#and just...everything to do with the reminders of Nightwing's own comic book right now

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

tumblr.com/emdeerm insert-that-spiderman-meme

based on this prompt and the amazing fanfic "Wait I'm a Cartoon Over Here?!"

Ahem Damian flopped onto his bed, exhausted after having had to clean the bat litter once more, as per Alfred's instruction. However, that exhaustion was punctuated by an underlying satisfaction. Despite everything, he and Richard had succeeded. They made contact with Team Phantom (part of him felt dizzy and giddy at the notion, but he'd impale anyone who'd suggest it) and managed to keep Father and the others from combusting at the notion of their existence. Phantom had sworn up and down to never expose their identities, knowing just how important they are. ("You were my hero since I was 7, I'd rather eat Dash's underwear again than betray your trust!") If only he knew...

Speaking of whom, Damian clamped his hands of his ears as the girlish squealing in this room entered a fever pitch. He was starting to regret allowing Kent to enter the Manor while team Phantom were visiting.

"DANNY DANNY DANNY DANNY DANNY I'M SUCH A HUGE FAN OF YOU CAN YOU PLEASE SIGN THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND-" Damian could've sworn that's the spiel Jonathan had opened with about twenty minutes ago. Fenton, for his part, was doing his best to withstand the onslaught of super-powered pre-teen fandom.

He'd never be caught dead doing something so... debased. So petty and pointless as to gawk at a fictional character. He, the blood son of the Bat and his future successor.

"Come on Damian, aren't you excited too?" His heart rate spiked. Blast. How quickly could he break into Father's kryptonite vault...

"You sure you wanna mess him with right now? He really looks like he could kill you, and I read the issue where he tried to murder Tim."

Damian prickled, even felt a hint of shame knowing that Fenton knew just as much about him as he did, how shameful. No not shameful at all, why would he care about someone who probably wasn't even real. Damian moved to sit up and shot Jonathan the deadliest glare he could muster, an expression copy-pasted right off his Father's Batglare.

Jonathan, for his part, cowered behind Fenton. "You'd do well to keep remain silent, Kent, before I remind you that your life is as fragile as a dying rat." He all but spat out. However, instead of cowering further, Jonathan's lips curled into a devious expression.

Fenton's head bounced between the two. "Maybe this personal arc hasn't been published yet..." He muttered.

"Hey Danny..." Jonathan began, hesitantly. This could not be happening. Damian grabbed the nearest katana and lunged. However, his efforts were made fruitless as he passed through the duo like they weren't there. Dammit! "I know this is kind of embarassing, but we put in a lot of work and you're like my number two inspiration after my dad and we don't know how long you'll be here so., but you gotta keep this a total secret, like a total secret, you can't tell anyone."

Jonathan reached into his backpack. Damian swung his sword again. Anything, anything to prevent the inevitable. If this were allowed to happen, his life would be forfeit. Curse his hero this hero for being so overpowered. Where was the lipstick laser when you needed it? Or the fenton thermos? or the anti-creep stick, or anything?!

