Author: Robert Greenberger

Opening Batman: The Complete Series, I said, “This is my childhood in a box.” When the ABC series debuted in January 1966, I was seven, the exact perfect age to be utterly captivated by seeing a comic book faithfully adapted to the small screen. Without fail, I was glued to the television set on Wednesday and Thursday evenings right until the final episode aired in March 1968, leaving indelible images in my mind. These were reinforced just a few years later when local syndicated reruns burned the stories, sounds, and characters deeper into my psyche.

I was too young to understand the context of the show and its impact on popular culture, DC Comics, or the world of licensing. I didn’t get the wry jokes, it’s knowing pop camp approach to storytelling, or how it cleverly worked on multiple levels (a rare occurrence on prime time back then). Instead, I just knew that it was the Dynamic Duo getting into amazing fights, escaping inventive death traps, and keeping Gotham City safe.

As the show continued to be rerun, I grew up and came to appreciate the challenges confronting William Dozier, hired by 20^th Century Fox to adapt the character. He wanted Dick Tracy or Superman, but those rights weren’t available. 20^th settled for Batman in 1964, just as the character was being reinvented by editor Julius Schwartz, saving the Gotham Guardian from possible cancellation after a decade of benign neglect. It was also a time of convergence as a new wave of influences was seeping throughout American culture. The Beatles had stormed America. Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were rewriting the rules of modern art. Fashion designers were shortening skirts and introducing brighter colors. American households were buying more and more color televisions so by that fateful January nearly all of prime time programming was being broadcast in color, in some cases highly saturated color.

Batman was also the beneficiary of good scheduling. ABC had several shows perform poorly that fall so conceived the marketing concept of a Second Season launching right after the holidays. As a result, it received tremendous marketing and a hungry audience awaited that first fateful episode.

Lorenzo Semple Jr. worked with Dozier to set the tone that would be slyly wink at the parents, offer sexy molls to the teens, and pure action for the main viewers: the kids like me. His two-parter was almost perfect with Frank Gorshin’s manic Riddler, Neil Hamilton’s stoic Commissioner Gordon, Jill St. John as the distracting femme, and of course, Adam West and Burt Ward as our dashing heroes. The camera angles, jazzy soundtrack, and brilliant colors all came together and ignited Batmania.

The 120 episodes comprising the three seasons are incredibly uneven in their quality, especially the full second season which seemed to exhaust all concerned. There is lazy acting, very bad writing, and increasingly implausible storylines and death traps as the camp overshadowed the other aspects that made the initial season so memorable. Also, as the second season rolled onward, rather than continue to mine the comic books for villains plot lines, the writing staff seemed encouraged to find roles to fit available actors or try and match two decades of inventiveness from DC’s stable of writers, led by Bill Finger, Batman’s co-creator. It’s a shame Finger only got to write one two-parter given how much of his DNA can be found throughout the show, from the origin story (mentioned rarely) to the oversized props.

But when the series was good it was very, very good and rewatching them as an adult, some even got better. The performances from the core villains, starting with Gorshin but including Burgess Meredith (Penguin), Cesar Romero (Joker), Victor Buono (King Tut, the only original creation that worked) and Julie Newmar (Catwoman) showcase some genuinely fine performances and its clear all are enjoying their work. Newmar’s Catwoman was slinky to the 7-year-old and downright sexy and alluring to his adult self. They get to chew the scenery with gusto but credit also has to be given to silent film star Hamilton and Alan Napier (Alfred) who worked hard to ground their characters, so the absurdities were heightened.

By season three, ABC saw the craze was dying out and cut the show from two nights to one, cramming a lot of story into thirty minutes while also introducing Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, a logical way to extend the franchise. Her cute face and balletic moves endeared her to males of every age while girls finally had their own positive role models. But even she was not enough to save an oversaturated public and like a brightly burning candle at the end of its wick, the light went out.

As has been made clear through the years, there were numerous reasons why the series remained unavailable before this week. The best coverage appears to be at Wired but one good thing has come from the delay: technology has advanced to a degree where the digital restoration work is the highlight. The colors are more vibrant, the detail to the costumes and props is riveting, and the care means we’re getting the best possible version of these now cherished episodes.

