Echo (Marvel, 2023)

[shevek]

From this article in Bounding Into Comics, it looks like the Echo series (Echo being introduced first in the Kate Bishop Hawkeye show last year)
was in danger of being entirely scrapped, or 'Batgirled', as the term now exists.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023/07/ ... rs-strike/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_(TV_series)

Supposedly, because it was so mediocre. But Marvel decided to keep it, do a few reshoots, and release it at all at once (coming up soon) instead of week by week, because a drought in content was created by the writers' strike.

So, look for Echo to come out on Nov 29, 2023. And please note, before you go disparaging the journalistic source, this article's content was pretty much taken from an interview with Marvel stuntman Chris Brewster, who was dishing on various behind-the-scenes Marvel stuff on a show called "Unscripted" from the Ikuzo Youtube channel. They're not saying anything he didn't already say.

Echo, the show about a deaf Native American female vigilante, will be coming to your screens soon.
And like everything else, they could have easily at least made her hot, or given her a cool original costume, but they didn't.

In the comics, Echo is fit and sexy and young, and has nice tight abs, at least.
Random Indian feathers on her costume attest to her Native American heritage, although I don't know if they ever say what tribe she's from.
Here's her debut in 2000 (Daredevil Vol. 2 #11).

In that very first story (which I just read in its entirety on Read Comics Online) Echo and Matt Murdock go out on a date.
The story is very sexy and flirtatious, with beautifully drawn and colored romantic panels showing their attraction to each other and displaying her beauty. Initially, at least, he likes her and she likes him. And they go to see "Mallrats". It's very 90s.

There are literally lines like "Her smell, it goes right through me, becomes my oxygen...Thank you, God, for making this perfect-smelling person."
And she ogles right back: "He is so cute. He says things that I've never read on lips before."

This character is way sexier than I thought - her training sequences in the comic show how she revels in the movement of her tight and fit body.
You would never get that impression from watching the dour, RBF version that is portrayed on the Hawkeye show.

You can be sure that whatever it does show, the Marvel series won't contain any amazing lines like from that comic book.
You'll have to save it for the sexy fan-fiction on SHF.

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[shevek]

Well, it came out Jan 9, 2024 instead.

Anyone see this? I wound up watching the whole thing - I figured why not, it's only 5 episodes.

The actress isn't attractive. In fact, nobody in the series is, unless you count the naked natives from their "origin myth." I'd love to see a whole episode with just the ancestral natives, since their costuming is great.

There's no sexy whatsoever - no indication that Maya ever had a love interest, or any interest in love, either in NYC or back in her hometown of Oklahoma.

In the comics, Maya is the adopted daughter of Kingpin. No problem with that. But in this series, it looks like a large part of her hometown in Oklahoma is also working for Kingpin, including her uncle and various unidentified town residents. What exactly is the rationale for Kingpin having
a major criminal enterprise center in a small town in rural Oklahoma? No idea.

The costume she winds up wearing (for the final battle only) is boilerplate Marvel, similar to a Native American version of Ms Marvel.
It covers her up completely to the point that there's almost no shape. But then again, she not attractive anyway. What's interesting is that even though she looks very bland (like Jessica Jones, but not hot) for most of the series, the characters around her have colorful appearances - not just the ancient natives, but also the trouble they went to for dozens of Indians to appear in authentic native dress at a powwow. They definitely went the extra mile for that.

They went for total authenticity with the Choctaw Nation feel, but in the comics, she's Cheyenne.

They also went with a totally different definition of what her "Echo" power is. Instead of going with the comic book powers of imitating other people's movements, which the showrunner apparently thought was "ridiculous", she "echoes" the skills of her ancestors, and at some point learns how to transmit those powers to others, but only those of her exact lineage, and only women. The scientific explanation of that would be a genetic mutation that is passed down mother-to-daughter over the centuries, but that's not explained at all - the explanation is purely spiritual and tribal.

Half of the shots consisted of her riding around on her motorcycle. Riding into town, out of town, all around the countryside. That eats up an awful lot of screen time.

Almost every dialogue scene consisted of ASL hand-signing along with the lines, which slowed everyone's conversation down and made things drag. That eats up a lot more screen time, overall making the viewer think that more things are happening than they really are. Literal "decompression".

I dunno - it wasn't as bad as the critics on Youtube say it is, but it wasn't a great time, either - and there was very little that was "superhero" about it until the very last 10 minutes, where the powers are finally demonstrated but never explained in a rational sense.

The other main problem with the character is that she is portrayed for most of the series as a ruthless, uncaring killer who starts her killing spree and her lack of empathy all the way back in her childhood, and it's hard to sympathize with someone like that, even when she winds up defending her family, because she's been a hired killer, and basically a psychopath, for so long.

What did you think? Anybody?

Critical Drinker doesn't like it much.