Going Through The DCAU Part Five

Continuing Tom and Jimmy’s rewatch of the DCAU.

This week, we’re covering “Heart of Ice,” “The Cat and the Claw Parts 1 and 2,” and “See No Evil.”

Poll Time! What Should Tom Cover Next?

Gabbing Geek has been kind enough to give me space to spout off my highly ignorable ideas.  To that end, I usually do various weekly columns.  Tuesdays there’s something about a comic book character who died.  Wednesday is TV reviews for non-geek TV.  Thursday is the misplaced heroes series.  Fridays, ending very soon, is the recap of all the stuff Jonathan Hickman has been doing with various Avengers titles leading up to the new Secret Wars, mostly so Jimmy’s head doesn’t explode.  And, sporadically, there’s the Discworld read-along.

So, I am thinking, with the Secret Wars thing ending soon, I should do something else along the lines of a revisit to something I enjoyed in the past.  Let’s let the Gabbing Geek loyal readers (both of them) help me decide what to do next with this handy poll:

This could be fun.  Or it may not be.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

Original Geek Art: STAR WARS

In this weeks edition of “Original Geek Art” we’d like to bring your attention to these beautiful Star Wars hand drawn and colored posters. All credit goes to Ben over at Bensmind. Ben states that when he was younger he used to make books about going out and about in the world where he’d write and draw about his experience. Now, all grown up, Ben is a graphic designer. The Star Wars prints came about because he proclaims himself as a massive sci-fi geek. His ETSY shop proves his passion. You can see anything from what we are featuring, to Star Trek, Game of Thrones, Dark Tower, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Breaking Bad and so much more! See more of Ben’s amazing work after the break…

Aliens Considered

Starfire’s people supposedly evolved from cats. The X-Men’s Shi’ar supposedly evolved from birds. Too bad that was never followed up on during the X-Men/Teen Titans crossover of 1982.

Most superheroes at some point deal with aliens.  Heck, many of them are aliens.  I’m looking at you, Superman.  The same holds true for science fiction that goes into space in any way, shape, or form.  In fact, space-based sci-fi that completely omits aliens might be more noteworthy than the ones that include them.  Aliens have a tendency to be silly at times when they aren’t handled right, and it is way too easy to not handle them right.  Glue a forehead ridge on an actor, give him a couple of odd quirks, and then call it a day.

Aliens in fiction offer too much of an opportunity to really stretch a creator’s creativity.  It is easy to see why so many would look down on aliens, so let’s consider some of the more successful attempts to create otherworldly races and cultures.

Time Travel Considered

May or may not be stylish.

At some point every geek franchise goes for time travel.  Superman circles the globe at high speeds to make sure he can be in two places at once.  Captain Kirk needs to find some humpback whales.  I dream of dumping Barney back in the paleolithic age where he belongs.  Time travel is what every geek has considered at some point.

But, how exactly does it work?

From A Certain Point Of View: Political Perspective In Speculative Fiction

Way back in the year 2000, I was snooping around the DC Comics message boards and came across a debate over who the various members of the Justice League at the time would vote for in the 2000 Presidential election  One particularly memorable individual insisted that all the various Leaguers would have obviously voted for George W. Bush except for that “treehugger” Aquaman.

There is one problem with this assumption:  Aquaman at the time couldn’t really vote in an American election.  He was the king of Atlantis.  You know, foreign citizen.  And given the way he was being written in his solo title at the time, it probably didn’t matter much to him who the president was.  Plus, there aren’t many trees to hug on the  bottom of the sea.  Oh, and he’s a fictional character.