Dennis O'Neil, RIP

We lost a legend over the weekend - Writer/Editor Dennis O'Neil (aka, Denny O'Neil) passed away. A former newspaper reporter, O'Neil began writing comics near the end of the Silver Age in the mid-to-late-60's and became a beloved mainstay thereafter. My introduction to him was a memorable 2-part episode of Batman: The Animated Series he had written titled "The Demon's Quest", which reintroduced to a new generation of Batman fans a villain he had co-created with artist Neal Adams in the 70's: seemingly immortal criminal mastermind Ra's Al Ghul:

 Is it pronounced "Raysh" or "Razz"? That's an old debate...

This adventure was atypical of any Batman cartoon or movie we had seen before. More like Indiana Jones, The Spy Who Loved Me or Casablanca. Batman's world opened up.  If your knowledge of Batman came from the live-action movies by Tim Burton, the TV series with Adam West or the Superfriends, you would think this was an experiment, but this did solidify Ra's as a top-tier Batman villain in a way that the comics never did. This episode, plus subsequent appearances in the series became the definitive portrayal of the character and he appeared in more comic book stories by other writers & artists in the decades that followed, including new stories written by O'Neil, like Birth of The Demon, which revealed the origin of Ra's, and Greg Rucka & Klaus Janson's Batman: Death and The Maidens. He also became one of the main villains in Christopher Nolan's trilogy of Batman films, played by Liam Neeson.

I met Dennis O'Neil at BigAppleCon in New York in 2004. I was actually surprised that there wasn't a long line of people to see him, but in retrospect, I recall that this was at a time when people thought the years when he was in charge were creatively limiting and the Bob Shreck-edited era of Batman comics was better, but tastes have changed since then. We didn't speak much beyond exchanging simple, polite dialogue: "Hi - signing books?" "Sure." "Okay...these are great. Thank you. It was nice meeting you!" I was impressed by how simple it was to get an autograph (and he didn't charge for it either), but then again, I had just 5 comics for him to sign (1 Batman, 1 Brave and The Bold, 1 DC Comics Presents, 1 The Shadow, 1 Further Adventures of Indiana Jones), though some artists are known to act as though they're handed everything & the kitchen sink, then whip out their calculator and start carrying decimals. No..."Denny", if I can call him Denny, was professional to the fingertips.

I have my own theory that prototypes of Ra's, his daughter Talia and the enigmatic demonic bubble bath known as The Lazarus Pit made a preliminary appearance in "The Secret of Waiting Graves!" - the first solo Batman tale he worked on with Neal Adams:

This one, along with "Daughter of The Demon!" are my favorites of the Batman tales he wrote. O'Neil's writing reminds me a lot of Stan Lee in that they're heavily influenced by tropes found in genre fiction, but there's an effort to achieve a sense of realism - characters talk and react to things that are happening to them the way that we know people would act in real life, a lot of the action is from a street-level, even in trips to exotic locations. The villains', supporting cast and even the city the heroes lived and operated in would be fleshed out to be less one-dimensional. Gotham City was the only fictional city/location in DC Comics that was starting to feel like a real place. Whereas Stan Lee's plotting style was inspired by soap opera, O'Neil's storytelling was inspired by a combination of his background in journalism, a casual knowledge of Pulp adventure/mystery/horror comics/magazines, and a genuine interest in theories about social issues, folklore & mythology and philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhism in The Question.

 This was a prose paperback.       novel that was published in 2006. It's a nice encapsulation of the 1980's comic book and works as a novelization of a "Question" movie that never happened but could work as inspiration for one.

 Another prose novel - this one retells the origin of Kyle Raynor becoming a Green Lantern, but without the 1990's excess. Under O'Neil's word processor, Kyle's origin is more contemplative and metaphysical - a "vision quest". 

These iconic images from his run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow with Neal Adams still resonate today:

Although he wasn't shy about writing characters with phenomenal powers, like Superman, The Shadow, Shazam and the Justice League, he was more at home crafting stories about characters who he could understand or relate to on some basic level of humanity: Batman, Green Arrow, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, The Question, Azrael...someday, the 100+ issues Denny wrote of Azrael, Agent of The Bat will be re-evaluated, because I am convinced that Jean-Paul Valley was Denny's alter-ego, a reflection of his knowledge and thoughts on himself, of heroes & identities and the state of the world, particularly in the late-1990s.

