her to be a better hero. This week, he decides to spend some one-on-one time with Cisco Ramon (CARLOS VALDES), the former Vibe, because he's picked him to be the team leader when he's gone. Which, I suppose, will be Team Frozen Stretch, without the speedster around.

The story of Alice (RACHEL SKARSTEN) deepens as Kate (RUBY ROSE) learns just what it means personally to take on the mantle of the bat.

Gotham City has a new supervillain problem -- a catburglar who likes to steal shiny objects. No, it's not Selina Kyle. It's Magpie (RACHEL MATTHEWS), a thief with a bird-motif, who steals expensive baubles and uses small grenades as her getaway weapon. In the comics, Magpie was a bit deeper than that -- her psychosis caused her to leave something in trade for the objects she stole, which would explode when moved. After a string of robberies -- one in which she escapes Batwoman, whose miss of a returning batarang causes expensive collateral damage -- Magpie sets her sights on a special piece of jewelry: the pearls worn by Martha Wayne the night she was murdered. Visually, they're not much of a display, but historically they carry a provenance special to Gothamites.

With the Crisis bearing down on them in less than ten weeks, Team Flash has moved from grief to acceptance -- particularly Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) who has yet to tell the team what he knows of the future -- that he has to die in the Crisis.

And the Crisis has taken on its own identity as well, losing the "the" in front of it, and simply being called "Crisis" -- which sounds a bit odd and all proper-nouny when heard spoken about prior to its occurrence by those who are going to experience it.

To prepare the team to work without him, Flash decides he has to train them better, starting with Killer Frost (DANIELLE PANABAKER). But her anger gets in the way as the pair hunt down an angry zombie named Romero (thought we wouldn't notice that naming convenience, didn't you, @FlashTVWriters?), and Flash realizes he's going to have to find a way to cool down the ice queen's hot temper before she can be an effective hero.

The more Kate (RUBY ROSE) operates in the Bat-suit, the more Gotham City wants to see Batman fully reappear -- and that includes those who would like to see the Dark Knight dead.

Among those in that latter category are Tommy Elliott (GABRIEL MANN), who has the added advantage of knowing that Batman is actually Bruce Wayne. Kate catches him in the Wayne executive board room, looking for Bruce, fully believing that Bruce has returned because Batman has returned. Later, when Luke Fox (CAMRUS JOHNSON) informs Kate that there's been a break-in of the Bat-arsenal, we learn that Bruce developed a weapon capable of penetrating the bulletproof Bat-suit -- a contingency plan in case someone ever got their hands on it. And, Bruce being Bruce, he had contingency plans for the contingency plan.

With all the news coming out about who was going to be appearing in this December's CW crossover event, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, I've been persistently saying that to cram it all into four episodes would require them to start building hard during these leadup chapters. And so far, at least with THE FLASH and ARROW, it appears that is exactly what the CW showrunners are doing.

In "A Flash of the Lightning," Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) finds himself despondent over the knowledge of his impending death. But IRIS (CANDICE PATTON) isn't one to let him give up so easily. The future has been changed before, and she's not going to quit believing it can't change again just because of some ominous message from The Monitor: "For billions to live, The Flash must die."

When the pilot episode completed, Kate Kane (RUBY ROSE) had a strong suspicion that the terrorist Alice (RACHEL SKARSTEN) was actually her long-thought-dead twin sister, Beth, based on the evidence of a dagger Alice left behind that has a gemstone in the handle that matches the one in Kate's necklace -- the twin of the one her sister owned.

Convincing her father, Jacob Kane (DOUGRAY SCOTT) of that proves to be another matter entirely. He is convinced -- or seems to be convinced -- that Beth died, citing the evidence of skull fragments being found that matched Beth's DNA.  But if Kate can get some DNA off that knife, she may just prove herself to be correct.

Alice wants her lost knife. Someone is wanting to get the knife away from Kate.

The two events are not necessarily related, which puts Kate into the suspicion that there's a third side to this game, hidden from view and playing by their own rules.

WONDER WOMAN: BLOODLINES is a callback to the DC Universe crossover event of several years back. It has nothing to do with that event however, so don't get excited if you were a fan. Rather, this new release from the DCAU represents the origin of Wonder Woman (ROSARIO DAWSON), with Steve Trevor (JEFFREY DONOVAN) crashing near Themyscira after attempting to shoot down an incursion of Apokoliptian parademons. This serves to tie the story in better to JUSTICE LEAGUE: WAR, to cement Diana into the mythos.