The series comes in a variety of packages and price points but reviewers were sent the Limited Edition box set which has all the bells and whistles you could want, starting with the sound chip in the packaging letting you hear the Neil Hefti theme. There’s the Hot Wheels diecast metal Batmobile, complete with Batcave background panel and a sampling of 44 of Norm Saunder’s fine artwork from the Topps Batman trading cards from that era. Within the colorful box is a small book with photos from Adam West’s collection, which is a nice assortment of familiar and new images.

There are twelve discs in the box, the final one being nothing but special features. If there
is any fault in the collection it is that many strong opportunities were missed in favor of some overly simplified, gimme pieces. The Bat-gadgets and villain props should have received recognition and in some ways George Barris’ groundbreaking work on the Batmobile is underplayed while no real mention is made of the Batboat, Batcopter, or Batgirl’s frilly cycle. Craig herself is oddly missing from all the interviews, which is a shame since she is one of the few remaining performers still left. None of the secondary players even get a chance to discuss what it has meant to be on the show. Finally, a piece about the comic book’s influences on the show, including which issues provided inspiration, would be in order but the comic is often left out of the discussions at all.

Which is not to underplay the value of the extras we do get. We start with the West-centric Hanging with Batman (29:56), a career retrospective that shows what the struggling actor’s career was like before receiving this part. Perhaps not enough is done about the dry spells of the 1970s and 1980s before his career renaissance at the hands of my generation who were now in a position to hire him.

Holy Memorabilia Batman! (29:59) heavily spotlights collector and radio personality Ralph Garman and Guinness record holder Kevin Silva as both show off their vast collections. West even visits Garman’s home and tries on a replica cowl, having fun at the same time even he seems awed by how much stuff was generated in so short a period of time. Fiberglass replica master Mark Racop is the only one to give the cool car and Barris their due.

Batman Born! Building the World of Batman (29:41) is the one piece that takes a serious, academic approach to putting the show’s phenomenal success into perspective. Of course, much of that comes from former DC president Paul Levitz, who can reliably be counted on for such things along with the ubiquitous Michael Uslan, West, Ward, Newmar, animation director Bruce Timm and even comics historian Andy Mangles helps flesh things out. This should have been the disc’s centerpiece and needed far more time to properly explore the subject.

On the other hand, Bats of the Round Table (45:08) sees West host a conversation with director Kevin Smith, Garman, actor Phil Morris, and DC Comics’ copublisher Jim Lee. Why on Earth is Morris there? There needed to be people with more gravitas to make the conversation more useful and less gushing. (And someone should have been there to correct all the misstatements of fact.) If you skip any feature, this is the one.

West recorded audio commentary for the episodes some time back and it would have been nice to have them here. Instead, we get the interesting Inventing Batman in the Words of Adam West, as he sits with his pilot script and walks us through how he developed his performance, showing off his original handwritten notes. As result, we can rewatch “Hi Diddle Riddle” and “Smack in the Middle” and see an actor working on his craft but you’re dying to hear him riff about working with Gorshin or St. John, et. al.

Na Na Na Batman! (12:15) is a filler feature where the camera crew wandered the Warner Bros soundstages and interviewed cast and crew from their other series about Batman. Some of it cute but given what’s missing, this stands out as a very cheap marketing ploy.

Finally, we have Bat Rarities! Straight from the Vault, nicely cleaned up versions of things we’ve seen before but want now.  We have the mini-Batgirl TV pilot (7:54); Adam West and Burton Gervis’ screen test (including solo Gervis moments proving he, now named Burt Ward, deserved the role (6:16); a screen test featuring Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, making it clear why Deyell did not get the role while Waggoner would have been interesting (4:23); and an archival clip of James Blakeley, the series’ Post-production Supervisor, which is interesting since he was the one to develop the way of splicing in Joe Letterese’s onomatopoeia text during fights (2:24).

Summing it up: given how long fans of all ages have been waiting for this released, Warner Home Entertainment does not disappoint. For those curious about the frenzy, these are the versions you want to sample in their clean, crisp, uncut glory.

