While I have enjoyed many aspects of the first couple of episodes of ‘Stargirl’, I was disappointed to find yet another example of ironically mocking the original names, in this case, The Injustice Society of America. It’s actually one of the bigger flaws of the Arrowverse as a whole, even on ‘The Flash’, where Cisco enthusiastically chooses the villain names but somehow makes fun of his own choices at the same time. I’m firmly of the opinion that if you’re going to adapt from the comics, you should either choose to honor those roots or just make the decision to change the name and get it over with, leading to today’s metatextual query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) also thinks that Injustice Society of America is a much better name than Stargirl itself, asking: Does it bother you when adaptations make fun of the source material names like “Injustice Society”?
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Well, you can’t not hang a lampshade on it, since in modern context the names do seem fairly silly. If you change the names, old fans will complain, and if you use the original names without acknowledging how they sound to a viewer in 2020, new fans will call those out. (Remember how people reacted to “unobtanium” in Avatar).
Using the old name, but pointing it out for what it is, is a compromise that likely irritates the least amount of people.
They are little on the nose, but I still kinda like good, old fashioned, unapologetic villain club.