There is a chance that these grittier, street-level characters, the Marvel Knights if you will, could still end up getting picked up by Hulu or another Disney-related streaming service. If they do, I hope they take a page from the recent Titans series:
- Have more stuff happen more often
- Shorter seasons are a good idea
- A little humour can balance out the grimdark without undermining it
- Masks, costumes and powers are cool - don’t be afraid to be a $&#%ing comic book show
Even if they don't though, there is more superhero content out there than I can reasonably be expected to watch. Agents of Shield comes back this summer, I gave up on most of the CW Arrowverse shows, but could go back at some point, and still hear good things about Legends of Tomorrow. Hulu already has Runaways and Cloak & Dagger, and Umbrella Academy just premiered on Netflix this past weekend.
And that's just superhero shows; Star Trek and Star Wars both have television series currently airing new episodes, with more rumored to follow. Game of Thrones will follow up what is likely to be the most highly anticipated television finale of all time with at least one new spin off, and Amazon is producing something similar for Lord of the Rings.
Fresh anime can be viewed from Japan within 24 hours of it airing there, and increasingly grandiose boardgames covering more and more nichey topics are being backed on Kickstarter all the time.
Truly, it is a wonderful time to be a nerd.
And yet... I find myself wondering how long it can last.
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| Go ahead, call Joe "Deathstroke" Manganielloe a nerd -wait, he doesn't care. |
Nowadays, famous actors can tout their devotion to Dungeons & Dragons, and an adult wearing a superhero t-shirt doesn't even rate a second glance. But it wasn't always that way.
I've raised my girls in a nerd-positive environment -honestly, what choice did I have? - but I've told them of my own childhood and adolescence. Of having to conceal the things I was interested in, of having to determine who in my class outside my immediate circle of friends had similar interests. Having to find sympathetic teachers willing to let you play D&D or deploy a tabletop Starship Tactical Combat Simulator in their classroom over the lunch hour, and hoping the wrong people didn't drift in to mockingly ask how to play and express consternation at the notion that no one actually "won" role-playing games.
I mean, let's be clear - as forms of prosecution go, being teased for your interests is way down the list, and doesn't compare with being a different colour or sexual orientation from your peers. But it made things harder than they needed to be, and built in me an appreciations for them that I am unlikely to forget anytime soon.
And I wonder, what spawned that difficulty? What made that commitment to the status quo seem so pervasive at the time, so that kids, and sometimes parents and teachers, felt the need to call out people that thought or acted differently, who embraced the fantastic, who dared to use their intellect or imaginations?
And could it happen again?
This global rise in populism, the growing fear of migration, the phobic and bellicose view of not just other religions but the people who practice them, the license to not only speak in intolerant tones, but to do so publicly, loudly and proudly. People who look like our neighbours, spewing invective-filled filth about "you people" in coffee shops, waiting rooms, and street corners. Terrified people in yellow vests linking economic consequences to increased levels of immigration. Yesterday, Audrey was disappointed to discover that a fellow elementary schoolteacher has a lot of racism in her worldview and is convinced that the Muslims cause most of the problems in her school, and they are taking everything over to boot.
In Ontario, the Conservative government has rolled back the sexual education curriculum back to the 1980s, and the leader of the UCP here in Alberta is promising a similar "common-sense" and "ideology-free" approach to scholastic matters if/when he gets elected. The past couple of years seems to have had a number of people clamoring for a return to the "good old days", which I suppose they were, if you were straight, white and male, but despite being all three of those things, I still find my blood chilling at the thought of what might yet come.
Ho emboldened might these reactionaries get? Just how persecuted does the "Silent Majority" feel these days, and what sort of comeuppance might they be looking for? Will the rising tide of populism bring with it a cultural shift in what we consider "normal"?
As our society becomes more insular and austere, will fantasy and speculation become viewed as frivolous and unproductive pastimes like they once were? In a world where Avengers: Endgame is expected to make hundreds of millions of dollars, it seems almost ludicrous, but remember, it's the same world where Captain Marvel is being negatively review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes. Whether this is due to the temerity of the studio for building a blockbuster action movie around a female lead or the lead actress speaking out about the need for more diversity in both filmmakers and film reviewers is immaterial.
Look, this is all speculation here, just small talk in the vestibule, and I am almost certainly overreacting here. Maybe this is all just a time-delayed response to Bill Maher's ignorant exhortation to "put away childish things" (which I thought I had circumvented by reading Peter David's brilliant response to his vitriol).
And even if there was a concerted effort to "normalize" entertainment or somehow shun those with an interest in the unusual, the internet makes it way too easy for us to not only connect and exchange ideas, but also do commerce, so it's not like I am actually worried about an Orwellian future looming just over the horizon, or having to buy polyhedral dice on the black market.
But then, three years ago, people pish-toshed the idea of Nazis being anything but a fringe element in North America, and now you have them, and people terrifyingly similar to them, marching around openly, taunting the rest of us and trying to cloak themselves in free-speech protection.
Saying "it can't happen again" is not that different from saying, "it can't happen here," and if there were more people alive from Germany in the early 1930s, they would not sadly and tell you, "that's what we thought, too."
Right here, right now, I am revelling in my time, glad to be a nerd, happy to declare it in public, grateful for far too many opportunities to spend time and money on a variety of geeky pursuits with my friends and family.
But I have to tell, you, I am kind of keeping one eye on the door at lunchtime too.
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