Superpowered: The DC Story Review

The week of San Diego Comic-Con 2023 is a fitting time for Max to release a three-part docuseries about the history of DC Comics. Unfortunately, Superpowered: The DC Story suffers from the same problem plaguing the con these days: overly relying on comic book-adaptations rather than shining a deserving light on the comics themselves. Directors Leslie Iwerks (100 Years of Warner Bros.) and Mark Catalena (Johnny Carson: King of Late Night) start strong with a relatively thorough overview of DC’s origins. But as Superpowered progresses, it gets more diluted and scattered in its attempt to cover DC films, shows, video games, and comics across the decades. The result is a disjointed and watered-down look at the DC Comics legacy.

The strongest episode of the pack is the first. “The Hero’s Journey” begins in 1934 with Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s formation of National Allied Publications, which weathered a rocky start before the publisher’s business ignited with the introductions of Superman in 1938 and Batman in 1939.  It’s a wide-ranging premiere, covering territory that includes the broadening of Superman’s audience via radio serials; the myth of Batman’s creation, which exaggerated Bob Kane’s contributions at the expense of Bill Finger; William Moulton Marston’s feminist heroine Wonder Woman; the Comics Code Authority; the Silver Age; the Adam West-Burt Ward Batman TV series of the ’60s; and the purchase of DC Comics by Warner Communications. Together, these stories provide the most cohesive narrative of the doc, as it charts how DC built its stable of characters, while not always successfully navigating cultural shifts that impacted their success as a company.

Rosario Dawson’s narration is the spine of Superpowered, but “The Hero’s Journey” features the most interesting talking-head interviews, with comic book luminaries Gene Luen Yang, Jim Lee, Joëlle Jones, Grant Morrison, and Mark Waid speaking to the impact of the “Holy Trinity” on culture and DC’s business. With the benefit of historical distance, Iwerks and Catalena are able to tackle the sins of prior leadership and regimes with candor and context. But that piercing insight goes away almost entirely by episode 3.

The weakest sequences of Superpowered – and this goes for all three episodes – are when the filmmakers make nonlinear jumps in the corporate timeline to tie a character to their 21st-century incarnations in film or television. In theory, that’s a reasonable way to connect past and present. However, the flash-forwards are dominated by mind-numbingly generic promotional interviews. It’s all vanilla soundbites lacking substance or even good stories to make them worth inclusion. Looking at them as a piece, these interviews feel like they made the final cut because somebody behind the scenes groused about not seeing enough of today’s talent. There’s also a lack of commentary from anyone outside of DC’s inner circle, with only the occasional appearance of the Washington Post’s comic book reporter David Betancourt to provide an independent voice.

By its third and worst episode, “A Better Tomorrow,” Superpowered enters the Speed Force, sprinting from the ’90s to the release of Black Adam (the latter represented by a cursory quote from Dwayne Johnson). The logic of topic selection is baffling, with no mention of comics milestones like Becky Cloonan being the first female artist to draw a Batman issue, the closure of Vertigo, or even James Gunn’s Peacemaker series. With a puff-piece segment on DC video games and a weird, no-context mention of Zack Snyder’s recut Justice League, it’s little surprise Superpowered’s final chapter glosses over hot buttons like toxic fandom, accounts of Joss Whedon’s abusive behavior on the Justice League set,  or any controversy surrounding the 2023 Flash movie starring Ezra Miller. Aside from a nod to Milestone Comics and Phil Jimenez’s emotional story about the 9-11 Annual in 2001, this entire episode plays like a supercut of existing DVD featurette material. It’s a limp, “Why bother?” ending that fails to honor the comics or the adaptations.