DC Television

Before I tell you which television programs based on DC comics that I would like to see on air, I want to inform you that this is part of a much bigger discussion. In December of last year, my friend Chad posted an article over at his blog Political Jesus called "Who Should Fill the Void Left By Smallville?" In this article he critiques the CW network's choice of selecting Raven as the subject of the next DC comics television program, and elevates for consideration The Graysons, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Y the Last Man, and Starman, all of which have been at least rumored to become television programs. In a comment, Rodney, the founder of Political Jesus, suggests a Joker series or a Green Arrow series. Last month, Josh at Fat Train added his voice to the discussion with his article "DC TV." Josh suggests a couple ideas that he doesn't think are possible but loves anyways, namely Gotham and The Green Lantern Corps, before settling on The Question as the best choice for filling the Smallville void.

Of all of these choices, I found myself enamored the most by Chad's choice of Y The Last Man and with Josh's choice of The Question. Outside of casting my vote for the best choice, I'd like to add a few possibilities into the mix and see what happens.

BATMAN: VAMPIRE

The Batman: Vampire trilogy (Batman & Dracula: Red Rain, Batman: Bloodstorm, and Batman: Crimson Mist) astounded me. Add to the fact that vampires are really popular. Bam. You've got yourself a fantastic series. Now, I'm not pandering to the whole vampire trend just for the sake of having more vampires. I'm pandering to it because it makes an easier sell for a fantastic story. After all, in every crappy trend there will inevitably arise something of genius. Batman: Vampire, if done well, could redeem the entire corpus of vampire works. I'd watch the crap out of it.

CREEPER

This Jekyll/Hyde character really innovates the idea of costumed superheroes with secret identities. As the Creeper he is blessed with superhuman abilities and a monstrous visage, as frightening as a demon but doing the work of a crime fighter. As Jack Ryder he is an outspoken television journalist who, and here's the kicker, conceals his identity as the Creeper by offering anyone who can reveal the monster's secret enemy a cash prize. He brilliantly cloaks himself while at the same time shooting himself in the foot. To me, Creeper has always been a very Aaron Sorkin character. We've seen Sorkin deal with influential people like presidents and social networkers; why wouldn't he be able to take on the flashy media personae of people like Rush Limbaugh and company while also dealing with important issues of the media in general through the story of DC's Creeper?

FRANKENSTEIN

I recently read Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory and was astonished at how interesting I found Morrison's depiction of Frankenstein. I liked it so much I want it turned into a TV show. There are so many oddball stories that Frankenstein is engaged in, from grade school to Mars, and they all work. I'd love to hear more about Bride, who we understand to be uninterested in Frankenstein sexually and blessed with four arms. I'd love to hear more about the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive, of S.H.A.D.E., for short. I'd love to watch a DC's Frankenstein television program.

HARVEY

I like the idea of seeing a TV show that really delves deep into the persona/personae of Harvey Dent. There would be a couple of seasons devoted simply to Harvey Dent and his rise to the District Attorney position, but also his battle against corruption in Gotham. Eventually, Batman would be introduced as a supporting character, and with not only more mob convictions but a series of villains who are criminally ill and on trial in Dent's court room. After a little bit of this, we finally see the moment where Harvey snaps, where the acid is thrown in his face, destroying his already tenuous grasp on reality. This is a story about mental illness, but also about law and order. It is a downward spiral that raises the question of redemption. It cares first and foremost about depicting Harvey Dent in the truest possible way.

SCIENCE POLICE

What I imagine in the pilot of Science Police is a scene that looks like a normal bank robbery in the middle of the night, an explosion, an alarm going off, criminals sneaking into the vault. This is all juxtaposed against a scene of a police department that looks really normal, people at desks, in locker rooms, etc. The police receive notice that the bank robbery is in process and things get less normal. They start suiting up in ridiculous armor and packing the most insane weapons. They pile into space age vehicles and zoom to the scene. Outside of the bank, to distract the police, is an enormous monster that the Science Police engage. With some clever thinking and some awesome gadgets the criminals are apprehended. The camera quickly pans out of the scene past hundreds of building and finally to a sign just outside of town that reads Metropolis City Limits. There would be mention of Superman here and there, and perhaps some appearances from favorite superheroes and villains, but these would be predominantly the crimes that are either below Superman's "pay grade" or that occur while Superman is busy. I think this would be best overseen by Edgar Wright and company.

PREACHER

According to artist Steve Dillon there's been talk of a Preacher TV series since the publication of the first story arc. Within the last two years we came closer than we've ever come to a Preacher television program, but the deal fell apart and the property got bought out by someone else. I think there are a bunch of people out there who could do Preacher well, so I'm holding out hope that the right people get their fingers on this project.

