Is The Reason I'm Suddenly Into Watching Comic Book Shows The Fear Of A Hard Brexit?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Yesterday. Whilst the wife was out for the evening helping a friend I and daughter spent the time watching comic book shows on the TV. And we had a good time. I'll chat about the shows we watched later on (though some of them I've chatted about before) but as we were viewing the thought entered my brain.

"Why after all these years am I into comic book heroes again?"

I had assumed as I've written about before simple nostalgia was the reason. The Flash seems to be like a comic book made flesh. Fantastic in effect and plot but done in a way that your belief as an adult is suspended.

Now though I'm wondering something completely different. I'm wondering whether in the face of Brexit, with the possibility looming of a hard Brexit (where even today the morning's headlines are of warnings from the NHS over a shortage of medicines) my subconscious is seeking some sort of rescue where impending disaster is averted at the last minute.

I've not hidden my desire that the UK should be broken up. But as I've also said no nationalist wants the UK to be broken up because of a hard Brexit (even if it turns out that it's the best thing to do and has to be done) because of the misery that the hard Brexit would have inflicted upon families across Britain (except of course for the rich Brexiteers who helped cause this and would have probably gone into foreign exile by then).

What the United Kingdom as a whole needs is a hero/heroine. What it's getting are villains and idiots.

And so to yesterday evening. Daughter and I watched:

The Flash: Having gone through series one daughter and I have moved to season two. And it works. We watched two episodes and daughter was quicker to understand the possibilities of parallel Earths than me. Episode three ended with the return of Tom Kavanagh as chief villain(?) ...we shall see.

(As a quick aside I must see if I can download Ed, a show Tom Kavanagh starred in. One of those quietly seemingly simple but effective shows not unlike the Gilmore Girls that America does produce well).

Krypton: This was the new show. Where the hero is apparently Superman's grandfather. Being in his twenties he doesn't know that yet. Instead he's doing what men in their twenties do. Drinking, fighting and having sex (thankfully not shown - my finger was hovering on the remote at that point).

Krypton is, interestingly run as a dictatorship at that time through a mysterious masked figure. It also has wealthy and poor areas. It is, essentially a futuristic Gotham city.

Everybody speaks in British or Irish accents, except an American from the future. He warns Superman's grandfather of the arrival of Brainiac (I remember him from the comic books) from the future intent of destroying Krypton and therefore destroying Superman before he's even born.

That is the clever part of the plot. The Batman prequel on TV, Gotham, suffers because whilst you may not know the route you know the destination. You know the child Bruce Wayne is going to be the Batman for example. No mystery there. So the idea that a villain from the future is coming back to change history at the very least creates some tension.

Worth moving onto episode two anyway.

Krypton: A divided society facing impending danger. That's a Brexit metaphor. As is...

Black Lightning : A society teetering just this side of social collapse. It is realism with a fantastical edge alright.

I've chatted before that Black Lightning is not just a superhero for the Afro American community but also for mature men with wife and kids everywhere. He's tired. In this episode he faints. He takes medication. He's determined but weary.

(As an aside wife came back during the middle of the episode and on a particular scene. I told her to look and see if she recognised the actor playing a newspaper editor.
"Is that Huggy Bear?" she said.
And yes it was. Huggy Bear from the seventies cop show Starsky and Hutch.
Daughter looked as if we had just had a conversation in Mandarin)

But although a prequel where the original was based on a comic book perhaps the closest metaphor to a hard Brexit is a programme I've been watching without my daughter.

Fear The Walking Dead. Where slowly but surely disaster strikes and society as we know it is gone forever.

And that is definitely a hard Brexit metaphor.

Until the next time.

This Is The Year I Understood TV Series Can Be Discovered Like Books....Years Later...By Accident....in A Flash

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I should have of course realised this earlier in the year. When on returning from hospital in Essex when my mother was unwell I would ping a microwave meal as was too bothered to watch anything else. Slump in front of the TV and surf any channel until the moment I discovered Bones. Slowly I was hooked even though it was a twelve year old series that had finished the year before. There I was though watching repeats on a remote channel and very late to the party. But in the party I was.

Thing is. When I was child there was just three channels (Yes I'm that old). So you had a good chance of seeing all of the latest series for a couple of episodes and making a decision on whether you wanted to continue. Nowadays however with the gazillion and one channels available even if you have every pay TV channel available plus Netflix and Amazon Prime most people still do not have the time to look at every available series.

So what that means is that rather like books there is now a greater chance that TV series can be discovered by accident.....which leads me to The Flash.

Daughter had series one on DVD and asked whether I wanted to watch it. As it was raining outside (the British summer at last!) and as I'd nothing better to do I said yes, though grudgingly. I was aware of the show though I'd avoided it given that this first series started in 2014 and I was then forty nine.

The other reason why I was so reluctant was that I remembered the reading the comic (now called graphic novels....please) as a child and I was at best neutral. I mean he could run fast. So what?Hardly Spiderman now is it?

Well...I loved it.

The plot is simple. Barry Allen is struck by lightening and with the help of others becomes The Flash in which he fights various super villains. Obviously more complicated than that but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Part of the reason I think why I liked it was that it television form it seemed to capture what the best American DC and Marvel comics could do which was to mix the realistic with the fantastic. You believe in the world you're seeing.

It is basically a comic book on screen. And (though this is the varifocal lens of my memory) it's better than the original comic.

It's also helped by some familiar screen faces. Jesse L Martin as the police detective and surrogate father to Barry was part of the Law team when Law and Order was in it's prime when he partnered with Jerry Orbach. Tom Cavanagh was also in Ed. A favourite of mine in the quiet humorous hometown style of Gilmore Girls.

If it was a choice between Bones and the Flash Bones would always win. But for a few moments escapism in the mad place called Britain right now you could do a lot worse.

Until the next time.