My Favorite Things with Darin Kennedy

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Darin Kennedy, who is the author of the Fugue & Fable series.

What does Darin love when he’s not writing magical and musical mysteries? Spoiler alert: many things meta, especially when it comes to the DC Universe. Curious? Read on to learn more!

Thank you so much to Venessa Giunta and Shara White for the invitation to come talk about my favorite things! Of those things, there are many, but…

Let me tell you how excited I am that Crisis on Infinite Earths, a comic story from my teenage years, is going to be showcased as a five hour special on the CW Arrowverse shows this month — I hope it lives up to the source material, as I am a huge fan of both Marv Wolfman (the writer) and George Perez (the artist, and one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met).

In case you aren’t familiar with the story, basically this twelve issue mini-series came about right around 50 years into DC Comics history, where the only explanation for why Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and all their “super friends” weren’t 70-80 years old was that 1940s Superman (Golden Age) and 1980s Superman actually were two different versions of the same person, just from two different Earths. By the end of this series, an all-powerful villain had ravaged the Multiverse and the only way to save everyone and everything was to condense all the remaining Earths/universes down to one. This was also a way for DC Comics to go forward with a tighter unified creative universe much like their “marvelous” competition had at the time. Meta, right? Since then, DC has undone and redone Crisis like a gazillion times while Marvel has done its own fair share of multi-versal stories from the Captain Britain stories of Alan Davis to the recent Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse movie which really captured this idea well.

The brilliance of doing this now on the CW Arrowverse shows is not only that it’s a fantastic idea around which to build this year’s six-show crossover event as Arrow finishes its run, but that television has finally come to the same point DC Comics hit in the mid-eighties. We have 1960s Adam West: Batman, 1970s Lynda Carter: Wonder Woman, 1980s Christopher Reeve: Superman (who made a redux in 2006’s Superman Returns where he was played by Brandon Routh — more on that later), 1990s John Wesley Shipp: Flash, etc. And then we get into Smallville, Batman the Animated Series, Lois and Clark, and dozens of other examples: basically multiple versions of the same characters in different time periods. Not to mention the clever (or nostalgic) recasting of previous actors in strangely fitting roles: John Wesley Shipp now plays Barry Allen’s father on Earth One and the Jay Garrick Flash on Earth Two; Lynda Carter plays the President of the United States on Supergirl; heck, if you want to get really meta — Noel Neill who played Lois Lane in the 40s and 50s went on to play Lois Lane’s mother in the 1970s movie with Christopher Reeve who, in turn, went on to play Dr. Virgil Swann on Smallville opposite Tom Welling as a young Superman, and then Smallville alum Erika Durance went from that show’s Lois Lane to Supergirl’s Alura (the lead character’s birth mother) where Dean Cain (another previous Superman) and Helen Slater (a previous Supergirl) now play Kara Zor-El’s adopted Earth parents while Tom Welling, Brandon Routh, and the most recent Superman (on television), Tyler Hoechlin, will all play various versions of the Man of Steel in the upcoming Crisis crossover. Whew… The idea that this five-hour special will bring together all those realities is simply incredible. I’m hard-pressed to imagine a more ambitious creative endeavor and just hope they can pull it off.

Can you tell I like things that are meta? I still miss Community. Now, that was one heck of a show. By the way, anybody else convinced we’re all living in the Darkest Timeline?

We won’t talk about the recent DC movies, at least not the Superman aspects of those films. (And YES, Mr. Scorsese — these comic book movies ARE cinema.) That’s not Superman… which seems a waste because Henry Cavill certainly looks the part and has the chops to pull off a proper Last Son of Krypton if someone would write him a script where Pa Kent has a motivation that makes any sense and Clark is allowed to smile like… ever. Big kudos, however, to Ben Affleck’s Batman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. Both of those are on point, though I was raised in the whole “Batman doesn’t kill” thing. If there is a better possible portrayal of Diana than Gal Gadot’s I’d like to see it, and as the sequel is coming up, it appears I will get my chance! As for the latest Bruce Wayne reboot, I am optimistic about The Batman. And as for everyone’s concerns about Robert Pattinson playing our favorite traumatized youth who grew up into a winged mammal cosplayer who beats up bad guys, I remind you again that Michael Keaton was Mr. Mom.

Didn’t see Joker. Not sure if I will.

And I still need to check out Titans and Doom Patrol. Only so many hours in the day…

To sum up, it would appear I’m looking forward to my mid-life Crisis. (Insert rimshot here. Thank you. I’m here all week. Try the veal — it’s delicious.)

It’s funny… As I started writing this, I planned to talk about a completely different topic. Maybe you’ll all get to hear about me checking out the various symphonies and ballets of North Carolina over the last year and soaking up the various inspirations for my Fugue & Fable series if Shara invites me back for a return visit…

Lastly, a bit of advice that seems on point for this particular venue. Whatever you love, love it.

So… what are your favorite things? What is it you love about them? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

Darin Kennedy, born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Bowman Gray School of Medicine. After completing family medicine residency in the mountains of Virginia, he served eight years as a United States Army physician and wrote his first novel in the sands of northern Iraq.

His novel, The Mussorgsky Riddle, was born from a fusion of two of his lifelong loves: classical music and world mythology. The Stravinsky Intrigue continues those same themes, and his Fugue & Fable series culminates in The Tchaikovsky Finale. His The Pawn Stratagem contemporary fantasy series, Pawn’s Gambit and Queen’s Peril, combines contemporary fantasy with the ancient game of chess. His short stories can be found in numerous anthologies and magazines, and those about a certain Necromancer for Hire are collected for your reading pleasure.

Doctor by day and novelist by night, he writes and practices medicine in Charlotte, NC. To hear from Darin, find him online at darinkennedy.com and sign up for his newsletter, or join The Chessboard, his Facebook group.

Author Photo by Michael Church Photography

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