Episode 158 - Naomi

No guests this time — just Case and Jmike diving into Naomi, both the first comic volume by Brian Michael Bendis, David F. Walker, and Jamal Campbell, and the CW pilot it inspired! We unpack her origins, the themes of identity and legacy, and how this new hero fits into the Superman-adjacent universe.

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Men of Steel Full Episode

Originally aired: November 21, 2025

Edited by Sophia Ricciardi

Scored by Geoff Moonen

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Outline

️ Introduction and Topic Setup (00:00 - 10:36)

• Discussion opens with commentary on a break-in scenario as a humorous analogy.

• Hosts introduce the podcast episode focused on Naomi, a comic series and its TV adaptation.

Comic Book Deep Dive, Part 1 (10:38 - 20:37)

• Case shares his late discovery of Naomi via Superman comics.

• Discussion of typical Brian Michael Bendis storytelling traits and Naomi's origin story.

Comic Book Deep Dive, Part 2 (20:37 - 29:58)

• Discussion of the comic’s minimal action narrative; Naomi only fights once near the end.

• Critique of the pacing and suggestions for narrative recap.

TV Show Critique, Part 1 (29:58 - 39:35)

• Hosts express strong disappointment with the Naomi TV series.

• Exploration of key changes from comic to show, including character depth.

TV Show Critique, Part 2 (39:36 - 49:32)

• Further criticism of the TV show’s deviation from comic lore.

• Exploration of Naomi’s 'Mary Sue' characterization and visual production issues.

TV Show Critique, Part 3 and General Reflection (49:32 - 58:53)

• Frustration with the show's pacing and poor adaptation of comic’s style.

• Suggestions for animated series instead of live action.

Comparative Analysis and Storytelling Challenges (58:53 - 01:08:51)

• Reflection on comic’s pacing translating into TV episodic structure.

• Challenges of stretching limited content to a full season.

Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up (01:08:52 - 01:19:00)

• Overall enjoyment of the comic despite flaws and disapproval of the TV show.

• Hope for future projects that better capture the comic's qualities.

Closing Remarks and Promotional Segment (01:19:03 - 01:27:09)

• Hosts encourage listeners to read the comic and promote Patreon.

• Plug for Case’s new podcast project Trade School.

Transcription

00:00
Case
My bigger point is that she has this giant posse, and they all, like, the majority. Like, one is on lookout, and the rest of them all go inside, as opposed to having, like, five people on lookout and two people to break inside. Because they need the girl, Lourdes. Right. From the comic shop. Like, they need her because she's able to pick locks. Cool.

00:19
Jmike
But.

00:19
Case
But everyone else who comes in is just, like, an extra flashlight to be seen from outside.

00:24
Jmike
Yeah.

00:25
Case
So I messaged you. That's a big group for some B and E. Yeah.

00:29
Jmike
Like, I was like. I was like, wow, they really like Ocean's Eleven or they tried to Ocean's Eleven. This was, like, the worst way possible because they're all making so much noise.

00:42
Case
Yeah. It's like if you tried to have everyone in the party be rusty.

00:48
Jmike
Yeah.

00:49
Case
And have no one else to do any of the other jobs. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, J. Mike Falson.

01:26
Jmike
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show.

01:28
Case
Welcome back to the show. This is an episode we have been talking about for a long time internally, because today we are going to dig into that Brian Michael Bendis property from 2019 that somehow got a TV show greenlit. Immediately following that is we are talking today about Naomi. Specifically, we're talking about season one of the comic, and were talking about the pilot of the TV show. And to have that conversation, we're not joined by anyone, because this has been on J. Mike's bucket list, and we're finally having this conversation. So why don't we open the conversation with J. Mike? What the hell are we talking about today?

02:12
Jmike
Okay, so like he said, this has been on my bucket list for a while, because way back in the crazy year of 2020, D.C. was having its, like, big event for its shows and movies coming out for the near future. And I think were watching it. I think were. We were. We were messaging back and forth about it, and I saw a trailer that I was very confused by, and it was about this girl who was in class, and she just runs out because she hears that, or she gets a message that Superman is in town fighting some bad guy. And she runs into class. She gets, like, halfway to the town square, and then she, like, has an asthma attack and passes out. And I was like, what even is this? And it, like, says Naomi. And everyone was like, oh, clapping.

03:04
Jmike
Or, like, virtually clapping, because everyone was in, like, the chats and things. And I was like, I'm Very confused, but also kind of intrigued. So I did a little research online. I came across her first arc for the Wonder comic series. And I was like, huh, Interesting. And I was like, case, we should probably talk about this one day. And he was like, yep, we sure will.

03:27
Case
And, hey, we are.

03:30
Jmike
Five years later.

03:32
Case
It hasn't been five years, but it has been a number of years of us talking about it. And part of that was that when the show was coming out, everything was bad about doing TV shows live. Like, we're. We tried to do Superman and Lois live, and we did season one, and then we just completely dropped the ball.

03:52
Jmike
And now it's over. So we're eventually going to have to go back and talk about that.

03:55
Case
I know. Yes. I want to talk to Michael Bailey, who is a Superman podcaster, who did a ton of coverage on Superman Lois about that one specifically. But let's circle back to what the hell? Naomi is. J. Mike, for listeners at home who's not familiar with your experience of it or why we're looking at this, what. What is just, like, the basic synopsis. Like, what's the elevator pitch of this?

04:23
Jmike
Okay, I'm gonna go with my personal favorite version of this story, which is the. The comic version, and we'll get into that the other version later. But in the comic verse, Naomi is this ordinary teenager. Nothing stands out about her. She just an ordinary kid from Oregon who's from a town that nothing exciting ever happens in, except that she's, like, a huge Superman fan because they have this one thing in common that they're both adopted. And so, like, she's doing her normal thing. She's a normal kid, goes to school, works a little 9 to 5 job after work or after school. She's very bad at what she does because she's an average US Teenager.

05:04
Jmike
And then Superman has this huge fight in town, which kind of sparks her interest in, like, trying to figure out, like, where she comes from, who she actually is, who her birth parents are, which starts her down this huge road of discovery that culminates with her parents being like, surprise, you're not from Earth. Ta da.

05:30
Case
Culminates is a good way to say that, because there's a lot of. A lot of time spent getting to that point.

05:35
Jmike
Yeah. Or it's like, I. I enjoyed the ride. So it's. It's a fun. It's a fun, like, coming of age, like, new character story for dc, which they haven't really had in a long time. And so you get to, like, see everything happening through With Naomi and her little group of friends. Her best friend. What's her name? Annabelle.

05:51
Case
Annabelle, yeah.

05:52
Jmike
And their little quirky relationship and everything that goes on in town together. I laughed, I cried. It moved me, Case.

06:00
Case
Yeah. And that seems to be pretty close to what overall happens in the show. But the show is. The show is remarkably clunkier.

06:11
Jmike
I'd like the show, like, at every, like, going back and forth, because I did. I rewatched it because I was like, it's kind of unfair to have Kate's watch this catastrophe and not go back and re. Watch it too. And then I reread the book again, and I was like, you can tell in this show where they try to take inspiration from the book, but they did it in, like, the most clunky way possible. Yeah.

06:34
Case
Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about the comic first, and then we'll get into the. Into the show. But I was surprised. Consider one thing I will say for the comic is that it feels like it is very much written to be a pilot for a teen TV show on the cw. Surprise. And that turned into a teen TV show on the cw. And I would say that I was surprised looking at the pilot, which is done fairly cinematically, or rather, the comic series is done fairly cinematically. And it doesn't translate to the show because they do several things in the show that are head scratching, and many of them are changing the perspective of how we get to, like. Basically everything becomes, like, refocused on Naomi in a way that I find frustrating.

07:28
Jmike
Yeah.

07:29
Case
I'm just gonna say, before we get into this too much, I think that the comic is an enjoyable enough ride with a lot of big asterisks on that. But the. The show I was not a fan of.

07:39
Jmike
No.

07:40
Case
And it makes sense that it was canceled after one season of a.

07:43
Jmike
It was canceled halfway through. It just kind of, like, decided to, like, give it the rest of the time off. That was like, ooh. Like, they didn't. They didn't wait, like, to. To finish the season. They kind of canceled it halfway through the season and, like, let the rest of the episodes play out and, like, dropped it. And I was like, well, then I can see how that happened.

08:11
Case
Yeah. Yeah. No, and look, I'm. I'm usually not here to just, you know, vent about a work that is not particularly. But this one is extremely on the nose as far as the Superman analog comparisons go. So it's certainly worthwhile for us to discuss. In both the TV show and the comic, it does revolve around the scenario where this child is very much like Superman, an orphan of a different world on this earth, with powers and abilities far, far beyond mortal man. Naomi's power set is. Is pretty high up there in. In all versions.

08:54
Jmike
Yeah.

08:54
Case
And. And it's certainly a worthwhile character to say is a Superman analog just in terms of raw power. And, and I think that combined with the fact that the origin is. Is intentionally aping Superman's origin makes this pretty one to one in terms of conversations about like a Superman analog type.

09:12
Jmike
So she's like, oh my gosh, I want to be like Superman because he's adopted and I'm adopted. We have like a connection there. And I was like, all right, cool. I guess that makes sense.