However, just as Jonathan was about to retrieve the forbidden contraband, a fist flew out and blew him away. "Woah what is this?" Exclaimed one Danielle Phantom. It was at that moment that Damian knew, there was nothing more that could be done.

~~~~~

Danielle rifled through the pages of the comic book that Jon was about to pull out (which, btw, was amazing! Danny might be into Nightwing and Martian Manhunter, but she could not count the number of nights she'd dreamt of flying with the Super Sons. Basically she was never gonna wash that fist again anyway) and was shocked to find the contents. "Yo Danny, have you seen this??"

Her template/brother/cousin/dad (his status is in a weird gray area at the moment) leaned over, eyes widening too.

For within her hands was the latest issue of the celebrated fancomic, the Secret Adventures of Danny Phantom, which circulated around this universe's social media forums and the schoolyards of Metropolis and Gotham. Danielle flipped through pages upon pages of lovingly hand-drawn panels.

"I didn't know we were a comic, too! I've never looked that cool before." Danny said, nothing the cover art.

"I dont think this is official, i mean, whatever official canon means these days. Look, there's no logo from the channel our cartoon's on."

"I can't believe I have fans who know enough about me to make a fancomic." Danny groaned.

"Oh shut up, Danny. you don't see me getting any fanart." Dani teased, until she reached the beautiful two-page spread of her, Robin and Superboy swooping in to save Danny from the GiW. Special attention was placed by the artist on her hair, and the unnatural glow of her ghostly eyes. Overall it was a very flattering picture. the real Dani's jaw dropped.

Danny turned to the gaping Jon, and the limp Damian, both of whose faces were drained of colour, looking even more dead than himself on a cold day. Realisation dawned inside of him. "Wait, did you guys make this?"

His interoogation could not continue furhter before Dani squealed with excitement. She phased out of the bedroom door in an instant before anyone could react, yelling in excitement about this amazing fancomic that Damian and Jon had made, like it was fate... Her voice was followed by one Dick Grayon's comment on Damian's evolving artstyle, before more joined the chorus. As for Damian? He rolled for 60d6 psychic damage, took 300, and lost the wlil to live. Jon was not far behind.

#dpxdc #dc x dp #danny phantom #dp x dc crossover #based on another prompt #each universe exists in the other as a fictional series #How do i tag others??? #im new to tumblr plz hepl

[bigskydreaming]

If you were editor of Nightwing's book ever since at least the start of Rebirth to today and you were given free reign, what would your story mandates?

Oh no, this is dangerous. LOL. Hmm, I have no idea what to shoot for here, so I'll try to keep it to ten. That's reasonable right? Ten is good. Yeah. Is fine.

Okay, so, in no particular order:

1) Let Dick be competent 101. None of this him having to play hype man for every other character to pop up in HIS title bullshit. Nope. That's not what they're there for. He's the lead man, LET HIM BE THE LEADING MAN. Like sure, everyone has their areas of expertise, he doesn't need or have to be the best at everything, blah blah blah.....but its about the nuance. All of that is kinda lip service because the thing is, you don't go into MOST comic books and NEED to be reminded of that because the lead characters of those books are all constantly getting saved or shown up or chastised by every guest star in their books, you know? This is a very weird, very niche phenomenon very specific to Dick's character, and I'm super over it. I'm here to read about the guy who has literally been doing this longer than most superheroes twice his age. The guy who's been doing this since before he hit double digits. The born acrobat. The destined ultimate warrior or whatever of Gotham's Ornithological Society Of Murder and Pretentiousness. Gimme that guy. And that guy doesn't need to be 'humbled' every other page, because the thing is, he's not some egomaniac to begin with so the everpresent need to humble him doesn't actually come off as humbling! It just comes off as pandering and not even to actual fans of the actual character, so its like.....wyd DC.

2) Let other people take responsibility for their own crap with Dick rather than always just expecting a mea culpa from him. I'm so unbelievably tired of the words I'm sorry from Dick. I love personal accountability, so I never thought I'd have to say this about a character, but enoooooough. They have made it completely in character for this dude to apologize to everyone ELSE for being brainwashed, getting amnesia, being KILLED, like.....the amount of things he's groveled for forgiveness for when he didn't actually do a damn thing wrong or worse yet, was the ACTUAL victim of is like....pretty damn staggering. And meanwhile, there's nary a peep of apology from the people who regularly insult or belittle him, get physically violent with him, take advantage of him or take him for granted, etc, etc, etc. Its entirely too one-sided and imbalanced, and the pendulum needs to swing the other direction, like YESTERDAY, and in a fairly big way, IMO.

