Love Interests of Flash/Arrow - an essay elsewhere!

Today, another link to a blog post I've written somewhere else - this time on the Moderate Fantasy Violence website about how Flash and Arrow have dealt with introducing new TV love interests whilst working on a pre-destined comics canon. How have they done? What can other properties (such as Captain America: Civil War) learn from it?

All that and... well, that. Basically, no deleted scenes from the podcast this fortnight, so I'm doing this instead. Enjoy, hopefully! First long-form bit of pop culture writing in a while, must admit I quite enjoyed it.

Avengers: Age Of Ultron and the serialisation value of superhero movies

Avengers: Age of Ultron is out now all over the place, and I saw it on the opening Friday. The many solo film stars of the Marvel movies re-unite to take on an evil robot, ruptures form among the team and I'll refrain from over-describing the film as some people might still be avoiding spoilers.

It was good, though - not as no-reservations excellent as the first Avengers movie, due to Ultron not being quite as memorable as Loki and the sheer volume of characters taking away from focus. Sill, among the upper echelons of Marvel movies and successfully kept me invested in the whole Marvel monolith.

Anyway, this isn't going to be a straight review of the movie as there are plenty of those on the internet. The release of Avengers II served as a kinda peak point of a few months where I've been consuming a load of superhero media. Between DC's FlArrow shows, Gotham, Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil and Agent Carter, that's a whole lotta tights and tights-related material.

And that's without even counting Walking Dead and Constantine.

Point being: I love serialised fiction across all mediums, but it kinda started with comics. So I've been thinking a lot about how this stuff translates because... much as I've liked many superhero movies, I feel like TV might be the ultimate medium for them.

Since I've Found Serenity - Thoughts on first watching Firefly in 2015

You can't take the sky from me... *sob*

As mentioned on my Twitter, I've recently watched popular Joss Whedon-helmed TV show Firefly and movie follow-up Serenity for the first time ever. I have no real excuse for this - I believe I have lived with copies of the DVD for at least six years now.

For the unacquainted, Firefly is often described as a "space western". It revolves around the ramshackle spaceship Serenity, whose crew are living under the radar for various reasons, surviving on snatched jobs from various employers. Thanks to this off-the-grid ethos, their missions mostly end up unsavoury - theft, smuggling or worse.

Firefly is perhaps even more famous as a great One That Got Away of the modern TV age - despite massive critical and fan love, it lasted one 14-episode season. Whedon had the movie follow-up Serenity to wrap up at least some major plot threads, but for the most part, it died young, its potential unfulfilled, everyone is very sad.

Anyway, despite its massive popularity, I've only just sat down and watched it. I don't think it's that significant whether I think Firefly is good (BRIEF REVIEW: it is very good - unless you hate the sci-fi genre or Whedon's quips-and-sadness writing style, you will probably like it), but I am kinda interested how it looks to a modern TV viewer. Has it informed the landscape? Would it do better nowadays? Other talking points, probably?

And yes, I may mention a few spoilers, but now I've finally watched the thing, there's officially no-one else left to care.