WHEN HARLEY MET JOKER

(That's a reference to When Harry Met Sally, Gabe.) When Rodney suggested a Joker series, Chad countered that "the Joker would be far too macabre and dizzying if they did it anything close to right. A show that would give you nightmares." When Harley Met Joker, however, would tell the story of psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel and her strange infatuation with the Joker, an infatuation which leads her to break him out of Arkham Asylum, follow him around, and engage in crime with him. She is infected by Joker's madness and becomes a kind of She-Joker. The Joker finds her useful at times and annoying at others. When Harley Met Joker spans the strange romance, mostly from Harley's perspective, from the day they meet until the day Joker gets too annoyed with her and decides to kill her by hurtling her into space on a rocket.

And now, as they say on the Saturday Night Live segment called "Coffee Talk," it is time for you to "Discuss."

What is Class?

A few days ago I was driving down the road in my mom's station wagon. I had my windows down and a Rolling Stones album cranked up and I was just living the rock life. In my mom's station wagon. As I passed my girlfriend's house, I saw her outside entertaining two gentlemen by her car. Naturally, I pummeled my horn like I was Mel Gibson (which is accurate, because my horn has no soul) to make my presence known. Immediately afterward I texted my lovely girlfriend: "Classy?"

Some time later, while sitting on the porch of my parents' house, my good friend Brian described to me the class-dynamics of our good friends from high school. We had always belonged to this metaphorical Island of Misfit Toys. Some of our friends fit the local dynamic better, coming from financially well-off families, whereas others, sometimes living directly across the street, lived from paycheck to paycheck and had, at various times in their youth, experienced poverty face to face. After high school, I think the differences in social status were more obvious. Those raised with money somehow naturally knew how to excel, and they amazed us with the kind of success they could achieve, whereas the so-called have-nots often lacked either drive or dream, and sometimes both.

The part that struck me the heaviest was when Brian described me as somehow being the most successful at jumping between these links, perhaps even the missing link himself.

The progression of my summer was enough to prove this theory of Brian's. As soon as I'd completed all required papers and exams I was on a plane to New York City to visit my high school friends Becky, Elliot and Ken. Ken had worked his way into management at The Walking Company before becoming a certified pedorthist. Elliot had an illustration degree and was working for a company that deals with possibly his favorite thing in the world: records. The two of them had consistent DJ gigs throughout town. But the cherry on top of this success story is my best friend (female category) Becky. She became our most successful high school friend the moment she moved to New York and began working in design for Liz Claiborne. I couldn't personally imagine anything more impressive than that. But she now has her own apartment in the Village and works freelance for Victoria's Secret. When I was in town there was no difference between us. I adore everything about these, my classy friends.

When I left my classy friends to their classy lives in classy New York City I returned to my home town in Michigan. Michigan is one of the states most devastated by the economic turmoil of the last several years. It stinks with suffering, sacrifice and sadness. Even those who might have had chances at a classy existence have found themselves stuck int his mire. Months prior to my return, my parents had been forced to declare bankruptcy, and my Michigan friends all found themselves in similarly difficult situations. My friend Jared, for example, had been working two jobs: he works for the City of Grand Rapids in a parking garage and at a local college in their food service, and yet there are many weeks where he's incapable of getting a single hour of work between the two jobs. Most of the rest of my friends have found themselves working in terrible factories and various temporary positions through Manpower. Some live in trailers. Others, like myself, live with their parents in whatever apartment or house they can still afford. My Michigan friends are, by the standards of many, trash, and I, by anybody's standards, am no different from them. We stand together in solidarity on the nation's bottom rung.

Some might imagine that class has something to do with your level of education. I have two bachelor's degrees and two half-completed master's degrees, one of which I intend to finish within the year. While speaking with my girlfriend's step-dad Cliff, he once remarked, "Some of us only had a little bit of college." He sarcastically addressed the possibility that the amount of education you have has some connection with how classy you are, with what subjects you can talk about in high society. Sure, I can argue that most people are giving Plato's Republic a bad reading, but I've only ever worked at low-paying jobs that anyone who graduated from high school could be hired for. And quite often the standards weren't even that high. Prior to my return to school I was selling fried chicken at a Chicken Express and confirming service switches for Verizon in a call center. And the pendulum of Justin Tiemeyer has swung back to the trash side.

It was actually a discussion with the aforementioned Cliff that brought my understanding of class versus trash into better perspective. Cliff runs a business in the town of Lowell, a town located not too far from where I grew up. When I was in high school we were trained to believe that Lowell was a town full of hicks on tractors. I went to Forest Hills Central, a fairly wealthy and respected school district. Lowell had a football team that became one of our football team's rivals, so it was important for people to spread rumors as to Lowell's deficiency in the name of school spirit. That's how you get mindless crowds pumped up and excited about crushing large groups of people you don't know or understand. (I wonder if anyone's ever tried to do this on an international level...) What Cliff told me is that he was once privy to some demographic information which told him that the average income in Lowell is much higher than he would have ever guessed. We were taught that Lowell was nothing but trash, but if the financial method of measurement is correct, Lowell was actually a place of class.

