A solid four hours of my week now are taken up by different superhero shows now that they’re becoming all the rage. That would be Arrow, The Flash, Gotham and Agents of SHIELD, and I can only imagine how time consuming this will get once Netflix release its stable of Marvel shows. SHIELD is barely a superhero show at this point with actual superpowers few and far between. It’s more of an action thriller than anything, and is good in its own right, but not really relevant to the topic today.
Rather, I just got done watching this week’s Flash, where yet again Barry Allen takes on another superpowered baddie by unlocking a new speed skill like he’s allocating stat points in a video game. And after that I read a news item that Arrow will see Captain Boomerang appear on the show this season, a character which may cross into the Flash as well, given the history of the characters.
But that caught me off guard because really, do we need a villain as dumb and obscure as Captain Boomerang on either The Flash or Arrow, a boomerang-throwing Aussie who couldn’t be menacing if he tried?
This is a problem I’m starting to notice a little bit with all these different superhero shows. They seem absolutely terrified to try and come up with meaningful villains in any capacity. They rely solely on comic book lore for the most part, no matter how obscure the villain or hero in question. I think this can be a mistake.
Don’t get me wrong, often times we see great things when these shows use established lore to create foes for their heroes, case in point Arrow’s duel with Deathstroke last season, and now Barry Allen’s inevitable confrontation with a time-traveling Professor Zoom on The Flash. And yet, I don’t think these show’s need to entirely rely on comic books for their blueprints. I think those behind these shows are in fact smart enough to come up with their own creations and storylines within the universe, but drawing on ideas that aren’t necessarily from the comics.
If they don’t? You get Captain Boomerang, a villain who yes, has existed in Flash lore for a while, but is inarguably lame and really does not need an attempt to make him “badass” taking up space on Arrow or The Flash. Characters like that should be cut completely, and when these shows are reaching for new heroes or villains, they shouldn’t be afraid to invent some.
“But what about the fans?” you’ll cry, and while it’s true that you take a risk messing with existing lore or cutting characters, I think the impact of the comic-devoted audience is over-estimated. Hardcore comic readers are a niche group, and though they can be a vocal one, I’m willing to bet that 95% of the Flash’s audience this week hasn’t read more than ten pages of a Flash comic in their entire lives. Would the show really be missing something important if they decided to ditch a few of his lamer plotlines in order to try and fashion new villains that could play a major role in his universe?
This is why the concept behind Heroes was so great, at least when it started. Before the show turned into a crapshow of plot holes, it was fresh and exciting in part because it had no existing lore. As a result, villains like Sylar were TERRIFYING because NO ONE had any answers as to who this guy was and why he was going around eating people’s brains. We didn’t nitpick the origin stories of the heroes in related to the various iterations of them throughout the years, because this WAS the first iteration. A completely blank slate.
I’m not saying that we should ditch all established heroes and villains, but I think that superheroes are mainstream enough at this point where you no longer have to be a slave to comic book lore when you’re trying to expand your cast. This is true to a lesser extent in movies, because you generally only have time for one or two villains a movie, and there are solid comic book choices to choose from. But in a show like Arrow which literally features dozens of villains over time, I think there’s a lot more leeway.
What do you think?
[Photos via The CW]
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The Flash could use some metahumans on his side, you know, like him, good and helping humanity. That could be a break from the comics, get him some help, a partner or two. The girl who makes anything she touches a bomb was good, but they killed her off right away.
It depends on how the character is adapted for TV. In the comics, the Absorbing Man is pretty much an idiot. However, his characterization on the first two episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this season was done pretty well.
Paul, I think you don’t understand the importance of Captain Boomerang as a villain for Flash. Captain Cold is just as lame by himself as are just of the rest of the rogues. That’s why I’m sure they’ll end up forming their version of the rogues group which as a whole is a completely different thing. Together they can actually fight and win vs. a speedster. In the comics, they were able to kill 1 and neutralize another. This version of the Flash has already gone off track if you want to try to compare it to the comic version. Very few things line up as exactly the same on the comics, and that’s a good thing. I could go down the list of differences of each show to makes them unique and hence it doesn’t matter what was done in comics.