Agent Dark

I don't think the President is going to be "willingly" stepping down... They deliberately put the shot of Shepard and Roman standing in front of what I can only assume is a nuclear missile as one of Roman's flashbacks. I think that COGS will end up being the government, simply because Shepard is planning to purge the current government in nuclear fire. Shepard, it would seem, must think that the members of COGS are ones she's sees as "fit" to run the new government.

When I first saw the 'Transmatter Portal', I was like "Hey, its a Stargate!" And then Winn was like "Hey, its a Stargate!", and then also made a Portal reference! So that's my main takeaway from the episode.

Hugh Jackman. "But he's Wolverine!"

Yeah, she's a Justice Society of America villain (in the Post-Crisis continuity), and in particular for the original Mr. Terrific (the Terry Sloan version, not the Michael Holt one that's in Arrow), though she pops up in the wider DC Universe from time to time. I thought Supergirl had a pretty spot-on interpretation of her.

The Uncle/Niece thing is purely from Young Justice, which had a slightly different version of Miss Martian. She's always been a White Martian in the comics, sent to Earth by her parents to escape the Martian Civil War, and initially pretended to be a Green Martian as part of the Teen Titans. One of her main storylines involved her encountering and defeating an evil future version of herself that gone full White Martian, only to have elements of her evil version merge with herself which she has to overcome. Miss Martian is a fairly recent character to the comics, only coming in shortly after the Infinite Crisis storyline (mid-2006), and I can't seem to think of her doing too much outside of the Teen Titans books. A couple of cameos here and there in Supergirl and Batgirl books, but not much else. I'm not even sure if she's been introduced yet in the New52 continuity yet. The main thing I remember about her is that she lived in Australia for a while, because the Australian Outback reminded her of Mars. I always that was pretty cool, because we don't get too many super-heroes down here. We're claiming her as an Aussie!

Maggie Sawyer is white and blonde in the comics, and she's drawn as a bit 'older' (like in her 30s) since she's usually depicted as a Captain. Supergirl's Maggie Sawyer actually seems more like Renee Montoya from the pre-New52 continuity to be honest - a Latina detective in the GCPD, who is also gay and also dated Kate Kane lol. Montoya is a Batman character mainly though, whereas Sawyer was originally a Superman character that moved across to the Batman comics for a while.

That's not entirely out of line with her Post-Crisis origin in the comics - as a college student, Pamela Isley was duped into an experiment that turned that turned her into Poison Ivy. I guess this is somewhat similar, in that Ivy unwittingly ends up with her powers after a transformation.

Probably because the risk of being caught out is too great. The idea of a mole is you sit in deep cover, doing nothing to arouse suspicion (which means no contact with your handler) until you get activated. That way you run no risk of being pegged by a random counter-intelligence sweep that watches you doing something odd.

There is some very bitter relations between Japan and China, dating back to the late 19th Century when the Japanese fairly convincingly won the first Sino-Japanese War that resulted in influence over Korea being wrestled away from China and to Japan. That had some pretty big repercussions in China, since they had been forced to sue for peace which put a huge strain on their economy, and was basically the beginning of the end for the Qing Dynasty (which had ruled China for over 250 years but collapsed not long after, just before WW1 started). Japan later perpetuated some horrific war crimes in China when they invaded during WW2 (ie the Nanking Massacre), and that is still a very strong point of contention between the two nations particularly because there's a culture of denial in Japan about its actions during WW2. In more recent times, there's disagreement over the status of Taiwan, China's concern over Japanese-American military cooperation and disputes about ownership of islands in the East China Sea that continue to flare up. Peng's personal vendetta against Japan definitely 'makes sense' in that context. Obviously it was taken to a xenophobic extreme, but Peng was the bad guy after all...

Its weird considering how Warner Bros. knocked it out of the park with the other DC Comics stuff. Wonder Woman especially, but Suicide Squad and even Justice League had good showings. But all the Flarrow stuff seemed really tepid in comparison, even accounting for the fact that its relative to the fkn amazing Wonder Woman stuff.

Power Girl was never part of the classic Birds of Prey, aside from a few issues where she popped up (and I seem to remember a very big distrust of Power Girl by Oracle, to the point where Oracle only called on Power Girl as a last resort). The original Birds of Prey one shots/mini-series in the mid 90's were mainly Babs and Dinah, though Huntress and Catwoman made appearances. When the series launched as an ongoing in 1999 it was just Oracle/Black Canary again, and it wasn't until Gail Simone took over about 4 years into its run that Huntress and then Lady Blackhawk got added as full time members.

Well given that Kate Kane is rumoured to be appearing on the show I think that's the direction where any of Maggie's romantic interests will be going. And judging by the casting, I wonder if they actually wanted Renee Montoya but couldn't get her due to Gotham. Or if they're blending a bit of Montoya into the Sawyer character.

Awesome! Back when they announced Maggie Sawyer, I posited that Kate Kane might show up. Especially because Cameron Chase had already made a brief appearance. They probably won't get Renee Montoya, but Maggie and Chase both had recurring parts in the recent Batwoman title which made me think that Kate was a natural follow on. Barbara Gordon as Oracle is just icing on the cake (yeah, take that New52!). A Batwoman/Oracle "Birds of Prey" duo sounds interesting too. The original Birds of Prey title - when Chuck Dixon was writing it - was for a long time just the team-up of Barbara Gordon/Oracle and Dinah Lance/Black Canary. It wasn't until a fair way into the run that Huntress and Lady Blackhawk were added into the team as regulars (though the very first Birds of Prey one-shot, written before the on-going series, had Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress and Catwoman if I remember). I guess with one Canary dead and the other tied up with Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman steps up and I'm completely fine with that. I like Supergirl just fine, but I'm not going to lie - a live action Batwoman on the screen had me way more excited than anything else announced for the show lol.

Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman were the executive producers. Jonah Nolan is the brother of Christopher Nolan, so you might know his writing credits from movies like Memento, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar. Nolan's next project is an adaptation of Westworld (1970's movie that was written by Michael Crichton) about a futuristic theme park with Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris and Evan Rachel Wood amongst others. He's also supposedly starting on TV series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series.

The Z-11 is a Chinese designed and built helicopter that's heavily based off the AS-350 Eurocopter. It looks very, very similar to the point where you could definitely paint a red-star on an AS350 and call it a Z-11 for TV show purposes. And both the AS-350 and Z-11 have military variants - the Royal Australian Navy for example uses AS-350s in training and surveying roles, and the Chinese have variants on the Z-11 suited for Light Attack roles