3) None of this Baby's First Social Justice Awakening 101 crap. I'm sorry, but no. Especially not when you go out of your way to acknowledge that Dick is Romani, only to then turn around and act like he's only JUST had his eyes opened to an awareness of like, classism and poverty and the real struggles people face day to day? Sorry not sorry, but especially for other white writers out there, do not use people of color as self-inserts for dipping a toe into Learning To See Past Privilege. And especially when talking about a character who has a history of being actively abused and hurt by the system and institutions of power, or hell, even leaving out that particular origin story, who has still been out on the streets helping people since he was a literal child. You can not tell me that this is his first face to face experience with social issues, or the first time he's had the inclination to try and address those head on. (And its also particularly egregious that the people second-guessing Dick in his own title and giving him reality checks or acting like they have more of an awareness of all this than he does like, happen to all be white? OPTICS. LEARN ABOUT THEM. COMMON SENSE. GET SOME.)

Know what would actually be a better way to approach this? Flashbacks. Show us Dick running into situations that make him think back to a case when he was still Robin, when he and Batman had started fighting over their approaches to things, actually SHOW us those conflicts and how their viewpoints had started diverging, and how much of that was due to Dick not having the same experiences as Bruce, or the same standing in society, no matter what house he lived in. THEN you can jump BACK to the present, with the reminder/awareness that this is something that isn't NEWS to Dick, but that he in the past felt he was forced to make his peace with as something he wasn't in a position to do that much about....only NOW, he's in a very DIFFERENT position, and suddenly it just hits him how he's still acting like he did when he was limited in resources or in having to be part of a chain in command or having to factor other responsibilities into things....now he ACTUALLY has the power and the resources to make meaningful change in the ways he ALWAYS wanted to, but maybe just needed time to figure out HOW.

Like you know what would have made Shawn Tsang's story arc so much better? If Dick didn't just remember her as the Pigeon's one time teenage sidekick he'd briefly fought as a kid, but like.....if he remembered her as someone he and Bruce had FOUGHT about. Because he didn't agree with sending someone to juvie for defacing public property as a form of political protest, when it was someone's LIFE who was going to be irrevocably damaged by that while the damage to the city could be fixed with a check, and what made Dick any more deserving of Bruce's leniency and faith in his potential or underlying goodness than Shawn?

But he was still a kid himself back then, and when Bruce responded with his usual conviction, talking about the importance about rule of law and etc etc, Dick just didn't have the words to get through to him then, to get him to understand that this wasn't just Dick not getting it because he was too young, it was BRUCE not getting it, that Dick was literally just saying well he wasn't too young to have been in juvie himself, and of the two of them, he's the one who has experience there so why was Bruce's opinion on whether this was the punishment that fit the crime the one that got to hold more weight here? When Dick's the one who knows what that punishment actually LOOKS like beyond the abstract, for whom it was a reality that still haunts him in ways that even defacing a few statues of some rich old fucks doesn't deserve?

Or hell, go back FURTHER than when he was Robin. Idk where any of those posts are, but I've always wanted to see something where Dick maybe runs into someone he remembers from his time in juvie, maybe a guard who is like, the source of the reasons Dick mistrusts figures of authority and is so hung up on independence and not being under anyone's thumb, or maybe someone who was in there with him, another kid who looked out for him when he didn't have to, etc. Gimme Dick tackling head-on his firsthand awareness that there's no rehabilitation to be found in a jail for kids, when most of those kids don't even need rehabilitation in the first place and only did what they did in order to survive or escape from worse situations or like, were there purely because of racist cops, etc. Let him go after THAT system, driven by personal experiences and memories that maybe only hit him in full after recovering his memories from the Ric Grayson arc, like they're things that he put in a box in his mind a long, long time ago because he didn't have the spoons or reserves to deal with them when he was a kid still so traumatized in so many ways, like, something had to give and so he put all those memories away for another day and just....never got back to them because life kept hitting him with new and fresh trauma every week.

But now something has him thinking back to those early days in Gotham, and reminding him that not everyone had a Bruce Wayne willing and able to give them an out from that place or acrobatic skills to escape it on their own, and like. You want to do something about the cycles of violence in Gotham and Bludhaven? Why not start with the places that literally MANUFACTURE cruelty on an institutional level, that teach kids that no matter what they did to get put there, even if that was nothing at all, they're all going to be treated the same way and given no reason NOT to do whatever it took to be top dog in a dog eat dog world by the time they got out.

There's SO many better approaches to social awareness in the Batbooks than what we're seeing, and like. Sheesh. The bar is way too low.

