Category Archives: Agents of SHIELD

What a week: ‘Sherlock,’ ‘Arrow,’ ‘SHIELD,’ ‘Walking Dead’

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arrow heir to the demon

Like some kind of aligning of planets, the seven or eight days we’re in the middle of here is a heck of a week for episodic TV.

And that doesn’t even count “The Black List,” which didn’t have a new episode this week, but entertained the heck out of me with the episode from last week I finally got around to watching.

Quick impressions (and spoilers if you haven’t seen):

“Sherlock” finished up this year’s three-episode run on “Masterpiece Mystery” with “His Last Vow,” a quirky finale to a quirky season. Over the past three weeks we’ve seen Holmes return from the dead after his rooftop encounter with Moriarty last season, John and Mary get married and Mary exposed as a rather deadly former government operative. In “His Last Vow,” Holmes and Watson run up against a loathsome news magnate who can blackmail Mary. With no other way to save his friend’s wife, Holmes kills the man and Mycroft prepares to send Sherlock off on a nearly-certain-to-be-fatal mission. But then … images of Moriarty appear all over London and Sherlock is called back to investigate. And we wait until next year to see what happens next.

“The Black List” – last week at least – gave us “The Cyprus Agency,” in which the federal agents – with the help of James Spaders’ Red – broke an insidious group that kidnapped women and kept them in comas as well as pregnant to provide babies for adoption. Didn’t we see something like this – with organs instead of babies – in the movie “Coma” 40 years ago? Yeah, but that didn’t have James Spader in it.

“Agents of SHIELD” raised its somewhat low bar again this week with “TRACKS,” a high-stakes adventure that found the agents on – or thrown from – a train as they try to foil the plot of a villain. More good scenes with the agents – even Ward and especially May – some good Marvel movie references (Blonsky’s cryogenic cell is obviously now the holding place for the monster from “The Incredible Hulk”) and the return of Mike Peterson (J. August Richards) as the comic book character Deathlok.

“Justified” upped the stakes also this week with more peril and more bad-assery for Art (Nick Searcy), more misery for Boyd and Ava and more danger from those scumbag bad guys the Crowes. But we gotta have the return of Constable Bob soon.

“Arrow” might have tied “Justified” for my favorite episode of the week. “Heir to the Demon” brought Nyssa, the daughter of Ras al Ghul, to town, seeking … well, not revenge on Black Canary. As a matter of fact, I totally did not see the true nature of their relationship coming. And neither did Oliver Queen. This series, the true TV embodiment of comic book adventure like “Batman,” just gets better all the time.

And then there’s “The Walking Dead,” which returns for the second half of its season this coming Sunday. With the destruction of the prison, the survivors are split up. We want to know what happened to Rick, Carl, Michonne, Daryl and Tyrese as soon as possible. And tell me Carol is coming back. I’ll be watching Sunday.

Heck of a week.

Screen Caps: Shots from ‘Winter Soldier’ trailer

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CAP falcon close

Last night’s Super Bowl had at least one highlight: A new trailer for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

I’m hoping that, when the movie opens in April, we’ll all get just what we’re expecting: A smart and action-filled political thriller that pits Cap against dark forces that want to control super-spy agency SHIELD.

Not to mention his one-on-one bouts with the Winter Soldier, who comic book fans will know is the reincarnated and improved – into a killing machine – version of his old sidekick Bucky Barnes.

The images in the trailer continue to be among my favorite from any Marvel movie. It just feels like directors Anthony and Joe Russo have totally hit their marks.

There’s a lot of focus in the trailer on Cap’s former, current and future partners: Bucky/the Winter Soldier, Black Widow and Sam Wilson, aka the Falcon.

CAP winter soldier hands

Bucky Barnes realizing he’s been turned into the Winter Soldier, a Russian assassin.

CAP winter soldier chair

The Winter Soldier process, apparently.

CAP winter soldier close

Not the face of an ally. Yet.

CAP fury after crash

Nick Fury after the Winter Soldier tries to kill him.

CAP body on table

Who’s the body on the table? Who would Natasha be mourning? Surely it can’t be fury. SHIELD agent Hill is out in the hallway. Who’s dead?

CAP SHIELD helicarrier crash

Not a good day to be in the SHIELD helicarrier. Or in SHIELD headquarters.

CAP falcon shooting

Sam Wilson gets in on the action.

CAP falcon running

Cap and the Falcon, reporting for duty.