09:26
Case
Yeah. Well, okay, so why don't we start with our conversation about the comic and focus on that for the moment. My experience with Naomi is different than yours. I was not paying attention. I am usually not as big of a fan of like, looking at the upcoming, like, listings type of thing I used to be, but it's. It just got to be hard for me to like, keep up with it all.

09:48
Jmike
And I wasn't. But this one just felt so weird. I was like, I kind of want to know more.

09:55
Case
Sure, sure. I'm just saying that, like, I wasn't aware of this character until she showed up in the Superman books. She immediately crosses over. I believe it's like the same month as the last issue drops. She like pops in to the Superman story that was running at the time and then proceeds to pop up around the DC comics because Brian Michael Bendis was writing a bunch of different things. And every single book he touched, she followed. It was very much a heavy handed push for this new character, which is not by itself a terrible thing, but it certainly was a heavy handed push.

10:29
Jmike
For a new character because she ends up running with the Titans and running with the Justice League a couple times.

10:38
Case
Yeah, she runs with the Justice League within like two years of coming out.

10:42
Jmike
And I was like, hey, all right. They really putting her out there?

10:45
Case
Yeah.

10:45
Jmike
Okay. Good for you, girl.

10:50
Case
And here's what I will say about that. This is the most Brian Michael Bendis of Brian Michael Bendis comics that I could have imagined.

10:57
Jmike
Oh, yeah.

11:00
Case
Now look, I. I have said that I have had problems with Brian Michael Bendis before on the podcast. This is very much true with this comic. It benefits from a few things, one of which is that I read it after it had already come out, so it was already collected into trade paperback form the first time I read this, because it reads better as a complete story. And I cannot imagine reading this book issue by issue.

11:28
Jmike
Oh, week to week, month to month. I got. They got the arc. Get the whole arc. When the first, Like, I first saw it free or first saw it being able to buy, and I was like, all right, cool. I'll check it out.

11:40
Case
Yeah. Because this is a very decompressed story. Like, I don't want us to waste our time going through issue by issue because the fucking events of each issue are not very much, which is generally a problem I have with Brian Michael Bendis material. So that's in full effect here. Then you get into the other tropes of Brian Michael Bendis stuff. Not that these are necessarily bad tropes, but the. The fact that the character is adopted and that the parents are of different ethnicity than the adopted than the adoptee are both Brian Michael Bendis tropes. Because in real life, Brian Michael Bendis is the adopted father of, I believe, two girls of color. And. And again, these are good, but it's. It's very autobiographical in that regard.

12:23
Jmike
Yeah.

12:24
Case
Then you get into the fact that the story. Let's be honest here, at minimum, or pardon me, at maximum, this story should have been three issues. At maximum, it's six.

12:36
Jmike
I would argue, definitely cut out some things.

12:39
Case
I would argue that this could have been two very easily. And honestly, if this was, like, the 90s or before, this would have been one issue. It is so decompressed. Like, what actually happens? I mean, consider this. We don't see Naomi's superhero form until the fifth issue of the story.

12:58
Jmike
Yes. At the end, the whole thing of trying to actually figure out all this other stuff going on, I was like, all right, cool, cool. And then we get the revelation that, like, her dad's an alien. You're like, oh, well.

13:15
Case
Yeah. So there's a lot of bait and switch. Bait and switches going on in this book. So the. The initial bait and switch is that there is this guy who appears to just be kind of watching Naomi.

13:26
Jmike
Yeah.

13:26
Case
Who's really weird looking. He's huge, and he's covered with tattoos, and he's bald. And it turns out he's a Thanagarian.

13:32
Jmike
Yay.

13:33
Case
Which I thought you would appreciate.

13:37
Jmike
I'm all for more Thanagarians in here.

13:39
Case
I have some interesting questions about. About it and the timelines that. That play out in this all, but. So he's a bait and switch because he actually doesn't have really anything to do with her. Aside from the fact that he happened to be aware of when she was first adopted. So she doesn't, he doesn't really have like a big role to play in the comic. His role is much more amplified in the show.

14:07
Jmike
There's like the whole scene where she breaks into his shop or in his shop because he's a mechanic in the comic.

14:12
Case
Yes.

14:13
Jmike
And so like she late night, she breaks into his shop and is like going through his things because he looks suspicious to her and she wants to find out more. And then she finds like the picture of him and his wife. And then she's like, who is this? Who are you? Are you my dad? And he's like, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Is this my mom? Where do I come from? And he's like, I don't understand what's happening here. Please leave my house.

14:37
Case
Yeah, I mean, but those are such bait and switches going on there with like, with the fact that his ex lover looks just like Naomi. Even though they're not connected characters at all. It's just there to sort of fuck with you, the reader. And then the next part of this all is that her adopted parents take her to a cave and reveal the Batcave, a rocket ship. And it's like, is this where I come from? No, hun, this is where I come from, says the dad.

15:09
Jmike
This is my ship. This is all me.

15:13
Case
And it's revealed that he's Iranian, a Ranian. Just, just to space that one out there. A person from Rant.

15:22
Jmike
Ran. And now it's like, who is? Where is that? Where is that?

15:28
Case
I had never heard them before, really. So this is where the, the timetable for this book gets really interesting. So this book as it's written feels like it takes place like 15 years into like the DC universe being like a real thing. And one of those areas where it feels like 15ish years into the future or I guess 17ish years because like the Ran. So the Ran Thanagar war is a, a more modern concept. Ran is the, is this world that the character Adam Strange, who is a human, gets teleported to and has like sci fi adventures with.

16:03
Jmike
And the dad does name drop a lot.

16:06
Case
Yes, yes. Adam Strange gets mentioned quite a bit. And Ran got teleported because Ran is where the Zeta beam technology comes from. Rand gets teleported to the same solar system as Thanagar in like the 2000s. It's like Geoff Johns Green Lantern Run or like around that time. And that creates this, the story of the Ran Thanagar War. So prior to that, they don't have this big tradition of being at war with each other. I mean, the Thanagarians are bellicose by nature, so it's not, you know, wildly wild that these two wouldn't like each other directly because the Thinnerians are typically warlike people who are aggressors in most conflicts that they're in. But, you know, it's, it's interesting that particular juxtaposition right there, the fact that it's Iranian and a Thanagarian is a more modern kind of component of the oppositional space politics.

17:04
Case
It's not like the Kree Skrull from like, Marvel who have this like, ancient tradition of hating each other.

17:09
Jmike
I was like, oh, cool. This is. I've never heard of these guys before. Well, Case would probably know more than me anyway.

17:16
Case
Well, yeah. Anyway, so this all gets revealed that the dad is actually an alien himself. And that the, the weird part is that having two aliens living in this quiet little town in Oregon, they both get tipped off when this like, extra dimensional thing occurs and they like, arrive at the spot where a woman flees from a bunch of soldiers with a baby and she dies and they like, kill the soldiers and they have the baby all of a sudden. And that's Naomi. And so that's where, where she pops into this whole situation. And. And then we get these straight up, like, Superman, like, Jor El rocket thing by way of this, like, crystal that like, connects her with her mom, her dead mom, and who goes on to explain all the stuff you would kind of expect about Superman.

18:10
Case
But then it's like through the lens of this other world, which is. I actually have to. I enjoy this, like, other multiversal world that they set up. Yeah, this other Earth is like, kind of fun. It makes me think of rising stars in that all the people of this alternate reality. Not all the people. Pardon me, like 27 people from this alternate reality get superpowers and they, they duke it out and there's only like a few people left at the end of the whole story. But all of their powers are like, in this like, godlike tier. Like they're Superman esque across the board. So Naomi is the biological child of two of these, like, super beings from this other world that is supposed to be very much like our earth prior to 17 years ago.

18:56
Case
You know, some handful of people got superpowers and she, because she's the only biological child to occur from any of them, the biggest douchebag of them. Zumba.

19:13
Jmike
Zumbato, whatever.

19:15
Case
Yeah, he's like, well, I can't have that because I'm trying to assert the fact that I'm the most powerful and that I should rule the Earth. So, so he's the one who sends his troops to like, try to try to kill her and has been waiting to hunt her down ever since. And Naomi like, goes off and explains this all to her best friend. And then while she's like trying to manifest her powers, he comes through a portal. He's like, I've been waiting for your power signature to flare up so that I could lock in on you.

19:47
Case
And yeah, he takes her to this alternate Earth and I, I think he's trying to like, feel her out to see if she is a worthwhile, like if she could be an ally, if she could be a tool, a weapon for him or if he has to kill her. But she reveals that she knows because of the memory download from her mom who he is, and so he's like gonna chase her back into her to her reality. And, and the one action beat of this entire six issue series, or not the only action beat, period, but like the only action beat that Naomi's actually involved in is that the Zombatta dude tries to follow her through a portal and she punches him back.

20:34
Jmike
Oh yeah, that. And like her mom's friend comes and like saves her.

20:37
Case
Yes, yes, there's more. She has allies on the other side there as well. But, but the frustrating point for me is that she only. This is the only time she does anything in the entire book aside from just like snooping about.

20:52
Jmike
I was like, I was like, it's an origin story, it's whatever. Getting to like see her character coming to her own. I was like, all right, cool. It's an interesting little concept. I was like, it's the first, like, it's one of their only times they actually try to go through like making a new character and let them do new things in a long time.