4) On a related note, if I'm editor of the Nightwing book, the FIRST thing I'm doing is making it a priority to find a writer of color for that book, ideally someone of Rom descent. Its waaaaay past time to let a Romani writer take the reins on Dick, Wanda, Pietro or Doom, aka some of the only prominent Romani characters out there? You can't tell me that there aren't talented writers who identify as Roma who would be more than willing to add their perspective to Dick's archive of narratives, and if an editor's gotta go looking for them? Go fucking look. DC and its fans have milked a lot of mileage out of the idea of Dick being Romani with very little in the way of nuanced storytelling to show for it in the past twenty years, and if DC wants to trot out little reminders that Dick is Romani every couple years, like in the form of a freaking line that has no follow up or expansion to any degree and is offset by an internal monologue that otherwise reads as incredibly privileged, the least they can do is TRY to expand on that with the narrative perspective of someone they claim to be representing via that character.

And no, this isn't gatekeeping, this is prioritizing. Its not about preventing other writers from writing this character, like just for the hell of it, its about being proactive about finding a writer who can write specific aspects of this character that have long gone unaddressed or poorly represented. And like. Okay. Its not easy breaking into the comics industry for anyone, but its particularly not easy for marginalized writers. Most every major comic book company just recites 'make your own stuff first and then show us that' but when you're a writer specifically, finding a compatible artist to partner with on creator-owned indie stuff first, when those artists are in the same position as you are and apologetically and understandably tend to have to take paying work over yours if you can't pay except on the back end, like....there are a lot of hurdles to getting your start in comic books, and while there are more and more marginalized writers in comics these days, DC and Marvel kinda fucked up, because you know what?

After being told 'make your own first, then we'll talk,' writers DID do just that....but then found out that well, due to the ease of online distribution and access these days, for any writers who CAN find an artist to partner with, its a hell of a lot easier to get their content out there these days WITHOUT a major publisher behind them.....and for a lot of marginalized writers in particular, its worth it to keep full creative control in exchange for smaller circulation. Especially when they don't have to deal with editors 'softening' their work to make it more palatable for audiences that quite frankly aren't necessarily their primary target. So yeah, marginalized voices are becoming more and more present in comics, but Marvel and DC for the most part are keeping the same voices centered they always have, and what these voices have to say is becoming less and less relevant and outdated. Because much like this arc from Taylor, even when they DO dip their toes into story matter that's of interest to wider audiences, they're doing so to a degree that still puts them years behind the conversations everyone else is having.

5) The same holds true of disability representation. I stopped reading Taylor's run for a lot of reasons but his way of responding to people unhappy with his depiction of Babs was a key one. If I'm editor on a book, and someone tweets at one of my writers that their depiction of a disabled character was hurtful because it feels like they're doubling back on everything Babs has ever said about not being defined by or ashamed of her disability and now its being treated like a dirty little secret, and that writer's response is essentially to just laugh at them and say there's nothing wrong or ableist about their writing of a disabled person, TO a concerned disabled person? That writer's ass is getting fired. Full stop.

Either you give a shit about this stuff or you don't. Don't pay your readers lip service about how important social issues are to you and how much you care about using superhero narratives to inspire people on these matters if you're gonna turn around and show your ass the second you don't feel comfortable and prioritized by the conversation, like it wouldn't exist without your oh so valuable contributions. ESPECIALLY if you don't identify as sharing the same identity of the marginalized character you're writing. You are a guest in someone else's lived experiences at that point, and you think you've got the right to belittle and talk down to the people who LIVE THERE? Fuck off, my dude.

6) Re-center Dick as someone who the superhero community RESPECTS. I love seeing Dick depicted as someone who has an awareness of his own limitations and an appreciation for what others bring to the table, and so I'm not opposed to him calling on others when he needs to.....but I also would like to see more of the opposite. But not in the way we usually see it these days, where he's asked to come help with a crisis and then usually second-guessed the whole way, and then sent back home without so much as a thank you when its done. Yawn. Sorry. I've read that story by now.

You know what story arc I freaking LOVED as a kid, back in the 90s? In Green Lantern, when Kyle Rayner first became the sole GL, one of his very early arcs, before he ever joined the JLA or anything....was him realizing how little he knew about being a superhero. He was like, my predecessors all had a full fledged CORPS to teach them everything they needed to know, but I had a few lines of exposition from a funny little blue guy in a red pillowcase and then I was off to the races. That's not good enough. There's so much I don't know about being a hero, I don't even KNOW what I still need to know.