CAP sharon carter

We even get a look – in the UK trailer, at least – of whom we suspect to be Sharon Carter, SHIELD agent and (likely) granddaughter of Agent Carter, Cap’s old flame.

I can’t wait for this movie.

 

Cool, cool, cool

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la_ca_0102_Captain_America

Here are things that make me smile.

Like that picture, above, of Chris Evans and Anthony Mackie as Captain America and the Falcon from “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

JaimieAlexander_Sif

And this, Jaimie Alexander as Sif from “Thor: The Dark World.” She’s going to appear in a February episode of “Agents of SHIELD.”

hayley atwell agent carter

And here, Hayley Atwell, in her role of “Agent Carter” from “Captain America,” starring in a pilot for ABC for a possible series about the early days of SHIELD.

‘Agents of SHIELD’ slow burn or burning down?

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Agents of SHIELD magical place coulson

It’ll be really interesting to see how we feel about “Agents of SHIELD” in May.

The Disney/ABC series, about halfway through its first season, debuted in September to good ratings and impossible expectations. The street-level spin-off of Marvel’s cinematic universe and follow-up to “The Avengers,” the show looked at the non-superhero agents – like Phil Coulson, played in the Marvel movies and here by Clark Gregg – who are left dealing with the aftermath of the Battle of New York.

But while ratings are still … fine … disappointment set in as each successive episode not only failed to hand over the candy – Marvel characters we’ve wanted to see and fantastic events, even on a TV budget – but seemed like a routine supernatural procedural, an “X-Files” knockoff.

The showrunners have promised that “Agents of SHIELD” was in the middle of a slow burn, with the mismatched agents who are the series’ central characters still learning to trust each other and the mystery behind the resurrection of Coulson – who was ostensibly killed by Loki in “The Avengers” – slowly playing out. Sooo slowly. And obviously.

Last night’s first episode of 2014, “A Magical Place,” followed up on the kidnapping of Coulson by agents of Centipede, the organization that has been trying to turn people into superbeings. Centipede wants to know Coulson’s secret – SHIELD’s secret, really – of how you bring someone back from the dead.

Most of the rest of the episode really doesn’t matter and already has mostly disappeared from my memory. Vivid in my mind is the scene in which, through a Centipede experiment, Coulson recalls his resurrection at the hands of SHIELD director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson. There’s Coulson, strapped to a table, his brain exposed and being probed – seemingly being kntted back together – by a high-tech device.

And the entire time, Coulson is begging to be allowed to die.

It was an unsettling scene and Coulson’s unsettled reaction to the memory makes me wonder if the series isn’t going the way I speculated a few weeks ago in making SHIELD itself a bad guy – or at least an organization that needs reigning in.

That would also appear to be setting us up for the plot of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” which debuts in theaters in April and appears to pit the Sentinel of Liberty against at least some elements of SHIELD.

Considering the showrunners of “Agents of SHIELD” – created by “Avengers” mastermind Joss Whedon – would certainly never be able to tip the hand of the Cap movie, it’s possible this is where “Agents of SHIELD” has been heading all along.

We’ll know within a few weeks, certainly by the time the movie comes out in April and the first season of the series winds down in May.

It’s asking a lot of today’s short-attention span, general audience viewers to wait an entire season to get a bead on a show’s characters, tone and plot.

But maybe, come spring, it’ll all make sense to us, and we’ll see if the show’s slow burn has been worth burning some early viewers.

‘Arrow’ – Best superhero TV of all time?

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Three GhostsHow can you – well, I, really – proclaim anything the best of its kind of all time when it’s still relatively new and hasn’t withstood the test of time?

Beats the heck out of me. But I’m inclined to call “Arrow” the best live-action superhero series of all time. And yes, we’re not quite half-way through the CW network show’s second season.

But the gritty and stylish Greg Berlanti-developed series, featuring Stephen Arnell as millionaire crimefighter and adventurer Oliver Queen, who uses gimmicky arrows and amazing trick shots to fight crime, is tops.

Believe me, I didn’t expect to go into this fall season liking “Arrow,” the DC Comics-based show about a Batman-style vigilante in its second season, better than “Agents of SHIELD,” the TV beachhead for the Marvel movie universe.

And yet …

Crowning “Arrow” might sound like heresy for people who loved the simple pleasures of the 1950s “Adventures of Superman” series or the camp 1960s classic “Batman” or even more recent ventures like “Lois and Clark” or “The Flash” or “Birds of Prey,” all of which have their strong points.

But no, “Arrow” is better than all of them, a truly satisfying experience for comic book fans.