21:07
Case
So I was like, cool, I, I appreciate all of that. And like I said in the trade, this is not that bad because individually. Yeah, individually, man. The first. I don't know how you get to issue five.

21:22
Jmike
Don't know. I guess they were like, oh, it's gonna. More it's coming.

21:26
Case
Like, I could see being intrigued by the first issue. Like, like it. There's interest, an interesting world being set up here, despite the fact that the DCU seems to be, like, a little bit older than it should be. Like, just that, you know, everyone's been doing their thing for so long.

21:40
Jmike
Yeah.

21:40
Case
And at all. Which is just part of the sliding time scale making it difficult. But the first issue is, like, kind of. Kind of interesting because you're like, who is this weird dude that she's trying to study? How does she know his name? Like, I get that it's a tiny town and, like, maybe the mechanic. She would know if he was a different profession. I don't know if she would just immediately know the. The dude's first name. Like, why would she know someone who's a tattoo artist? I don't know. That just seemed weird to me.

22:09
Jmike
He's a mechanic, Case. He's a mechanic.

22:11
Case
The mechanic part at least is like, well, probably she's had to take her car to him at some point or.

22:17
Jmike
She runs into him at the grocery store or something. To me, her mom is the MVP of this entire series so far.

22:25
Case
Yeah. Her mom, who is just a regular human.

22:27
Jmike
Yeah, her mom's just a regular chick. She's like, oh, okay, cool. I like, she always wanted kids, and she finally got her chance to have a kid, and now she beats up people with baseball bats. They get too close to her daughter at 2 o' clock in the morning, which is totally a thing that happens. Yep. Because Naomi is very much just reaching for straws most of the book. And she walks into this dude's house at midnight, basically, and goes through his stuff.

22:55
Case
Right. And then turns out, like, this. It's sort of a weird way to play it because she, like, overplays her hand pretty fast where it's like, oh, yeah, D, you were supposed to keep this all secret from her. But they are about to reveal everything to. To Naomi. Anyway.

23:08
Jmike
Yeah. Anyway, I.

23:10
Case
So, like I said, I think that overall, this is all fine, except it's just way too fucking long for the parts that. And all of. All the pacing issues with it are ones where I'm like, this would work fine on a CW show with a limited budget. So you can't do the special effects stuff.

23:29
Jmike
Wait, wait, did it happen? Casey?

23:33
Case
So watching, like, looking at this comic the whole time, I'm just like, man, this is a really decompressed story. Like, they're really spending their time just on dialogue and camera movement and a lot of stuff like that. And that's not, you know, what you're here for a comic book for. Like, you would expect a little bit more action. You would expect the character to be in her costume at least within the first three issues. Right. Like, like fucking five issues in. And at the end of it, she's like, in. In costume. Like, that's. That's a lot, but okay. All right. You know, you. You would like it. Brian Michael Bendis is known for doing decompressed stories. Like, infamously, they announced the six issue ultimate six story arc, and then it had to be seven because he just couldn't get it all in.

24:24
Case
In six issues for some fucking reason.

24:27
Jmike
Some reason.

24:29
Case
Like his. His New Avengers arc, I checked out because I literally read an issue where they started the issue and ended the issue at the exact same beat. And I was like, I'm done. This.

24:44
Jmike
This is not for me.

24:45
Case
This issue didn't mean anything. It could have not happened and I would have been fine. No more. But I've like, powers. I liked his Mighty Avengers run. Like, I. I do. Like, I read through his Superman stuff and enjoyed much of it. Like, there. There are choices. Like the fact that this is happening concurrently with Jonathan being aged up, which was, you know, not a great choice. No, I. I think that there were factors outside. Yes. Supersons. We should talk about that Animated series or the animated movie at some point soon.

25:16
Jmike
Yeah.

25:16
Case
Yeah, we should make that happen. But to stay on Naomi. Gotta talk about Campbell's art. It looks really good. The whole book is fucking gorgeous. So it looks really good. The dialogue is very Brian Michael Bendis, but it's not the worst example of Brian Michael Bendis because most of the characters we're talking are appropriate to. To talk in Brian Michael Bendis ways.

25:46
Jmike
Yeah.

25:46
Case
It's not a scenario where, like, a character really should have a different diction than. Than that. These all work fine here, So I wasn't too stressed about that. I really like the fact that they named naomi after Dwayne McDuffie. I think that's a good. A good thing there. I think that there's a lot of reasons why you. You should like the first trade of this.

26:10
Jmike
But.

26:12
Case
It certainly makes sense that it's not.

26:15
Jmike
It's. It's not amazing.

26:16
Case
Right.

26:17
Jmike
It's a fun story.

26:18
Case
Yeah.

26:18
Jmike
It's a fun, like, quirky story to read.

26:21
Case
It just takes so long to get there and then doesn't like, really have a bunch of action beats. Like, if Naomi. If the last issue had like a bit of a fight between Naomi and. And the dude, like, it would be a different story. But. But she doesn't. She has one hit.

26:37
Jmike
Yes. So she gets slapped around for A couple of panels. And then she has the one hit at the end.

26:42
Case
Right. It's just very lopsided in terms of how much story we really do. And I think it was overestimated that we would find the story of, like, who her parents are. Like, I think it was. It was assumed that would be a more compelling narrative and it might be for people who are adopted and are really looking for this kind of material. I don't want to discount life experiences that are not mine on this one. It just seems like she is making a bunch of leaps of logic to ask about these people specifically. Dee. Like, he doesn't really seem that connected to her. And then she, you know, fortunately he happens to know a bunch of stuff about her.

27:26
Jmike
Could you imagine if he didn't? Right.

27:28
Case
It would just be so weird. Like.

27:33
Jmike
Little girl, why are you in my house at two o' clock in the morning? Please leave. And he has anxiety issues. So she's like, hammering him with questions and he doesn't know how to properly respond to her.

27:42
Case
But I mean, like, I could, like, Christ, man. I. Like, I told you, I don't want to just, like, do another pass of this one. But issue. What is it? Issue five, where she's like, explaining everything to Annabelle. Like, that is a perfect in media resources. Like, if you wanted to get this down to three issues, have the middle issue be her. Explain explaining everything to Annabelle and you can just like, kind of like speed past some of the issues that don't really matter. She catches you up on basically everything. Like, you honestly could jump in with issue 5 and not have missed anything, which is bad.

28:20
Jmike
Well, I mean, we're not. We're not taking it back. We're not going to another pass this case.

28:25
Case
I know. I'm just saying. I'm just saying that, like, all it requires is her to explain it to her friends. Or her friend, I should say.

28:31
Jmike
Yeah.

28:32
Case
And it would be a perfectly sufficient, like, way to, like, speed through a whole bunch of this narrative.

28:37
Jmike
Yeah, that. That could be the intro to the entire story right there. You start off with her going, hey, come here. Meet me at this place, like 2 o' clock in the morning. And her friend shows up and she goes through the entire list of events that happen.

28:47
Case
Yeah. I mean, even if you want to, like, put in a bunch of stuff from issue one and two in your first issue where, like, she's asking questions about it all, like, that would be perfectly fine choices. It's just they spend so much time on this. And there's so many pages where it's like a bunch of people just talking about nothing.

29:05
Jmike
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, he was here for a while and he flew away. I didn't see anything. I was like, all right, cool. Moving on. Come on, come on. Next thing. Next thing. Which, I mean, it's. It's for what it is. Like, I had fun with it for what it is. It's a different telling of an origin story for what it is. And I was like, it's fun. It's quirky.

29:30
Case
Yeah. Also, I do want to note that I was coming in because I knew where she's like, because I was coming in from being introduced to her in her crossover in Superman.

29:40
Jmike
Yeah.

29:41
Case
I knew that she was going to end up as a superpowered being. I think if you came into this book not aware, like, where it was going, and it was just a book called Naomi, and it was a investigation into the weird upbringing of this character, that would be a different story. And I don't know how I would picture this. I do know that the mystery is not enough to keep me going if I.

30:08
Jmike
It's not that big of a. It's not like some big overarching mystery.

30:11
Case
Thing because it's literally the classic Superman thing. And it's just like, well, how many tw. Brian Michael Bendis put using DC lore.

30:20
Jmike
Yeah. Because, yeah, the Big MacGuffin is the Cube. I keep thinking of that stupid Transformers movie, but, yeah, it really is just Superman now.

30:32
Case
Then the character goes on to have adventures with young justice, to become a member of the Justice League in very short order, and to be sort of nominated to be, like, the new most important person of all time for as long as Brian Michael Bendis is.

30:49
Jmike
The.

30:51
Case
Hot new thing at dc. And when that dries up, I'm pretty sure I haven't seen her since.

30:57
Jmike
She's around with the Teen Titans and occasionally off with. I don't know if it's JLI or jla. She's just doing her own thing.

31:10
Case
Yeah. And to be clear, it's not that I have a problem with her making the Justice League that fast. It is surprising. But my problem is that it just seems like a character who was foisted very briefly to be the hot new thing. And then kind of they sort of didn't have the energy to keep it going, so they pushed really hard and then kind of, like, felt. Yeah. And I think it was a bit aggressive. I think, like, she should have spent more time with the young Heroes. And that could have been a place to really build her fandom.

31:38
Jmike
Yeah.

