DC Comics Thread

Cody_Travers · August 15, 2008, 10:48pm

Green Arrow Movie

He’s a DC Comics hero with nearly 70 years of backstory and mythology, a modern-day Robin Hood who uses every tool in his arsenal to fight for the little guys of Star City, but in the pantheon of great comic characters, Oliver Queen (a.k.a. the Green Arrow) ain’t exactly the most well-known mask around.

Heck, he won’t even be the most well known in his own movie, scribe Justin Marks told MTV News.

“Oh, we’ve got Lex Luthor in there,” Marks gleefully revealed. “I’m pretty sure Riddler gets his shot Ed Nigma gets his moment.”

Tentatively titled “Green Arrow: Escape From Super Max,” Marks’ take on the titular titan is unlike any superhero movie out there in that it takes the familiar tropes of comic book films and mixes them with the long-established traditions of prison movies. In the film, Queen is unjustly locked up in a federal penitentiary for meta-humans and forced to rely on a whole bevy of villains to make his escape villains like Luthor, Icicle and even the Joker.

(Want to know what they plan to do with Black Canary? Find out over on the MTV Splash Page blog.)

But the best superhero of all in the Green Arrow prison movie? Would you believe it’s the prison itself?

“It’s a very, very awesome prison. I majored in architecture in college, and design is how I actually started in. For ‘Super Max,’ designing that prison, it had to be the kind of thing that was a character in and of itself,” Marks said. “We’re in a world where instead of just trying to contain a guy who’s really big, you’re trying to contain a guy who can in the case of Icicle who can freeze things. What kind of a cell would a guy like that need in order to have his powers neutralized? So to escape from Super Max they have got to go through the most elaborate heist we’ve ever seen, involving superpowers. Because the prison itself kind of has superpowers!”

It’s a fitting tribute to a character that over the years has been more famous for his team-ups than for his individual adventures, Marks pointed out. Those team-ups include characters like the Green Lantern in a legendary run in the '70s and Batman in Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns.”

You can’t find a much better character, then, if you’re DC and your goal is to produce cross-pollinating superhero movies like Marvel has done with “Iron Man” and “The Incredible Hulk.”

“What we wanted to do, and I think we’ll continue to do as the studio continues to push the movie forward, is to be able to [put Queen] in the center of a much bigger universe,” Marks said. “In the same way that Marvel is starting to do, when you’re in the [filmed] DC Universe [where] this world and this world and this world they all exist in an interrelated web. It’s the kind of thing that I think absolutely is about spelling out a couple different roads for a couple different characters.”

That means Queen won’t get a traditional origin story along the lines of Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker. But you wouldn’t really want that anyway, Marks asserted.

“By the time a movie like this comes out, we will all understand origin stories. And mainstream audiences now are willing to suspend their disbelief to the point that we can believe that a world exists where superpowers exist and people dress up in costumes. So now what? Now what do we do? And I call this Superhero 2.0,” Marks said. “We do deal with his origin he’s got a very interesting origin with a desert island and everything else but we get to the core of Green Arrow not by showing where he starts but by pushing him into a key moment in his life where everything he has is lost, and he’s got to earn it all back. I think for audiences it’s going to be a great way to get to know a new character.”

Queen himself is the “perfect hero” for this sort of reinvention, Marks said, as he’s a B-level super without all the heavy baggage of Batman or Superman. More important, though, he’s also a real guy, a mortal without any meta-human skills or weapons, a vigilante who gets by on nothing more than his preternatural intellect and guile. That already makes him less like the silly Golden Age caricatures and more like the reinventions so many writers deem necessary these days.

“I see him as the Jason Bourne of superheroes, a guy who exists with his own sort of set of tricks. And I think the difference between Ollie Queen and a guy like Bruce Wayne they’re both rich. They both have their things. But Batman is about his equipment and is about his theatricality and about his detective skills. And Green Arrow is a guy who’s really just the sort of MacGyver type,” Marks said. “In his hand, anything can be a weapon.”

Debaser · August 21, 2008, 11:49pm

that better be sarcasm sir.

Tizoc · August 22, 2008, 1:08am

@thrust- I am a HUGE Cassandra fan and if anything I really don’t like her talking normally, her with her speech impairment is what made me like Cassandra in the first place. Sadly in this series she talks normally
Plus Beechan is writing it and he don’t get much love
I digress however; I enjoy Cass in Batgirl and the Outsiders (I CALLED IT FIRST EVEN THO I CALLED IT THIS WAY CUZ I’M A CASSANDRA FANBOY AND COULDN’T GIVE A DAMN WHAT BATS DID IN THIS SERIES) even tho there are hints of her being able to talk normally.
At any rate-

Batgirl and the Outsiders #10

[details=Spoiler]So Grace and her team find the alien, the alien can give powers to normal people or kill them if they don’t get any powers, they fight its recent gifted human (Kid Magma/Lava Lad), they defeated him, Batman tracks the alien with his team and goes MiA, Batgirl becomes the leader of the Outsiders and Salah has now become Remac.
Overall a good issue IMO.[/details]

Sano · August 22, 2008, 9:56pm

Picked up Brave and the Bold this week for the Superman / Catwoman team up lol! Anyway, it was a fun story by Mark Waid. :tup:

Tizoc · August 22, 2008, 10:50pm

Waid+Superman= Instant Win for me.
Guess I’ll give it a read after all.