So he went on kinda a superhero training roadtrip. He went to Metropolis to ask Superman for advice, he went to Batman to learn from Batman and Robin (Tim at the time). He went to Wonder Woman, Sentinel (Alan Scott, the first Green Lantern), etc, etc. And in the end, Kyle very much became his own kind of hero who wasn't just a pastiche of all those other heroes and the advice they gave him, but like....this put him on the road to that.

And I'd love to see something like that happen in Dick's solo title. We've seen him train in a team setting, we've seen him train the other Robins.....I'd love to see like, young superheroes from OTHER books, not ones created by the title, but like names people actually recognize from other franchises, like, guest star in Nightwing's book to learn from HIM, specifically. I wanna see something where Wally looks at the latest speedster and is like, you know what, if you really wanna be the best hero you can possibly be, then Nightwing's who you gotta go to, because there's no one I trust to make a better hero out of someone than him. I want the newest kid on the JLA block to worry that people aren't taking him seriously because of his age or experience, and he's always hearing them talk about Nightwing and how young he was when he started and so if anyone knows something about how to gain the respect of your older superhero peers, that's the guy to talk to.

Gimme Dick's couch being crashed on at various times by a half dozen new or upcoming young superheroes who all heard or figured out that if they really want to up their superhero game, Nightwing's the guy to see.

7) Bring back Bea. There's no long paragraph expansion on this, its really simply. Bring back Bea. She was one of the freshest breaths of air in Dick's supporting cast in ages, most of the current run is based off her character direction in the first place, she's literally the best suited TO help Dick in this venture, and the reasons they gave for writing her out of Dick's life were all bullshit and they just wanted to focus on his previous relationships, which would be fine if they didn't fall into the same two endless cycles of bring back up, go nowhere with, awkwardly avoid each other for years, rinse and repeat. Like. Bring back Bea, please and thank you, the end.

8) Focus on new villains. Heartless is meh, but the idea of new villains is still better IMO than rehashing Blockbuster, Zucco, etc. Like, nostaglia ain't it. If I want to read Blockbuster fucking up Dick's life, I can do that. They're called back issues. The thing is, love it or hate it, the Blockbuster arc WAS iconic. It left its mark. And anything that doesn't leave just as much of a mark, if they're going to bring him up again, is just gonna be a waste of time, you know? It'll just dilute his overall presence when like, what he was - worked fine as is. We don't need Round Two.

The trick to good villains, IMO, is they have to speak to a fight that needs fighting.

What I mean by that is....the best villains are those who resonate on a more instinctive level because they embody something that already exists in a reader's mind as a conflict that needs fighting. Like, if superheroes exist, if the embodiment of larger than life presences and forces devoted to protecting the world from various things are real....then their villains need to embody the kinds of fights or conflicts that NEED larger than life figures to combat them, at least on a one to one level.

Look at Superman and Lex Luthor. Superman at his core embodies the strength of community. He's the ultimate hero of the people, his essence is that he was the last survivor of a doomed race who was raised by two honest, hard working people to see the beauty in just being ONE of them, in using what he had on behalf of all of them and not just himself. In contrast, Lex Luthor is basically the embodiment of capitalist greed, of excess, of the entitlement of being able to have anything with a snap of your fingers and thus assuming that gives you divine mandate to make the kinds of choices that he sees as only his right to make.

He hates Superman, ultimately, because Superman is the WRONG savior of the people. He wants their only savior to be HIM, half the time he honestly believes he's saving the world FROM Superman, but just as often he's perfectly content to be the villain and not shy about it....because Lex Luthor's ultimate motivation is he wants everyone to know when he's dead and gone that LEX LUTHOR WAS HERE. He genuinely doesn't care WHAT his impact or legacy is at the end of the day, just that it exists and it overshadows most everything else...because all that really matters to him is the irrefutable proof that HE mattered. And thus at their cores, Superman and Lex are perfectly opposed. Ideally situated to eternally be in conflict, their own forever war, because their core natures are incompatible. They CAN'T compromise, without compromising themselves and essentially ending up as someone totally other than who and what they are already.

And you can go down the list. The Joker is the chaos to Batman's order, while Mr. Freeze is the stagnancy of that order taken too far, he's what you get when you freeze everything in your grief and refuse to let anything go on, anything new grow, because that would mean having to admit once and for all that what you're mourning is really gone. Two-Face is the ultimate embodiment of Man vs Self, a once good man at war with his own worse nature, and reminding everyone who looks at him how easily they could fall to the same fate.