All things come to an end and the true death arrived for HBO’s True Blood earlier this year. This week, HBO Home Entertainment offers up The Complete Seventh Season along with a mammoth complete series box set. In looking back on the series, it probably hung around a little longer than necessary, especially as things spiraled from over-the-top to insane crazy after series creator Alan Ball left.

The seventy episodes veered further and further from Charlaine Harris’s The Southern Vampire Mysteries novels and even she wrapped up her prose stories recognizing the time had come.

Bon Temps is under attack as things open up, picking up where season six dropped us. The Hep V Vampires are running amuck as many of our favorite supporting characters have been threatened. Pam continues her hunt for Eric leaving Sookie as the calming voice of reason and she’s not feeling all that steady. Meantime, Bill is on his own and every scene brings us closer to the end of his arc and there’s a sense of inevitable melancholy from the beginning.

His arc is the only one that gets the right amount of time to resolve. While things ratchet up in intensity, we watch one familiar face after another die in vastly imaginative ways. But it also brings several sub-plots to hasty or abrupt conclusions. Luke Grimes, who played James, walked away when he was unhappy with his story and was replaced with Australian actor Nathan Parsons, who is fine. The uneven pacing also serves to winnow down the cast for the final two episodes when the main figures take center stage. As usual, poor Tara gets the worst treatment as if the writers could never get a handle on her after the first brilliant season. Alcide’s departure barely gets noticed.

On the other, it’s nice to have Hoyt back and reaching a satisfying conclusion with Jessica so it isn’t all gruesome. With Jessica back in Hoy’t sarms, Jason needed someone to love – as befit his character from the first episode. However, how quickly he found it with Bridget and received Sookie’s blessing came way too fast for my taste.

And then we’re down to Bill, Eric, and Sookie the enduring triangle that was twisted like so much Silly Putty across the years. Is it entirely a happy or unhappy ending? Your call but it does wrap things up in a tidy package which is fine. The show grew more and more uneven through the seasons so this was about as good a wrap-up as one can expect. (And there’s a lovely cameo of novelist Charlaine Harris in the final episode, her way of saying bye-bye.)

As we have come to expect, the three disc set comes packed with the usual assortment of special features starting with audio commentaries for five of the ten episodes. Directors Howard Deutch, Gregg Fienberg, Angela Robinson, and, Simon Jayes; screenwriters Kate Barnow, Daniel Kenneth, Craig Chester, and Brian Buckner; and actors Kristen Bauer van Straten, Carrie Preston, Lauren Bowles, Chris Bauer, Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer all weigh in on the stories. It’s nice to hear from Paquin and Moyer in the final episode since they carried the emotional load and saying farewell to the show they fell in love with (along with one another).

There’s the fifteen minute True Death: The Final Days On Set, an informal look as the cast and crew wind up their work. Then there’s True Blood: A Farewell To Bon Temps, a twenty-eight minute retrospective that explores the attraction of vampires with Ball, Buckner, and the main cast offering their well-earned observations on that and other aspects of making the series. An updated True Blood Lines timeline is offered once again along with the previews and recaps.

Sing No Evil
By JP Ahonen and KP Alare
Abrams ComicArts, 181 pages, $24.95

Translating music, meant to be heard live, and print, meant to be imagined in one’s mind, is a challenging task. When the music is heavy metal, a very visceral sort of sound, the challenge is even harder. As a result, artist JP Ahonen and writer KP Alare are to be commended for trying but fail to achieve their goal. Sing No Evil, translated from NAME, is about music, friendship, love, rock, and sorcery. As a result, it wants to be too many things and falls short on every level.

The book is at its strongest when Ahonen fills spreads with the manic energy that goes into performing before a crowd. The words get out of the way and the pictures tell the story and we can imagine the chords and backbeat. Sprinkled across the book, they come as welcome breaks from a tedious story about a band that can’t get their collective act together even to perform at a local bar. We are meant to feel for Aksel, the guitarist who can’t sing and the stress his perfectionist attitude brings to his band Pekeros. The rest of the band — keyboard player Lily, bassist Kervinen and drummer Bear –cajole, support or scold Aksel. Lily is the most rounded of the characters in the story while there’s little appealing about Aksel. The dynamic should noticeably change when Lily recruits Aydin, the local pizza delivery guy, as their new singer, but he’s wallpaper. Kervinen is a seemingly ageless spiritual guide to Aksel but feels like a stock player.

