Limerick Review: Arrow S3E23, My Name Is Oliver Queen

A vax from Merlyn saves the day,
And Flash briefly comes out to play,
And while he's sympathetic,
He offers a pathetic
Handwave as to why he can't stay.

Then, somewhat to my dismay,
Katana steps out of the fray.
But Ollie, still sane,
Sabotages the plane
The trap's sprung, but Ra's still gets away.

Ra's wants to make the virus spread,
But Thea's back, now decked in red.
And newly-supported,
The team sees the plan thwarted,
And Oliver kills Ra's stone dead.

Freed from being Ra's' tool,
Nyssa goes back to ninja school,
Only to find
That there's no peace of mind,
For Merlyn's the new Ra's Al Ghul.

Now Ollie, guided by a dream,
Chooses to pursue a new stream.
And thus it transpires
That Ollie retires,
And leaves the city to his team.

I've said this show could be a gem,
If it would focus on the femmes.
Now we're happ'ly aligned
To leave Ollie behind
And retool the show around them.

Pet Peeves: Don't Shelve Comics With Books

On occasion, I will visit a library (or even a bookstore, although there it is far less frequently a problem) where comics and are shelved amongst the novels, all listed by author. so let me just put out this slightly pleading message to any who organize their establishment's shelves in this way:

DON'T DO IT.

I love comics. I love what the medium can accomplish, and the effects made possible by the heightened reality that particular styles of artwork can evoke. But that is precisely the point: comics are a different medium from books, and even when there is overlap among the authors contributing to both (e.g. Greg Rucka, Brad Meltzer), they are authors working in two different formats and adapting their writing to each format as appropriate.

In short, putting comics and novels on the same shelves just because both are printed on bound stacks of paper is like shelving CDs and DVDs together because they both come on discs.

Limerick Review: Arrow S3E18, Public Enemy

So Ra's has dispatched an array
Of fake Green Arrows into play.
And just to inflame
This extravagant frame,
Faux-Arrow just up and shoots Ray.

The cops now won't back down or flee,
'Til the Arrow's their detainee.
And just to be sleazy,
Ra's makes their job easy
And outs Ollie's secret ID.

Ray's health is still on the downswing,
But the one thing this subplot can bring
Is merely to tie
Up Felicity's eye
So she can't just resolve everything.

And really, Ollie's actions have been
Getting much harder to spin.
Whether out of remorse
Or a matter of course,
Ollie finally turns himself in.

There's a great scene on the police bus
As Quentin and Ollie discuss,
But all of that sport
Is abruptly cut short
As Roy tries to pull a "Spartacus"

Why I Hate The Term "Graphic Novel"

Page from Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

I hate the term Graphic Novel, but I hate the term Sequential Art almost as much, because each term has roughly the same problem. In the term Graphic Novel, the Novel element gets the emphasis. Not only does this sell the artist short, but it reeks of trying vainly to leech credibility from another medium that hardly has enough credibility to sustain itself. Call me cynical, but a medium that counts Dan Brown and Snooki among its most profitable contributors, no matter how old and venerable, is not one whose blood it is wise for even the most vampiric of mediums to imbibe.

But Sequential Art has roughly the opposite problem, in that it places the art in a place of exclusive privilege, making only a fleeting reference to the whole story element of what is ostensibly a storytelling medium.

If we are to describe this medium of words and pictures, Comics is as good a word as any. It is its own entity, not a hodgepodge of only tenuously related words meant to make the whole enterprise sound more credible.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E13, One Of Us

Skye's dad wants these powers of hers
To be free of S.H.I.E.L.D. saboteurs,
He starts a project,
Going 'round to collect
Some superpowered prisoners.

The team has its own problems to spar,
And things only get more bizarre,
But though they're detained,
Skye's dad's campaign
Puts him squarely on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar.

Meanwhile, May gets her ex, with glowers,
To consult with them for a few hours
And though Skye is annoyed,
He still plays Sigmund Freud
To help her control her new powers.

The team wants to live and let live,
But Skye's dad doesn't want to forgive.
Mercy is refused,
But that's all defused
When Inhumans take him captive.

