Universes Apart

            So Comic-Con is coming to an end, and DC saved their biggest guns for the last day.  

            That’s right, they revealed…what Wonder Woman will look like, in that movie that she was already confirmed to be in, that won’t be out for another two years.  They also released a trailer, but only for Comic-Con attendees.  Wonder Woman appears to be entirely maroon.  They didn’t release anything else, so Wonder Woman’s washed-out costume can stand alongside Superman angsting in the rain as the new information about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Frank Miller is Still Cool: Colors Are Not.

            Granted, things could have been much, much worse.  We could have gotten the “CEO/civil rights hating vigilante/ice-cream eating, kitten hugging ‘normal girl’/pining for her boyf” Wonder Woman of the shockingly bad new TV pilot from a few years back.  Or her costume could have been an army uniform that accidentally got “W-W” burned into it as the serial number, and there you go.  Or they could have announced that Frank Miller and David Goyer had a chat and decided to make their own movie to introduce “Wonder Man,” Wonder Woman’s movie counterpart, because vaginas remain mysterious and scary.

            At the same time, this is a post-Avengers world.  Fuck, it’s going to be a post-Rocket Raccoon world in a few days.  It’s just a little hard for me to be excited about a company announcing that they’re pretty much making the same movie for the fifth Goddamn time when next door, Marvel is running around, laughing, and throwing colors and genres and Ant Man all over the place on a regular basis.  As somebody who grew up pretending to be Superman and Batman more often than Iron Man or Thor, it’s just depressing to watch the potential for interesting stories to be discarded in favor of more of the same.

            “But Sam,” I hear you cry, “it’s not like they can just shamelessly rip off Marvel.  At this point, that would be humiliating, even if the movies would probably better.”

            And I suppose you’re right.  If only DC had some other model or blueprint to follow, one that did what Marvel’s does, but better, and yet preceded Avengers by over a decade.

            If only the model laid the ground for a vast universe of interesting characters, one that could match and even surpass Marvel’s roster, hobbled as it is by Sony and Fox’s holds on several of their big franchises.

            If only the model had surpassed Marvel even further, by creating new characters that were just as cool and interesting as those from the comics, and even rescuing comic book characters that otherwise would have ceased to exist.

            If only the model had been created by really, really, really talented writers and visual directors, who could seamlessly transition between goofy silver-age throwbacks,

            heartbreaking drama,

            Critical examinations of comics of the past,

            and grimdark nightmare fuel like the kind DC seems to love so much these days.  Only interesting.

            Oh! Oh wait! That’s right, there is a model for them to follow! It’s the thing I’ve been stealing all those pictures from! It’s Paul Dini and Bruce Timm’s animated DC Universe, and it’s literally perfect!

            The fact that this doesn’t come up more often in discussion of the new DC movies is mind-boggling to me.  Has this thing just been forgotten about? Am I the only one who remembers it? This show did everything I like about the Marvel films—well-written characters, awesome action, diversity in tone, setting, and the personalities and origins of the heroes—except better and earlier.  This show could go from outer space to undersea adventures to city crime and the struggle not to give in to your lesser instincts and go too far in the fight against evil, and it was all different and interesting while still being connected as a cohesive whole.  Also, there was a time where they went back in time to cowboy times, and fought cowboys.  That was sick.

            Even when the show occasionally fucked up in exactly the same way as the new movies, it somehow did it more competently and better.  Man of Steel is infamous for its climactic fight scene, where Superman is willing to let his city crumble and burn if it means he can punch Zod in the face one more time than Zod punches him in the face.  But towards the end of the DCAU, there was a similar moment where Superman started fighting with no care for collateral damage.  But Justice League had shown us so many instances of emergency services and heroes evacuating people during big fights that it was harder to believe that there was anybody left in the city.  Plus, this Superman actually had placed priority on avoiding collateral damage in the past, so watching him fly into a rage as one of his teammates is in trouble and reveal how much he’s been holding back actually had meaning beyond simply being a spectacle.  It would be like if the scene at the end of Man of Steel happened two movies later, and was good.  Even when it fucks up, the DCAU is good.  It’s really difficult to be that good!

            It’s the existence of this show that prevents me from making any excuses for the new DC movies.  It’s not that I think they can do better; I have years of amazing, firsthand experience that they can do better.  They can do way better.  Zack Snyder, if you’re reading this, know two things: one, the Dawn of the Dead remake was actually pretty solid.  Good job, that movie should have been terrible, but you salvaged it.  And two? If you take the episode of Justice League where Superman is sent to the future, where Vandal Savage is the last human, and he has to fight a wolf-pack and we don’t know if he wins or not but then he emerges wearing the lead wolf’s skin and he’s Super Wolf, and make that into a movie, you win.  You win everything.