Marvel's Jessica Jones

Thanks to Veg for giving the seal of approval on Daredevil. Eight episodes in and this is excellent.
Of all the cultural things for me to get a buzz off of at this stage in my life, I really wouldn't expected comic-book adaptations to be one of them - but here we are.

After 50 years, the MU is a notebook jammed full of iconic characters and heroes' journeys and weird inversions of heroes' journeys and interesting plotlines -- costumes and powers are almost beside the point. Certainly not everybody feeding Marvel their dollars is viewing through the vaseline-smeared lens of nostalgia, so they must be doing something right from the standpoint of basic storytelling.

After 50 years, the MU is a notebook jammed full of iconic characters and heroes' journeys and weird inversions of heroes' journeys and interesting plotlines

Oh for sure, I'm not doubting this for a second. Reading my post back, it probably comes across as patronising, as if I'm sneering at long-term MU devotees, but that's not where I'm coming from - more just flagging up that this is a slightly out-of-character thing for me to be into.
The richness of the storytelling is a huge part of what I'm enjoying in both shows, so it's heartening to know that they're just the tip of the iceberg in that regard.

No worries, I didn't read any patronizing in yr post. I'm just tickled, as a Marvel Zombie going back to the early 70s, that the decades of accumulated characters and stories in the print universe is being mined carefully and reasonably successfully for the cinematic universe.

Just started, sooooooo much better than Daredevil. Didn't think that Ritter could pull the grit to do something like this, but she's been pretty damn great.

First episode is kind of inert, but it picks up really quickly, i.e. when Trish starts punching people.

I'm sad this wasn't renewed as quickly as DD was.

it'd be cool if they did some cross-over episodes, like the arrow/flash collabos

they're doing an entire crossover series

eventually

i'm sure it will be renewed; netflix renews EVERYTHING and this got crazy good press for them. i think w/ daredevil it was a case of a huge runaway success that probably caught them off guard (i'm guessing that's the show they claim got more viewers than game of thrones), and they wanted to reassure ppl it wouldn't be three years until season 2.

Incredible show. Among other things I've never seen the real-life implications of a superpower (Kilgrave's) unpacked so thoroughly: his manipulation and self-justification; his victims' trauma and guilt. As Emily Nussbaum wrote: "Much of the reason that their dynamic works is because of Tennant’s sly and layered performance, which suggests a grotesque innocence beneath Kilgrave’s sadism, a distorted belief that this is true romance." He's the ultimate friendzone creep.

I'm also not sure I've ever seen a TV show which accomplishes diversity with less fuss. No white male heroes at all. PoC and gay women in key roles that aren't identity-dependent. Passes the Bechdel test so regularly that it doesn't even seem to be thinking about it. Nothing contrived or didactic. And the show's strengths flow from that diversity.

I do think Tennant is amazing in this - and I had my doubts beforehand, regarding him as a bit of a ham.

(btw I'm 4 eps into Daredevil and yeah, really enjoying that too)

I'm also not sure I've ever seen a TV show which accomplishes diversity with less fuss. No white male heroes at all. PoC and gay women in key roles that aren't identity-dependent. Passes the Bechdel test so regularly that it doesn't even seem to be thinking about it. Nothing contrived or didactic. And the show's strengths flow from that diversity.

One of the big things that immediately struck me about JJ is that it was created and exec-produced by a woman. It approaches things so freshly that is making this show incredibly novel and gripping, in part by upending archetypal expectations. Hogarth is an amazing character, I'm loving her to death.

Also just found out who Simpson is supposed to be. The creators went kinda deep for him!

the ease of its diversity and all the other refreshing aspects make me extra frustrated that it was so sluggishly paced and indifferently directed tbh

I hope they swap directors w/ Daredevil for their next seasons

JJ was everything I hoped Daredevil would be. With the latter, I always struggled to find the motivation to watch another episode (gave up 3 or 4 eps before the end).