And so on and so on. What Dick needs, is more of the same. Like, as much as I'm not a huge fan of Talon stories, I maintain that the Court of Owls were a great foil for him - just they tend to be poorly used in canon as well. But I also think how poorly they come off in canon has a lot to do with canon not really touching on WHY they're such a perfect foil for Dick....and that's Dick's history with being outside the system, mistreated and even exploited by the system. Because the Court, their core concept, is they ARE the system. They are entrenched, enfranchised, institutional power, passed down through generations, dynastic control that is a perfect counterpart to the dynastic power of the Wayne family, embodied in its youngest generation in the form of Bruce's FOUND family, the children he adopted regardless of whether or not his peers found them deserving of that honor. The Court, and their entire....thing...about the Gray Son, is the entitled fury of those denied something they deem theirs simply because they WANT it, and who will burn the whole world down rather than admit defeat or let someone else have it instead.

And that resonates. It could resonate a lot MORE if DC would actually lean into those concepts and allow Dick to explore how the Court are nothing he's not used to, they're literally made up of the same people who have looked down on him ever since he came to Gotham, but now they're actually a face and a name put to all those attitudes, something he can literally FIGHT BACK AGAINST. The Court are literally human-sized embodiments of everything and everyone who's tried to confine Dick since his parents' deaths, tried to define him without his permission, tried to make him other or lesser than who and what he is.....and who thus now exist in a form that Dick can literally BATTLE. So that he doesn't HAVE to just take this stuff lying down.

Thanks to the Court, he doesn't HAVE to just passively accept it, that this is just how life is, that some people are going to view him this way and think this about him and there's nothing he can do about it. He CAN do something about it, in superhero stories. He can kick its ASS, in the form of the Court of Owls and everything its members think about him and intend for him. He can refuse to bow down to them, to accept their mark on him. He can say lol, no, and then blow their shit sky high, ideally with a little help from his family. He can BEAT them, in this incarnated form, and in doing so, even though he can't beat everything they stand for and represent, that victory still matters, still means something symbolic to readers it resonates with.

And that's what we need more of. Villains created specifically to embody concepts that are diametrically opposed to Dick and what he represents. The system, yes, but also villains who embody the kind of tyranny and control he fights back against in his constant battles for autonomy and self control. Villains who embody the 'new hopes' of a second generation just like Dick himself is the focal point of the hopes embodied by the second generation of heroes. I'm actually not the hugest fan of multiversal constant Dick Grayson, but I might like it more if he had an opposite number there, someone he was specifically contrasted with. Idk.

But you get it.

9) Dick having a social life. Gimme the Titans and his siblings showing up JUST to show up. We have room enough for at least a couple pages every other issue where we just get to see these characters having some breathing room, taking a beat to stop and be something other than just a superhero, to be human as well. There's more to life than 24/7 fighting, even for them, and that's largely been lost in modern superhero comics, which kinda sucks, because that was what made most of the more iconic and lasting dynamics between various characters like, STAND the test of time. The larger than life battles between good and evil might be what many of us come to superhero comics FOR, but the relatable back-and-forths and ups and downs of their private lives spent with friends and family tends to be what keeps most of us coming BACK. And lately its all just mission, mission, mission, and I'm like blah, blah, blah and its like, meh, meh, meh. Y'know? Give the guy some down time, and let his friends come spend it with him.

10) Boone. This is purely self-indulgent, but if you know anything about me, you know my obsession with Robin: Year One, Dick's brief time at Vengeance Academy, and the hate/hate relationship he has with his brief frenemy from that period, Boone aka Shrike. This character has SOOOOO much potential to be Dick's true archnemesis and rival, and like. *Sobs* I can't get into it all again. Its too much. I can't do it.

Okay, I absolutely can. And will, probably. But like. Later.

BONUS ROUND:

Other thing I would absolutely insist upon if I were Nightwing editor....

GET THAT FUCKING MEME SHIRT ABOUT BRUCE SLAPPING DICK THE FUCK OUTTA HERE.

Like. Seriously. WHAT THE HELL. Why would you double down on THAT? Why is Babs STILL wearing it? (Last I checked, like I think I saw it in a scan from last issue? I'm pretty sure its still there? If not, forget this entire rant, and I am very embarrassed. Okay not that embarrassed. I don't really care if I'm wrong here but like, in case I'm not)...

WHY. Who thought that was funny? No, seriously, on behalf of any other abuse survivors who like me are SERIOUSLY not amused, who the FUCK thinks its FUNNY to have one of Dick's best friends sporting a shirt that no matter what it represents IN universe, to readers OUT of universe, is always going to call to mind the fact that this meme only freaking EXISTS because of all the times DC has obliviously and without acknowledgment written Bruce abusing his children, including the BFF that Babs is literally wearing that right in front of.

