Smallville - Icarus
Aug. 19th, 2011 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcWell that was a bit of a rollercoaster.
First the high: Clark and Lois are engaged! Yay! The Clark and Lois marriage is one of the awesomest bits of the Superman mythos, and I can't believe the comics are getting rid of it next month. (And following on from a rather dumb year-long story where Lois barely appeared anyway. Aargh!) The engagement party was fun, with the surviving JSAers, Courtney and Carter, as two of this week's returning guest stars. So more Arrow/Hawkman banter, which is always nice.
(Other returners: Black Canary, although she doesn't actually do anything, and Chloe in flashback. Hmm, with Chloe out of the picture, is it time to start setting up Ollie and Dinah?)
Then things take a darker turn; it's already been made clear that the Vigilante Registration Act has extended its peramaters to become Homeland Security Only More So, with a curfew in place, and mandatory scans at the Daily Planet office (searching for what? A metal detector isn't going to indicate that you have powers, or even that you're wearing brightly coloured spandex under your clothes.) Now we see the effect Darkseid's influence is having on ordinary people, with Ollie attempting to rescue a woman from a mugger and being assaulted by ordinary citizens. Which the TV news then reports as them attempting a citizen's arrest on a dangerous terrorist.
And Slade Wilson (now with eyepatch!) is back in command, and knows Clark is the Blur. So Watchtower shuts down, and even that doesn't stop the VRA swooping down on the League's support personnel, especially once Cat reports Lois and Tess for thoughtcrime. Meanwhile Clark, Ollie and Carter all independently interprate "We should all lie low" as "You should all lie low; I'm going to break into Slade's office."
Winner of the Ceannaideach Award for the Most Clunkingly Forced Attempt To Work An Unused Supervillain Identity Into Dialogue: "The reaper can swing his sickle at me, but I'm beyond death's stroke now!" For heaven's sake, "deathstroke" is an actual word. If you must work it in, how about "When I have the information I need, it'll be the deathstroke for your gang of vigilantes!" Still clunky, but not quite as forced.
And it's not a sickle, it's a scythe.
Talking of the clunkingly obvious, having a winged man plummet from the ofices of the Icarus project in flames is very much so. It really doesn't neeed Wilson to point the symbolism out. And when Hawkman dies the little light in his chest logo goes out. Um, how does that work?
So the general responsible for the VRA has Mysteriously Disappeared. I'm sure that will really encourage people to trust the superheroes.
The funeral scene was touching, especially that Shiera's headpeice was already there[1], although I was kind of distracted by the two pallbearers at the back, who were dressed as A.C. and Bart, but whose faces were determinedly not shown. And then ... well, I'm not sure what happens then. There isn't even a To Be Continued, although I assume it will be.
[1]Although .... are all incarnations of Kha-Tar and Chay-Ara buried in that pyramid? It must be getting crowded by now.
First the high: Clark and Lois are engaged! Yay! The Clark and Lois marriage is one of the awesomest bits of the Superman mythos, and I can't believe the comics are getting rid of it next month. (And following on from a rather dumb year-long story where Lois barely appeared anyway. Aargh!) The engagement party was fun, with the surviving JSAers, Courtney and Carter, as two of this week's returning guest stars. So more Arrow/Hawkman banter, which is always nice.
(Other returners: Black Canary, although she doesn't actually do anything, and Chloe in flashback. Hmm, with Chloe out of the picture, is it time to start setting up Ollie and Dinah?)
Then things take a darker turn; it's already been made clear that the Vigilante Registration Act has extended its peramaters to become Homeland Security Only More So, with a curfew in place, and mandatory scans at the Daily Planet office (searching for what? A metal detector isn't going to indicate that you have powers, or even that you're wearing brightly coloured spandex under your clothes.) Now we see the effect Darkseid's influence is having on ordinary people, with Ollie attempting to rescue a woman from a mugger and being assaulted by ordinary citizens. Which the TV news then reports as them attempting a citizen's arrest on a dangerous terrorist.
And Slade Wilson (now with eyepatch!) is back in command, and knows Clark is the Blur. So Watchtower shuts down, and even that doesn't stop the VRA swooping down on the League's support personnel, especially once Cat reports Lois and Tess for thoughtcrime. Meanwhile Clark, Ollie and Carter all independently interprate "We should all lie low" as "You should all lie low; I'm going to break into Slade's office."
Winner of the Ceannaideach Award for the Most Clunkingly Forced Attempt To Work An Unused Supervillain Identity Into Dialogue: "The reaper can swing his sickle at me, but I'm beyond death's stroke now!" For heaven's sake, "deathstroke" is an actual word. If you must work it in, how about "When I have the information I need, it'll be the deathstroke for your gang of vigilantes!" Still clunky, but not quite as forced.
And it's not a sickle, it's a scythe.
Talking of the clunkingly obvious, having a winged man plummet from the ofices of the Icarus project in flames is very much so. It really doesn't neeed Wilson to point the symbolism out. And when Hawkman dies the little light in his chest logo goes out. Um, how does that work?
So the general responsible for the VRA has Mysteriously Disappeared. I'm sure that will really encourage people to trust the superheroes.
The funeral scene was touching, especially that Shiera's headpeice was already there[1], although I was kind of distracted by the two pallbearers at the back, who were dressed as A.C. and Bart, but whose faces were determinedly not shown. And then ... well, I'm not sure what happens then. There isn't even a To Be Continued, although I assume it will be.
[1]Although .... are all incarnations of Kha-Tar and Chay-Ara buried in that pyramid? It must be getting crowded by now.