Bear, by the way, is a real bear who fights off the urge to hibernate so they can make the band’s dream come true. Why the drummer is a real bear, who doesn’t speak but acts human in every other respect, serves to rob the story of feeling set in our world. And that’s before the demonic forces arrive in the final act.

The creators try too hard, stuff too much extraneous stuff into the story, robbing it of any real emotional depth so we wind up caring little for the band members or whether they achieve success or are another failed act.

The artwork and strong sense of color makes the book interesting to look at but just further emphasizes how weak the characters are and overall storyline is. I gather Ahonen is best known for Northern Overexposure, something I am unfamiliar with but I’d be interested in seeing what else he can do. Right now, though, this book is just plain disappointing.

When your father is a god, your life is bound to be pretty interesting. As a result, it is never less than astonishing how often the story of Hercules ignores the rich source material, transplanting the demigod to whatever environment is currently in vogue with diminished results. Twice this year, we were treated to variant interpretations of the Greek myth with vastly different results. Coming in second and by far the inferior of the two, Brett Ratner’s Hercules is one of the weakest films of the year. Once more one wonders how Ratner keeps getting hired since clearly his limited directorial vision has been spent.

The film, out now from Paramount Home Entertainment, claims to be inspired by Radical Comics’ The Thracian Wars limited series, but veers far enough from it to be another story entirely. Hercules (Dwayne Johnson), cursed by Zeus’ wife Hera, has completed his twelve labors but remains a lost soul, wandering Earth. Thrace’s King Cotys (John Hurt) and General Sitacles (Peter Mullan) hire him to train their army, preparing it for a forthcoming war against Rheseus’ (Tobias Santelmann) forces. Herc, accompanied by his nephew Iolaus (Reece Ritchie), the amazon Atalanta (Ingrid Bolsø Berdal), and  Autolycus (Rufus Sewell), and his own nephew Iolaus (Reece Ritchie). Here’s a chance for screenwriters Ryan J. Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos to breathe life into these people, using the late, great Steve Moore’s comics as inspiration. Instead, they come from central casting and the actors do little to make them interesting.

There are some nice moments but they come few and far between mindless, violent action and flat by-the-numbers strorytelling. You are not surprised by the plot twists, robbing you of the cathartic thrills a movie like this should be delivering.

These sword & sandal epics always look great when shot right and here, the high definition transfer is crisp, clean, and colorful. It is equally paired with the DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack.

Among the extras is an extended cut that adds about three more minutes of vapid stuff, so you wonder why they bothered. Ratner and Producer Beau Flynn provide an audio commentary that acknowledges the dozens of previous screen incarnations and pays too little attention to the Radical publication. There’s An Introduction (5:32) from Ratner and Johnson; Hercules and His Mercenaries (11:07), which explores the supporting cast; Weapons! (5:24); The Bessi Battle (11:54), showcase the preparation going into filming the battle; The Effects of Hercules (12:28);  and an entertaining assortment of Deleted/Extended Scenes (15 clips, 14:38).

How to Train Your Dragon was an immensely successful adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s charming children’s book. The story ended nicely and had we never revisited the village of Berk, we would have been satisfied. However, in film, success demands milking the cow as far as audiences allow so we now have a sequel. Unlike so many other money grabbing attempts, this once actually advances the characters without rehashing the past.

Growing up is never easy, it has fueled countless movies and novels through the years so it is a challenge to effectively tell a sequel to a beloved children’s tale where the characters actually change. DreamWorks Animation, though, accepted the challenge when they green lit a follow-up to 2010’s smash hit. The sequel arrived to great critical acclaim in the summer and now, Fox Home Entertainment is making it available now via digital download with the Blu-ray edition to follow on Tuesday.