Diana sacrifices her life on Themyscira, defying her mother, Hippolyta (CREE SUMMER), and losing her life on Themyscira for good in choosing to help Trevor and defend Man's World.

Previously released in two parts, THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN and REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN have now been edited together into a seamless, single movie experience.

Superman (JERRY O'CONNELL) is struggling. As Clark Kent, his relationship with Lois Lane (REBECCA ROMIJN) is difficult to commit to as he has been keeping a huge secret from her. He becomes particularly nervous about this when his parents come to town and meet Lois for the first time. The advice of his fellow Justice League members is that he should open up to her if he wants her to be a larger part of his life.

While we've seen The Monitor, Mar Novu (LaMONICA GARRETT), make a cameo appearance in the season finale of SUPERGIRL, it's his message during this season opener for THE FLASH that really gets the ball rolling for the December 2019 crossover event, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

As Iris (CANDICE PATTON) and Barry (GRANT GUSTIN) continue to mourn the loss of their future-daughter Nora, The Flash has kept busy chasing down the mystery of mute speedsters in Godspeed suits. Iris realizes she still has something left of Nora in her dad's garage -- but he's cleaned out the garage, sending Iris to dig through the local junkyard. But when she finds the item, it's sucked out of her hands by the sudden appearance of a miniature black hole. Yes, a black hole. Where did that come from? That's the mystery of tonight's episode.

It was the CW series with what was perhaps the most off-putting promo trailers ever created. BATWOMAN starred RUBY ROSE as Kate Kane, and our introduction to her had her uttering a sequence of lines that came off as smarmy and militantly feminist, claiming the Batsuit would be perfect "when it fit a woman," and remarking that she wasn't going to let the credit for her work go to a man (after, of course, borrowing everything right up to the reputation of the man who built it).

When the pilot finally aired in its totality, we do get the line about the Batsuit, but given that it wasn't so concentrated with similar lines, it was easier to swallow.

After having endured the dark debacle that was passed off as TITANS on the DC Universe streaming service, I was once bitten, twice shy about DC Universe's other original series, DOOM PATROL, a spin-off of the TITANS series (having made a guest appearance that season).

Trepidatiously, I began watching the opening season, hitting the play button like clicking the pull/spin switch on video slot games, hoping this one was going to roll up better results than TITANS did.

Jackpot!

Back in the day when the UNCANNY X-MEN were jumping from one classic arc to the next classic arc, the House of Ideas threw a huge curveball at us when it was revealed Jean Grey had been possessed by a cosmic entity so powerful that it could -- and did -- destroy planets. And even though she was supposedly cured of this, there was still a need to balance the scales of justice. She couldn't just walk away from a genocide unscathed. The death of Jean Grey for the actions of the Phoenix Force was more than just a classic story -- it was a pivotal milestone in the history of the X-Men.

Getting an accurate retelling in a movie was a hopeless case from the beginning. To do it even the slightest justice would have required a season of a live-action X-Men series.

So what we get with X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX is pretty much a standalone film that uses some of those ideas and character names, to tell a completely different story.

Starting out as a B-team of heroes in the CW's Arrowverse, DC's LEGENDS OF TOMORROW has evolved from being a time-traveling adventure story that didn't take itself too seriously to being a full-out sitcom of superheroes who reference the main continuity but who remain unaffected by it -- and, apparently, don't affect it all that much themselves, despite what should be some world-changing impacts -- particularly given the very public appearance of some very supernatural happenings.

SUPERGIRL is one of the Arrowverse shows that stands apart from the rest of the CW shows. First of all, it's not strictly a part of the Arrowverse as it is part of the Arrow-MULTI-verse. Kara (MELISSA BENOIST) lives on a completely different Earth than The Flash and Green Arrow, but crosses over whenever there's a crisis at hand, such as with this fourth season's ELSEWORLDS event, and the upcoming CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

DCEASED is a comic series I can get invested in. Why? Because despite utilizing the characters of the DC Universe, it's self-contained. It doesn't promise to have any impact on the DCU as a whole -- unlike, say, books that have that promise stolen from them like DOOMSDAY CLOCK.

In this pocket universe, Darkseid has unlocked the much-sought-after Anti-Life Equation. But it has been corrupted, and turns whoever sees it into a mindless undead creature who can infect others into becoming the same. And with Darkseid's death, the equation gets broadcast through Cyborg to every television, computer, and phone in the world. An epidemic ensues, and even the world's greatest superheroes are not immune from its effects.