Here Are the Supermen of Color

We’re back with another round of casting, this time, we’re casting twelve guys in the respective roles of various superheroes for the now CW sophomore show Supergirl. Last time, we mentioned that while Supergirl did well to promote (white) feminism, it needed to share that with women of color. Feminism does mean equality, and not just for women but for men as well.

Although arguably, little by little, we’re starting to see more men of color as heroes, but honestly? The barrier-breaking could use a little help, and Supergirl is in the right position to super-punch right on through them. Though the show just announced it’s bringing on Superman next season, DC Comics has a range of wonderful heroes of color and it’s about time that we got to see them shine too.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: We Didn’t Start the Firestorm

Is it just me, or have the early episodes of both Arrow and Flash felt more like prologues for Legends of Tomorrow than independent, standalone series? Perhaps this is the one drawback of such a wide-ranging shared universe. It’s difficult to serve your own story when you must also plant seeds that will bloom in a completely separate show that will happen several months from now. Like I said in last week’s Arrow recap, “The Fury of Firestorm” felt more like a prequel to Legends of Tomorrow than a self-contained Flash story. Still, there were a lot of things to like from the episode that launches Firestorm 2.0.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Rebuild It and They Will Come

I bet you didn’t think that our second season would include Barry Allen ditching Team Flash to become a mysterious midnight contractor, Cisco becoming a semi-cop, Harrison Wells making things right, and Iris West actively-in-the-know regarding all things concerning The Flash. Yes, that all happened… or did it? I don’t know who or what to trust anymore after the re-imagined reality that was the episode’s opener.

It’s like one minute you’re in a bear hug (Barry-hug?) with Grant Gustin… but then you pull back to realize you’ve been hugging the sharp bony angles of Ezra Miller instead. NO NO NO. NOT MY FLASH. HE IS NOT MY FLASH. #NotMyFlash

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Crisis of Infinite DC Shows

As we do every year, we take some time to preview the upcoming debuts of our favorite superhero shows. And since Netflix recently announced The Flash will be joining Arrow to stream, everyone can catch up before both shows return next week.  To discuss those shows and others, criminology professor ‘Shawn Smith makes his triumphant return to the NOC, joining our resident Flash recapper and TV superfan Christelle Gonzales (@christellexoxo).

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NOC Recaps The Flash: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?

If last week’s “Rogue Air” is anything to go by, tonight’s episode will be a beautifully worked and satisfying finale leaving us with lots to look forward to in the second season. Before I recap the penultimate episode below, I want to bring attention to the title “Rogue Air.” This show (and Cisco) has made it clear that names are important, so why the partnering between the words “rogue” and “air?” Team-ups and partnerships were a major theme of the episode, and “rogue” obviously refers to Captain Cold’s teaming with The Flash, then his betrayal to form his own team of Rogues. But “air?” Could it be alluding to Ferris Air and a possible test-pilot Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern coming into Barry’s life? The presence of The Flash’s superfriends and Arrow’s changing-of-the-suit-color to make room for another guy who likes green leads me to believe YES YES HELL YES.

Alright, onto the recap.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Great Scott! It’s FlashStorm

The “Fallout” episode of The Flash speeds on where we left off last week: Snowbarry zooming away from the mushroom cloud that is Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein. Yes, it’s a mushroom cloud and, yes, it looks, really bad, but there’s no radiation according to Cisco and Wells via the comms. It’s all good! The last-minute Quantum Splicer worked.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Too Hot (Hot Damn)

This week’s episode of The Flash, “The Nuclear Man,” heats up with both the Firestorm storyline and Barry Allen’s love life. This show is too hot, hot damn. We take a break from our usual villain wreaking havoc on Central City and delve into some of the overarching mysteries set up during the first half of the season: F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M, Nora Allen’s murder, and what happens when The Flash get sexually excited?

Don’t believe me? Just watch1.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Revenge of the (Bro)gues

Only my fellow nerds understand how excited I was to hear a narrative voiceover again, despite basically memorizing our hero’s speech. But it’s a new year, and we have a new Barry!

“My name is Barry Allen. I am not the fastest man alive.”

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Zoom Zoom Zoom

The Flash’s mid-season finale has left our minds racing. My thoughts are running around and colliding all over the place like a thousand different speedsters from different centuries battling it out in a football stadium.