Everything about this film feels more grounded and more mature with the animators carefully aging our main characters five years so Hiccup (voice of Jay Baruchel)  is a hairy teenager. Having achieved the unthinkable, peace with the dragons, they have integrated to make the village of Berk a unique place in the world. As a result, we pick up and see Hiccup, aboard Toothless, as they go out exploring. The problem now is that Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) wants him to come home and succeed him as chief.

First, though, Hiccup and Astrid (America Ferrara)  have to prevent Berk from being destroyed by a dragon army led by the mad Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou). Through convoluted means, he now can hypnotize dragons and winds up taking control of Toothless, leading the siege that claims Stoick’s life while Toothless remains a prisoner. However, he is far from alone as he also encounters Valka (Cate Blanchett), a dragonrider who is revealed to be his long-lost mother.

The story, from writer/director Dean DuBois, nicely parallels the further maturation of both boy and dragon. Toothless may have the harder experience to recover from considering he is coerced into attacking a place he calls home and being somewhat responsible for the death of Hiccup’s dad.

At story’s end, Hiccup has been through the emotional wringer although he fortunately winds up in a better place as a result of the experiences, making one and all proud. Now, don’t get me wrong, despite the heavier emotional tone, the movie still has plenty of action and humor with excellent animation.

Streaming this via Digital HD is clean and clear so if that’s your preference, you have little fear. Additionally, the digitals download and Blu-ray come chock full of extras. First up is the short, entertaining adventure Dawn of the Dragon Racers (26:37). The bonus features include Fishleg’s Dragon Stats (12:04); Drago’s War Machines (2:56), as Gobber the Belch narrates an inside look at the fierce creatures; Berk’s Dragon World (4:19); Hiccup’s Inventions in Flight (3:32), and an assortment of  Deleted Scenes (12:13). Additionally, there is some interesting commentary from the production team: Simon Otto, Bonnie Arnold, Dean DeBlois, and Pierre-Olivier Vincent. Where No One Goes: The Making of How To Train Your Dragon 2 (54:39)– Writer-Director DeBlois guides us through how this went from notion to film.

We’re now in the first sweeps period of the current television season and its fair to say that while several new series are entertaining, few are measuring up to our increased expectations. As a result, it’s refreshing to see that in one week, one of the smartest shows is returning albeit for a truncated final season.

Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom debuted on HBO in June 2012 and was immediately declared better than Studio 60 but still no West Wing. It has remained, though, a riveting series that reminds us that serious journalism remains an elusive ideal on television. The series is set in the immediate past, using real world events so the audience can focus on how the noble, flawed characters react and cover the stories.

The second season, out tomorrow (Election Day appropriately enough) in a three-disc box set from HBO Home Entertainment, has a major arc showing how the team ran a story after doing their due diligence only to have it blow up in their face. Using flash forewards and flashbacks, we see how things unfolded to the point where  ANC’s lawyer (Marcie Gay Harden) interviews the key players to figure out how things really happened and what to do. In the meantime, several of the core characters also have their own trials and tribulations, enriching each episode.

We pick up the season later in 2012 as the nation readies itself for Election Day and we see producer Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr.), unable to get over his fractured relationship with Maggie (Alison Pill), assign himself aboard Mitt Romeny’s press bus, giving us a fresh look at the tedium of campaign coverage and the risks one takes when asking the hard questions the road-weary veterans refuse to ask. Along the way, a budding friendship with rival reporter Hallie Shea (Grace Gummer) begins.

Maggie, meanwhile, pitches a story in Africa and travels to a Ugandan orphanage where horrific things happen, emotionally and psychologically scaring her. Already broken up with Don (Thomas Sadoski) because of her enduring affection for Jim, she’s on the verge of a major breakdown.

The big story, though, is Operation Genoa, brought to MacKenzie Hale’s (Emily Mortimer) attention by Jim’s fill-in, Jerry Dantana (Hamish Linklater). As they investigate it, we see Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) insist the Red Team vet the story time and again before everyone is comfortable with going live with the story of US Marines using Sarin gas in Afghanistan.

