The Comic Book: The TV Show: The Thread

The Umbrella Academy is basically X Men meets The Royal Tenenbaums, which is an infinitely more interesting super hero commentary concept to me than The Boys.

It’s a shame the show is so sloppily executed, at least in the first episode. I hope it gets better.

Wasn’t there like a Wes Anderson directed X Men parody trailer a few years ago?

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I regretfully must report that Swamp Thing just kinda blandly sucks.

Setting is great, monster effects are great, it’s just, the story and character arcs are so uninteresting. Also cannot believe who they picked as the main villain.

There is one concept I like a lot - that the Swamp Thing can see and communicate with anyone who is taken by the swamp, so he has this kind of swamp purgatory he can visit to talk with vanquished foes.

So, I got to episode 10, and the show just straight up ends, two episodes from the finale. I assume they got the axe before these two were put into production.

So yeah, Swamp Thing just ends without even getting a full season. Rough stuff.

Overall, the show has its charms - particularly the setting and the main guy playing Swamp Thing - but wow is the dialog awful, often, and the action uninspired. Characters will have exchanges that are stunningly stilted and ham-fisted, frequently saying things that make me shake my head in disbelief. Not quite bad enough to recommend as a “so bad it’s good”, just, man, not great.

The last big action scene has a squad of PMC soldiers go into the swamp to kill Swamp Thing, then do the "my god… we’re not hunting him… he’s hunting US! " bit before they proceed to shoot wildly and uselessly at CG vines until they all die.

At the end of the day, Swamp Thing was not as bad as Teen Titans, but it’s real down there as far as live-action DC goes. You could see signs of a better show a season or so down the line, but yeah, we’ll never see it.

Highlight of the show was Kevin Durand as the Floronic Man, who I thought nailed the part.

OH, and holy fuck, The Blue Devil appears. They started that plotline and were going all the way with it, and holy shit did that look promising. We get two or three scenes with the character before the show went down.

It keeps up enough to watch an entire season, but at some point I think it’s the sunk cost fallacy that kept me around. The end definitely was bad enough that I will at least watch the first episode of a second season to see how they try to fix it.

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ok so does robin finally get to fuck batman this season or

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I want to clarify…

Do I have this straight in that right now there are three, maybe four, ongoing tv series about the Teen Titans?

technically young justice is not literally about the titans they are just functionally the teen titans

I just love Agents of SHIELD so much, I dunno why it has to end. For the final season we are getting full-on LMD Phil Coulson, and the Agents of Tomorrow. Time travelling Fitz-Simmons. A possible Agent Carter crossover?? What could be better?

I fell off the show midway through the previous season (the one where they were in space). Have they just completely abandoned comic book inspired storylines at this point or are they just based on stuff that is more obscure? I mean I know LMDs are a thing but everything I’ve seen about the most recent season is very hard for me to relate to what I know about marvel comics (which is, admittedly, very little)

I couldn’t really tell you as I have never read the comics!

Oh fuckkkk they’re getting into LMDs? I should get back on this, I stopped somewhere in the ghost rider season

oh well you stopped right before the LMDs became a thing! they started doing 3 mini arcs per season, in s4 it was Ghost Rider > LMDs > Framework (Agents of HYDRA), with it all tying back together in the end.

the goddamn hell is an “LMD”

leapon of mass destruction

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You need to get some more of the good jack kirby shit in your veins

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legion really spent the whole season trying to dig out of the hole of season 2 and i’d say for something i really had zero expectations of they made it like halfway out. i really feel like this could have been an all time show if they hadn’t gone in the directions they did with david and farouk and sydney and probably even ptonomy. this show had so many situations where i couldn’t understand if the characters or the writers absolutely did not understand what they were doing. the ending was a real ending with narrative catharsis but boy they didn’t do right by these actors

i do genuinely love how self indulgent and up it’s own ass and embarrassing the could be because it felt extremely personal compared to everything else so i guess this is kinda the price you pay

would be nice if the show was at least aesthetically influential to other superhero stuff

i have so much more to say but man

i liked professor x he was cool

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oh fuck right off, marvel

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Life model decoy

Robot copy of a person with an AI of their personality