At the end of last Friday's episode of Smallville, they showed a teaser for the upcoming two-hour episode featuring the Justice Society of America.



I'm excited. I had read that the episode (written by comics writer Geoff Johns) would be featuring Hawkman, Dr Fate, and the Star-Spangled Kid, but from these clips, it looks like we'll be catching at least glimpses of a couple of other characters. And I admit, I squeed like a little girl (or a middle-aged comics fan) when I saw the Alan Scott Green Lantern ring and the gas-masked visage of the Wesley Dodds Sandman.

I've been a fan of Smallville since the beginning, although my affection for it waxes and wanes. I think I was losing interest a little the first half of last season; the Doomsday story was a little too dark and depressing, the show seemed to be having trouble adjusting to the loss of two regular cast members, and I was distracted by a new relationship in my life.

My excitement was reignited with the episode last January (written by Geoff Johns) guest-starring the Legion of Super-Heroes. I have blogged previously about how I loved those characters as a kid, but didn't know what to expect from their Smallville appearance. Would they be the characters I knew and loved, or would they be radically changed (like not even from the future) to make them "cool" and "hip?"

Turns out, while some of the less-cool-for-TV elements were downplayed (they didn't have names like Cosmic Kid or Lightning Lad, to my recollection), they were very much true to their origins. And when I saw them wearing Legion flight rings that looked like they came straight out of the comics, my heart grew three sizes that day. Much the same as seeing the JSA characters in this teaser.

I've lost count of how many times I've had conversations with friends about how cool it would be to see our favorite comics or books turned into movies. I don't actually look forward to that stuff all that much. If I like a particular story or set of characters, it's because I like the stories in whatever medium they're told in. If the stories are about characters I like, then I would like more stories, but not necessarily the same stories retold in a different way. Movies based on books are necessarily going to eliminate things; even a movie or TV show that adapts every scene and every line of dialogue is still going to lose the style of the prose, and still won't match the pictures in my head. Even if you adapt a comic panel-for-panel, like Sin City, what I see on the screen is still not going to be exactly what I imagine happening between the panels.

And adapting comics superheroes to live action? Changes are going to have to be made, just in the costumes alone. For example, when you try to do a Batman costume that looks just like the one in the comics, you get the Adam West version from the 60s.

(I've read some online complaints about the Hawkman picture to which I've linked above. I don't know; I think it looks okay. Smallville has done a good job making their superhero costumes look a little more reasonable on TV, like giving Green Arrow a dark green leather costume and dark glasses instead of a bright green cloth outfit and mask. The thing about Hawkman, though, is he's got big wings. And his mask has a beak. I'm not sure there's a way to make those elements look realistic.)

Having said all that, while I don't particularly look for the things I love to be adapted into other media, I still get excited when it happens. And when it works, like The Dark Knight or the Hellboy movies, it's really cool.

But the JSA and Legion are hardly as well-known as Batman or Spider-Man or the X-Men. So to see them come to life? This really is very close to a dream coming true.

Can't wait for January to come.

I have a confession: Several years after lambasting Geoff Johns for his comic, Green Lantern: Rebirth, Green Lantern has become one of my favorite superhero comics. It's got just the right mixture of Hill Street Blues, Star Wars, and superheroics. Instead of an endless string of battles against supervillains, one after another, Johns' Green Lantern is pretty much just one big story, which has gotten even bigger as it currently embraces the rest of DC Comics' superhero universe in the pages of Blackest Night.

I'll probably write more about Green Lantern and Blackest Night at a later date. But today I want to rave about Geoff Johns' newest comic, Adventure Comics #1. Certainly my favorite comic of the week. If it keeps up, probably my new favorite superhero comic.

While I try not to be too much of an old man, bitching about why can't comics be just like the ones I used to read, truth is, there are comics I used to read and love and can't find anything like any more. One of them was The New Adventures of Superboy. I liked the small-town setting, and the fact that, unlike Superman stories, the Superboy tales were less about him fighting supervillains and more about his life on the farm and his relationships with his friends and family.

(Of course, it's possible that the actual comics were nothing like that. But that's the thing about nostalgia, isn't it? You don't want to reexperience something just like you did before; you want to reexperience it the way you remember experiencing it the first time.)

I'm not a huge fan of the current Superboy. Nothing wrong with him; in fact, I really liked his earlier adventures by Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett, with their neo-Jack Kirby vibe. But that's because I was a fan of those creators, not of the character specifically. I was planning on buying this new Adventure Comics series, because I like Geoff Johns and the artist, Francis Manapul, not because it was about Superboy. (Oh, and because it has a Legion of Super-Heroes backup.) It was a comic I was anticipating enough to order, but not one I was necessarily more excited about than the other superhero comics I get.

Then I was listening to the podcast of the Superman panel from this year's San Diego ComiCon, and James Robinson (one of my all-time favorite comics writers, and the man responsible for my reading Superman comics again) described Adventure as having a Ray Bradbury or Norman Rockwell feel to it. And I realized that's how I remember those older Superboy comics feeling. And while I love the comics I am currently reading--otherwise I wouldn't be buying them--I'm not getting anything that feels quite like that. So I started getting excited.

The comic totally lived up to my anticipation. We see Superboy on the farm, going to school, rescuing a girl who falls in a river, and talking to his friend/father Superman. (He's not a son; he's a clone. Not sure what the right term for his relationship to Superman would be.) No supervillains, no fights. And while there are hits of trouble down the road, they seem more rooted in character than plot contrivance. It's exactly the comic I was hoping for.

And the art is nice, too.

Plus, it's got the Legion of Super-Heroes as a backup feature. I first discovered the Legion when it was being written and drawn by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, pretty much universally recognized as one of the team's golden ages. I kept reading it even after Levitz left, but gradually drifted away. It just wasn't the same for me, and apparently I wasn't the only one. DC has tried numerous revamps and reboots for the series, none of which have restored it to its former glory (by which I mean sales).

I think switching to the backup format may be the best idea yet to rebuild interest in the feature. It keeps the Legion in the public eye without the burden of carrying their own book. Perhaps more importantly, the short page count forces Johns and his fellow creators to focus on one or two characters at a time. One of the Legion's selling points--at least for me--has always been its big cast. However, I can see why trying to learn all those characters can seem off-putting to new readers. Giving the Legion a format that allows more of a focus on the individuals will help ease readers into the series, instead of dumping them in the deep end.

Will the series continue to hold my interest and excite me? Only time will tell. But for now, I'm hooked.