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.