Good friends are important, and best buds even more so. Someone who has your back, and who will be there when the chips are down. And of course, a heavily super powered friend that shares your own values, motivations, and love for extremely tight uniforms has to be pretty much the best thing ever.
There have been a lot of great pairings over the years in the comic book world, from best friends to friendly rivals. With more than a few friends taking each other on in the theaters next year with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War, it’s important to take stock of these friendships that have developed on-screen and in the comics for years. Sure, they’re fighting now, but chances are after the battle they’ll all go and grab a few beers and bro out over the battle.
There are quite a few more great friendships among the superhero community, buddies that have been through the thick and the thin, fought each other more times than they could count, and have even survived the ‘finality’ of death (at least until the inevitable rebirth). Let’s take a look at some Superhero Best Buds that have survived the test of time.
Everyone who knows me, knows of my love for Booster Gold. Those who have to listen to me often, know of my very strong desire for a Booster Gold movie or TV show. Those people are tired of hearing me talk about it.
Well too bad, so sad suckers because for right now, I am victorious.
Kids are going back to school, the weather is getting cooler (this is a lie), and pumpkin spice everything is back on the shelves. This means only one thing, fall TV is just around the corner. It’s time to check in with our favorite DCTV shows – first up, Constantine and Arrow!
Excuse this TV nerd but seriously, is there anything better than upfronts? Networks putting their best feet forward trying to impress marketers really does nothing but good things for the fans. Today’s good thing? An amazing first look at Legends of Tomorrow.
While Marvel seems to have the comic movie market cornered, DC’s grip on prime time television is set to strengthen as the CW plans a new spin-off to their already successful duo of Arrow and The Flash.
During the Arrow Comic-Con panel, we found out some of the guest stars coming to the show, like Bronze Tiger and Brother Blood, but today the big name was announced. It is none other than Barry Allen himself, The Flash!
At their Television Critics Association presentation, The CW president Mark Pedowitz made public the plans to bring Flash to the small screen starting with an appearance on the already hugely popular Arrow. There were quite a few mentions of Coast City during the first season so there were many, including myself, who thought that perhaps the next “big” name to come to Starling City would be Green Lantern.
Well, we were wrong. Just like we were wrong when we assumed there would be no Flash until the Flash feature film came about in 2016.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Barry Allen will roll into Starling City for three episodes before embarking on his own series. He will be introduced in episode 8, then appear in episodes 9 and 20, and then will go off and do his own thing. Writing the Flash episodes will be the crack team of executive producers Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti, along with DC author and now frequent Arrow writer Geoff Johns. Episode 20 will be directed by David Nutter, who directed the series pilot last year.
The odd part about all of this is Warner Bros. and DC are not planning on having the already somewhat established TV universe have anything to do with the proposed and hopefully successful cinematic universe. I understood that decision when it was just Stephen Amell’s Green Arrow because the show does have the “no superpowers and/or metahumans” stance, but now that Flash is coming along? Granted they are saying that when Barry Allen and Oliver Queen meet up Allen won’t be Flash but still, the show about the Fastest Man Alive is getting a soft launch from one without any superpowers. Unless they cast Usain Bolt as Barry Allen, I’m calling bull. Actually, they are beginning the casting process this week so maybe it is Usain Bolt.
Another thing we (okay, maybe this was just me) were wrong about? Holding out any hope for the Wonder Woman series to ever make it to air. CW President, Mark Pedowitz, announced yesterday during the same presentation that the Wonder Woman project, Amazon, was on pause.
Excuse me as I roll my eyes in epic fashion. It’s on pause? Did anyone ever press play? Even when we last spoke about the Wonder Woman television series, it was all still speculation and rumor. This whole “pause” business is just irritating. Rip off the Band-Aid Mark, just do it already.
I get that Wonder Woman is a difficult character to try and build a franchise around. Almost every Wonder Woman fan will agree to that. The invisible jet, the different planet, the Lasso of Truth… it’s all a bit fantastic and might be too fantastic to make a TV series out of, outside of the campy 70s. However, either do it or don’t, but stop stringing us along.
Speaking of stringing along… What happened to Booster Gold? When Arrow premiered, Andrew Kriesberg was still talking up the Booster Gold series. I got my hopes up. Thought that for sure one of the men behind this great new show would want to do every thing in his power to bring one of his favorite characters to life in a live action setting. Instead we’ve heard nothing about Booster Gold and when Greg Berlanti was asked why Flash was getting a series, he said it was because Flash was one of his favorite characters growing up! Ugh, I just can’t win.
The last bit of Arrow news coming out of TCA, we now know who Caity Lotz is playing. We saw her in the Arrow season two sizzle reel, but there was no indication who her character was beyond “the origin story for Black Canary”. Well get this, Sarah Lance is still alive and she’s returning to Starling City thanks to Caity Lotz. If the Tommy/Laurel/Oliver love triangle was messy, I can’t even imagine how dysfunctional Ollie stuck between two sisters is going to be.
Despite my irritation, this is exciting news. As a DC fan it’s easy to look at the Marvel cinematic success and be jealous, but Arrow andthe new Flash show (and Booster Gold and Wonder Women if they ever get made) are all part of a long and storied history of DC characters on the small screen. They are doing well, so here’s hoping they continue to do well…
Executive producer Marc Guggenheim sat down with ComicBookResources to talk about Arrow season two. It’s a very interesting interview in terms of what they envision as the “trajectory” of Oliver, plus hints about who we might see from the DC universe in this upcoming season.
