Smallville Season 11: Lantern - Adapting Parallax for the CW

[zapbiffpow]

 

 

Adapting the Lantern mythos' Big Bad Bug, featuring some do's and don'ts from Smallville. Plus, which color power ring should Alex Danvers get? Check it!

 

 

 

Smallville: Lantern #7: 

 

Clark gets a GL ring and, together with Lantern John Stewart, takes on the Manhunters...eventually encountering the thing that loosed them:

 

Here we come to Tip #1: Don't make Parallax into a vague black cloud thing - give him the yellow bug appearance he has in the comic books. If budgetary concerns are a thing, Tip #3 has something for that. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's Tip #2: Do take out the original Lanterns out of play, but don't kill them. Rattling of the mythos has shock value, i.e Batman v. Superman, but there's more value to be had by scattering the old guard among the stars for our Lanterns to find. 

 

(Besides, more characters means you run out of episode ideas slower this way.)

 

Smallville: Lantern #9 gives another example of this sin in addition to Ganthet, after Clark and John decide to call for backup:

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, Batman's Rogues have been deputized into the Yellow Lantern Corps...





...leading us to Tip #3: Introduce a fear harvesting endgame for Parallax to work towards.

Giving the villain a motivation is always important, and there's no easier transition to that than the '100% fully charged' mechanism most Lanterns have.

Not only does it give our heroes a ticking-clock plot point to race against, but it allows Parallax to be played by some actor with CGI'd yellow eyes until the time comes for him to go Super Saiyan, like this:

 

 

Tip #4: Basically do this sweetass pose.  

 

Smallville: Lantern #10: 

 

Clark tries to talk Parallax!John back to normal, leading us to Tip #5: give the idea of fear a deeper exploration. 

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps: Rebirth's current truce arc is examining how fear can work for and with others, like so:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ha! Yeah, that'll work, guy. That's Smallville Superman. Even the exact things that're supposed to kill him can't kill him. 

Anyway, ironically Parallax is one of those villains for whom a no-depth, full-evil approach would work, like Pennywise from IT. Your witness.

 

Lantern #11: 

 

While Superman's busy with Parallax, Batman and the STAR Labs team decide to get to the root of the problem:

 

 

And with that, Tip #6: Be inventive with the ring deputizing. There's some with already laid-out groundwork, like Alex Danvers (if ever) getting a red/yellow ring on account of Supergirl 2x15, but there's a few more less unthought-of combinations out there. 

 

Consider this refreshing twist on the kickass but used 'Batman yellow ring' trope:

 

 

 

If anything, I'd like to see him wearing the purple ring for a change. Of course that'll mean he'll have to wear that half-naked thing what the Indigo Tribals wear, but I'm pretty secure about Batman's status as an institution of badassery to be fazed. 

 

Besides, it's not like he hasn't worn anything outlandish before. Or every night since becoming Batman.

 

Back to it! Batman's team manages to reboot the yellow and green rings, leaving Parallax in plain Saiyan form again. 

 

 

 

 

"We're not done fighting yet!"

 

Smallville: Lantern #12:

 

And while Parallax is on the ropes, the other Green Lanterns pull off a Gandalf 'Look to my coming' moment, summoning Green Entity Ion...and a surprising new tidbit about their relationship:

 

 

 

 

Holy shit. Apparently Parallax is the screwup younger brother of the Emotional Spectrum family.

That also ties in to Tip #5 - maybe the evil, Ganthet-murdering, fear-harvesting bug just needs some understanding. He doesn't, but y'know. 

Meanwhile,  the Lanterns' plan hits a snag, but Superman steps up:

 

 

 

 

Superman, after sending back Ion and Parallax to the Source: "All in a day's work, folks". 

 

 

 

 

And in LexCorp Tower, Luthor hoards a bunch of deactivated yellow rings, saying, "I'm going to need a team." 

 

And with that comes one last tip: make sure to have some lingering consequences to make narratives out of. You can't have giant whales fighting giant bugs downtown and not have plot points come from all around. 

 

And that's a wrap! I wish I could go back and refine this post, but mostly I just want to get it out of my metaphorical in-tray. Next: Wonder Woman. Stay tuned!

Comments

[shadowpsykie]

I LOVED this show (it got SO good once it started really embracing it's legacy, and next to Hatcher, Durance has been my image of Lois Lane second only to Kidder) and the Comic just took everything that was good about that show and went full on comic book. is the series completely in trade now?

[joetuss]

Now that you mention it, Lois has had quite a few good portrayals, including the TAS

[zapbiffpow]

Durance is my favorite Lois Lane, hands down! She's got this aura of gutsiness in the way she carries herself that's essential to an ideal Lois Lane portrayal. It also didn't hurt that we got to see her story filled out over the course of six seasons.

As for the TPB's, it'll take someone with better research skills than I for the answer, friend. Sorry!

[zachbeacon]

That show was kind of underwhelming to me but I LOVED the comic. That's mostly due to Miller but also because it delivers on something I wanted from the show and never really got; rookie Superman.

I think the physical collections stop right before the last arc. Volume 8 collects Chaos but there doesn't seem to be a ninth with Continuity.

[deepspaceartist]

Honestly I really gotta agree with you on the "don't kill off the old guard Lanterns" part. For whatever reason a lot of writers seem to have desire to kill off all the Lanterns they don't want to use, like here (Hal, Guy and Kyle), Star Trek/Green Lantern (Kyle) and Injustice (Guy, John, Kyle, Ch'p, Mogo and Kilowog). And I can't help that notice Kyle is almost always included in the killed off, which sucks because he's my favourite Lantern.

It's like they don't get that they don't have to kill the other Lanterns to be 'allowed' to focus on the one they want. Like here, would it really have been all that hard to make John the main Lantern of the story if the others were still alive?

[zapbiffpow]

It's like they don't get that they don't have to kill the other Lanterns to be 'allowed' to focus on the one they want.

I totally get this. I don't know if that's an editorial mandate, or something, but it's gotten to be a pattern: defaming, killing off or otherwise 'reducing' predecessor-level characters. I believe creative teams are capable of (or should be encouraged to find) respectful, creative ways of taking them off the board.

[zylly]

I think another good tip to take from this is

Use John Stewart as your GL of Earth.

I know Flash/Arrow has mentioned a missing Ferris pilot, but that could still be John.

[zapbiffpow]

Ah, man, my chips fall on Jess Cruz, given the current ratio of central characters in the DCTV shows (Green Arrow, Flash, Rip Hunter and then Supergirl), but yeah, I wouldn't mind John Stewart as a main Lantern. I did a whole Smallville post recently about him to that effect, see.

[zylly]

I've only been following Jess in Justice League, but I wouldn't be opposed to her being the CW-verse's GL at all.

[deepspaceartist]

Honestly, I'd argue that Sara has become more of the central character of LoT than Rip, especially in season 2.

And I may be biased, but I think Kyle would be great for TV. His origin, but with the corps detained or otherwise depowered but not killed (maybe go with the whole trapped in an alternate dimension thing from the recent books), would lend itself well to doing the (mostly) solo hero thing that you also see in early Arrow, Flash and Supergirl.

Though of course, it wouldn't hurt if they brought back his dad being a latino secret agent, and cast an appropriate actor to show that heritage for Kyle.