31:39
Case
JLA is. It's a heart. Like, I. I get it that Bendis was writing jla, but, like, it. That's a hard book to, like, sell that. Like, why that character matters that much.

31:50
Jmike
Keeper of the Teen Titans, like, you should do with Cyborg. Oh, how do we. What? That's crazy. Cyborg belongs to Teen Titans. Who would have thought?

31:59
Case
I mean, Cyborg can be a member of the Justice League. It's just weird. When he's a founding member.

32:07
Jmike
He could be reserved on the jail. I. Would. I would have definitely kept her on the Titans for as long as possible and let. Let her build camaraderie with them.

32:20
Case
Yeah.

32:21
Jmike
Or.

32:21
Case
Or Young Justice. Like, either one is good in that front because, like, again, she's a cool character from a design standpoint. I like her overall look. She's got this, like, braided hair in the comic. She's got, like, really long braids in. In the show. And the sort of, like, black and gold, like, armor design and then this, like, very golden energy effect.

32:42
Jmike
Yeah.

32:42
Case
Which is all very cool.

32:43
Jmike
Looks really cool. Like. Like. Like Case said earlier, like, the. The book is drawn magnificently.

32:48
Case
I know. It's so.

32:49
Jmike
It looks gorgeous. Like, in terms, like, the.

32:53
Case
And the panels are interesting. Like, the. They do, like, these, like, big, wide screens with, like, multiple, like, very wide panels, like, to show, like, the passage of time for things. And they have, like, a lot of, like, really, like, really well done digital art.

33:09
Jmike
It's really pretty.

33:10
Case
Yeah. I like the way D. As a Thanagarian has, like, these cool yellow eyes to his design.

33:16
Jmike
Yeah.

33:19
Case
I. I like pretty. Most. Most of the energy effects in this book look really good. I think that the main baddie dude has a really cool look to him with, like, the smoking mouth and everything. Yeah.

33:33
Jmike
Yeah. I was like, is that his hair? No, that's him breathing fire. Oh, yeah. Like, that's pretty cool.

33:39
Case
The art is top tier.

33:43
Jmike
Like, the invasion point where her mom comes through and they're chasing her through. I was like, that looks awesome. When Dee and the dad go to the football field and they come bursting through the sky, I was like, oh. Oh, that looks pretty freaking cool. Looks pretty freaking cool. Yeah, yeah. The story is. It is rad. It could be trimmed down quite a bit.

34:04
Case
It's pretty basic, and it's not doing a lot of things. Like, it's a lot of twists that are sort of like, you think this, but it's actually this. Kind of. Kind of Twist that doesn't actually change, like, the bigger scope of it all, because she's still ultimately a multiversal orphan who on this Earth has powers and abilities far beyond the Mortal Men. Like, she's very much doing a Superman reflect. It's just that it's like, oh, well. But one of her adopted parents is actually an alien hiding out on Earth, and she's got a dude who she just knows who is pretending to be a mechanic who's also an alien hiding.

34:37
Jmike
Out on Earth and an extra bodyguard watching over her from a distance.

34:43
Case
Right? Yes. Which is why I find D just, like, this weird misdirect in the comic. Like, he's just there to waste her fucking time.

34:54
Jmike
He's not wasting our time, Case. He's there for. He's there. He's there for a specific reason they really haven't given us yet. I don't know. I haven't read the second arc yet, so maybe he gets. Has a purpose there.

35:08
Case
Well, either way, like, the opening arc for this is doing this decompressed Superman story, which, you know, to be fair, like, Bendis is best known for giving us decompressed Spider Man. So, like, it's not a terrible choice there. And like I said, the book looks great. The character has potential, but I think it was really hurt by the show because we should start talking about the show because Jesus Christ, what a piece of shit.

35:36
Jmike
He was hurt by this show.

35:40
Case
For.

35:40
Jmike
Oh, my gosh.

35:44
Case
I think that the show getting canceled, as hardcore as it did, especially after it was, like, kind of weird that it just came out as a thing. Like, it is clear that this comic book was greenlit with the. With the. The pilot for the show being greenlit before the. Before the comic came out and before there was any fan response. Like, this was clearly a property that was developed behind the scenes beforehand. And, like, it makes me think of, like, 30 days of night or whatever the comic is that became the movie of the same name where the comic was created just so that there was a comic for the movie to be an adaptation of.

36:24
Jmike
That's so dumb.

36:25
Case
Well, and. Or. Or the way it used to work with books all the time. Like Vertigo. Like Vertigo. Classic Hitchcock movie based on a book that was written specifically to be. Because it. It was basically written as a spiritual sequel to a book that Hitchcock wanted to make the movie of, but that rights got, like, handed off to someone else, and at the time, they couldn't just make movie. It had to be an adaptation of a book, because that's how they did Movies back then. No, specifically, it was like a window of, like, 10 years where, like, adaptations were all the rage for their dramas as opposed to, like, original ip. Not that we don't know anything about that.

37:00
Jmike
What are you talking about, Case?

37:02
Case
Anyway, yeah, no, so this show did horribly, and I think that helped kill the character in people's pop culture or pop culture consciousness, because. Wow. Wow. All right, I'm bringing up the notes. So I, I, I, I swear that last night was not my first time watching it, but I'm, I must, listeners.

37:23
Jmike
I must, I must say this, that Case was watching this again and he's live texting me while he's watching this. Mind you, I'm rolling on the ground because I was dying to see what he was going to say about this show. So I'm cackling while I'm reading this stuff.

37:38
Case
Yeah, so it opens. I don't mind the party scene. I think that overall is fine. It's just it. But it introduces this weird detail of the show that I can't wrap my head around, which is. Is Superman a real thing?

37:52
Jmike
Yeah, that was like, they were like, oh, but he's not real. I'm like, wait, everybody knows about Superman? But, like, this kid's like, but he's not real. I was like, wait a second.

38:02
Case
And this creates so many things. So, first of all, so it's revealed that Superman is real and that's a thing about the show. But it's a weird world where, like, Superman isn't, like, a big public figure, which is weird. But in this reality, Naomi has, quote, unquote, the third largest Superman site in the world, which apparently makes her popular in high school, which is strange because that doesn't make sense. And also, why would this random teenage girl have the third largest Superman site in the world?

38:37
Jmike
Like, no one knows.

38:39
Case
I'm not even, I'm not even being, like, a gatekeepy, like, fake fan kind of thing here. Like, she's, like, fucking 16 in this. Like, how has she amassed that amount of, like, Superman fandom?

38:51
Jmike
How does she get the footage and all this other stuff? Is she, like, paying people online to get the footage from them? Because, once again, she lives in Oregon, like, the middle of nowhere Oregon, where apparently she lives next to a military base, which they. Oh, yeah, by the way, they kind of switched up to her parents. Like, her dad's a military captain or whatever. Her mom's a lawyer in the show, which kind of, like, throws off a lot of the feeling for It. I guess.

39:17
Case
Yeah. I mean, they keep, like, the. Yeah. So they. They remove the, like, the double fake out of the parents also being aliens. If I'm not or if I understand how the. How the show goes. And it's just D. And D gets upgraded to being a full on mentor character for her.

39:36
Jmike
Yeah.

39:39
Case
Man, let's talk about D for a second. I fucking hate this D.

39:46
Jmike
You weren't a fan of him to begin with, but now you're like, I hate him.

39:49
Case
Like, D, the character in the comic book is at least, like, vaguely interesting looking. D, the character on the show, they, like, dress head toe in, like, leather and.

39:58
Jmike
Yeah.

39:59
Case
Which I have to assume is a way for them to save money on makeup of, like, putting all the fake tattoos on him. Like, the actor is, like, a totally weird choice. Not that's the end of the world on this one, but. But he just doesn't like, really seem that interesting. And then in the pilot, he's like, you're just not asking the right questions. You're just not asking the right questions. What is the question, Naomi?

40:19
Jmike
What is the question you'd ask?

40:23
Case
I made so many Simpsons allusions in my head because this felt like, so why did I have the bowl, Bart? Why did I have the bowl?

40:31
Jmike
What's the right question? You just aren't asking the right questions.

40:34
Case
Right. So that's a bunch of lame that's going on in there. I appreciate that the comic actually had the restraint of having a Thanagarian not have wings. The fact that they had to put it in the TV show. I get it. It's one of the few things that you're going to be able to.

40:50
Jmike
The gat. Oh, snap. Moments where he reveals, my wings are out.

40:54
Case
Yeah, but, you know, like, the Anagarians, like, the wings are artificial. They just, like, put them on. Like, they don't have wings.

41:04
Jmike
I was like, oh, okay. And she's like, oh, my gosh, what's happening? Once again. Like, I was laughing when I first saw this, because when I watched this, I think it was, like, three years ago I first watched this. Yeah. I think it was because I had to watch it on the CW app first. And I just went ahead and bought the first episode off of Google Play because the CD of the app was trash. And so I was laughing because, like, in the first I wanted to say 10 minutes of the show, like, half of the school is in love with Naomi. Like, everyone's kind of, like, fawning over her.

41:35
Case
The whole goddamn class is in love with Naomi. She's, like, the most popular girl in school. Like, which is not by itself that bad. Like, we're.

41:43
Jmike
We're.