About a year ago, news came out that I completely missed. If you missed it as well, let me catch you up. Syfy ordered a script from Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg that was about DC Universe superhero, Booster Gold. That was the extent of the news. Nothing much was heard more of the project (as far as the internet is telling me because again, I missed all of this at the time) but Berlanti and Kreisberg had gone on to head up Arrow on the CW, which has been quite successful so far.
Then summer rolls around and IGN meets up with Kreisberg at Comic-Con and they ask him about the progress on Booster Gold:
If I were to get nothing else out of that conversation, it would be that Andrew Kreisberg and I should be friends. His favorites are Green Arrow and Booster Gold? Ah, a man after my own heart. The more exciting news though was that Booster Gold is still a thing. The summer continues, moves into early fall and Arrow premieres to great ratings. It’s easy to see why people would either start wondering about Booster Gold’s future or just forget about it altogether.
Thankfully IGN caught back up with Kreisberg recently and posted their interview with him today. He discusses the upcoming episodes of Arrow with Helena Bertinelli, aka The Huntress mainly, but at the end they asked Kreisberg about Booster Gold.
I got a little waylaid by Arrow. Booster Gold is going in the next couple weeks before Christmas. We’ll see what happens from there. It’s such a different project even though they’re both DC Comics properties. Booster is much more candy and popcorn, being about time travel and changing the future and being a superhero who can fly. But they’re both super-fun projects. As a lifelong DC Comics fan, I am beyond blessed to be working on these projects with all these amazing characters.
I for one, am happy he mentioned that Arrow and Booster Gold are very different. As much as I like the “Dark Knight” angle that Arrow has taken, a similar path would not work for a character like Booster Gold. He’s much flashier and in the spotlight than Oliver Queen. Especially if they are starting the show with Booster Gold as a new superhero. Granted if they were to jump into his story line right now it’d be different as he has grown as a character, but he still would not be the “in the shadows with a bow and arrow” type that Arrow is.
They haven’t released any details of the show beyond these few blurbs, but one has to imagine that it would include Blue Beetle which will make me just giddy. The relationship between Booster Gold and Blue Beetle is one of my favorites in all of the DC Universe.
Of course no mention of Booster Gold would be complete without Skeets. Let’s all gather together and say a prayer that they make Skeets an actual robot that could have done security patrols around a museum unlike the incredibly lame earpiece AI that the Smallville interpretation of Booster Gold wore.
I think if you are a DC fan, you should be excited by this. Marvel has their big movies and everything but DC has ruled the TV realm in recent years. No matter what you think of Booster Gold (and sadly there are people who do not like him, even some here though they shall remain nameless for fear of Booster Gold fans revolting against them), you can’t deny that he has the possibility of bringing in new fans to DC Comics. More people reading and supporting the comics industry, no matter who they are reading, is always a good thing. Of course there is great potential for disaster as well, but perhaps we should all just let it come to fruition and then we can complain about how awful it is.
Now that I’m aware that this is even a thing, I’ll be waiting with bated breath for more news. Of course if we find any, we’ll share it with you so stay tuned!
Welcome back to the Hero Express, your one-stop sometimes SPOILER filled shop through the news filled world of superhero’s in Film, TV, Video Games and whatever else floats your boat.
Here’s a short one to lead us back in to where Scoot left off in yesterday’s Express: Andrew Kreisberg , whose work you may know fromFringe, is slated to write a pilot for SyFy based on DC hero, Booster Gold. Executive Producer Greg Berlanti will be backing the project, which fits in nicely with his previous work on Green Lanternand No Ordinary Family.
It will be interesting to see if DC can find a place for its lesser-known heroes on television, as it seems they remain unable to find a lasting home on the silver screen.
A while ago it was announced that the popular comic, Powers, was shooting a live-action pilot for FX, though it seemed initially like it wasn’t going to make it through. However, word is that FX has passed on a competing pilot and given Powers another chance, provided they can go back and do some more work on the special effects.
The comic’s writer, Brian Michael Bendis, tweeted happily about the news:
“In regard to ‘Powers’ TV: the pilot was crazy expensive and very lovely and shows incredible potential for a long series,” Bendis wrote. “The reshoots are planned for January and are all about tone and clarity. I am very proud of the pilot, as [is] [Michael Avon Oeming]. Stay tuned.”
Supposedly, according to Bendis, the process of going back to work on a pilot is not necessarily a bad sign, as FX is known to do this sort of thing. He mentioned that hit series Sons of Anarchy had to do the same.
Two sets of photos have surfaced regarding The Amazing Spider-Man production. One features an extensive gallery of the cast on set for re-shoots, which you can see here. The other is much smaller, but much more revealing:
Most exciting to see, at least for me, is Rhys Ifans‘ ugly hand up there, which looks a lot like it means Connor’s experiment was a success (Giant lizard-monster transformation notwithstanding).
And here we are with the the Hero Express segment that likely overshadows the rest of these links; welcome to Dark Knight Station. Here are some photos (The best quality the internet has of them so far) of the Empire issue dedicated to the upcoming Batman movie:
Continuing our look at the DCNu, it’s time to check out the heavy hitters. The go-to gang, the Justice League. Or Leagues, I should say. Featuring some of the biggest heroes in the DC Universe, all of whom have their own #1’s coming out as well. We’ve already looked at Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern (plus Teen Heroes and Solo Heroes) so let’s see the rest. Descriptions from CBR:
Grizzly Bomb 