The most frustrated member of the staff may be Neal (Dev Patel) who is trying to get Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) to take the Occupy Wall Street movement seriously.

The season unfolds across nine densely packed episodes covering August through November but at its heart is the romance between Will and Mac, so their engagement is a satisfying high point as the season draws to a close. It’s more strongly written while remaining optimistic about the noble profession of journalism, imbuing the entire ANC staff from owner Leona (Jane Fonda) down to the lowliest intern (Riley Voelkel) with high-minded ideals. If only more dramas aimed so high.

The discs are crisp and fine to watch with good sound. We get four audio commentaries that are largely disappointing as creator Aaron Sorkin, producer Alan Poul and some of the cast meander about everything under the sun rather than enlighten the audience with the whys and wherefores of the season. The most interesting revelation is that during production, Sorkin realized he had written himself into a corner and revised upwards of 60% of the first three episodes and HBO allowed them to reshoot. Among the handful of deleted scenes is one from the first version of the season opener, spotlighting Oliva Munn’s Sloan, who emerges as the strongest character of the season. Each episode comes with the previously broadcast Inside the Episode, with Sorkin providing some good insights.

Gregory Maguire had no idea what he was unleashing when he wrote Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West in 1995. Since then, a tremendous amount of energy has been spent on revisiting the antagonists from fairy tales to modern fiction in an effort to explain their motivations. Quite often, the opponent is more interesting than the protagonist so there’s an appetite to understanding what made them “evil”.

Another trend has been taking the classic fairy tales and first making them into palatable Disney animated fare followed by live-action adaptations and stage editions. By combining the above, we arrive this year with Maleficent. Perhaps the single most arresting visual in the Disney rogues gallery, this cunning sorcerer has given generations nightmares since the cartoon version arrived in 1959.

With Angelina Jolie as the title character, this had the making of a fascinating character story hidden under layers of action, adventure, and humor as she cursed young Aurora who went on to become known as Sleeping Beauty.  The pedigree both before and behind the camera promised a grand experience which is why the final product, out Tuesday as a DVD Combo Pack, is so disappointing.

Linda Woolverton, who has virtually lived writing fairy tales for Disney since Beauty and the Beast in 1991, seemed a perfect choice for the project. She dutifully did her homework and found a key to understand why Maleficent was evil. In the Charles Perrault and Brothers Grimm retelling of the story, she was a fairy and fairies, after all, have wings. Once she asked, “where are Maleficent’s wings?” that he story was found.
The film tells of young Maleficent (Ella Purnell and Isobelle Molloy), an orphan fairy, who is somehow the leader of the mystic realm known only as the Moors. When an orphan human, Stefan (Michael Higgins, later Sharlto Copley), wanders from his adjoining lands, an unlikely friendship develops. But then he vanishes and the next time we see him he is a servant to King Henry (Kenneth Cranham) and we’re told, but never shown, he had become greedy. Instead, Henry leads a vast army towards the Moors where he is repelled by Maleficent and her enchanted allies where he is mortally wounded.

Stefan renews his acquaintance with Maleficent in order to kill her and become heir to the throne. When he drugs her, after forgiving him his absence, he finds he cannot end her life but instead steals her wings, effectively ruining her and winning him the throne. Now she’s pissed and seethes and rages and summons heretofore unseen occult energies and becomes the recognizable evil power.

Woolverton is so busy building up Maleficent and making her sympathetic that she’s forgotten to make the humans anything more than one-dimensional beings. Why does Henry want to conquer the Moors? There is no apparent enmity between them nor reason to gain the land? Why is Stefan so ambitious, forgetting his friendship? Everything the humans robs the film of being a well-rounded story.

Similarly, the three fairies who arrive to first bless then care for Stefan’s daughter Aurora (Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, Eleanor Worthington Cox and finally Elle Fanning) are played for comedic effect but fail at being funny, just inept, wasting the talents of Imelda Staunton (Knotgrass), Juno Temple (Thistlewit), and Lesley Manville (Flittle). The crow Diaval (Sam Riley) is enchanted by the witch and is at least interesting to watch. Memorable supporting players would have made this a far stronger film.

