While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going great guns for the past decade, the Marvel TV world is in a sorry old state, isn’t it? Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD was largely unwatchable in its first season until Captain America: Winter Soldier gave it a twist that made it really rather good… until the end of the season. Then it all went to pants in season 2 and I didn’t even bother with season 3. It’s about to get even worse in season 4, by the looks of it, now that the only two decent characters in the show are going to get their own spin-off series, Marvel’s Most Wanted, leaving the dregs behind.
Meanwhile, Marvel’s Agent Carter, while having far more engaging characters than SHIELD and the delights of a post-war setting to play with, had soporific, unengaging storylines. As with SHIELD, a tie in with the MCU gave the first season a welcome twist – a glimpse at the Black Widow training programme in Russia, as well as of one of its graduates
But season two was so dull, I didn’t even make it through to the end and chances of the show being renewed are slender.
I did say ‘TV’ but Netflix is different. It’s not TV. Except in Eastern Europe.
Season 1 of Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil is one of the best shows the Internet TV provider has so far produced, while Marvel’s Jessica Jones actually managed to exceed it, while simultaneously deconstructing all the assumptions of the superhero genre. Very adult, unencumbered by the restraints of network TV, they make superhero TV shows – and many other dramas – look very inadequate.
When originally announced, Daredevil and Jessica Jones were both part of an attempt to do an MCU-style team-up on Netflix, with the first seasons of those shows to be followed by Marvel’s Luke Cage and Marvel’s Iron Fist to introduce those superheroes, and then by Marvel’s Defenders to bring them all together in one big show. However, both individually proved so popular – Jessica Jones was the top original streamed TV programme in the UK last year – that they’ve both been renewed for second seasons ahead of schedule.
And now, with Iron Fist himself only just getting cast, here’s season two of Daredevil, with blind but superathletic New York lawyer Matt Murdock having to deal with the fall-out from his quest against Kingpin last season, as well as his attempts to escape from his old mentor, Stick. But can the second season match the quality of the first, despite losing showrunner Steven DeKnight? Has it been rushed onto our computer screens too soon? And will Daredevil himself be overshadowed by the season’s two guest ‘superheroes’ – The Punisher and Elektra, both of whom have had their own movies?
Here’s a good batch of NSFW trailers for you to enjoy. Discussion after the jump: multiple spoilers ahoy, obviously, so probably best if you watch the entire second season first – unless you don’t care about being spoiled, of course.
When superhero comic books first became popular in the 20th century, it was largely because they were fantasies. Male fantasies for boys. Superman may have been a fantasy of immigration, but it was also about a mild-mannered man who could never reveal his all-conquering power to anyone, not even the woman he loved from afar. Of course, if she knew what he was really like, then she’d fall into his arms without a moment’s hesitation.
Batman? A boy orphaned by crime who devotes himself to destroying those who would make him feel frightened. The Hulk? A ‘milksop’ scientist with a terrible temper that others better not unleash by bullying him. Spider-man? A nerdy boy with pretty much the same issues as Superman. Captain America? A man who could defeat the Nazis while remaining true and good and honourable.
You get the picture. Lots and lots of power fantasies for lonely boys.
Superheroines took a while to appear and represented different kinds of fantasy. The first, Wonder Woman, was originally intended as both a male and female fantasy – a precursor to a better, future, female-dominated world, with Wonder Woman an icon of feminine power that women could embrace and men could accept. But with a slightly kinky subtext and male authors, her popularity often stemmed from… other sources. Future superheroines didn’t fare much better, and frequently fared much worse.
Which meant for decades, many girls and women found comic books to be female-unfriendly areas that were practically a panopticon of the male gaze. There were plenty who became involved or who became readers, but they were the exceptions. And although male authors came along who tried to make female characters less fantasies than they had been before, that was pretty much the rule.
That was even the case when comic books started being adapted into movies. Think Sue Storm perpetually having to disrobe in the street in Fantastic Four. Think Black Widow in lingerie shots in Iron Man 2. That Wonder Woman movie? Only just being made, just as we’re about to get our third series of Batman and Superman movies in the past 40 years. And try to find superheroine merchandise from those movies for your daughters if you dare.
But the times have been a changing, of course. Have a look on Facebook and you’ll discover that more than 50% of the people who identify as comic book fans are women. And while only 3% of the people who’ll step into a comic book store are women, more than half of those who read digital comics are women.
Marvel, of course, has been doing rather well at the movie with its comic book adaptations. However, it’s got considerable stick over the years for not giving any superheroines their own movies – particularly Black Widow. Now that’s changing, with a Captain Marvel movie due… in 2019, a full 11 years after Iron Man came out.
On TV, of course, we’ve already had Marvel’s Agent Carter, except she’s not a superheroine, per se. But finally, we have our first, fully fledged superheroine TV show, the second of this year’s Marvel’s Netflix ‘Defenders’ shows following Daredevil – Jessica Jones. And what’s interesting about Jessica Jones is that despite being based on a character and a story created by two men, I think what we have is the first instance of an on-screen superheroine who’s there for a female audience and who’s a female fantasy.
Or should that be nightmare? It could be both. After all, it’s got David Tennant in it.
But no, this is a blog with a cast iron guarantee that it will cover every new, scripted US TV show for adults, provided they don’t feature too much music, appear on some obscure network I’ve never heard of or start in August. Could there be any stronger bond of trust with you, dear reader?
And gods damn it, it’s September.
So I sat down and braved myself to watch two full hours of Scream Queens. And waddayaknow? After an initially bumpy start, Scream Queens turned out to be the first new show of the Fall 2015-16 that I’ve actually enjoyed.