Cliff told me the story of a recently deceased and widely mourned local man named Ivan. Ivan was, by all standards, wealthy, but if you saw him walking around Lowell you'd never know. He'd be wearing over-alls. He'd be covered in sweat and dirt from working long days. If Ivan were to walk into a fancy jewelry store in some other part of town, there's a good chance he wouldn't even be waited on. In Lowell, however, Ivan was welcomed everywhere, regardless of his appearance. Ivan was of the old stock, the land-owners and pioneers who founded the area, the kind of person I am lucky to be connected to through my grandfather Paul Slater and great grandfather Hugh Slater. Ivan is a man who could purchase most businesses he's ever set foot in, but if appearance was all that mattered he would be called trash by lesser people. If such a person as Ivan ever existed on this planet, and expert testimony says he did, then the definitions of class and trash given so far in this essay ought to be called into question.

In China during the life of Confucius, traditionally rendered as somewhere between 551 BCE and 469 BCE, this concept of class and trash was of the utmost importance. Back then it wasn't merely a matter of what bar you were going to go get drunk at. It was a matter of whether your ruler was brutal or kind. It was a matter of life and death in many cases. The classy folk were known as chun tzu, which literally translated means "Lord's son." The chun tzu was a noble overlord of the people, a prince who ought to be defined by his kindly and thoughtful rule of the people. But as time went on, the word began to lose its moral overtones. The chun tzu no longer represented or protected the people, causing great suffering and often death.

In modern times, the most common translation for chun tzu are "gentleman," "superior person," or even "examplary person." None of these emphasize the noble ancestry of the individual, and this is a fact owed largely, if not completely, to the ancient philosopher Confucius. For Confucius, chun tzu was not a birth right: it was a perfection cultivated daily by a person, focusing on morality, filial piety and loyalty to other deserving individuals, and being benevolent toward all life. I once heard a speaker apply this benevolence even to the plant life around us, claiming that a Confucian ought to understand other life on this earth not in human terms, but in terms of the life itself.

Ancestry, like wealth and level of education, is not the measure of class, at least not of true class. True class is an invisible quality of character, built with hard work and careful guidance, an invisible quality that oozes off of a person, obvious once you learn how to recognize it. The trouble, in my experience, is that it takes time and close examination to understand the nature of class in another person. It takes love. In short, you need a spoonful of class yourself before you can recognize it in others.

Amidst the graft and excess of New York City, I have some friends with true class, and I would tell you more about them if that were the best way to hammer home my point. Instead, I want to tell you some more about my best friend (male category) Jared, he of the parking garage and food service. Why? Because if you know Jared Smith, the man I am speaking of, then you know that class, in its purest and most benevolent form, currently resides in a trailer park in West Michigan. Never have I encountered a more noble soul, and I can't imagine encountering his like ever again. Some have come close, but all have fallen short at some point. Jared is a man of kindness. He is discerning but never manipulative. He loves and respects women like few men I have ever known. He is understanding, almost to a fault. He'll give you the benefit of doubt even if you've just broken his heart and crushed his dreams. And that's because Jared is the modern chun tzu. He's a gentleman. He's The Gentleman.

Jared Smith, if my opinion can be trusted, has class, and I'm willing to devote my entire life to striving towards being this man's equal. In response to Brian's conclusion that I'm capable of moving between crowds of class and trash, that I am in some way "the Daywalker," I'm going to have to disagree. I don't have a single un-classy friend. I have some friends who might get kicked out of restaurants. This is true. I have some friends who I might get a call from in the middle of the night from jail. Also true. But all of my friends have class.

What is class? I don't think I could ever put my finger on it, But if I'm looking at the right people as examples I know that loyalty is definitely involved. And by loyalty I don't mean partisanship. I mean the kind of loyalty that spits in the face of all established order, the kind of loyalty that Jesse Custer embodies int he comic book Preacher when he says, "Well [God] can shove his law up his ass, if just one word of it says I can't stand by my friend."

Amen.

Preacher

Sometimes I think everyone on the planet knew that Preacher was one of the most amazing comic book series ever published long before I did. Just in case there's someone who hasn't encountered Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's masterpiece, I thought I should write out a recommendation. Vertigo's Preacher series tells the story of some normal people (well, mostly) who become entangled in an enormous metaphysical drama. It is edgy and smart and never takes the easy way out, taking on the more interesting geographical destinations in America: Texas, New York City, San Francisco, Louisiana... You might say that Preacher is, in a way, the Great American Novel. I say this mostly because people list The Great Gatsby as the leading contender for that title, and as interesting as F. Scott Fitzgerald can be at times, the American experience is not one of old and new wealth. It's one of pain and struggle, of grit and of wonder. These four adjectives apply easily to Preacher. I suggest you read it as soon as possible, and continue to read it over and over throughout the years.