Just to add to a well-crowded field,
Some more layers start to be peeled,
For when Lance inquires,
It quickly transpires
Someone's started a parallel S.H.I.E.L.D.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E15, Out Of Time

A lot happens in this episode, so I am actually going to lay down a mild SPOILER WARNING for this whole recap, with extra-spoilery stuff marked off at the end.

Weather Wizard enters the show,
Avenging the death of his bro,
And finds out a name:
Det. West is to blame,
So he really has it out for Joe.

Barry and Iris have their tells
That set off their partners' alarm bells.
Meanwhile there's fretting,
And everyone's getting
Suspicious of Harrison Wells.

Even as the truth starts to dawn,
The end seems already foregone.
So get out your feels
As Harris reveals
He really is Eobard Thawne.

He reveals he's not from where he's at,
And he's free of the wheelchair he sat.
Cisco gets wise
And sees through the disguise,
But Harris swiftly takes care of that.

Weather Wizard so alters the clime
That a tidal wave's all set and primed.
And to make it re-route,
Good old Barry runs out
Running so fast, he travels through time.

EXTRA SPOILERY SECTION

So Cisco was picked as the one
To die in a twist meant to stun.
So before we dismiss:
I have issues with this,
But the scene was certainly well done.

One more thing: I was a fan
That when the Chief's hurt for a span,
During his E.R. stay,
His worried fiancee
Just happened to be a man.

Limerick Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2E11, Aftershocks

Last time was our heroes' close shave,
Underground in an alien cave,
Where old Whitehall died,
Tripp got petrified
And Skye caught the Terrigen wave.

Now, Skye has had a good restorer,
But poor Raina's come out the poorer.
She thought she'd be divine,
But the show seeks to mine
Inhumanity for body horror.

Coulson and Co. then enlist
Their pris'ner's unwilling assist,
So that each Hydra brother
Will turn on each other,
Which is really a nice little twist.

Jemma's concern is just that
Skye's condition will be a plague rat,
But we have the acumen
To know she's Inhuman,
And for comics fans, this is old hat.

The show takes a chance to reload,
But happ'ly declines to be slowed.
It's smooth as a harp,
The dialogue's sharp,
And it's just a first-rate episode.

Limerick Review: Arrow S3E15, Nanda Parbat

Team Arrow prepares for a blow
From a massively better-trained foe,
And the rest of the run
Is just everyone
Being told things we already know.

But Ra's' League is still in play,
And they really want someone to pay
For Sarah's demise,
So to no one's surprise,
The League just takes Merlyn away.

But Ollie, perhaps 'cause he's high,
Decides he can't let Merlyn die.
But through all the surprising-
-ly weak moralizing,
He won't give a good reason why.

Ray marches to the heroic drum,
And though his suit looks kind of dumb,
When we first see him try,
He manages to fly,
And Felicity finally gets some.

So Ollie and Diggle soon dare
To break right into the League's lair.
They soon lose their cover,
But, as we discover,
Ra's really wants Ollie as heir.

The ep sure is one snappy dresser,
But Ollie's dumb choice makes it lesser.
But it takes that hit,
'Cause I'll say this for it,
It's better than its predecessor.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E8, Valediction

With theatre-goers en masse

Killed off before much time can pass,

The truth will soon out,

But Sousa the scout

Gets dosed with the angry gas.

Howard shows up, fashion'bly late,

To set the record vaguely straight,

And to prove he's an ace,

He helps out with the case,

And offers himself up as bait

But he falls into the baddies' snare,

And gets hypnotized at their lair.

Things start getting grim

As they hypnotize him

Into almost gassing Times Square.

But Peggy to action is spurred,

And the evil plot is deterred.

And she beats the toughs,

Not through fisticuffs,

But simply through well-applied words.

Throughout the tale we see conclude,

It kept us consistently glued.

And that had better please,

'Cause from the ending tease,

It looks like it's getting renewed.

Limerick Review: Arrow S3E14, The Return

Fearing execution for treason,
Ollie and Thea take a season
To train for a while,
So they go to the isle,
And have to train there for some reason.

To give Oliver back his drive,
Merlyn found Slade still alive,
Let him out for a thrill
To force Ollie to kill,
Which is interesting, if contrived.