I reckon that the Daredevil team will have to up their game after JJ because it exists in the same corner of the MCU and they're playing in different leagues. Contrast the best-friend roles of Trish and Foggy and it's embarrassing for DD. A lot of shows now seem to have major upticks in their second season so it's possible.

Tennant's petulant exasperation and whiny entitlement is fantastic and nothing like the more stereotypically evil comic version. He's not a supervillain, he's just a dick who uses his powers to have an easy life.

Agree with everything Leee said.

DD had one great character, a couple of solid ones and a string of duds. JJ has the reverse.

Foggy's always been kind of a schlub in the comics and Trish is based on a character that became an actual superhero, so I wouldn't be surprised to see their respective arcs remain basically the same in subsequent seasons.

If a major subplot of JJ season 2 involves Trish opening up a temp agency for superpowered people who aren't trying to be vigilante heroes, this will be my favorite show of all time.

Hellcats for Hire

I know what Foggy's like in the comics but the scenes between him and Karen in DD are death. Bad comic acting and horrible dialogue. He can be a schlub but he doesn't have to be such a drag. Trish is different enough from Carol Danvers that it's more about the writing on the shows than the existing back stories. No excuses basically.

I would never recommend DD to someone with no interest in superheroes but JJ has been wowing Marvel-agnostic friends.

(Psst...although she's standing in for Carol Danvers' role in Alias, Trish is Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat.)

The scene where Foggy and Karen go out drinking together because she's afraid to go home was really sweet, I thought.

xp Gah, you're right, I forgot Hellcat's real name. Spotted Nuke though.

there are a few articles explaining how Patsy Walker, which was an actual long-running comic, got pulled into the Marvel universe as a superhero

really enjoyed that being integrated into the show as Patsy being a child television star

sorry, Trish :)

Patsy Walker is, I think, the MCU character who's existed the longest aside from the golden age-era Captain America characters.

Future Mad Magazine cartoonist and "Fold-In" creator Al Jaffee wrote and drew most of the early issues, several of which included Mad founding editor Harvey Kurtzman's highly stylized "Hey Look!" one-page humor strips.

If nothing else, this has led me to find out Al Jaffee is still around and drawing fold-ins.

btw for those unaware, I was describing the setup for the new Hellcat solo title upthread

The way they made the 'It's Patsy' theme music kind of perfectly irritating was one of my favourite little things in this.

Does this get better? I made it to the episode (episodes?) where the mind-control bad guy keeps sending randos on the street to assassinate the good guys, and it was super hokey, like an early Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode or something

Finished up with Daredevil last night - avoiding spoilers for DJP and anyone else still on the go with it, but I agree with people who've been saying that the last few episodes feel padded out. Also feel that it stuck the landing in the very last episode pretty well though. If I had to compare the two shows, I'd say that notwithstanding the padding, DD was slightly (but only slightly) more slickly put together in terms of plotting and dialogue, but JJ inspires slightly (but only slightly) more ~deep thoughts~ in me. Wouldn't want to pit one show against the other though as obv I thought they were both excellent.

One thing that's been going round and round in my head in regards to JJ in particular relates to Scott's comments way upthread about how he was fed up with a certain brand of darkness that had become popular in comic/superhero related stuff post-Frank Miller and at times he felt like an over-reliance on darkness had ruined the whole genre. I feel that in certain critical circles that's quite a fashionable, almost right-on stance - that a cliched ~Dark and Gritty~ style has developed and kind of overwhelmed superhero-genre stuff - and it's a way of thinking I'd probably fallen into myself: I probably overemphasised my naviety/inexperience upthread but obviously like anyone not under a rock I'd seen plenty of the big comic-book adaptation movies over the years, but generally I'd just come to accept the view that modern comic/superhero stuff is all D&G cliches and therefore not worth paying much attention to.

