Specialised Study

Adam Waddington (334022)

Creative Media LVL3

Friday, February 15, 2019

Specialist Study: Superhero TV Shows

For my specialised study, I will be looking at how low budget TV shows portray the fantastical characters from comic books as they are less stylised than usual. As for locations, they are usually kind of accurate to the comics counterparts because of multiple reasons including budget, creative ideas and rights to use those ideas.

(Arkham Asylum – Gotham TV Series) looks very accurate to the comics because locations are easy to make either on set or by finding real life locations that match.

James Gordon in Gotham the TV series, because he is just the police commissioner in the comics he is basically exactly the same except he is younger because it’s an origin story. Meaning he has not changed very much from his original form.

Bruce Wayne in the Gotham show is still young because of origins so he is not Batman yet, however he does fight crime in usually black hoods or a black mask as a reference to his original comic form.

Edward Nygma as The Riddler is just a normal guy in a green suit who sends clues related to his crimes so in Gotham he appears as a very close version but in an origins state where he appears before and at the start of his time as The Riddler.

Selina Kyle is basically just a younger version of Catwoman in the show because of the whole origin story mechanic, this is another common thing to do in TV adaptions, making younger versions of characters.

For characters like Solomon Grundy whose origins are too far based on the past they may be altered to take place in the present so instead of being a human from the past who became a zombie in the present he was a man from the present who turned into a zombie much later, he still had super strength though because sometimes super powered characters need powers. In Arrow Solomon Grundy was just made a mindless super strong henchman because it fits the character still there meaning the changes to make him fit the show still work to the origins.

Something important about story writing is “Finding the right Characters and the concept. It is all about choosing the right story, with sufficient ambitions or twist” (Thirkell, 2010) an example is in Gotham where they introduce the seemingly random gangster Butch Gilzean who eventually turns out to be the famous character Solomon Grundy.

Some characters are completely altered depending on creator’s ideas or what they have to work with, an example is that in Gotham Poison Ivy had her real name changed and she was young to be an origin story, but then they wanted to use the older powered and flirty Ivy so they made a story where she is aged up by another villain.

Arrow is about the hero Green Arrow who doesn’t have many villains so it often borrows villains from other shows such as Firefly and Dollmaker. Because Arrow came out before Gotham (a show about the origins of Batman characters) they created new characters to take the mantles of the main versions instead because some shows don’t like to share the same characters. As such the Firefly & Dollmaker from Gotham are different people to the ones that appear in Arrow (who are entirely based on comic characters)

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Fish Mooney is a character made for the Gotham show, this also happens often where a character is created just for a show as such they may never appear in the source material. According to Prudom and Friedlander’s article TV’s Super Battle Mooney is “central to “Gotham” […] a strong female character unique to the series. “I particularly wanted to create a female villain who didn’t have superpowers — who is just powerful the same way that Batman is strong and Penguin is strong,” Heller says. “Jada brings the level of veracity, strength and intelligence that the character needs.”” (Prudom, 2014) which means superhero shows can make new characters that never appeared in the source material.

Chloe Sullivan is a character made for Smallville who became so popular that she was added in the comics as a character based on the one from Smallville.

Smallville is a show about the origins of Superman, in this show Superman never wears his iconic suit because people thought it would look weird so instead he and a lot of other heroes just wore clothes that were the same colours except not as bright, the iconic symbols usually appeared still though. The show went on long enough to add an entire superhero team, they weren’t allowed to use many of the bigger hero names like Batman and '''Wonder Woman''' (other than references and hints) but they used other lesser known heroes like The Flash’s future son, Green Arrow and Hawkman.

In some cases, a character can be split into multiple characters, an example of this is that in the comics Cat Grant started out as an excitable bubbly person but when she grew older she became an office flirt, for Smallville they made 2 '''Cat Grants using both personality types and came up with a reason for having 2 Cat Grant’s'''.

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Eobard Thawne (Reverse Flash/Professor Zoom) in The Flash was split slightly when they created his relative '''Eddie Thawne''', he has a few traits that the original character has but is so different that he has become his own separate character.

Doctor Fate makes very minor appearances in Smallville which shows you can use main well known characters to fill out the background and still have them be very accurate to their source material.

Felix Faust

Some shows get tie-in comics that introduce characters that probably wouldn’t work on a live action show like Ares or Felix Faust.

In some cases, such as '''Renee Montoya' in Gotham'', the character only appears as the civilian identity as minor characters that never appear as their hero/villain version like in the comics.

Sometimes characters are altered in many ways, 1 example is Nora Fries in Arrow where her story is completely altered as the creators felt like doing something different sometimes this can cause backlash but sometimes can be interesting.

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In cases like Mr. Terrific characters are changed to be more diverse because a lot of characters have existed for so long that some characters may have been stereotypes and most characters are white and straight (In the case of Mr. Terrific he was already black but was changed to gay, his wife is changed to his husband with a slight first name change)

Walter Steele for example was a minor character in the comics and is a minor character in the show, since his race isn’t important to his character he was changed to black which doesn’t ruin anything becaue he was so minor.

Although changing a character for other media can sometimes upset people, such as Titans making Starfire black (although Starfire is an alien with yellow skin in the comics so her race doesn’t actually matter).

Supergirl the TV show made Jimmy Olsen (a usually ginger haired guy) black which caused some problems for fans also. Sometimes characters that never really become a superhero in the comics take up a hero mantle in live action (on a rare occasion) such as Jimmy Olsen becoming Guardian which was a pre-existing hero alias used by others, the show is the first-time Jimmy has been known as Guardian.

In Arrow the Hawkgirl is a combination of multiple characters (specifically the combo of 2 different Hawkgirl’s).

These are all ways that live action TV adaptions of comic characters can be altered to fit the show in some way, this information will help me with my music video and final project because I need to do the same things with my characters.

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Bibliography

Prudom, L. and Friedlander, W. (2014) ‘Tv’s Super Battle’, Variety, 325(6), p. 32. Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=v1h&AN=98406142&site=eds-live&authtype=sso&custid=s7989057 (Accessed: 25 March 2019).

Thirkell, R. (2010) CONFLICT - The Insiders’ Guide to Storytelling in Factual/Reality TV & Film. London: Methuen Drama (Professional Media Practice). Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000muk&AN=697286&site=eds-live&authtype=sso&custid=s7989057 (Accessed: 1 April 2019).

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