The episode opens up BOOM! with Zoom… or “Reverse Flash” as the people in this Flashverse (eventually) call him. This mid-season finale is named “The Man in the Yellow Suit” because we finally get cracking on the storyline they’ve set up from the beginning. The promos leading up to this episode have centered around Barry’s fear and obsession around the man who he believes murdered his mother, Nora. Accurately, we follow Barry this episode as he learns that The Man in Yellow in the Lightning is once again in Central City which, of course, brings up a lot of issues for our superhero.

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Flash v Arrow: Dawn of Just Awesomeness

We conclude Flarrow Week at the NOC with our own special crossover featuring our Flash and Arrow recappers Constance Gibbs (@ConStar24) and Christelle Gonzales (@christellexoxo). Together for the first time! Join us to sort out all of your thoughts and feels about your two favorite shows.

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NOCs of the Roundtable: All the Flarrow Feels

Wow. It’s been two days since the epic crossover between The Fastest Man Alive and the Emerald Archer blew up the internet and we are still thinking about it! Even though Christelle and Connie dropped 5,000 words combined on both episodes, we still have more to say. So we reconvened the Roundtable and brought in some of the other Nerds to talk through their Flarrow Feels.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Rainbows, Sunshine, and Flarrow Feels

You guys you guys you guys… IT’S HAPPENING. Some have been waiting for this crossover since the announcement this summer, but I, personally, feel like I’ve been waiting since Barry’s first appearance on our screen’s during Arrow’s second season1. And I’ll say what the entire internet is saying about the epic Part 1 of The Flash vs. Arrow crossover: “Holy crap, they did not disappoint.” No seriously, just check all of twitter and tumblr. We’re all going crazy!

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Fire and Frost

Another Tuesday and another strong episode of The Flash has come and gone. Unlike Arrow, which I admittedly bolted on after three episodes during its debut season, or even Gotham, which I continue to hate-watch for some reason, I’m pretty sure I’m all in on The Flash. While there are some superhero TV tropes that might get annoying eventually — Barry’s unrequited pining for Iris, for instance — there’s enough good to keep me tuning in. Episode three, “Things You Can’t Outrun,” introduced yet another baddie from the DC Universe while foreshadowing the debut of another classic DC hero.

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NOC Recaps The Flash: Better than the Multiplex

Yesterday, I went on a bit of a rant about how DC was getting trumped by Marvel on the big screen. The opposite is true on the small screen. Sorry, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but there’s only one comic-based superhero show to watch on Tuesdays: The Flash on The CW. After one of the best pilots of the season, how was Team Flash going to follow through on episode two?

Well, by fully embracing its superhero-ness, for one. Grant Gustin’s opening narration even poked fun at similar type internal monologues — *cough*Arrow*cough* — before diving right into the action. And this week’s cold open was literally on fire as we saw Barry saving  folks from a burning building.

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Stretching Spandex Over Melanin Won’t Make Comics More Diverse

Sometimes being a Nerd of Color is difficult. Often, the sci-fi you watch marries awesome next-gen splatterpunk visuals with horrid White Man’s Burden political sentiments, or the games you play offer wickedly fun three-dimensional gameplay with healthy servings of amoral misogyny and racial epithets. But often it’s pretty easy – each and every Wednesday new worlds reveal the secrets of earthbound metahumans and iron-masked despots and immortal ronin and sentient bacteria and techno-organic telepaths and rubber geniuses and fighter pilots with imagination rings. The comic industry may not accurately render tomorrow, but it can always take you somewhere you never thought you could go.

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A Series of Carefully Selected Moments Over the Course of 35 Years

In all sincerity, I actually attempted to construct this in a more conventional narrative form, with the initial phase being the following series of roughly dated bullets. Upon completion, I realized the bullets actually covered my “nerdom coming-of-age” origin tale better than any formal composition.

So yeah, in all it’s abstract glory, here you go:

  • 1980s… My Saturday Morning line-up for a decade was (in no particular order): Spidey and his Amazing Friends, Captain N: The Game Master, The Get-Along Gang, Pole Position, Fraggle Rock, The Gummi Bears, Danger Mouse, Inspector Gadget, Mighty Mouse (The New Adventures), Garfield and Friends, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, ReBoot…

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