But the rain of flashbacks is torrential,
And, as ever, inconsequential,
But as onward they plow,
They still manage somehow
To be more than usually tangential.

It's not like Oliver et al
Have that many plot points to corral,
So all this past action
Is just a distraction
From Slade's little Battle Royale.

There are big reveals to mull,
But of stuff we know, so it's null,
And somehow, in spite
Of flashed-back-to fights,
It just ends up terribly dull.

Limerick Review: Agent Carter S1E7, Snafu

Now, Peggy's got reason to frown,
As her own friends take her downtown,
They press and they press
To get her to confess.
But she ends up dressing them down.

Jarvis comes, a story to tell,
And to get Carter out of her cell,
He goes off-book
To get her off the hook,
But it only lasts for a spell.

They quickly find the real mole,
And try to suss out what he stole,
But that's blown asunder
When the chief falls under
The doctor's hypnotic control.

But the enemy's very precise,
And give our heroes the slip twice,
There's happy delusion,
And widespread confusion,
And one heroic sacrifice.

The villains have one last hurrah,
That Kingsman has made a bit blah,
And their final jest
Turns out to be to test
A gas bomb in a cinema.

As we start to wrap up every thread,
And the villains turn out to be Red,
To solve all our queries,
It seems that the series
At last is coming to a head.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E14, Fallout

Now the nuclear man has blown,
The atomic gauntlet has been thrown.
And explosive events
Get the constituents
Back to bodies of their very own.

But this event proves too beguiling
For one man with milit'ry styling.
And this great dissension
Has drawn the attention
Of the villainous General Eiling.

Meanwhile, something has Barry graveled,
As one case starts to be unraveled,
And though it seems queer,
It quickly becomes clear
That Barry's already time-traveled.

Stein soon gets caught in the snare,
Though Wells betrayed him, to be fair.
But it's all for nought,
As the Flash takes his shot,
Beats Eiling, and rescues the pair.

The emotional beats get due deference,
Though action is this ep's clear preference.
We get the side case,
And somehow there's still space
For a slightly odd Game of Thrones reference.

SPOILERS

Comic book fans will be awed
At this episode's final nod,
As Wells in long johns
Tells Eiling to come on, And basically feeds him to Grodd.

Limerick Review: Contantine S1E13, Waiting For The Man

On the Louisiana side,
Where all kinds of mischief reside,
It seems that some ragin'
Occult rapist Cajun's
Gonna take a new child bride.

Leaving the casework to Zed,
Someone's put a price on John's head,
So Papa Midnight
Books the first flight
To go and make Constantine dead.

So we go from the pedophile's house
To Midnight's game of cat and mouse,
But one's just a fetter
For its clear better,
And some of the fire just gets doused.

That's not to say it's all half-assed,
The Midnight scenes are just a blast.
Zed is conflicted
On what she's predicted,
And Manny is badass at last.

So when it's all over and done,
This is the lesson to run:
Creepy Cajun dude
Can establish the mood,
But Papa Midnight's just more fun.

Limerick Review: Arrow S3E13, Canaries

Since Oliver's team won't enlist her,
Laurel's mind's just one big twister,
Afflicted by lows
Where she has on-the-nose
Nightmares about her dead sister.

Then, Ollie and Malcolm consult
To bring Thea into the cult.
They open her eyes,
And to my surprise,
She takes the news like an adult.

But just as I sink into bliss,
Oliver takes time to reminisce
And so they unpack
Yet another flashback.
I had hoped we were well over this.

Before she again comes apart,
Laurel goes to see someone who's smart,
And who does she see
But Felicity!
So the girls have a nice heart-to-heart.

Laurel joins the fight and wins,
But meanwhile is dosed, for her sins,
With vertigo type b,
Which is just basically
The fear toxin from Batman Begins.

So Laurel makes the police blotter,
And finally starts to tread water,
And works up the nads
To confess to her dad
Just what happened to his other daughter.

I had feared that this ep would get caught
In all of the baggage it brought,
Though it can be erratic
And melodramatic,
It actually moves up the plot.

Limerick Review: Constantine S1E12, Angels and Ministers of Grace

It seems that the cosmic Il Duce
Long ago came upon the excuse
To send down a canny
Young angel named Manny
Who's always needlessly obtuse.

