‘TV has cracked the comic book code’

Barry Allen, AKA the Flash, is the fastest man alive, zig-zagging across Starling City at inconceivable speeds. But despite his impressive nippiness, Bazza feels a little late to the party. TV has finally cracked the comic-book code, or at least jemmied the floodgates open: The Flash joins existing adaptations such as Arrow, Agents of SHIELD, The Walking Dead, Gotham and Constantine. In a few months, we’ll also have Agent Carter, featuring plucky Hayley Atwell in tales of SHIELD-related derring-do during the second world war. That’s not to mention Preacher, Daredevil, Powers, Supergirl, Teen Titans, Scalped and even the slightly rubbish Hourman – all comics properties at various stages of TV development. We’ve reached peak Spandex, or whatever futuristic material superheroes wear in 2014 to look cool. And it feels really good, like some colossal karmic apology to those of us who endured 10 long, soapy years of Smallville.

If you don’t care much for stories about uncanny powers or exuberant vigilantism, all this probably feels like overkill. What’s actually surprising is that it has taken so long to get here. The current rush to fillet comics for TV content may be a trickle-down from the success of superhero blockbusters, but the post-Iron Man irony is that the small screen is arguably a better fit than the cinema for most of the source material. Movies struggle to cram anything more than an origin story and climactic punchy ding-dong into two hours. A 13- or 22-episode season is far more sympathetic to adapting the long-form storytelling of the very best comics. The last time the Flash was on our screens, back in 1990, he was the lone superhero on air and couldn’t go the distance. Now comic-book TV has proliferated to the extent that it’s becoming a genre, like cop shows or medical dramas, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. Even to Hourman. Graeme Virtue

‘There’s no excuse for grown-ups to watch’



The Flash first appeared in DC Comics in 1940, and now reappears as a TV series more than half a century later: proof of the obstinate longevity of the superhero conceit. The televisual rendering of the Flash is likable enough, if somewhat overwrought: the dialogue, often delivered against a soundtrack of swelling, saccharine strings, is clearly aimed at the thickest 15-year-old who might be watching. But for all the painfully telegraphed reinforcements of his specialness, the Flash is competing in one of the most over-subscribed fields in entertainment. At the risk of prompting involuntary humming of a memorably dreadful Tina Turner song, it’s worth asking whether we need any more heroes.

Heroes are (or should be) something we admire when we’re young and are trying to figure things out. It’s only when we are sufficiently lacking in any power or agency of our own that we should seek the consolation of cape-clad proxies. Not for nothing is the transformation from awkward geek to dashing saviour a favourite trope of superhero mythology (the Flash’s alter ego, Barry Allen, is an amiable, nerdish forensics boffin). But there’s no excuse for grown-ups to watch. Any idea that these profoundly silly programmes compete with the great long-form, episodic television with which we are currently blessed is risible. For all their abilities to leap tall buildings in a single bound etc, superheroes are boring spiritually as well as being actually cartoonish. These better-than-average beings are generously endowed with advantages unavailable to other characters, and they always win. It’s like watching a football match in which one of the teams is permitted to field 20 extra players, and arm themselves with Tasers. Which, granted, would be fleetingly amusing viewing, but not something you could regard as a serious test of anyone’s mettle. Andrew Mueller

The Flash starts Tuesday, 8pm, Sky1