Lanterns, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and the War Between Two Kinds of Nerds

In a very short time, I received some solid hate mail from those of you who didn’t appreciate my take on HBO’s new “drama,” definitely not a comedy allegedly, Lanterns, the painfully serious Dark Knight wannabe about one of the cheesiest comic book characters ever put on a movie screen.

Sorry?

It’s easy to get annoyed about these things when you’re wrong, but I digress.

I think we actually need to have a conversation about two very different segments of superhero fandom that constantly get mashed together as though they are the same people.

They are not.

There are people who love great movies about great heroes.

And then there are the comic book nerds.

I do not mean that in a derogatory way. I am, in fact, a Star Trek nerd. I understand exactly what it is like to love a franchise or a character so much that you desperately want the people controlling it to treat it with the same precious reverence you do.

You want them to understand the canon. The timelines. Why this thing mattered. Why that thing was wrong. Why one tiny detail somebody changed completely destroys 40 years of established lore and civilization as we know it.

I get it.

Fandom is actually a pretty pure form of love for culture and art.

But, as some of the nerdiest franchises themselves have spent decades warning us, there is a dark side.

And its temptations are strong.

It is hard to know a ridiculous amount about anything without eventually developing some sense of superiority over people who have not achieved your particular level of obsessive enlightenment.

And boy, do fans love to tell you about it.

They tell studios why they were wrong to make this movie. Why that character would NEVER do that. Why this costume is wrong. Why this timeline does not count. Why somebody has personally destroyed their childhood.

Eventually, something that started as wanting to protect the culture you love can become an attempt to control it.

And sometimes that makes the culture worse.

Look at Jar Jar Binks.

Fans absolutely annihilated that character after The Phantom Menace. Years later, an elaborate fan theory emerged suggesting that Jar Jar was secretly supposed to be some kind of Sith mastermind, and that George Lucas changed course after the backlash.

There is no proof Lucas was secretly building toward Darth Jar Jar as the great villain of the prequels. But Ahmed Best, who played him, has said there were elements of those theories that were not completely crazy and that Jar Jar’s role was pulled back significantly after the reaction.

Which, honestly, is enough to make the whole thing fascinating.

Because once creators start writing scared of the audience, bad things can happen.

And eventually we somehow arrived at The Rise of Skywalker, where the answer to everything was apparently:

Palpatine.

The whole time.

Good one, Disney.

And I have never totally understood why everybody blames Rian Johnson for wasting Luke Skywalker, either. I thought Johnson set up the possibility of a much more interesting ending.

But whatever.

PALPATINE.

Somehow.

More recently, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy got hammered online by a loud segment of supposed Trek purists, many of whom seem to have completely lost touch with what Star Trek has always been about in the first place.

Paramount ultimately decided the show will end after its second season.

I am not going to pretend angry internet people singlehandedly canceled it. That is not something we can prove.

But the culture surrounding these franchises has gotten exhausting.

And more importantly, I do not need the other half.

The show is one enormous, ridiculous, farcical love letter to all of it.

Movies.

Comic books.

Science fiction.

Multiverses.

Alternate realities.

Superheroes.

Nerds arguing with other nerds about nerd stuff while reality literally collapses around them.

And this stupid show is completely enthralling.

Kevin Sussman’s Stuart Bloom is somehow leading a multiverse adventure. Lauren Lapkus’ Denise is along for the ride. John Ross Bowie is Barry Kripke.

And then there is Bert.

Brian Posehn.

Dear God.

Posehn’s deadpan monotone works so perfectly in this universe that every time Bert opens his mouth I start laughing before I even know what he is going to say.

These were secondary characters on a sitcom I actively avoided, and now I am completely invested in their interdimensional nonsense.

I do not know these people.

I do not know half their history.

And somehow that has made watching the show even more fun.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, it occurred to me that maybe I was doing exactly what I had been accusing everybody else of doing.

I had already decided what this thing was before I gave it a chance to be anything else.

And suddenly I realized that maybe I have had beef with nerd culture my entire life because I got picked on in high school and desperately did not want anybody putting me in that category.

And I definitely was not going to laugh at the same thing all those stupid people laughed at.

Self awareness is priceless.

Would have been useful at 17.

Apparently I am not above any of this.

I am just a different kind of nerd.

And this stupid show got me.

So much so that I started watching The Big Bang Theory on HBO Max the other night.

Which is why I am currently sleeping on the pullout couch.

My wife is NOT happy about it.

So well played, comic book nerds.

I guess you win.

You can go rub your stupid lanterns and chant your Green Lantern rhymes about it.

See you after Lanterns next week. 😉