I was a little worried about “Arrow” when it was announced by the CW a couple of years ago. The Green Arrow character had been a nice addition to the network’s “Smallville,” the 10-season show about the growing years of Superman and, for me, marked when the series finally got interesting. The Clark and Lex theme of the show was always good but the writers were just too coy for too long. And I have to say I was kind of ticked off when they never actually showed Clark in the suit, even in the final episode. It all reeked of superhero shame.

But despite some coyness of its own – “Arrow” instead of “Green Arrow” as a title – “Arrow” has the courage of its convictions. The series put millionaire Oliver Queen into a green hood right from the word go and put him on the path to avenging criminal activity. He’s surrounded by an engaging supporting cast.

barry allen on arrow

And the series has aggressively set about building its own universe, adding characters like Black Canary, Slade Wilson, Huntress and, this week, Barry Allen, a young police scientist who’s not yet the Flash. The character, as played by Grant Gustin, is apparently destined for his own CW show. If it’s handled like “Arrow,” we’ll have another classic on our screens.

“Arrow” has some problems, certainly. But it feels like they recognized most of them early.

Chief among them is Katie Cassidy, cast as Oliver’s ex-girlfriend Dinah Laurel Lance, who comic fans know is destined to become Black Canary, a tough-as-nails hero and companion to Green Arrow.

But it’s almost as if the producers decided early on that the character and actress combination was just too … I don’t know, awkward? Cassidy seems like she would never for a moment be believable as a street-fighting gal. The show has introduced a new Black Canary, Dinah’s sister, played by Caity Lotz, and she’s more believable.

The cast is pretty uniformly good, from thinking man’s hunk Arnell to David Ramsey as Dig, Oliver’s cohort, to Emily Bett Richards as Felicity, Oliver’s Gal Friday and tech guru who deserves all the online worship she gets.

The show flips back and forth from Arrow’s exploits fighting crime in present-day Starling City (an inexplicable change from Star City in the comics) to five years earlier, when Oliver was shipwrecked on a not-even-remotely-deserted island and learned his survival skills.

The first season gave us an Oliver on a mission to clean up his city and willing to casually kill bad guys. The second season has Oliver pursuing a less murderous campaign. Heck, he’s apparently even about to start wearing the mask seen in the photo at top here.

All the while, “Arrow” is adding characters and mythology and feeling stronger and stronger.

‘Agents of SHIELD’ – Five ways to save it

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agents of shield cast

Remember way  back in September, when Marvel’s first modern-era TV production, “Agents of SHIELD,” seemed so exciting?

Sure we were all worried about how Marvel and show creator Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Avengers”) would be able to translate the excitement of the big-screen world onto ABC’s small screen. That ABC was showing it at 8 p.m. Tuesdays was also a concern. Nobody expected tough-and-gritty stories and atmosphere anyway, although we might see that with “Daredevil” and the other shows Marvel is doing for Netflix. An 8 p.m. timeslot all but guaranteed a fairly family-friendly aura.

But we were genuinely excited at the thought of everything that might happen. “SHIELD” would be a weekly dose of the greater Marvel  universe, filled with characters we love, characters that have never been portrayed in live action before. Luke Cage! Moon Knight!

At first, “Agents of SHIELD” seemed like a sure-fire hit. The pilot got very good ratings.

But as the first nine episodes continued to air, audience numbers dropped – and so did our expectations of and faith in the show.

Too many episodes, although they seem “thisclose” to really taking off, somehow fail to. The core team of SHIELD operatives isn’t that interesting. Too much time has been spent teasing the audience about what happened to Phil Coulson after Loki “killed” him. And the roster of comic book characters that have been allowed to make an appearance is lackluster. Graviton? Really?

So here’s what the producers of “Agents of SHIELD” need to do before it’s too late. If it isn’t already too late.

nick fury agents of shield

Give us some well-known characters. When Whedon said a while back that “Agents of SHIELD” gave him a few dozen opportunities to make “The Avengers: Age of Ultron” a little less special when it came out in 2015, he wasn’t joking. Obviously nobody at Marvel or Disney or ABC wants to sate the audience’s interest in Marvel heroes before the movie comes out. And obviously Marvel wants to save some characters for big-screen movies, which is why you won’t see Dr. Strange, I’m guessing. But stop with the one-and-done, wannabes and third-raters. There ware many, many Marvel characters the show could introduce.