John, with his distaste for the gaudy,
Thinks this divine scheme's rather shoddy,
And he's so nonplussed
That he gets Manny trussed
Up inside an earthbound mortal body.

So John and the Angel move out
For some misadventures throughout,
And there's evil to thwart,
In the form of some sort
Of heroin monster about.

Turns out, a doc wants to get at
Those who turned down second chances flat,
A new iteration
Of Saw's motivation,
And it's just as bullshit as in that.

All that, and it turns out that Zed
Has a tumor clinging to her head,
But future damage incurred
Can just be deferred,
So the show kind of loses that thread.

The episode won't disappoint,
But the season arc's thrown out of joint.
While it's fine that the louts
All get fleshing out,
I wish we'd just get to the point.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E13, The Nuclear Man

While Barry and co. look around
For where Firestorm's gone to ground,
Cisco and Joe
Review what they know
About where the Reverse-Flash is bound.

Now, Barry is set to begin
Dating Linda, to Iris' chagrin.
And though by no means
Are these the best scenes,
They're not as painful as they could have been.

But romance is placed under strain
As duty pulls back on the rein.
Firestorm comes to light,
And then he and Flash fight
For reasons the show won't explain.

The team find a fix to deter
Firestorm from going nuclear.
And we'll find out next week
If that small techno-tweak
Stops more damage than it might incur.

Overall, the ep deftly eludes
Soap-operaesque tantrums or moods.
People don't hurl insults,
They just act like adults,
And we'll see how that story concludes.

Limerick Review: Arrow S3E12, Uprising

Now, wrapping up all of Brick's feats,
We cling to the edge of our seats,
As our ragtag crew
And Malcom Merlyn, too,
Mass for a battle in the streets.

In this ep, Malcom's past is a factor.
He melts down like a nuclear reactor,
Rememb'ring how mommy
Was taken from Tommy,
Portrayed by a dreadful child actor.

Now I've said that flashbacks unfurlin'
Have done little but send me hurlin'
But it's clear as we breeze
Through Malcom's memories,
That we've just traded Ollie's for Merlyn's.

We see his wife's death was the kick,
And how he became such a dick,
Eventually brought
Back to the main plot
By a hasty retcon about Brick.

Oliver, once his injuries free him,
Returns to have the baddies flee him,
And while he's still no fun,
I must say, I for one
Never thought I'd be so glad to see him.

The dialogue tries to throw winks
As it runs through all these hijinks,
But it's mostly just staid,
Frequently cliched,
And never as smart as it thinks.

But the climax is done with such style,
And the last speech brings on such a smile,
How often it halts,
And whatever its faults,
The brawl makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Limerick Review: The Flash S1E12, Crazy For You

A woman gets teleport skills,
And pulls off heists to pay her bills.
But in quite a short time,
She gets organized crime
Looking to make bank from those tills.

The Flash is tasked to bring her in,
Though her boyfriend's the source of her sin.
So the show's running theme
Is love getting extreme,
For her woes and Barry's are twin.

So Barry and Caitlin bemoan
How they're each still hung up on their own
Former paramour,
Though it's so immature
That they both must know that bird has flown.

But while Barry just seeks safer harbor,
Caitlin must tend to her own arbor.
It's so hard to go on
When your boyfriend has gone
And combined bodies with Victor Garber.

They head out for vodka and ice
At a dive the bads hit once or twice.
And though I shouldn't gloat,
One just can't help but note
That the "dive" looks suspiciously nice.

While we follow the city's protector,
Cisco is off playing inspector.
And Hartley's quite willing
To go about filling
The role of a Hannibal Lecter.

Cisco lets him out of his cell
In hopes he'll surrender intel.
And though he gets a tip,
Hartley gives him the slip,
So the whole thing does not pass off well.

Now, Linda Park's our latest guest.
But I'm left somewhat under-impressed
That the show ushered in
Not one, but two women,
And yet barely passed the Bechdel Test.

It's a decent enough episode,
But it seems reluctant to unload.
It should move us ahead,
But it stands still instead,
And we're no further down that road.

I should also note, 'ere we go,
That just at the end of the show,
We get our first glimpse
At the king of the chimps,
Grodd, Flash's simian foe.