Solving Poverty in the DCU or the Berkeley Cinematic Universe?

Somebody Sa-a-a-a-a-a-ve Meeeee

If you haven’t caught the last Flash movie by now (and let’s be fair, you don’t really need to), there’s a quick gag of Batfleck admitting billionaire’s remorse under the influence of Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth:

But that got me thinking… We don’t have real-life Batmen but the SF Bay Area is actually the stomping grounds for a whole mess of billionaires.

Could they end poverty?

I’d say the only way to conclusively answer this question is to make a videogame in the style of paperclip maximizer, where instead of using all your resources to turn the universe into a paperclip-making machine, you turn Batman, Inc. into a poverty-fighting foundation.

One problem with one billionaire giving one billion dollars away is that that’s simply not enough. Putting aside that there’s been a substantial migration of people struggling to make ends meet out of the Bay Area, the ones still here number in the millions. A one-time $1000 check for everyone in the weeds would by no means be unwelcome, but the logic unfortunately points to Bruce Wayne Lucius Fox, Philanthropist aiming to become a Trillionaire first in order to build a hefty enough war chest to truly win the war on poverty.

Weirdly, this logic played out in a pretty catastrophic way in our Berkeley backyard. We’ve pointed out Fantastic Comics’ old HQ being absurdly close to that of the ill-fated FTX (and its now jailed founder), but it might also interest you to know that the entire FTX fortune was built under the auspices of an “earn-to-give” philosophy that smooths over the moral wrinkles of exactly how you make your money so long as that money is directed towards a good cause, and along with significant political contributions and luxury houses, a huge chunk of FTX’s ill-gotten gains went towards philanthropic causes.

Did it work? Well, clearly poverty still exists, but maybe fictional heroes and real-life would-be Robin Hoods are just bad at solving it. But, just how much would you want to play a game that sees if you can do any better?

Speaking of Multiversal Madness…

Smallville was always a weird show, telling a Superboy story with Clark Kent practically never donning the uniform, a lead actor who in many ways didn’t want to be Superman, and uh… the whole cult thing.

But a few years back, when DC started experimenting with multiverse tales (before its current multiversal cinematic reboot shenanigans), Smallville really got the perfect ending…

So if you’re in the TV-as comics/Comics-as-TV nostalgic mood, how about bidding on this five pack of trades: Smallville: Season Eleven (the TV show ended on season ten, if that makes sense) 1-3, and two Orphan Black (remember that show?) trades.

No minimum bid, but if you’re out of town and can’t come pick it up, you will need to add $25 for shipping, but we’ll eat shipping if the winning bid is at least $25, so out-of-townies, you might as well start bids at $25. Just hit reply with your bid. As a weird experiment, the second-highest bid will win it. As usual, we’ll close bidding whenever but you’ve got until next week at least.

And for the inevitable Summer Blonde/Ant-Man crossover…

Marvel has been repping for the Bay Area for awhile with Oakland showing up in Black Panther and SF in Ant-Man, but local boy Adrian Tomine’s new movie is apparently crammed full of Berkeley locales, at least the ones that haven’t closed since they made appearances in Optic Nerve. Of course, Boots Riley always reps for Oakland, but deficiencies in the streaming algorithms means you might have also missed the homegrown superhero comic-themed series I’m a Virgo.