A lot of really great Batman comics were made during the 15-year period in which he was the editor of Batman books at DC Comics...there was a consistent quality to them that we haven't seen before or after in any superhero comics before or after. When he stepped down and retired from editing, he wrote The DC Comics Guide To Writing Comics, a valuable resource when, even today, there are little or no books available specializing in the craft of writing a professional script...and it's his approach to it, really. It's literally a Magnum opus.

The book is out-of-print, but worth seeking. Within the last decade, DC has been compiling reprints of older Batman stories by various writers and artists in lavish hardcover editions under the title of Tales of The Batman/Legends of The Dark Knight. Denny's work with Neal Adams on Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow has been reprinted several times, his work on Spider-Man was recently collected in 2 volumes under the  Marvel Masterworks line, but he has told many other Batman tales with other artists that would best be seen again in a Tales of The Batman: Dennis O'Neil series. While it's a pity that it wasn't done during his lifetime, I'm sure that's an oversight that will be corrected soon.

Dennis O'Neil, R.I.P.

After They #ReleaseTheSnyderCut ...

Most movies nowadays are filmed on digital cameras and the footage is stored on hard drives, which would be about the same size as the sought-after "Mother Box" that is a key plot device in the live-action Justice League movie.

It's a smartphone, it's a virtual assistant, it's a universal remote, it's a personal computer, it's a pocket calculator, it's an alarm clock, it's a portable dimensional portal generator...

 Snyder kept a separate hard drive containing his copy of the footage he shot - allegedly enough content for a 4 or 5-hours long film...a very different movie from the shortened, reshot film that was presented in theatres under his name by his replacement, Avengers director Joss Whedon, who had been brought in to...make it more like the films at Marvel Studios, effectively giving us The Whedon Cut...

That's not Gal Godat, by the way...that's her stunt double. Godat refused to do that scene. Ezra Miller on the other hand...

And then there's this abomination:

       "What the heck was that!?"

I don't blame Snyder for wanting to disown a cut of a film that he claims used only a quarter of the work he did. This upcoming "Director's Cut" is unfinished business. I remember liking the film we got, but I never rewatched it since. And I still haven't subscribed to any streaming services...I just figure that when "Zack Snyder's Justice League" debuts on HBOMax, it should be good enough to also be released on DVD/BLU-RAY.

         Hey, where's Daffy Duck?

What I find more tantalizing to me is the faint possibility of sequels. I don't dislike Darkseid, but aside from "Rock of Ages", a lot of the Justice League vs. Darkseid stories are pretty flat to me. If Snyder does a sequel to his final cut, it should incorporate elements of one of the few big, epic tales from DC Comics that managed to catch on..I already mentioned "Rock of Ages", but recent news about Marvel Studios having no plans for a "Deadpool 3" started rumors that Ryan Reynolds might come to Warner Brothers to give Green Lantern another try...obviously, it would be more his way than the first go-around, but that got me thinking about Zero Hour:

The CW television series' "Arrowverse" already adapted Crisis On Infinite Earths, so it's natural that Zero Hour gets a look. For one thing, this arc, unlike Crisis, features more of the A-list DC stable, with a lot of fun moments where they encounter different incarnations of each other. How fun would it be to have Robert Pattinson, Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck as different versions of Batman onscreen? Likewise, Henry Cavill, Brandon Routh, Tom Welling and Tyler Hoechin as different versions of Superman? Then there's Batgirl Barbara Gordon having a key role. You could also have Lynda Carter, Grant Gustin, Stephen Amell...it goes on..

  That's right..Lily Collins is Batgirl.

The plot of "Zero Hour" is Crisis in miniature - a villain named Extant appears to be screwing with timelines, resulting in characters from parallel worlds interacting with each other...then it's revealed that Extant was just a puppet for Hal Jordan, who had become drunk-with-power villain Parallax in the 1990's, in his scheme to rewrite history...which sounds like Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet..

I do find Hal as Parallax a more-interesting villain than Darkseid, plus, Reynolds has more of a beat to play than he did before - I wouldn't mind if the film adaptation of "Zero Hour" reveals that he is being used as a puppet by Darkseid, obviously ditching the character of Extant entirely and improvising this new arc that opens up things here and there. Extant was too sketchy to be interesting, despite Geoff Johns efforts to bring him back..

      Eh...the stuff that 'back issue'          boxes are full of...

Besides, Reynolds' experience filming "Green Lantern" had rewards of it's own..

            Blake Lively is a fox..

Justice League: Zero Hour...that's a sequel I want to see..ironically based on a quarter of the actual plot of the mini-series that it's based on, but there's a nice symmetry in that...Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame don't exactly resemble Jim Starlin's Infinity Gauntlet, either.