Retool the cast. Each of the supporting characters is fine, really, but they’re the type of characters that Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson was in the Marvel movies. In other words, just that: Supporting. I loved episodes of “Buffy” that revolved around that show’s “supporting” cast. Remember “The Zeppo” and Xander as below-the-radar hero? “Agents of SHIELD” hasn’t, so far, been able to do that kind of thing with Fitz or Simmons or May or Skye.

Resolve Phil Coulson’s status now. Or at least take it to the next level. Remember in the final season of “Buffy” when Buffy would make a different version of the “this is gonna be a tough battle” speech what seemed like every week? Jeez, that got old. It seemed like the series was treading water. “SHIELD” seems to have fallen into the same trap with its near-weekly reminder that something is different with Agent Coulson. A while back I suggested they needed to let Coulson – who is blocked from viewing his own medical records – find out he’s a clone or Life Model Decoy or whatever, break ranks with SHIELD and go at least a little rogue. “The good guys versus SHIELD” angle appears to be at least part of the plot of next April’s “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” so it wouldn’t be totally out of character for the Marvel universe.

aim

Bring on the bad guys. SHIELD’s adversaries in the show so far have been weak to only mildly intriguing. I’m not sure I care a whit about Centipede unless it morphs into HYDRA. How about AIM? Advanced Idea Mechanics was referenced in “Iron Man 3.” In the comics, they were guys in crazy yellow hazmat/beekkeeper outfits. I’m sure the show could come up with an updated uniform.

iron-man-3-after-credits-scene

Give us some star power. Samuel L. Jackson’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in an early episode was fine. But we want more meat. Remember Mark Ruffalo’s appearance at the end of “Iron Man 3?” We want that in “SHIELD,” magnified.

Maybe “Agents of SHIELD” will resolve its problems quickly and, by February, be the kick-ass Marvel TV experience we all want. A couple of upcoming episodes hold promise.

But if not, it’s hard to imagine many of us sticking around.

‘The Well’ takes ‘SHIELD’ to ‘Thor’ territory

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CLARK GREGG, CHLOE BENNET, MING-NA WEN

Tonight’s “The Well,” the eighth episode of “Agents of SHIELD,” tried and mostly accomplished its latest delicate task: Tying into the big-screen Marvel universe.

“The Well” was billed as a follow-up to “Thor: The Dark World,” but really the plot that drove the episode wasn’t so much a continuation of the current “Thor” sequel but a variation on the idea of humans coming into contact with Asgardian (alien) technology we’ve seen before.

That’s not to say “The Well” wasn’t entertaining – most episodes of the series are; they’re just … underwhelming – but its most interesting element was a little more exploration of the show’s least appealing character, the gruff and ultra-competent Agent Grant Ward.

In the episode, the team is in England, picking up the pieces (literally) left over from Thor’s battle in the current movie. Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) consults with a Norse legends expert in Spain (played by Peter MacNicol) and unwittingly sets off a chase to recover portions of an Asgardian staff.

The staff – the weapon of an Asgardian berserker that’s been on Earth for centuries; so the Thor aftermath stuff is really only a way to get the expert involved – has been broken into three pieces. Each piece has the power to tap into the rage of the person holding it, increasing their strength.

A group of Nordic hate mongers (just go with it) gets first one, then two pieces and the race is on to stop them from getting the third and completing the berserker staff.

In the process, Ward (Brett Dalton) gets “infected” by touching the staff. Normally a slightly edgy, even standoffish guy, touching the piece of staff lets Ward’s rage turn him into a hostile bully. One important point, though: Ward recognizes the change and offers to bench himself. And Coulson – much like he’s given hacker Skye more than a few chances – keeps Ward in play.

The episode ends with a surprising encounter between Ward and Agent May (Ming Na Wen) and a Tahiti flashback for Coulson.

A couple of thoughts:

The show still isn’t as engaging as “Sleepy Hollow” or “The Blacklist,” but I’m enjoying it a bit more each week.

I’m ready for some real developments with Coulson’s resurrection.

I’m wondering how SHIELD itself will be portrayed by the end of this first season. By the time “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” comes out next spring, I’m wondering if SHIELD won’t be the bad guy in the whole Marvel universe picture and the agents we’ve (hopefully by then) come to care about will be like the “Angel” gang in Joss Whedon’s series of the same name, who were working for good in the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart.

TV catch-up: ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘SHIELD’ and more

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sleepy hollow headless horseman

The highlights of my TV viewing year are the limited runs of “Mad Men” on AMC, “Justified” on FX and “The Walking Dead” on AMC. That’s not to say there aren’t other shows that I’m hooked on.