41:44
Case
We have a fierce debate online about her being something of a. I hate to use this expression, but everyone has used this expression, and most of the people have prefaced with I hate to use this expression. She's a Mary Sue.

41:57
Jmike
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can see where they're coming from that.

42:00
Case
Yeah.

42:00
Jmike
Because they literally make her perfect in this show. She is the best at everything, including skateboarding. Yeah. I was like, why did they add the skateboarding thing? I mean, cool thing for the show, I guess, but, like, it was kind of unnecessary. But, like, it's. It kind of like, it's. They do it in the weirdest moments because at one point in the show, she's supposed to be sneaking around at night, taking pictures of all the cameras, and she's very loudly skateboarding around the town square at midnight. So, like, if anybody was, like, curious as to what she's doing, she's not really hiding. Are you being quiet or stealthy?

42:36
Case
Yeah.

42:36
Jmike
Yeah. Like, the entire school is in love with this chick.

42:39
Case
Yeah.

42:39
Jmike
Like, he's perfect.

42:41
Case
Like, you complain about that to me, and I. My response to you was, I can see that. And I'm only 10 minutes in. Like, she's like. She is helping everyone with their studies. She's, like, a perfect student. She's, like, extremely popular. She is on the debate team and, like, crushing it. She runs the third most popular Superman site in the world, and that is a thing that they boast about all the time. In a world where. Again, in a world where Superman exists, I can see that you would be cool about that kind of thing. Like, in a world where Superman doesn't exist, you're me, and I can tell you I was not cool in high school.

43:24
Jmike
You're a cool person, Case. I think you're cool.

43:27
Case
Aw, thanks. But, like.

43:33
Jmike
He didn't have to say it like that.

43:36
Case
Well, and also the fact that she's so good at having a Superman site and is able just to do that in addition to all her other stuff, I'm like, it's so much fucking work.

43:46
Jmike
Everyone's like, oh, Naomi knows everything. She knows everything about Superman. That guy who totally doesn't exist in this world. Is this still part of the Arrowverse? Was my next question.

43:57
Case
And so that's even more of the weirdness of it. Like, it.

44:03
Jmike
The. The.

44:04
Case
The show doesn't seem to exist in any of the. The universes of the Arrowverse. God, it Would be. It would be great if this was a Superman and Lois adjacent show. Like, that's already a weird. A weird universe where Superman's the only guy. Like, you could just have this. Be like, a little quiet part of that and just be like, superman's only. Only one Superman.

44:26
Jmike
I was like, wait, so, like, is he the only superhero out there? Because I was. I always took for granted that this was part of the Arrowverse. So I was like, it's kind of weird that no one else is mentioned. Like, they don't mention the Flash or Green Arrow or anybody else.

44:43
Case
It's. It's like in Power Rangers when, like, a random civilian will be like, monsters aren't real, but it'll be like the 17th episode of the season and monsters have been attacking literally every episode.

44:55
Jmike
Yeah. It's, like, interesting. How did you guys never notice this before?

45:02
Case
But. All right, so they do the party scene. We establish some of this stuff. Then we have the opening credits. My God, this is some cheap ass opening credits. Like, looks way worse than, like, most of the CW credits that I. That I've ever seen. Like, it. It took me back to my secret identity, the Jerry o' Connell show that he did before Sliders.

45:32
Jmike
I was like, man, they really didn't put a lot into this. But then it's Avery DuVernay's show, so it was like. I'm very confused what the thought process was behind a lot of the creative choices they made here. Yeah.

45:53
Case
There is one thing that I want to shout out as being really good. So they have this whole thing where, like, Naomi rushes out to find out what's going on when she gets a text message that something related to Superman is happening outside. And everyone's fine with it because Naomi's so goddamn cool and so responsible that if she's rushing out off because of something important, it must. Something important. We trust her. She. So she rushes off. She misses it because she gets a headache and passes out. And then she collects footage of. From people in it and so forth. And what she does that's really cool is she gets every single camera's footage from the time and then uses a computer to, like, sort them algorithmically by, like, timestamps.

46:40
Jmike
Yeah.

46:41
Case
And then stitches together the video of the fight that Superman has from, like, all these different camera feeds. And that looks really cool. Like, there's lots of different. You know, it cuts to lots of different people having reactions. It's very found footagey, but, like, in a way that's, like, actually really impressive. I like it's. A way to, like, cheapen out the budget on the fight. But it. It certainly, like, looked pretty good and was paced really well. Like, I just in general, like, that sequence blew me away.

47:12
Jmike
Yeah, yeah. Because she got her ex boyfriend to help her piece all that together. And I was like, well, okay, cool. This is. Okay, Maybe, maybe we're gonna get somewhere with this now. We didn't get anywhere with that. No.

47:26
Case
Well, they do actually get somewhere, but the show doesn't get anywhere. That was this, like, one highlight in this episode. And I needed to shout it out because it's really good. It's really good in the violet. Like, it's incredibly clever.

47:39
Jmike
Well, I. When I watched it, I was like, oh, wow, okay, cool. Because in the comic, like, Superman is there fighting Mongol. And I was like, oh, are we gonna, like, introduce like, other, like, Superman characters in this show? Are we gonna get, like a glimpse of Mongrel in like a. In like a TV show here? No, no. I cursed that. And I was like, my hopes shattered on the rocks.

48:08
Case
Well, and this is where one of my hopes for the show, which was a successful depiction of Dee, gets shattered, because this is where we introduce him. I have so many questions about what happens. They see him in the footage and they're like, that's Dee from the tattoo parlor. And that's all they say. And I'm just like, for one thing, again, he looks terrible. He's just in this tight leather jacket outfit kind of thing. And it just looks very early 2000s X Men.

48:45
Jmike
Yeah, it does. Yes. Yeah, it does. I never thought about that. Yeah, there you go. But the weird part about the whole scene is that they actually have Superman acknowledging him. So I was like, wait. Because Superman kind of like waves him off and like flies off. And I was like, wait, how does Superman know this dude? That's where I was more focused on. I was like, how does Superman know this guy?

49:08
Case
I mean, also. Also a part of this, but they're just like, that's D from the tattoo parlor. And these are kids in high school. They. There is no reason that they should know on a first name basis the guy from a tattoo parlor. And the tattoo parlor is not called Ds.

49:25
Jmike
No, it is not.

49:28
Case
So, like, it would make more sense if it's a mechanic. You're more likely to have had a reason to have brought it over to the mechanic or to have someone said, I'll have D take a look at my car or something to that effect. The tattoo parlor guy, which I can only Imagine is because, like, well, the one characteristic of the character from the comic book, aside from the fact that he's an alien, is he had a bunch of tattoos.

49:52
Jmike
Well, that he's like eight feet tall.

49:53
Case
Oh, yeah, exactly. Which they don't go for. And there's like, it's like not a shrimp, but like not, you know, he's just not a particularly large guy.

50:01
Jmike
No. Yeah, the tattoo guy. I was like, okay, once again, you see the inspirations from the comic in here. Like they were working with something, but like, they just kind of went off the wall with it in complete different direction.

50:20
Case
It's like, I have to wonder, considering how quickly this got made, if they were going off of notes for what ultimately became the scripts for the comics as opposed to going off of the full comic scripts themselves, let alone the actual drawings. I don't know, because the timetable for this is like, again, they must have had the pilot greenlit before the first issue dropped because it's only like a year later that the show's being made. It's just wild. So I wonder if they had no way of knowing what Dee in the comic books looked like. And they just had a note that he has a lot of tattoos and they're like, how do we make this simpler? Which I don't know how the tattoo parlor is simpler than the mechanic.

51:09
Jmike
No. Mechanic, No.

51:12
Case
I mean, I guess if you're just trying to film on like an office on your like backlot, like. Yeah, you just need to put in like a chair to like it for the tattoo part as opposed to like a bunch of cars.

51:24
Jmike
Here's the thing, though, here's the thing. You know, they could have given him the car shop that Zawarudo or Zabunda, whatever his name is, had.

51:36
Case
That's true, that's true. And that's because he has the car.

51:39
Jmike
Shop and D has a tattoo shop.

51:41
Case
Yes. And that's another detail which is the Zombatu character, a fake out villain, is my understanding, having done some more research into how the full season goes. So they're going off of your assumption. And this is another spot where I'm like, well, but if he's the big bad in the comic, it's really weird that he's not the big bad in the show, that he's actually an ally.

52:07
Jmike
Yeah. So I think I was like, what is happening in this show? I have so many questions and I feel like I'm never ever going to get the answers.

52:16
Case
No. And nor should you at this point? Because the show not only was canceled, I really hope that no one wants to revive this because this is not very good. And I.

52:25
Jmike
It needs a complete redo.

52:27
Case
But I don't even think, like, Naomi needs to not be a live action show. Like, what they need to do is they need to do animated show that does something visually interesting in a way that makes. That is evocative of Campbell's art in the comic.

52:43
Jmike
That would be amazing if they wanted.

52:45
Case
To do something like they needed. They need like a static shock.

52:47
Jmike
Like I was going to say my adventures type thing.

