Episode Title: The Triumph of the Green Goblin
Original Airdate: 9-12-81
Greetings true believers! It’s time to take a look at the debut episode for Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. What better way to start than an encounter with one of Spidey’s most dangerous enemies…the Green Goblin.
Continue reading Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends S:01 E:01
Episode Title: The Sound and the Fury
Original Airdate: 1-27-15
Once again, the Flash reminds me of Smallville in some of the best ways. Even when it has an episode with a fairly weak villain as the main focus of the episode, there are still some great elements of character development that are just too interesting and/or enjoyable to ignore. There is a lot to dislike in The Sound and the Fury from the rather uninspired villain of the week who has sonic gloves and a hearing aid that more or less turns down his super hearing, or at least just tempers his extreme tinnitus. Not to mention overplaying the chess metaphor between the Pied Piper aka Hartley Rathaway and Dr. Wells. But aside from the A story, there were some interesting developments regarding the mysterious Dr. Wells himself, giving a few more hints as to what his ultimate goal is as well as making him very analogous to Smallville’s Lex Luthor in the early seasons when he was still trying his hardest to do good and be Clark’s friend, but it just wasn’t in his upbringing to go about it in any other way than through money and power. In a very similar way Dr. Wells is doing what he can to be a hero in Barry’s eyes, but meanwhile he has an alternative agenda in place that is much more sinister.
Continue reading The Flash S:01 E:11
Episode Title: The Blitzkrieg Button
Original Airdate: 1-27-15
‘Agent Carter’ returns after a one-week break with an episode that is hopefully setting up the remaining half of the 8-episode mini-series. One of the more slow episodes of the Season thus far, The Blitzkrieg Button focuses on Howard Stark’s return to New York in order to check out which of his inventions the S.S.R has confiscated, while the officers of the S.S.R. follow their leads to get further clues about the mysterious villains introduced in earlier episodes. This episode is much lighter than the others, especially when you see Stan Lee make an appearance, and not a lot happens until the last 10 minutes, where a lot is set up for future episodes.
Episode Title: Welcome Back, Jim Gordon
Original Airdate: 1-26-15
Some days I feel like I’m too much of a positive person. There’s plenty of Batman fans that didn’t like this show and still don’t. But there is enough of an audience to give it a second season and episode by episode I’m falling more in line with the fans of this show rather than the detractors. In fact, this episode is one of the first episodes where I didn’t have any major issues with any moment in the show. There were still a couple little moments, but they were brief and often made up for even within that same scene. This wraps up Fish Mooney’s story arc, puts some more much needed kick into Jim Gordon as a character, and gives a bit of play to several of the other supporting characters’ arcs. It may be that I’m just getting a better feel for the characters in the show overall, but I thought this was definitely one of the strongest episodes of the season so far.
Continue reading Gotham S:01 E:13
Released in 1999 during the golden age of comic book adaptions when Warner Bros. Animation was given full access to the complete back catalogue of their sister company DC comics. They created this series which formed the DC Animated Universe including “Batman Beyond” or “Batman of the Future” as it strangely renamed here in the UK, with the series forming a book end for the universe they’d established with the series which came before it. The show would equally create another timeline for DC Animated Universe which would continue to be revisited by several other franchises even after the series ended, teasingly hinting that perhaps the studio wasn’t quite as done with the series as it would have seemed by its abrupt cancellation.
I would like to say that I started watching this when it first came out but, according to the internet, the series started in 1974 so I would have been three and I don’t I have memories that go back that far. So, I suppose I can say that I started watching these as a kid when the series was in full swing and hitting all of the right marks because we got The Bionic Woman and – if I recall – several spin off TV movies. I have fond memories of this show and this should be good fun to revisit.
Episode Title: Quid Pro Quo
Original Airdate: 1-23-14
“Quid Pro Quo” is a Latin phrase that means “this for that” which really gets to the heart of what Constantine is all about. There’s often talk of how when it comes to magic in the world of this show, “there is always a price” and we get to see a lot more of that price in this episode. We also get to see a lot more of the backstory of Chas, why he is so loyal to Constantine, and how he is seemingly immortal. While there is several mentions of the rising darkness, this felt much more like a one-off episode that didn’t really further any of the season-long plot lines, but it is a really great character piece that shows how far both Constantine and Chas have come over the past couple years. And it does so without getting into Newcastle any futher aside from one throwaway mention.
Continue reading Constantine S:01 E:10
Batman: The Brave and the Bold is an animated anthology series inspired by The Brave and the Bold comic book series. It aired three seasons on Cartoon Network from November 2008 until November 2011 with a final tally of 65 episodes. Much like it’s inspiration, the television series builds each episode around a “team up” of Batman and a (usually) lesser known hero to take down a bad guy. To a guy like me that is absolutely devoted to being exposed to as many incarnations of as many different comic book characters as possible, a show such as this is Nirvana. Further adding to the robust roster of characters is the convention of starting each episode with an unrelated teaser adventure before the story proper begins, always featuring characters that are not part of the primary story. Simply put, if a character has any degree of significance in the DCU he or she is bound to show up in this series eventually. I’m particularly found of episodes including forgotten characters from the early silver age (Catman) or prematurely abandoned recent creations (Geo-Force). Another characteristic of the series is that it often provides a straight forward superhero adventure while also demonstrating a meta awareness of the perceived ridiculousness of many of the characters involved. With art that is simultaneously classic and distinctive in appearance as well as writing that is both aware of cannon yet unafraid to alter it when needed, this show rarely disappoints. It is an understatement to say that I am excited to be reviewing each episode of this series, and I invite you to join me in this journey if you fancy yourself as brave and/ or bold.
Greetings true believers! It’s time to prepare yourselves for a journey into the realm of Saturday morning superhero television! After all, if we’re going to have a site all about comic book related tv shows, we’ve got to show some love for some of the classic animated shows. For my contribution to the site, I have decided to begin with an early 80’s classic, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. But before we start going through the episodes, I wanted to give a quick introduction for those who are, perhaps, too young to remember it.
Continue reading Spider-man and His Amazing Friends: Introduction
Welcome to the first of hopefully many forays into the wide world of webseries! Because nowadays television isn’t just about television, there’s so much content out on the internet in terms of shorts, animation, and of course, plenty of superheroes and comics. But we’re not here to just find webseries and share them with you, here at Channel: Superhero we want to give you that little bit extra to give you a reason to watch those webseries here rather than YouTube or Vimeo or wherever else they may be. So today I have a brief Q&A with writer Sammy Corrado and Cool Town Creations founder and animator Carol Rasaphangthong along with some behind the scenes pictures of the animation process. So I hope you enjoy the first of these and keep a look out for more to come!
Continue reading Webseries Spotlight – John Con Noir W:01 E:01
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