But they always take a backseat to those three.

This fall, there’s a surprisingly high number of shows that have rapidly become must-see (to coin a phrase) viewing. This doesn’t count “Parks and Recreation,” for example, a charmingly daft sitcom that just keeps chugging along.

Here’s a roundup of what I’m digging right now:

“Sleepy Hollow” – This fantasy adventure series, which has become something of a hit, is one of the greatest pleasures on TV right now. If you haven’t watched the first half of this 13-episode season, go catch up, online or on demand, right now. I’ll wait.

Okay, back? The story of the return of Revolutionary War soldier and spy Ichabod Crane, reborn in modern times more than 200 years after he and the (now) Headless Horseman fought it out on a New York battlefield, is terrific fun. Crane is teamed with a young female cop as they investigate the rebirth of the Horseman, who turns out to be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelations. 

The show has something for everyone: Fish out of water comedy and commentary, monster of the week, creepy thrills, fun special effects and great chemistry among the cast members.

Tonight’s episode found the 21st century characters explaining to Crane the secret relationship between Thomas Jefferson – one of his contemporaries and heroes – and Sally Hemmings, all the while preparing a snare to trap the Headless Horseman with ultraviolet light. You don’t have to ask. Just go with it.

“The Walking Dead” – I was relieved to see the Governor show up at the end of last night’s episode. I was feeling a little claustrophobic with the flu storyline that’s dominated this season so far. I do love the beefed up roles for many in the cast, including Carol. Was anyone else as surprised as I was about Carol’s exile?

“Agents of SHIELD” – I was looking forward to this Marvel spin-off more than any other series this fall, and I’m not alone in my disappointment at the resulting show. Each episode is an improvement on the last, for the most part, but I can’t be the only one that’s impatient with the character development and over-arching plot. I’m still watching, however.

“The Blacklist” – God help me, but I’m enjoying this series more than “SHIELD.” “The Blacklist,” about a mysterious criminal (James Spader) who comes in from the cold to help the FBI catch other criminals, isn’t quite as looney as “Sleepy Hollow,” but almost. Spader is the main reason to watch as he gives a master class in unsettling but entertaining villainy.  I can’t wait to see him as the bad guy in “The Avengers: The Age of Ultron.”

“The Mindy Project” – As fun and kooky as “Parks and Recreation” is, there’s not a more clever sitcom on TV right now than “The Mindy Project,” with Mindy Kaling as a neurotic doc surrounded by neurotic docs in NYC. The second season of the show is even better than the first.

‘Agents of SHIELD’ improving, but what it could learn from ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘The Blacklist’

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SHIELD girl in a flower dress

Okay, that was more like it.

Five weeks in. “Agents of SHIELD” feels a little more like it’s finding its way. And who knows, maybe the slow burn strategy of Joss Whedon and his showrunners has been planned this way all along.

But tonight’s episode, “The Girl in a Flower Dress,” took a couple of big steps toward making the show a must-see each week and, in the process, accomplished a couple of things: It (mostly) resolved the “is she or isn’t she a mole?” storyline about hacker Skye, and it furthered a series Big Bad in Centipede, the group that’s continuing the Extremis experiments – giving people superpowers, as in “Iron Man 3” and the “SHIELD” pilot, through dangerous chemicals.

It also established some other nifty ideas, including the fact that “SHIELD” has a list of superpowered people it’s keeping tabs on. This has been a matter-of-fact part of the Marvel movies and needed to be re-established here.

What still needs to be resolved right away: Coulson’s secret. If there’s one more reference to how the unwitting Coulson (the wonderfully deadpan Clark Gregg) has changed since Loki impaled him in “The Avengers,” I’ll cry.

Coulson thinks he died for a few seconds. Higher-ups including Maria Hill know something else is the truth … and think Coulson must never know.

I think everyone suspects that Coulson is a Life Model Decoy – as mentioned in “The Avengers” – or a clone or something. But please, please don’t save the explanation for the end of the season. Coulson needs to find out sooner rather than later, maybe in a November or February sweeps week episode. And then he needs to get pissed, taking it out on Nick Fury – Samuel Jackson’s already appeared in the series, so there’s no reason he can’t come back – and everyone else who deceived him. Knowing how buttoned-down Coulson is, that “taking it out” might consist of an icy glare and a brisk walking away. But do it soon.

That way, expectations will be defied and the next story arc – how Coulson comes back to lead the team – can begin.