52:50
Case
Well, yes, but. But specifically thinking about the McDuffie part of it, like, where, like, static shock did a lot to make that character, like, live on. Like, static is the character people know if they know anything about Milestone Comics. And that's because he is the one character who had a cartoon and has been able to cross over and really transition into the mainstream DC in a way that's been really effective. Naomi just needs a show where she can just be an up and coming teen superhero. I think that the show decompresses a comic that was already too decompressed. Because think about Smallville. Smallville, I think, is a really apt comparison show because it's a high school character with ridiculous superpowers and a weird secret, because it's a decompressed Superman show. But we get most of the power stuff.

53:47
Case
We get the iconic shot of Clark with the S painted on him and the kryptonite necklace. We get a lot of things that are like Superman iconography in the first episode. Th. This show doesn't. Does. Doesn't pay it off well. Like, the. The only thing that pays it off is that, like, d. Like, reveals his Thanagarian wings at the end of the. The episode. And like, that's the only, like, hook if you're here for, like, superhero stuck.

54:21
Jmike
Because, like, there are. Because then you have that, like, you also have the confrontation in the woods where she picks up the disc, right?

54:29
Case
Yeah. Which is like, clearly just like a spray painted, like, weight.

54:34
Jmike
Yeah. I was like, oh, my God. I saw it. I remember when I saw it the first time. I was like, okay, she gonna find the cube. And I was like, is that a weight? They really just pointed, like, put, like, runes on a weight, spray paint it and called it a day. I was like, I hate this. I hate this so much.

54:55
Case
Oh, we didn't talk about the debate, the actual debate she had, which is terrible. Her debate opponent has this, like, very succinct, like, I'm going to, like, argue this position. And then, like, Naomi does this, like, long monologue that would.

55:10
Jmike
About working together or something, which would.

55:13
Case
Certainly be, like, called for time. It's like, it's like a solid minute and the other person has, like, 10 seconds, I think.

55:22
Jmike
Yeah, they said they were given, like, how much time were they given for the. The practice thing? Because I think the teacher said they were only going to have a certain amount of seconds per answer. If I remember correctly, it's when she runs out to go see Superman there. He's like, going over the rules and she kind of ignores him and flies out.

55:39
Case
Well, and that would also be another thing, which is that, like, if everyone cheers, which, like, if she got in trouble for, like, doing that kind of a monologue, that would be funny, like, because she does this whole, like, we're going to make the world a better place because we have the ability to choose who we are. And it's not just our genes, which, like, Christ, man. So earlier in my notes to you, I wrote, oh, my God, she's poochie. Because she is exactly that word. Like, we're going to just make a character who is just good at everything, including fucking skateboarding, just for the sake of being, like, as cool as possible.

56:16
Jmike
Oh, my gosh. And they do like the whole. I was laughing. I was watching this. I was like, she doesn't find out about her parents or anything. Like, it goes in the comics. The comics. She doesn't like, she's not. She doesn't innately have her abilities. Her abilities are kind of unlocked when she finds the MacGuffin. In the book. Here they do, like, the whole Superman Returns Jonathan Kent thing where he has, like, the asthma. He's really. He's kind of sickly and frail. But then, like, when Lois is in trouble on the ship, he. His powers, like, flare up. He throws the piano at the guy. Here she has, like, the asthma attack while she's running to go see Superman. And that's kind of like her power is kind of awakening.

56:57
Jmike
And so, like, then, like, she doesn't have to, like, wear her glasses anymore because, like, she can see everything now.

57:03
Case
Oh, yeah, there was a telescopic X ray vision scene. Yeah, that I. That surprised me because they just sort of happens. And then my understanding is that there's like a later episode where it, like, unlocks for her again, which is just sort of like one of those like, oh, you guys weren't really paying attention to, like, what powers you gave her at any given time.

57:21
Jmike
Nope. So I was like, oh, okay. They're just kind of letting her, like, oh, I don't need these anymore. I'm becoming even more perfect.

57:30
Case
Yeah. I want to call out the fact that she has this big group of friends in this TV show that.

57:36
Jmike
First of all, Case, they aren't friends. Okay. Okay. They are admirers.

57:40
Case
Okay. Yes. They are admirers for her. And they don't really all like each other.

57:43
Jmike
Yeah.

57:44
Case
But yes. Including because she's bi. Lesbian comic girl.

57:49
Jmike
Yeah.

57:50
Case
Store owner or store worker. So, like, literally everyone wants to get Naomi's pants.

57:55
Jmike
Yeah. Like, everybody. Everyone within, like, Case. Case wasn't lying within, like, the first seven minutes of the show. There's at least seven people who are trying to hook up with Naomi, and.

58:07
Case
Four of them are. Four of them are, like, serious contenders.

58:10
Jmike
Yeah. And, like, her parents have, like, a. Like, a conversation with her at the dinner table about it, and her dad's like, oh, you're dating more than one person. And she's like, I'm not dating people. They're just like, my friends. I like everybody. Her dad's like, huh. Right.

58:27
Case
Which, you know, could be a very mature time to have a conversation about being poly. But that is not the conversation that they were having here. She's just too cool to have any serious boyfriend at the moment or girlfriend.

58:40
Jmike
She just. She likes being appreciated by everybody.

58:43
Case
Yes. But. So she assembles her admirers to, like, break into Zumbato's car dealership. Car dealership. For. For some fucking reason.

58:53
Jmike
It doesn't make any sense. Like, why is he there already?

58:58
Case
Well, my bigger point is that she has this giant posse, and they all, like, the majority. Like, one is on lookout, and the rest of them all go inside, as opposed to having, like, five people on lookout and two people to break inside. Because they need the girl. Lord is right from the comic shop. Like, they need her because she's able to pick locks. Cool. But. But everyone else who comes in is just, like, an extra flashlight to be seen from outside.

59:24
Jmike
Yeah.

59:25
Case
So I messaged you. That's a big group for some B and E. Yeah.

59:29
Jmike
Like, I was like. I was like, wow, they really like Ocean's Eleven or they tried to Ocean's Eleven this with, like, the worst way possible because they're all making so much noise.

59:42
Case
Yeah. It's like, if you tried to have everyone in the party be rusty.

59:48
Jmike
Yeah.

59:49
Case
And have no one else to do any of the other jobs.

59:52
Jmike
Like you said, they're not even trying to be sneaky. There's, like, flashlights out Opening every door, not closing anything, quietly swinging doors open, going through paper, slamming doors. And they have, like a little unicorn, like, walkie talkies.

01:00:04
Case
Yeah, I thought that was a cute detail. Actually. It was not a plausible detail, but it was cute enough like that.

01:00:11
Jmike
Yeah. Where are they going to get, like, high tech, like, walkie talkies? And the guy was like, my little sister had these. And I was like, oh, okay.

01:00:19
Case
Yeah. Now, that said, not that, like, you actually really need walkies for that kind of situation. In fact, I would say walkies are probably more easily cracked into since, like, those frequencies are going to be, especially on, like, a kids one, like a professional grade one should be able to, like, lock onto. And so, like, theoretically, a cop going by should be able to, like, find their. Their skit, like, their signal, and be like, huh, what is this conversation going on versus just fucking texting each other.

01:00:45
Jmike
We've been great. They all. All have phones.

01:00:47
Case
Yeah.

01:00:48
Jmike
Like, one, two people could have walkie talkies.

01:00:52
Case
That was the other thing. The fact that they had that many walkie talkies surprised me. I was like, that kid set probably had four at most.

01:01:00
Jmike
Like, oh, okay, cool. Because you don't need that many people.

01:01:07
Case
Or like I said, certainly not all of them on the inside.

01:01:10
Jmike
And like, when Zimbabwe shows up, they're like, oh, crap, he's here. And they kind of like, wait till he passes by in the car and they all sprint out. And, like, if he only looked back in his rearview mirror once.

01:01:24
Case
Well, then I. I found this line funny because they, like, shadow split up into different directions and they all just run the same way.

01:01:31
Jmike
Yeah. Scatter.

01:01:38
Case
It. Anyway, so they. Christ. So they go back and confront D again. And this is when he actually reveals that he has, like, the Thanagarian wings. And he's like, what is the right question, Naomi? And she goes like, who am I?

01:01:55
Jmike
Ada Black. Right. I was like, oh, this is so bad.

01:02:01
Case
Yeah, it's. I don't know how this show got made. Like, if this was the pilot, like, it must have been like a full season greenlit. And not like a pilot, because this. This is not a good episode.

01:02:11
Jmike
It's not a good series. There's, like I said, you can see where they were getting inspiration from for certain things from the comic. But then they kind of went loosey goosey with everything else. They're like, well, what if we did this? What if we made them all military instead of having them be weird alien people? What if we had 18 people in love with her? What if. What if we made her the Best at everything. What if. What if we, like. I appreciate the fact that she was just like a normal kid with, like, lots of flaws and everything going on, because he's just a normal teenager going about her normal life and rural Oregon. I was like, that's a cool little feature there. And here they just kind of took away that. That. That aspect from her and made her the best.

01:03:01
Case
Yeah, yeah.

01:03:03
Jmike
I also like the fact that her dad was an alien.

01:03:07
Case
Yeah. I think when. When looking at this, like, looking at the comic versus the show, like, the comic is so strong on its art and kind of being carried by that. And the show doesn't have anything that's equivalent to the art. And it has a couple of weird quirks. The desire to make Naomi not just overpowered and not just good at everything, but the focal point for everything is kind of frustrating. The way they structure. A lot of the scenes in the comic are testimonials from people. And then you catch up with Naomi, who was the person who missed it, and she's disappointed and so forth. Instead, we're with Naomi all the time.