Geese_Pants · August 22, 2008, 11:40pm

Mary Marvel sucks…Captain Marvel needs to throw her down some stairs.

Tizoc · August 22, 2008, 11:54pm

^She wasn’t that bad before FC I believe
Man Fabian is doing a good job with the new Robin story-

Robin 177

[details=Spoiler]Todd starts riling up Gotham’s gangs, and as Robin tries to stop him, the Red Robin appears!
Stephanie then hires an assassian to take down Robin[/details]

That’s just the gist, the issue itself is very good.

m121akuma · August 25, 2008, 7:58am

I haven’t been keeping track of this thread much, but, ummm…am I the only one here who likes Trinity? I think some of what they’ve done is really clever.

Sano · August 25, 2008, 6:10pm

Trinity’s cool. I’m in it for the Bagley art mostly, but I like all of the Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman character studies too. Pretty interesting.

Nightwing1990 · August 26, 2008, 12:08am

Anyone reading Dc Special:Cyborg, best shit i picked up

m121akuma · August 26, 2008, 8:45am

Bagley’s art is quite good, although the book continues to remind me how much more suited he is for Ultimate Spider-Man. He makes Superman look way too young.

Enigma is such a beast though, now that they’ve explained him.

Sano · August 27, 2008, 8:21am

Huge Morrison interview. He talks about Final Crisis and Batman RIP.

Tizoc · August 27, 2008, 1:53pm

Some info on Teen Titans

future stuff

Spoiler

Supergirl will return (yay!), Wondergirl’s gonna confront Ares and end the BS that’s with him, Static will join the Titans eventually, more members will join (I read Aquagirl and Speedy) and Rose will return to the gang after Terror Titans (FUCK YEAH!)

Tizoc · August 28, 2008, 3:27pm

Teen Titans 62 was BUSINESS!

A great series you may be missing out on

[details=Spoiler]This was a VERY GOOD issue IMO! A dog arrives at Titans Tower and the Twins dub it Wonderdog. Later on Robin and Wondergirl discuss Robin’s current worries about Gotham and his role with the Titans. At the same time, the gang gets accustomed to Wonderdog, who Martian gives a green cape to.
Martian later reveals that she must leave the gang for some stuff she gotta do and the team drops to 4 members.
That evening, Wendy is looking for Wonderdog only to find him 10 times bigger and has killed her brother Marvin!
We then get a ‘horror’ scene where Wendy is trying to flee from Wonderdog and call for help from Robin and co., but to no avail! Wendy gets slaughtered by Wonderdog and then it goes back to its master; Ares![/details]

Sano · August 28, 2008, 6:19pm

So did they stop that Terror Titans arc? Just kind of tired of the whole alternate Teen Titan teams thing. Alright man I’ll check it out. I’m looking forward to Static joining the team. That’s gonna be epic, no a MILESTONE! Harharhar… :clown: Seriously, I hope he acts like the Milestone comics version and not the watered down Saturday Morning one.

The last issue of Teen Titans Year One was cool. Looking forward to the TPB since I think I missed 2 of the issues or so.

Oh and Trinity! A gigantic LOL to Superman pushing pressure points with rapid fire quickness on Ultraman like Kenshiro of Fist of the North Star AKA Hokuto No Ken. Is it too late to put that move into Mortal Kombat vs. DC? :looney: Anyway, great issue! And in the back up, Nightwing was running things hell yeah! :nunchuck:

ChairHome · August 28, 2008, 10:06pm

I was kinda mad that my comic store sold out of DC Universe: Last Will and Testament and FC: Superman Beyond just before I got there. Has anyone checked those books out? Is it worth it for me to track them down?

The Terror Titans arc ended a few issues ago. I didn’t have big gripes with it, I thought it was executed a lot better than the Return of the Titans of Tomorrow arc. Terror Titans are having their own mini series with Ravager soon.

I dropped Trinity after the 4th or 5th issue, so I’ll probably check out the trade or something when its over. 52 was great, Countdown was kinda crap, but I’m assuming Trinity is in between those two?

Rogues Revenge was pretty awesome. Brutal violence, but awesome.

Tizoc · August 28, 2008, 10:42pm

@Sano- The Terror Titans arc was OK, mainly cuz Rose kicked ass :rock:

Sano · August 28, 2008, 10:52pm

I got kind of bored with it and left it after I was a few issues in. I feel they should of placed it a hell of a lot farther away from the Titans of Tomorrow arc.

I’m a big fan of McKeever but so far his DC work has come off as being subpar to me compared to his Marvel stuff.

Per your suggestion I did pick up the new issue though. Wonder Dog, lol!

Tizoc · August 28, 2008, 11:07pm

I just hope you enjoyed this issue. Personally I felt that arc was good since it gave a glimpse of why Devil would change.

darksoul173 · August 29, 2008, 5:03am

Rouges’ revenge #2 shits on everything that came out this week well almost everything JSA was great too