JJ kind of threw me for a loop in that regard, because although it's obv dealing with some really heavy stuff and although a lot of the time it feels like a very angry show (which I like), the tone and also the moral values of it come across to me as a million miles away from stereotyped ideas of D&G. It definitely doesn't remind me of Frank Miller at all. (DD is a bit closer to what I would usually associate with D&G, and at times feels a little Miller-esque, which I guess is inevitable given that it's partly drawing on stories/characters written by Miller - but it still doesn't feel like it's just accepting D&G tropes uncritically).

OTM. The anti-D&G line is very fashionable with critics like Anthony Lane who think superhero comics are fundamentally just silly fun and should be adapted for the screen accordingly.

but generally I'd just come to accept the view that modern comic/superhero stuff is all D&G cliches and therefore not worth paying much attention to.

Actually that doesn't quite capture it - it's not so much that I felt that all contemporary comic-book related stuff was D&G related cliches, because obviously that's not even remotely true, but more that when works in that genre attempted to do anything self-consciously serious or mature, then they would inevitably fall into D&G, not really having any other language available for that purpose. Both of these shows have established to me that this was a daft assumption.

Also I'm obviously not meaning to have a go at Scott personally here - like I say, his posts are an example of a wider view that I've encountered before and at times shared myself.

Sorry for navel-gazing and Aspie monologuing - will ease up for a bit.

I feel like the Frank Miller school circa his Daredevil and Batman work started with a nod toward the realistic repercussions, personal and societal, of vigilantes and criminals beating on each other and stabbing victims in alleyways and very quickly became this gritty noir thing where the people involved in this world were vicious and amoral, even if they had a moral code on the surface. Very black and white definitions of who is in the right, with lots of grey in the day-to-day actions and no indication it was as Dredd-like parody.

It took no time at all for the Daredevil/Batman stuff to be parodied by the Cerebus and TMNT comics of the day, but comics as a whole (and a lot of movies in the vein) embraced the roughness.

Now we're post-D&G and can have actual human characters that aren't embracing that darkness, that live in a violent world but aren't sociopaths gleeful that they're caving in heads. And there are characters who are unrepentantly violent and they're these pill-popping maniacs who are seen as threatening or even worthy of pity.

I think that's the angle I was missing when I was trying to determine why some latter-day writers can be enjoyable but I never completely get into it because at the root, they're coming from the fallout of the late 80s and their base angle is "violent sociopaths are fun"

see: the work of Mark Millar

As a reformed Frank Miller fanboy, I'm still a little annoyed that Alan Moore's hand in grim & gritty is underplayed, but that's an aside!

As for the way DD and JJ embrace that particular aesthetic, I do feel the former is a largely more generic standard example, but is it done right; it's easy enough to do something violent and dark, but where JJ pwns DD is how it's able to use gallows humor consistently and its main characters tend to be competent and generally avoid stupiditis (which increases the sense of danger when they get in over their heads).

xps

I will say that I was tickled with DD's scenes between Foggy and Karen.

Frank Miller, of course, eventually came at that from a different angle and ended up making straight-up noir pastiche with Sin City and his own "sociopaths are fun" comic is the ridiculous All-Star Batman & Robin which is good for all the wrong reasons

I really think the Affleck solo Bats film should be an adaptation of All-Star Batman & Robin

seconded

Are you retarded or something?

lol

No, I'm the goddamn mh!

I enjoyed JJ, particularly the amount of women and poc and how ppl upthread mentioned that it didn't feel like the show was begrudgingly enforcing a quota or w/e. Also as someone who's not too into superheros I like how the show wasn't all that superhero-y even with the special powers all over the place.

I only watched the first episode of Daredevil, nothing about it seemed particularly interesting, not sure if it dramatically picks up or not after that?

I didn't think it did, especially. It was visually neat, but it had the self-serious Darkness of, like, '90s television.

I thought it was good except for secondary character performances and all the dialogue. (DD, rather than JJ, is the one that I thought was padded out to about 3-4 episodes too long.)

Oh god, 1000 cuts.