01:03:51
Case
And so it's only afterwards when she's getting the interviews that we, like, see other people's perspectives of it, which means that what was already kind of shorthand in a very, like, in this very decompressed aspect is decompressed even further.

01:04:09
Jmike
Also, they took away, like, the little moments with her and her best friend, which I thought was, like, some of the stronger parts of the book with her, like, both them geeking out about certain things and, like, are gossiping about certain other things they have found out. They don't really do that here. They just give her more time with her admirers.

01:04:32
Case
Right. Who are all created for the show.

01:04:34
Jmike
Yeah. So you never really build up that relationship with her closest friend. Also, I want to point out that Zimbardo was always like. There was this one shot where she's sneaking around with her skateboard at 2 o' clock in the morning in the town square, taking pictures, and she hears someone in an alleyway. And she. She looks down the alleyway and there's no one there. But Zimbabwe is supposed to be there in the shadows. And then she's like, hello? And she looks down there, and then she's like, I don't. Whatever. She doesn't see anybody. And she turns away, and he's apparently was there the entire time and just walks from where she was staring directly at.

01:05:18
Case
Out of the shadows.

01:05:19
Jmike
Yeah, out of the shadows. And I was like, what is this? I was like, what is this?

01:05:24
Case
Yeah, it is a poorly shot, not very interesting superhero story that came out on the tail end of the CW superhero run where, you know, it's one thing if this had come out in like the mid-90s or something when there was like no superhero fiction on tv.

01:05:46
Jmike
I don't even know. It's sort of worked in the 90s.

01:05:48
Case
I don't know. I mean, it looks like it's from.

01:05:50
Jmike
The 90s, yeah, I'll give you that.

01:05:55
Case
But yeah, this is a poor conversion of a thing that was not the most stellar of products to begin with and whiffs it on the things that should have been the slow pitches. Like again, the comic is written with a very cinematic style. It could have very easily been shot for shot and it would have looked pretty good and been a fairly effective and slow paced got. I mean, look, a comic script translating to a TV show script, I think roughly breaks down to. It's probably four issues per for a 40 minute TV, you know, for like an hour long, quote unquote TV show that, you know, runs like 48 minutes or whatever.

01:06:38
Case
Because I remember back in the day when there would be like the spin off comic books, like for example, the X Men animated series had a spin off comic book or not a spin off comic book had a comic book that adapted the issues or like the episodes into issues, which friend of the show Chris Bautista used to be an artist on. Like that was roughly one episode of the animated series was two issues of the comic. And so going off of that math, then if this was an hour long show, which again goes down to like 48, so that'd be about four issues translates into one episode.

01:07:10
Case
And so I think with like a little bit of futzing, you could have split this up into like the first three issues could have been the pilot and then the next three would have been the like the next issue after that or the next episode after that, maybe like a filler episode or something in there. Let me see what the.

01:07:27
Jmike
I don't know, I feel like you were right when this could have been. Could have literally been a shot for shot of the comic.

01:07:33
Case
Right? But I'm saying if you're doing it shot for shot, like you. You could get through the first three.

01:07:40
Jmike
Issues in the first episode.

01:07:43
Case
In the first episode and you would get through. Let's see, where. Where does the parent stuff come in?

01:07:51
Jmike
The parent stuff comes in at four, I think. At four.

01:07:54
Case
Yeah. So the conclusion of the first issue would be the dad revealing that he's an alien. Or the conclusion of the pilot would be the dad revealing that he's an alien. And then you would open the second episode with then the blitz of Naomi getting her stuff. The revelation about Zimbardo. Yeah, I mean you could do. Yeah, you would get two episodes out of that.

01:08:20
Jmike
Now this could have been a limited run mini series for a new character.

01:08:25
Case
That's the thing that is really weird when we get into why they made this into a TV show. It's not like they have a lot of stuff to draw on. Like the decompressed opening arc of this book is not. Is barely enough for the pilot because it was barely enough for a single issue of a comic book that somehow got turned into six issues. So it's just a weird angle because. Well, what are you going to do to fill it out? I was thinking a lot of the TV show or like the Hulu show version of Runaways.

01:08:58
Case
Because I was thinking about that one where that's another young, a YA kind of focused book that had a bit of decompression going on in the storytelling as it was presented as a comic book, but was carried by a lot of good art and a lot of good dialogue and good character stuff. And then has a TV show that I don't think is particularly good. Now it's a show that I watched three seasons of, but it's not a particularly good TV show.

01:09:25
Jmike
Guilty pleasure for you.

01:09:29
Case
I kept. Because I liked the comic a lot, I stuck with it. But that was another kind of low budget show that didn't look that good for what they were trying to do. Based on a work that was mostly carried by good art. And that at least has the benefit of. There was a lot of material. Like for one thing, it had a large cast that had each of their own interesting backstories to sort of like mine. But there were arcs. There were a lot of arcs to kind of draw on. Naomi didn't have a lot of arcs. Naomi is not to compare it again with Smallville. Smallville could do any story from Superboy's past. Plus the whole setup for the show creates the monster of the week format that they had access to for the first couple seasons.

01:10:15
Case
They could do a lot of different kinds of Superman stories building towards, like eventually he becomes Superman.

01:10:22
Jmike
Right.

01:10:23
Case
Naomi, they had fucking nothing like they had. They had the one story of her origin which again is covered. It's like effectively is the same as the first page of Action Comics Number one.

01:10:37
Jmike
True. Yeah.

01:10:39
Case
Now, like, we get a lot more detail and it's better told Here than in the first page of Action Comics number one. But it is doing the Superman story in just a very decompressed way. So as a show, it just doesn't make sense. It's like, well, what? Like what. What stories are you going to fall back on? Like, what are you going to do with the rest of your stories? Like, with the rest of your episodes?

01:11:02
Jmike
Like, you're going to create random BS to put in their case.

01:11:05
Case
Exactly.

01:11:08
Jmike
Give her 30 admirers and call it a.

01:11:15
Case
Going back to the Superman movie with, like, his super harem. Yeah, it's that. But for Naomi.

01:11:27
Jmike
They really were like, we don't really have that much information. Like you said. You're just like, what do we do now? How about we try this? How about we try this too? And it all worked out poorly. Very, very poorly. Like you said. I guess there wasn't a lot of planning that went for this. They're like, hey, this is a great idea. We should totally make a series about this. And everyone was like, yeah, that'll work. That'll totally work. When did the comic come out? A year ago.

01:12:03
Case
And it's one that was done. It wasn't even an ongoing series because, like, it was broken up into season one and season two.

01:12:11
Jmike
Yeah.

01:12:12
Case
Like, it's just there again. There's just so little story, and they have nothing to really, like, pull from. But that said, I do think that this is worth us talking on the show because I do think that, like, both the show and the comic is doing a Superman story. Very, very muddled, particularly in the case of the show. But they're doing a Superman story and finding ways to have twists on it and so forth and sort of space it out, which is kind of cool. I am overall here for a. Like, we're going to really slow play the reveal of our super character and especially, like, live action media. I said the comic probably should have gotten to the point faster.

01:12:58
Jmike
Yeah.

01:12:59
Case
But you know that, like, it's certainly a worthwhile thought. Like, as an experiment, like, I'm happy that it exists and it's enjoyable. When you read it all in the trade. Naomi as a character, I think she's a little too perfect, even in the comic book at everything, which is kind of a shame because you can write a character like that, but it does present, like, certain challenges that you have to be very creative to work around.

01:13:27
Jmike
Yeah.

01:13:28
Case
And, like, ways that you can get around that is, like, you can have them have bad luck. You can have them be clumsy. You can have them have to be Just, like, emotionally sensitive and aware of the impact that they have on their peers. And I don't even feel like Naomi's that especially not in the show. She's not a particularly good person. Even though they kind of write her as if she's supposed to be the moral paragon that everyone looks up to.

01:13:54
Jmike
Yeah, I always laugh is when, like, she figures out that she can see without her glasses. And, like, after the debate, like, her friends, like, going on, like, trying to ask her questions, everything, and she completely zones her out, and it's like she's hyper focused on what the person had on that little note. And her friends, like, having this whole conversation with her, like, asking her questions, all this. And she's like, oh, my gosh, I can. I can see where that paper says. And she's completely blowing her friend off.

01:14:23
Case
Yeah, I felt bad about the. The Annabelle character in the show. Yeah, I felt bad about her. I felt bad for the actress because I have to imagine, like, that she's probably like a. Like a lovely person in the real world, but by, like, TV standards, she's like, the dumpy friend. Yeah. And I was like, oh, man, that's just a tough slot to be in right there, because you're playing on the cw where most of the people are models who are not necessarily best actors. But she's pretty good. I liked her. I liked her as a character. And the character I like, Annabelle, the one character who's both in the comics and in the show I rather enjoyed. And they don't develop her enough.

01:15:11
Jmike
No, they don't. They just kind of, like, leave her behind, which kind of sucks because, like, she's a pretty cool, quirky character for Naomi in the book. And they have this really cool relationship where they kind of, like, geek out about all that stuff together, and then it just doesn't go anywhere in this show at all. Once again, nothing doesn't really go in that show.

