What? I have to? C'mon, I haven't even--fine.

Alright, as a comics fan, I guess I'm obliged to do a post decrying Watchmen 2: Before Watchmen. I don't know, it's not that much a leap from a movie to prequels, and badmouthing the movie seems to me a little more on the "Alan Moore is a smelly hippie" side than "Alan Moore has a point." I mean, it was basically a multimillion dollar fan film.

The bigger issue is what it says about DC that they'd rather revisit Watchmen then try to make the next Watchmen. Part of it, I'm sure, is that if you want superhero deconstruction and attacks on conservative politics, that's pretty much been superhero comics for the past ten years, just with George W. in the place of Richard Nixon. And when, say, Mark Waid does a comic about expies of Superman and the Justice League, Irredeemable, the only larger message is "comic fans are mean!" So we're in a weird place where DC lacks both the ambition and the editorial support to throw its weight behind anything other than more Green Lantern shit. And that goes for Marvel as well (I have no idea what anyone was trying to do with Civil War). Even as "auteur" writers like Grant Morrison and Mark Millar gain power, they're using it to play in their sandbox. A lot of creators want to make the comics equivalent of The Rock; there's nothing wrong with that, but if you want another Watchmen, you have to try to make Drive (I was going to say something about how Drive uses nudity and violence as opposed to most comics, but that's a whole 'nother post).

In fact, the last attempt I'm really aware of was Superman: Power-Walking, which was A. Shit and B. more concerned with what the plot said about the character of Superman than what the character of Superman said about the plot, if you get my drift. There's not a lot of "oh, a thing's happening in Somalia, I can use the character of Superman to express an opinion" so much as "here's something I can say about Superman: he really hates it when people he likes die."

Sometimes, it's a *good* thing we don't get a Wonder Woman movie

Now playing at Fempop, a script review dating from the time when, yes, Sandra Bullock was going to be Wonder Woman. It is a crying shame that we missed out on this cinematic incarnation of Diana? Let me put it this way. Wondy dies on page 16. Read on, as me and Wonder Woman fan Lettersfromtheattic discover tough cop love interests, poorly named master criminals, and Dr. Equality--the madman who respects women.

I get my comments in pink, which I will take as a compliment. It takes a real badass to wear pink.

Let's talk about Treks, baby

Amidst all the speculation about Star Trek 2 and all the fangirls who want to see a strong female character from TOS brought in to stand alongside the Big Seven--you know, Chapel or Rand or Gaila (seriously, how weird is it that the girls are the ones clambering for the boy-hungry green space babe to come back?)--it occurred to me. There already is a big non-Uhura female presence in the bridge crew.

Y'all remember Saavik?


And her boss nightie?

She showed up in Star Trek 2 to replace Sulu, who was getting his own ship. Then in Star Trek 3 she came back, albeit with Kirk's son David, and totally did it with Spock. Then in Star Trek 4 she stayed home because she was pregnant with Spock's kid--though that was deleted, along with her half-Romulan heritage. Good on the Romulan thing, it'd make her too similar to fellow half-Vulcan Spock, but bad on the ret-bortion. Dealing with the fall-out from that would be a lot more interesting than anything that happened in Star Trek 5, the movie that made Captain Kirk wrestling a catgirl boring.

But okay, she's gone from Star Trek 4--there's precedent for that. Chekov was absent from most of Star Trek 2, Uhura sat out Star Trek 3 (along with Spock, obviously), but she'd come back in Star Trek 5? No, for some reason. And then she was supposed to be in Star Trek 6, but they couldn't get either of the actresses to reprise the role (marking the last time "Kirstie Alley is too busy to take the part" would ever be uttered), so they created an entirely new character rather than recast again. Which sucks, because having someone we know in ST6 would've immeasurably improved the mystery plot (who could the traitor be? Not the person who just showed up, surely!), but also given her a nice tragic arc. And you could always redeem her in EU novels.

Maybe it's that the character kept getting recast that stopped her gaining a lot of traction. But anyway, with all the timeline goofiness, she could totally show up in Star Trek 2 as a contemporary of Kirk as opposed to the more experienced Spock. I mean, Vulcans don't age like humans, right? I believe according to Roddenberry, they don't age, and they can only be killed by someone cutting off their head and undergoing the Quickening.