And Now...A Brief, Random Observation Related To Superman..

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace would've been a better film if it had the plot of Santa Claus: The Movie instead. 

Dudley Moore as Mr. Mxyzptlk, a merry-mischiefmaking imp from the 5th Dimension whose antics are always misunderstood, mistakenly identifies megalomaniacal toymaker Winslow "The Toyman" Schott - played by John Lithgow - as a beleaguered kindred spirit and offers his aid to provide Christmas toys to all the children of the world, not realizing Schott's true plans are for deadly toys stuffed in every stocking, along with exploding candy canes. Superman saves the day and saves Christmas by introducing Mxyzptlk to his annual Christmas tradition of answering children's letters to Santa Claus and delivering real gifts to everyone. 

I'm just thinking that would've been a jolly finale to Christopher Reeves stretch playing Superman..plus...this was more-or-less the plot that Alexander and Ilya Salkind had in mind for what would've been their 4th Superman, before opting to produce the Supergirl movie instead, followed by the big Santa Claus movie, which I like, but would've been potentially more interesting as a Superman film, I think. A Superman movie that focuses entirely on his acts of kindness, saving lives from spectacular disasters, advocacy for decency and good will...with flair.

Atypical from the other 3 films, but not ugly. Around the same time, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released and was a success, in spite of relatively few action scenes with no displays of onscreen violence. I'm not sure how good a sport Reeve would have been about it, but I can picture him in costume, tugging an enormous bag of toys up in the air, wearing a Santa hat, to the tune of Sheena Easton's "It's Christmas All Over The World Tonight"...

A Superman for Christmas. That would've been neat. Quite possibly the only time they could've pulled that off.

"Superman: Kryptonite" by Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale

The end of my loosely-connected trilogy of essays devoted to stories featuring kryptonite in Superman comic books is long-overdue...and really awkwardly put, since why would any non-Superman comic feature a story about kryptonite if it wasn't setting up an appearance by Superman? It's one of the few things that can kill Superman, the irony that it's made from the remains of his home planet; you're killing him with a "souvenir from home".

Kryptonite can be annoying, because it allows for Superman to be in peril of garden-variety gangsters and thugs; why waste imagination coming up with formidable foes for Superman to spar with, when a purse-snatcher holding a green rock the size of a penny could knock him out?

So..you can imagine the conceit in which Cooke has the audacity to suggest that the villain of his tale could be a giant sentient, telepathic chunk of kryptonite that's been passed around over the decades to various owners like the Hope Diamond, only to reveal that it was actually a cage for a telepathic alien imprisoned like a fly in amber, after briefly becoming intangible during Krypton's explosion, then trapped inside the meteorite while phasing in, ultimately using his mental prowess to force gangster Tony Gallo to act as his proxy on behalf, ultimately reforming the psychotic capo in an uneasy puppet show...I $#!+ you not, that's part of the plot in this book.

Superman: Kryptonite is actually the classiest Superman arc I've ever read, but I don't think it caught on with readers the way people say other stories have, like "Red Son" or "Whatever Happened To The Man From Tomorrow?" - but it's good company with those tales on your bookshelf of Superman stories...if you have one. It's got a sci-fi/noir feel to it, only cheapened, in my opinion, by the appearance of the post-Crisis version of Lex Luthor - the boring 1980's business tycoon. Again, just my opinion, but I prefer the Tony Stark version of Lex Luthor that was more prominent in the Silver and Bronze Age, who occasionally appears in Modern Age comics in the last decade since Infinite Crisis. Luthor didn't appear in the original tale that introduced kryptonite and he shouldn't have appeared here, even if it's abundantly clear that the only reason he's in this is to depict a new origin for the infamous kryptonite ring that he wore...which gave him cancer due to being in nonstop close proximity to it's radiation...which resulted in him faking his death and transplanting his conciousness in a cloned body that posed as the original's "son" until the clone body deteriorated and he made a deal with DC's equivalent of the Devil - Neron - in exchange for having his restored...I  $#!+ you not, this junk actually happened in the Superman books during the 90's...a character worthy of antics deserving to be banished to the now non-existent "quarter-bins" really shouldn't be seen in a classy joint like Superman: Kryptonite.

What else could've derailed this story? It was used as a launch for a new ongoing comic book series, Superman Confidential, a counterpart to another title, Batman Confidential, which was supposed to be the successor to the venerable 1990's Batman comic Legends of The Dark Knight..