Okay, now here’s what I intended to touch on before I saw tonight’s episode: A few things “Agents of SHIELD” could learn from its counterparts on other networks, “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Blacklist:”

Turn up the charisma. Yes, Clark Gregg is no James Spader, who’s chewing the scenery and loving it on “The Blacklist.” But “SHIELD” needs some flamboyance.

Turn up the crazy. “Sleepy Hollow” is getting points for the relish with which it embraces its storyline. “SHIELD” shouldn’t imitate it, but it needs more of the kind of moments that will make fans and casual viewers alike chuckle.

Show why these people are together. A seven-year-must-prevent-the-end-times-like-in-“Sleepy Hollow” plot device isn’t necessary. But there’s got to be more of a reason holding these people together than just the “we’re all in the SHIELD helicarrier break room at the same time” vibe that sometimes seems to be the case.

Give us more surprises. In the first episode of “The Blacklist,” the frustrated FBI agent stabs sneaky fugitive Red Reddington (James Spader) in the neck with a fountain pen. Yikes! It was quick and unexpected and totally justified. Give us more of that kind of “hey did you see that?” moment. (They even had Reddington make a joke about it in a later episode.)

Give us some Marvel comics names. Remember before the series began, people were speculating on which characters would be introduced? Luke Cage? Moon Knight? Who would have thought that “Arrow” would be introducing established DC Comics characters every week and Marvel, the king of synergy, would be running a series of wannabes past us every week?

Give us the goods, “Agents of SHIELD.”

‘Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle’ on PBS

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SUPERHEROES-A-NEVER-ENDING-BATTLE

Truly the geeks have inherited the Earth: A three-hour documentary about comic books on PBS.

“Superheroes: A Never Ending Battle” played on PBS this week and is still available online (if you can put up with PBS.org’s wonky video player).

I didn’t see all of it when it aired last Tuesday – three hours is a big chunk of time – so I watched the unseen balance today online.

A lot of documentaries have been made over the years about comic books, superheroes and their creators. Because of the wealth of interviews, this one is among the best and most entertaining. Maybe that’s in part because the tone is no longer so defensive and “can you believe it?”  The tone is what it is because superheroes are such a big part of pop culture right now, a huge presence in video games, movies and TV shows. Even though a fraction of the number of comic books are sold today as were sold two or three generations ago, their influence on pop culture has never been greater.

The first hour traces the early history of comics, from the first newspaper strips, folded and stapled and re-sold by the father of the creator of MAD magazine, to the heyday of comics in World War II and the 1940s, when virtually every boy and most girls read comics.

Influences like pulp magazine heroes including The Shadow are cited and the origins of Superman and Batman – familiar stories for longtime fans – are told. Before the first hour has ended, Wonder Woman’s kinky origins are recounted. Acknowledgement is made of the less savory aspects of comics, particularly racist treatment of Japanese characters during World War II. The first hour ends with the 1950s campaign against superhero comics.

Besides the classy treatment and nice graphics, the best part of the show are the interviews with pioneers of the early days, including Joe Simon (co-creator, with Jack Kirby, of Captain America) and other artists and writers who got their start in the Golden Age but continued to work in the Silver Age.

Throughout the three-hour documentary, we’re treated to lively interviews with creators, experts and actors. They’re funny and witty and sometimes surprisingly still vital. I swear that great DC artist Neal Adams, one of the driving forces of the 1970s, looks 40 years old.

steranko

 

And “SHIELD” artist Jim Steranko, whose towering head of hair is now quite gray, displays his comic historian side.

steranko SHIELD

The second episode starts in the 1960s and the birth of modern-day Marvel Comics. The impact of comics on the larger world – including the campy 1960s “Batman” series – is explored and, rightfully so, called a “game-changer.” This seques into Steranko and the “pop art” era.

The ground-breaking moments of 1960s and 1970s Marvel – Peter Parker attending an integrated high school, the introduction of black heroes like The Black Panther and Luke Cage – are given their due. Likewise, DC’s experimental book teaming Green Arrow and Green Lantern, tacking injustice and racism, are cited, as are the Comics Code Authority-flouting campaigns against drugs.

The third hour is kind of a victory lap, noting the huge role in today’s pop culture that comic book characters play, particularly due to the big-budget, big-box office movie adaptations of the modern era. As “Spawn” creator Todd McFarlane says, “None of it is silly anymore.”

lynda carter

But one thing is certain: Lynda Carter still looks amazing.