Flashing Light

So Doctor Light made her appearance on The Flash and I have somewhat mixed feelings. I mean yay, Doctor Light appeared on TV, but boo for just about everything else.

Now obviously they had to find some way of simplifying the character's tangled history, but they did so by simply conflating the two Doctor Lights as one character (which is all kinds of squick if you think about it at all) by making her a female villain. They also changed her civilian identity from Japanese Kimiyo Hoshi to Linda Park (played by Chinese American Malese Jow), Barry Allen's blink-and-you'll-miss-it girlfriend from last year, and Iris West's collegue at Central City Picture News. She's given no backstory, and she's basically just a villain of the week in an episode where fighting the bad guy was distinctly the B-plot.

Also undeveloped to the point of whatever-was-required-by-the-plot-and-no-more was Doctor Light's powerset. "Something something powered by star-light" translated into throwing big light flashes and occasionally doing some kind of blowtorch effect.

Even Flash's final confrontation with her seemed very forced. They made a big deal about him working out how to distract her with visual echoes, but A) she'd already shown she could beat that with a big area effect zap that she'd used twice before but somehow forgot about here, and B) the only reason he did this was so that he could get behind her and bop her on the head, which he could have done at any time by running really fast, which is kind of his core skill.

This isn't the first time the show has taken the name of a character from the DC universe and applied it to a disposable, virtually generic villain, and it's always a little disappointing, particularly on a show that does so well when it does make an effort. I don't think I'll mind if this rather poor copy of Doctor Light doesn't recur.

Supergirl and me

Or I was a Supergirl Fan Before it was Cool

So apparently the premiere of the Supergirl TV show last night was a massive success. I'm so glad because I loved it to bits, and that's usually enough to give anything the kiss of death.

I've been a Supergirl fan since way back. I mean so far back that I remember liking her before I could read. I haven't much liked her in the comics for some time. DC don't seem to know what to do with her and the writers haven't been able to make up their mind, and they've never stuck around for long, so it's been a bit like bronze age Wonder Woman where each new writer seems to be trying to reinvent the character so the first thing they do is dump everything that the previous writers have done, so the result has been disjointed at best.

But then I thought Supergirl's second solo series was kinda dumb, too. With characters like Supergirl you know they are going to outlast any wrongheaded editorial or idiot writer, and eventually you'll get back the character you liked. In this case it's not even a matter of waiting for the comic. That was cancelled six months ago and with the sort of marketing that gets someone fired, DC don't actually have a Supergirl comic being published at a time when she's on a live network TV show and appearing in the animated DC Super Hero Girls.

But I love the show. I mean I enjoy the Flash TV show, but Supergirl is better. And Flash has been my favourite of all the live action superhero shows in the last couple of years. It's somehow managed to escape the grimdark grey misery that has stunk up so much of DC's output in recent years. It's bright and it's fun and OMG it's a successful superhero show with a female lead. And not just female but unequivocally feminist. And what's more, it's being watched by boys. You know, those boys that toy manufacturers are so afraid of being put off by girl cooties that they erase female characters from toys for The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. They are watching a girl show. So hopefully we are at least done with that idiocy.