..just as a sidebar, I can't help thinking a book titled Legends of The Man of Steel would've been more interesting to have for an anthology book that was going to offer stories in a similar vein - tales set in the early years of Superman's career - but Coinfiential must've sounded "kewl" to the guys occupying the DC Comics offices at the time...

Batman Confidential lasted a few years, whereas Superman Confidential never got off the ground...this opening arc was plagued with delays (I think Tim Sale was also working on the TV series "Heroes" during this time - 2006) and DC Comics editors tried filling the schedule with mediocre fill-in stories by other writers and artists. That strategy for dealing with late books tends to piss off retailers and fans alike, because too long a wait invariably kills interest and hurts sales. It couldn't have helped that five of the six issues that serialized this story had drab covers. Issue #3 has the best cover - with the giant Kryptonite rock in the background and the "villain", Tony Gallo, in the foreground.

Another problem is that Darwyn Cooke could be his biggest critic. The introduction featured in the hardcover and paperback editions has Cooke somewhat writing apologetically, that brainstorming  ideas for a standable Superman story arc that could stand the test of myriad continuity changes and reboots was no picnic and appreciated all the help he got from working with Sale, plus the fact that this tale was a total reboot of a Golden Age tale that was executed frivolously (my observation from Cooke's summation, not necessarily his) and he was grateful to just see it done and in print, at last.

That...bellies the confidence and talent on display, here. All parties involved were up to the task and did a great job. It's one of the best Superman comics I've read. And it's even better collected as a graphic novel. I $#!+ you not.

Doctor Who: The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner

Genies are tricksters. Be careful what you wish for. In some tales, the actual wording of the wish you make begats unforeseen consequences. You wish you were rich...and the bill collectors show up. You wish you had a new car...and it's a car belonging to some wealthy drug lord...You wish you were famous...and it turns out you are that wealthy drug lord, pursued by bounty hunters...in that new sportscar you wished for. Nice.

And that's three wishes, already. Some tales hint about wishing for more wishes...others say ixnay on the 'wishing for more wishes'. Next Master, please.

And there's the character of the Djinn, or Genie. They rarely ever look like Robin Williams or Barbara Eden in these stories. The genie of 1001 Arabian Knights has more in common with Jafar when he became a genie in Disney's Aladdin. The business of Tony Nelson marrying 'Jeannie' was inspired by Bewitched, which was inspired by the movies I Married A Witch and Bell,Book and Candle...which might be inspired by the farcical "romance" scenes with Titania the Fairy Queen & Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream...that theory is entirely mine..though I don't think it's an original conclusion; I haven't checked if anyone else saw that.

There is a genie of sorts in Doctor Who: The Stone Rose, but the selling point of the novel was the 10th Doctor & Rose investigating the origin of a stone statue dating back to ancient Rome resembling Rose Tyler residing in the British Museum in London. Yes, this predates the episode revealing that the 11th Doctor's sidekick, Rory Williams, was working at the same museum as a security guard, so there's some wibbly-wobbly overlap for a potential future "Past Doctor Who Adventure" for Gareth Roberts or James Goss to type up if they want...they'll just need to have an icebag ready to deal with resolving continuity headaches. I'm not going to do this, so I can keep mulling over it.

The genie in Stone Rose is a Genetically Engineered Neural Imagination Engine. Described as a small, scaly creature, a cross between a baby dragon and a duck-billed platypus.

And...this "Genie" talks like Flintstones character The Great Gazoo. The best stuff in Stone Rose is the stuff with this G.E.N.I.E., but he appears in the last quarter of the book, so it's all plot denouement rather than plot & character  development; it becomes a Saturday Morning Doctor Who...with animation by Filmation, likely, but the concept of this magical creature, particularly the dragon-like description and Gazoo-esque personality, stayed in my brain years after reading the book.

It reminded me of other characters from other places. The best example is the wish-granting, genetically-engineered lab experiment resembling a dragon that appeared in an issue of World's Finest, featuring Superman & Batman, in a story written by Dennis O'Neil. Doesn't that sound like a likely inspiration? There are plenty of fantasy stories about a stopwatch that stops time, for example. Stories about magic dragons granting wishes, in summantion, sound more frequent than one would think. While preparing this post, I remembered Figment, the magic dragon from Epcot Center at Walt Disney World who had his own comic book series from Marvel Comics a few years ago. There are also Pocket Dragons, Smurf-like plastic figurines of cutsey baby dragons that even had their own cartoon show at one point. I'm absolutely convinced that G.E.N.I.E could've been based on one or any of these things.