The most interesting development Woolverton and director Robert Stromberg bring to the story is the quasi-mother/daughter relationship between Maleficent and Aurora, who is gifted with such a kind soul that she mistakes Maleficent not as the bane of her existence but as her fairy godmother. This leads a fine twist in the retelling of this classic tale.

The effects are swell, the dragon transformation and climax strong but the underlying motivations are so weak that it really robs the film of the strength of its themes. As a result, this 97 minute story disappoints more than it thrills. Clearly, though, I am in the majority since its worldwide box office is over $750 million.

The film comes as a Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD combo pack and the high definition transfer is rich and wonderful to watch. The 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio is a fine companion so young girls everywhere should enjoy it time and again.

For the adults, there are some nice Bonus Features, notably the five Deleted Scenes, at least two of which address the issues I raise above. Aurora: Becoming a Beauty is a lightweight look at how much Elle Fanning enjoyed becoming a princess. From Fairy Tale to Feature Film features Woolverton talking about the process without anywhere near enough time tracing the source material. Building an Epic Battle looks at the cinemagic involved in this particular action sequence while Maleficent Revealed looks at the rest of the digital effects but does so without much in the way of explanation o you just stare at before and after images as they speed by. Classic Couture examines the fine apparel worn by the characters (and probably deserves an Oscar nomination).

The Warren Commission Report
By Dan Mishkin, Ernie Colon, and Jerzy Drozd
Abrams ComicArts, 160 pages, $29.95

Conspiracies are everywhere if you know where to look. Over the last century, Americans have increasingly looked for dire machinations behind the unbelievable. Much as our ancestors sat around campfires telling mythic tales to explain how the sun rose each day, today, people make up fantastical stories to make the impossible comprehensible.

With the growth of mass media, from film to radio to television to the internet, studies have shown we have gravitated towards like-minded thinking, narrowing our worldview and therefore giving voice and importance to ones who would have once been considered mad. This development gained traction and accelerated its piercing of the zeitgeist thanks largely to ineptitude. America knew Japan was going to bomb throughout the Pacific but didn’t say a word much as we knew there were foreigners acting suspiciously in 2001. But the largest of these incompetency’s may well be the actions taken in the minutes, hours, and days that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Today, there is a growing subset of graphic novels that condense and streamline mass amounts of information for our benefit. There was Economix for finance and The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation. Now comes The Warren Commission Report, a handy one-volume guide to the facts, inconsistencies and theories surrounding the events of November 22, 1963. Adapted from the report, released September 27, 1964, writer Dan Mishkin deftly takes the reader through the indisputable facts and into the murky world of error, evasion, and espionage.

Looking back, it’s astonishing to see how inept and ineffective local and federal authorities were to secure the crime scene and preserve the evidence. We’re a CSI generation, used to minute inspection of every hair follicle and fiber, so the notion that precise measurements were not taken or that detailed studies of the president’s body were delayed, hurried, or incomplete is mindboggling. So too the inexplicably lax security when assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was moved, allowing Jack Ruby to get close enough to kill the killer.

Mishkin takes us step by step through the investigation, shining a bright light thanks to declassified and public documents that were not available at the time. He shows where mistakes were made, where politics and ass-covering led to facts being obfuscated, which went on to fan the embers that grew into the conspiracy fire. He also doubles back to introduce us to Oswald and how he had remained on intelligence radar for some time but agencies then, as now, didn’t share information or collaborate in the name of national security.

Brining Mishkin’s work to life is the art team of Ernie Colon and Jerzy Drozd, the former having gained newfound fame through the 9/11 graphic novel. Colon’s distinctive style is altered, not always for the best, by Drozd but the familiar faces of Kennedy, Oswald, Lyndon Johnson, and J. Edgar Hoover are readily recognizable. The storytelling is quite clear with the interesting color choice of making Oswald an all-white figure, letting him standout from the crowd wherever he is seen, devoid of connection to humanity. If there’s a visual fault it comes to some questionable balloon and caption placements that mar the smooth flow of the text.

