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Thought #2:
*If* we're going to keep remaking Dark Phoenix, it needs a definable commentary. A generic notion of "trauma" that doesn't attach to anything in the real world isn't enough; e.g., if it's going to be about sexism (rather than just being sexist) then ACTUALLY DO THAT.
*If* we're going to keep remaking Dark Phoenix, it needs a definable commentary. A generic notion of "trauma" that doesn't attach to anything in the real world isn't enough; e.g., if it's going to be about sexism (rather than just being sexist) then ACTUALLY DO THAT.
Thought #3 (far less conceptual):
The first season has no actual narrative closure except for Klaus learning to summon spirits; the opening of Season 2 should have been the closing of Season 1. At least you'd have a really good cliffhanger.
The first season has no actual narrative closure except for Klaus learning to summon spirits; the opening of Season 2 should have been the closing of Season 1. At least you'd have a really good cliffhanger.
Thought #4:
That said, seeing 90s seconds of the whole team looking organized, effective, and badass, like a "real" superhero team, and then having them all nuked is very "on brand" for this show. They're just never going to be that.
That said, seeing 90s seconds of the whole team looking organized, effective, and badass, like a "real" superhero team, and then having them all nuked is very "on brand" for this show. They're just never going to be that.
Last Thought on #UmbrellaAcademy 
:
It's clearly an X-Men pastiche (born with powers, academy full of children, morally repugnant mastermind) crossed with bits of Avengers (mostly the giant building in the middle of New York), but if that's what you're in the market for...
: It's clearly an X-Men pastiche (born with powers, academy full of children, morally repugnant mastermind) crossed with bits of Avengers (mostly the giant building in the middle of New York), but if that's what you're in the market for...
... then you should be watching Doom Patrol. Honestly, they're doing it so much better! They address the occasional real-world issue with some tact (sexism, homophobia), the team is would-be superheroes who mostly avoid battling villains, and it's so much weirder, guys! So much!
But this is the really interesting part: Doom Patrol might, itself, look like an X-Men pastiche, but it's more likely the case that the X-Men are a knockoff of the Doom Patrol. It's just that the copy became WAY more famous than the original (for many reasons; whatever).
Of course, it's mid-century comics, of EVERYTHING is a ripoff of SOMETHING ELSE. Even the concepts that are "original" in comics are usually ripped off of something from pulp SF/F, so I'm not *chapped* about the Doom Patrol/X-Men thing.
What it means, though, is that Umbrella Academy exists within this weird, anachronistic tangle of references where we're not tracing influences in time but rather in popularity: the touchstone text for most people is X-Men, so everything will get compared to that.
But here's where it gets really "superhero comics" on us. The most famous run of Doom Patrol comics was under Grant Morrison in the 90s, long after X-Men became the dominant book, AND Gerard Way also wrote Doom Patrol in 2017/18 *after* co-creating Umbrella Academy.
It's a total mess in which "originality" just doesn't apply because the same writers and artists and editors and etc. all swap books every year or two. We're not a "vertical" model of influence (i.e, through time). It's a "horizontal" model (between creators and publishers).
So my point (and I do have one!) is that the references in Umbrella Academy to the X-Men exist both in the creators' intentions and the audience's reactions because X-Men is the most popular, not because it's the "original" of anything.
It set a mould through its popularity, which is why it's the reference point, the thing others are reacting to or commenting on, and that's the case in most literature: there are no "originals." There are only touchstones.
This has been your post-structuralist cultural studies twitter essay for Tuesday. Come back tomorrow and maybe I'll talk about, I dunno, why I'll always sorta feel like Superman is my uncle because my aunt played his girlfriend thirty years ago.