So..in time for the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, original novels like The Stone Rose were reprinted..in this case, because it counted as an historical adventure  (everyone seems to just remember the David Tennant Doctor facing a lion in the arena, go figure). And..according to Wikipedia, it was the best-selling of the Doctor Who novels from the current series, so that's something, although maybe those Douglas Adams-branded novelizations of Adams' Who scripts might've bumped that down a few notches by now.

So the newer edition of Stone Rose came with an introduction by the author, Jacqueline Rayner. Would she bring up the G.E.N.I.E character? Yeah, she did. Should I buy this book? Yeah, I did. Did she confirm all that you thought inspired the character? No, she didn't - she claimed she was inspired by the severed monkey's paw from "The Monkey's Paw", which, to my knowledge, does not feature any dragon-platypus hybrids. Maybe she gave that answer because the plot mechanics in that last quarter do echo the story, but the reference that inspired the visual of the G.E.N.I.E is not there, so that may be her way of dodging any concern about copyrights and trademarks.

It's like this: I think I solved a puzzle, but the answer key provided to check is some kind of nonsense, so I'm just left with a gathering of stray observations that fit into something that made the book more-appealing past it's sell-by date, but will just stay scattered in the air...be careful what you wish for..

"Neat trick!" "Saw it in a Batman movie."

I was disappointed to learn that the expanded version of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice will only be available to own/view on Blu-Ray and Digital HD, whereas Standard DVDs will only feature the theatrical version. It makes sense that the PG-13 version is out there so that parents have an option..but it's still not highly regarded. Why not have both versions available on all formats? Or am I the only one who still doesn't own a Blu-Ray player? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? I'll move on, then..

Not owning the film means I can't get a closer look at a scene played in the trailer for the video: Clark Kent queries an old man about Batman...and this old guy punctuates his final word with a funny trick: he draws the Bat-emblem on a scratch-off ticket by scratching the surface with his thumbnail. My reaction was, "Hey! That's kind-of cool! I'll see if I can do that."

I used 3 tickets. Only one offered a prize. What was the prize? A free ticket. But that's not the fun part. The fun part was trying to scratch the Bat-emblem. On the 1st try, I realized I might've done it backwards. The 2nd try gave me the desired result. The 3rd try came about as an afterthought, because I recalled the image of the Bat-emblem was formed from a black surface, but that's where the ticket used in the film was essentially a cleverly designed prop. The surface of these tickets is usually a lighter color contrasting with the symbols printed in black. So I used a magic marker and drew a bat on the last ticket.

And I didn't use my thumbnail to scratch those tickets. That's actually pretty gross - those filings are worse than eraser marks: they stain the palms of your hands as you move your hand across the ticket surface. And when you use a coin to scratch, your fingers wind up smelling like the coin you've been holding (because the sweat & oils from our fingers collect the dirt & grime from the metal coin). I don't know if  "Lotto Scratch-off Ticket Art" is a pre-existing thing, but it exists now. Starting here? I do recall an artist drawing mini-paintings on those electronic subway fare "Metrocards" and trying to generate a trend a few years back..and Etch-a-Sketch "etchings".

Enemies & Allies by Kevin J. Anderson

Kevin J. Anderson is best known for his work writing Star Wars novels. He's quite good at writing widescreen-style epics in prose, so it was disappointing that for his first crack at a novel re-imagining the 1st meeting between Batman and Superman in the 1950's, he chose a kitchen sink approach. In one sentence, a Batman: Year One Batman meets a Superman: The Animated Series Superman to thwart Lex Luthor's attempt at a faux alien invasion to profit on arms sales.

Anderson chose an unusual storytelling structure for this book. Batman and Superman don't interact much. Chapter headings feature each hero's respective logo, allowing for the reader to opt out of reading the novel in order and read it as two separate novellas that only overlap with the last 40 pages or so. The best scenes featured subplots involving our heroes secret identities: Batman/Bruce Wayne has to investigate corporate moles among the Wayne Industries board; Superman/Clark Kent is assigned to investigate Area 51 with Jimmy Olsen, as well as fill-in as an advice columnist for the Daily Planet's romance column. These characters come alive during these passages dwelling on their personal lives and then become cipher-like once they put their costumes. Their costumed antics lacked any spectacle, which is a shame, because the 1950's issues of World's Finest Comics were purely spectacle. You kind of wish Bat-Mite and Mxyzptlk showed up. Instead, we get the world's greatest detective and the man of steel..in an adventure that's too basic to be a page-turner.