This book does not attempt to sanctify or refute the report or the theories around it but offer clarity, especially the last two dozen pages or so that places the events in the larger context of a rapidly changing society as the 1950s conformity gave way to a rebellion of individualism. This may be one of the strongest parts of the book, since context, as we know, is everything.

For those who lived through it, this will bring some comfort and some new insights. For those who were born a generation or more after, this is a good primer to what America was once like and how it helped shape the world we currently live in.

It’s interesting to watch Green Arrow thrive on television in ways he could only envy in the comics. After being a second string character for much of his career, he seemed to work well first on Smallville, and now on his own series, Arrow. The problem, though, with being a B-lister for decades is that his rogues’ gallery is woefully weak and therefore the show’s producers have to dip into the rest of the DC mythos to fill out his world.

The show’s third season gets underway shortly and Warner Home Entertainment has recently released Arrow: The Complete Second Season in a nice box set. Here, we can review all 23 episodes to see how things have evolved as Oliver Queen goes from vigilante to hero while his allies grow in number.

One of the things that has been a struggle in comics for the last era or two is that a hero can’t realistically maintain a secret identity. Ollie (Stephen Amell) needs allies and with that comes trust. So, we went from Diggle (David Ramsey), in the first season to Diggle and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) by season’s end. This year, Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), Canary (Caity Lotz), and Laurel (Katie Cassidy) have come to know Ollie’s alter ego. Argus’ Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) somehow knows, too. Heck, even newcomer Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), visiting from Central City, knows the truth. So, it’s telling that as the season ended, the one who still doesn’t know, his sister Thea (Willa Holland), is the one to vanish, a thread left unknotted until this fall.

The show has also nicely plundered Batman’s resources as Huntress (Jessica De Gouw) returned and we met Nyssa al Ghul (Katrina Law), setting up this coming season’s arrival of Ra’s al Ghul himself.  But first, old business needed addressing and much of the season’s meta arc dealt with Slade Wilson, Deathstroke (Manu Bennett), exacting revenge against Ollie, blaming him for Shado’s (Celina Jade) death and worked with  Isabel Rochev (Summer Glau) to take down both Queen Consolidated and the Queen family, which climaxed with the death of Moira (Susanna Thompson), Ollie’s mom. As for Thea, her world was shattered when she learned her true father was Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman), who conveniently returned from the dead.

The episodes stir the pot with verve and alliances rise and fall with long-simmering threads spun out across the weeks and months. We’re even teased with the hint of an Ollie/Felicity romance even while he and Canary got nice and cozy. On the other hand, the cast has grown so large, supporting teams of players in the present and an almost separate collection in the flashbacks, that some shows feel overstuffed, losing focus. While I appreciate the need to spotlight Diggle now and then, bringing in his wife, her connection to Waller, and the formation of the Suicide Squad felt more of a distraction than a strong storyline on its own. Both Thea and Roy were underserved by the scripts this year.

That said, I do want to applaud the two-parter that acts as prelude to this month’s The Flash series, and the way they subtly continued those subplots through the final episode. Speaking of which, the finale was one of the best action episodes of prime time I’ve seen in a long time so kudos to the writers, cast, and stunt performers for making it exciting.

The transfer to high definition is fairly seamless and a joy to watch, accompanied by the strong DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track.

The four-disc set comes with some standard extras, most of which are diverting enough although none are Must See viewing either. We have From Vigilante to Hero (24:00), an examination of the season’s design; The Visual Effects of Arrow (11:00), exploring how the night scenes, explosions, and action is brought to life; and, Wirework: The Impossible Moves of Arrow (10:00), a companion feature focusing on the stunts. There are, of course, Deleted Scenes, culled from “City of Heroes,” “Identity,” “Crucible,” “Keep Your Enemies Closer,” “State v. Queen,” “Three Ghosts,” “Tremors,” “Heir to the Demon,” “Time of Death,” “The Promise,” “Suicide Squad,” “The Man Under the Hood” and “Unthinkable.” And we have the requisite Gag Reel (5:00). Finally, there is edited footage from Arrow: 2013 Comic-Con Panel (26:00).