01:15:41
Case
Yeah. But, yeah, like, Naomi, I would like to see more of her in. In modern D.C. stuff. Like, I think that she's got a good look with a cool power signature. And those are both useful things for crowd shots. I think that she has the potential to be, you know, at the very least, like, an interesting player in the bigger kind of competitive scenes when they. When they need a lot of, like, heavy hitters. And the fact that she's so young and inexperienced is, like, a nice detail to sort of, like, allow her to not be, like, overpowering for anyone. She come, you know, comes face to face with.

01:16:19
Jmike
I Just, you said they put her in too much stuff, too fast, too. Too quick and too fast, and she didn't really get a chance to grow into anything. Yeah, that's what sucks most about that as a whole. Because, like, she. If she was able to, like, grow into and learn how to, like, be a part of the teamwork and be a part of her own little. Her own little group for a while, she would probably be a much easier character to latch on to and for people to grow with. But they were like, here you go. Here's new character. Enjoy. And kind of threw her out there before she was ready. So. And like you said, along with the show doing so poorly. Right. Like, she kind of, like, disappeared.

01:17:02
Case
Yeah. It definitely created a situation where she has to go. Her planet needs her to conclude the poochie reference.

01:17:11
Jmike
I must go. My planet needs me. But, yeah, it sucks. I like this character. It's a really fun little quirky character. And I was like, we should probably talk about this game. Yeah.

01:17:25
Case
Like, again, like, the comic is gorgeous. Like, if you're. And if you. It's all on the app. So if you're curious, like, if you're listening to us and you're wondering what the hell we're talking about, it's not a bad read. When you just, like, are reading the six issues of season one, it's a quick read. The fact that it's six issues is kind of frustrating, but the fact that you're not waiting between issues is pretty nice. And so, like, it is gorgeous. And you can see what we're talking about with this character. She doesn't do enough in the book, but, like, at least, you know, it's an interesting enough story, even though it should have not been this many issues. Christ.

01:18:05
Jmike
But I swear, I'm all for great pictures and a great art case. I don't know what you're talking about, sir. I'm all for more of this art.

01:18:13
Case
Style, more of this art, but I would love more of this art where, like, stuff is happening. There's too many, like, really gorgeous shots of people. Of people talking.

01:18:22
Jmike
Talking.

01:18:22
Case
Yeah. But that's to be expected with Brian Michael Benda stuff. And again, I don't dislike all of Brian Michael Benda's stuff. I have really enjoyed a lot of stuff he has worked on. It's just a situation where, like, once you can see the creator's bugs, it is very hard to unsee them. And this is a really big showpiece for a lot of those bugs.

01:18:44
Jmike
I like it for what it is. But, yeah, I had my curiosity, satiated and happy that I saw that trailer and was like, what is this show that's coming out? And I found the book and I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. Wish I'd never watched the show.

01:19:03
Case
Yeah.

01:19:03
Jmike
Like, I didn't need that show in my life.

01:19:05
Case
But I do feel worse having seen the show now because, like, we've been talking about this. About this for years. And so I read, like, a couple years ago the comic book in preparation for this episode and then had to reread it for now. The show was the reason why it took so long because I just dragged my heels on getting to that and having finally done so and now seen it technically twice. But I'm definitely sure that I fell asleep somewhere at the beginning of the show because last night was me taking good notes and remembering everything that was going on in this. Because it is a show that I feel. I feel worse for having watched.

01:19:48
Jmike
Yeah. There's a reason why I get canceled halfway through.

01:19:52
Case
Yep. So, J, Mike, you feeling good?

01:19:57
Jmike
Yeah, Yeah. I like. I enjoy the book for what it is. The show can never be seen again, but the book, it's nice, quick little read. Nice, quick little read. It's a little fun story. Nothing super, like, super. Gonna blow your socks off or anything, but if you like, for a quick read, it's good to go. Yeah.

01:20:20
Case
And like I said, it looks really good.

01:20:22
Jmike
Yeah. Yeah, it looks wonderful.

01:20:27
Case
Cool.

01:20:28
Jmike
But that show.

01:20:29
Case
No, it's. It's rough. It's. It's really rough. Yeah. Well, I think this is enough. Kicking a dead horse.

01:20:40
Jmike
Is it, though?

01:20:44
Case
Yeah. Yeah. Is there anything that we haven't discussed that you wanted to bring up about either the comic or the show?

01:20:52
Jmike
I think we covered everything. Yeah. I think we got it all. Give the comic a try. It's not gonna. Like I said, it's not gonna blow your socks up, but it's a funnel to read. Give it a try, see if you like it. It's a fun little almost Superman story.

01:21:05
Case
Yeah, very almost Superman. Like, shockingly so. I mean, like, it's very coded that way on purpose. And most of it's fun. It's funny that we're saying it's a quick story, but at the same time, it takes too long to do everything. It's just mind blowing that it's six issues. They are fast reads because nothing happens in any of them. Just reread issue four while were talking, and literally fucking. Nothing happens in the issue aside from someone explaining their backstory, which did not need like that to be the whole issue.

01:21:36
Jmike
The entire issue.

01:21:37
Case
Yeah. So you know, there's that.

01:21:40
Jmike
Maybe you need to do that to pass for this show.

01:21:45
Case
I need to stay away from this show because it makes my blood pressure boil.

01:21:52
Jmike
Maybe that's even more of a reason to do it.

01:21:56
Case
All right, so J Mike, where can people find you and follow you?

01:22:02
Jmike
Oh man. You can find me on bluesky on the bluesky at J5BLUESKY SOCIAL and you can also find me on the Discord where I have been more recently. So I've been checking in and commenting on things and liking things. K. So I did the thing.

01:22:20
Case
Yes you have. And the Discord is a great place to talk to either of us because we have really fun conversations going just all the time about comics, video games, literature, music. Like tons of great conversations going on. Sports for the people who care about sports. Like the Discord is a great place to go and you should check that out. If you are not currently a member of the CPOV Discord, you can find a link in the show notes or on our website, which is certainpow.com as for me, you can find me on most of the socials, Aiken, except for Instagram where I'm holding on for dear life for my aim screen name which is quetzalcoatl5q u e t Z A L C o a T L5. But yeah, like Blue sky is a great place to find me. Instagram's fine.

01:23:11
Case
I'm still on all the social medias and I still check my notifications. So those are all good places to check that out. We have some people to thank because we have a Patreon going now which has really helped us keep the show going. So we have people who joined at the executive producer tier that we have to thank and that includes Micah McCaw, Carter Hout, Sean Muir, Lee Greger, Memento Young, Logan Crowley, Joe Master, Piero, Casey and Nancy Aiken, Adam Sampter and Keith Lettinen. So those are all awesome people and if you want to be like them and support the show, you can join at any of the paid tiers on our Patreon and that would be really appreciated. That unlocks all kinds of stuff.

01:23:52
Case
And by all kinds of stuff I mean like previews of the show that we're putting out early episodes of the Superman analog videos and it also gets all the things at the free tier and above. You get access to two weekly essays that I write as well as additional content that we are coming up with on the fly. But the weekly essays are. One is about whatever I feel like and another one is tabletop role playing games related. So DD for the most part. But yeah, the Patreon is a great place to support us either at a free tier or at a paid tier. We would really love to have you. Yeah. In the meantime, you should check out some of the stuff we're working on.

01:24:29
Case
The show I'm going to plug today is my own show because we are launching Trade School, which will be out for several months by the time this episode actually drops, but has not actually dropped by the time we're recording this. Trade school is like SideQuest, which is the certain point of view video game podcast that, where a guest host talks about a video game. Trade School is that. But for comic books, where a guest host comes on and for five to 15 minutes talks about a trade paperback comic that they love and why they have warm feelings about it. And that can because of the story or it can because of things that happen in their lives. But. But either way, it's a really big celebration of comics and like, why they mean something to us. So. So check out Trade School.

01:25:15
Case
It's on its own RSS feed, so its own podcast feed, but it's on the same YouTube feed as this. So if you're watching this on YouTube right now, it's just another playlist on. On the same feed. So check that out. It's. It's a really exciting project that I'm really happy to have so many people submitting stuff at this point. We. We've got the first 15 episodes in the can. It's a really exciting project that's getting a lot of good attention and it hasn't even launched yet. So I'm excited to see where it's at when this episode actually drops. Otherwise, you should check out some of the new shows that join Certain Point of View. We had Long Live the Legion and we have issues. Both formally joined the network, so those are good things to check out.

01:26:00
Case
We talked about the socials, we talked about the website. I think that covers everything. So until next time, stay super man.

01:26:17
Jmike
Men of Steel is a Certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Sofia Ricciardi. Our logo is by Chris Batista and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our theme is by Jeff Moonan.

01:26:37
Case
Digging for Kryptonite is a weekly podcast series hosted by yours truly. Anthony DeSiotto examining Superman's vast mythology across time and media. If you have a favorite story, creator or adaptation, chances are we've covered it over the past 200 plus episodes. I've interviewed creators including Mark Waid, Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Joe Kelly, and many more. Whether you're a lifelong Superman fan like me, or you're new to the character, we have you covered. Subscribe to Digging for Kryptonite wherever you get podcasts and remember, it's about what you do. It's about action. Certainpov.com.