I'm not saying those old comics from the 50s were perfect - the scripts, particularly anything written by Edmond Hamilton - always felt cranked out, with no empathy, but the concepts were fantastic. Giant robots, weird monsters, time travel, space creatures and saucermen from Planet X. Apart from invasion/mad scientist stories, every 3rd or 4th story in World's Finest would be about Batman or Superman acting out-of-character, gaining/losing extra powers or adopting disguises to get one over on the other. It was daft, purely created to appeal to young children, but very persuasive. If I hadn't brought a used copy of this novel for a song, I would've considered taking it back to trade it in to cover some of the cost of that spiffy-looking omnibus edition of World's Finest that DC put out..if I hadn't checked it out at the library for free..and if could just casually throw down the bucks for that volume..I need to save up.

So, on the one hand, I don't regret reading Enemies & Allies. I just wish Anderson had eschewed earnestness and embraced the fanciful. It was probably two years too soon for that. Grant Morrison's approach to both characters was just around the corner.

"Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice" ☆☆☆☆☆ (Review)

Spoilers ahead...

I  saw this movie last week and enjoyed it.

...

I am completely baffled by the intense dislike of this film by the critics. Were Marvel Studios' efforts akin to the works of Shakespeare, Poe, Faulkner, Cervantes, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Dorothy Parker and Guy De Maupassant? Is there a bias?

I didn't find this film "dark", "boring", "depressing", "overlong" or "stupid". If you've been actually reading DC's superhero comics anytime within the last 3 or 4 decades, it's very faithful to the source. But it's not the funeral dirge that it's been likened to. These characters are not comedians, nor are they TV show characters making TV series-style quips; if they did make cracks, it would be in relation to real things as they happen (for ex: the "Is she with you?" "I  thought she was with you!" bit in the film).

Maybe it's a conditioned response. This movie had a four year buildup; sixteen years if you count the initial mention of a Batman vs. Superman film pitch that would've been directed by Wolfgang Peterson - this was during a fallow period when the Batman film franchise was thought to be dead after Batman and Robin and different ideas for a revival were tossed around Hollywood, including a live-action Batman Beyond and a Batman: Year One adaptation that Frank Miller and Darren Aronovsky developed. The Superman/Batman comic book from 2003, a revival of World's Finest, was obviously launched in anticipation of this movie (a reprint of the first issue was offered as a free giveaway comic to coincide with the premiere; DC went out of there way to revise the title credit page to add Bill Finger's name, in keeping with current tradition).

So, with the long wait, who can expect good reviews from critics, podcasters and bloggers who say things like: "I got a bad feeling about the choices Warner Brothers is making with this movie", "I don't really have high hopes for this film", "Zack Snyder is the worst choice for this movie"...with that attitude, you cannot possibly be engaged, you are stuck with the idea that you are watching a disaster.

All I feel I can really say is that I liked it..and I'm glad I didn't follow the bad reviews, otherwise I would've missed out on an entertaining launch that I hope won't be derailed. Yes, it is a sequel to Man of Steel. Yes, Jimmy Olsen gets killed within the first 15 minutes.* But this film is far superior to Man of Steel. It's short on jokes about underoos and flippant references to ancient video games and doesn't rely on cheap heat by sampling pop songs. And the bonus scenes that Marvel Studios usually saves for after the credits are offered before the third act, instead (enough bonus scenes for 4 separate movies, to be speciffic). And maybe the funeral scene at the end could've been shortened by a minute (and is the act of a hand bursting through a coffin exclusive to only vampires & zombies, but not heroes? Why couldn't we see a stronger image of Superman coming back from the dead? Or am I tapping into touchy subject matter?).

You know what? This film was cool. Go see it. I had fun. The people who hated this movie can go take their reviews and wipe their asses with them. Ben Affleck is a great Batman. Henry Cavil has gotten more comfortable as Superman. Gal Godat is a fantastic Wonder Woman. Amy Adams is kind of bland as Lois, though her scenes with Cavil are good. Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor may get his mannerisms and wardrobe choices from Heath Ledger's Joker, but make no mistake, beneath the affectations, this is the manipulative, Machiavellian, egocentric meglomaniac of the modern age comics, so it's very entertaining to see how the two incarnations of Luthor manage to mesh well.

Enough. Go see it.

*DC Comics had a "Jimmy Olsen Must Die!" lapel pin made available at one point; he must've grated on people over the last 77 years.