Like omg do you hate her, DC? What other possible reason could you have for thinking that would be a cute, funny thing for her to wear around the guy getting SLAPPED, by his DAD, in your shirt's iconography.

Okay I'm done.

LOL.

Sorry, that last one was brewing for awhile. Deep breaths. Woo.

[hollyharper]

For awhile, I’ve been working on some of my own stories. This is the half of the first Chapter to my novel: played into love. I will be making alterations, replaceing DC references with characters form my storyline: Legacy.

I login into my computer, just as the microwave beeps. I dodge around a metal support, and skip over a box of wires. I swing the microwave door open, and another yawn escapes. In the next cabinet, I feel around for a spoon. Savory, warm Ramen scent filled the room. I should clean up. I shake the notion away and start to stir my unhealthy dinner. I think about cleaning again, As I open a Coke. And a third time, as I dance around the mess, dinner in one hand, and an open soda in the other. Email is the last tab I use. The other five tempt me with names of comic series I haven’t finished reading. Half of the emails are ads. Hobby Lobby and Jonains are having sales. I glance at the billboard covered in cosplay designs. It would be a great time to pick up martials for my next cosplay, if I wasn’t tight on money. Half of my inbox is work related. One email pops out. It’s from Kate. Kate and I had grown up together. We went on vacation together, cosplayed together, read books together, and even moved to New York together. About a year ago, she had gotten her break as an actress and had to move to Hollywood for work. I missed her, but my robotics job keeps me too busy to visit. I open the email. A smile spread immediately. It’s an invitation to a massive comic convention in Chicago. Her boyfriend, Mark lives there. They were planning on going as Black Canary and Green Arrow, but now are doing the Birds of Prey. Kate knows I have a 2014 Batgirl cosplay. The email simply said, what hotel they were staying at and that we would be meeting two other cosplayers, who were coming as Nightwing and Huntress. I glance over at my cosplay rack. A purple leather sleeve sticks out. I want to go, but… I’m on a tight budget, and I don’t know these other two cosplayers. There are a hundred ways that could play out. Huntress could be mean and give me the silent treatment. She could be lesbian and like me. That sent tremors down my spine. Or she could be dating Nightwing and hate me because of some photo we take together. Nightwing could be snarky and awful to me. Or he could be fat with bad habits and hit on me. The image that pops into my head, ruins my dinner. A shirtless Nightwing, with skull tattoos over his chest, and cigarette breath, backing me into a wall, while Huntress glares wickedly. I set my roman aside, before I have a chance to puke on it. On the other hand, I haven’t seen Kate in months, and I’ve met Mark. Both of them are good people. But two strangers? Miles from home? That is a bit much. Still, I want to see Kate. If I drive, I can leave whenever I want. That eliminates the possibility of getting stuck around people I dislike. A quick google maps search reveals it would be a twelve hour drive. I’ve done longer, though not preferable, it’s not inmangeable. The two strangers still unnerve me. Kate would never put me in a bad situation. I remind myself. It’s true, but my imagination is still running wild. I type a response and hit send before I can talk myself back out of it. My reply is short: I’m in.

The hotel Kate had chosen was right across from the convention center. I park the car in the closest stop to the door. The moment my feet touch the ground I stretch. A large yawn escapes. Sluggishly, I unload my bags. I swing the backpack over my shoulder, slam the trunk close and drag my two suitcases towards the door. I check in as quickly as possible and finally lug my bags into my hotel room. The king bed calls my name, but I unpack anyway. The coffee maker calls my name. I fill a cup with water from the sink, and almost fall asleep on the counter. The firmerill sound and scent for brewing decaf coffee fills the room. I stack my clothes neatly in the provided drawers. The coffee machine continues to gurgle. The sound slowly disapates. It beeps, an jarring reminder to awaken. I waddle over. Decaf won’t give me much energy, but it's better than nothing. Another, bigger yawn escapes. I find the tv remote. It takes a little bit to find a good channel. I settle down for the final task of the day. I pull out my cosplay and run a final inspection on it. Thank God, I find no holes. Nothing was damaged during the growling thirteen hour trip. Satisfied that everything is ready for tomorrow, I climb under the covers.

[heroicadventurists]

Batgirls: The Legacy and Discord among fans

My journey into comics started in the 90s, thanks in large part to the X-Men cartoon. I loved everything about The X-Men; their powers, their fight for equality and their strong female characters. I started reading X-Men comics religiously until I graduated from college and started working at a bank.

Fast forward 9 years, and I go to my first comic book convention and I'm sucked in again. This time around, I'm interested in the Batfamily. I start buying bat related comics and my favorite character changes from Gambit to Red Hood. I actually love all of the Robins; and of course the only Batgirl I have ever known, Barbara Gordon, from the 90s cartoon.

I joined Tumblr to engage with the fandom and to my surprise, there is discord among Batgirl fans (specifically Babs, Cass and Steph). Some fans refuse to call the current Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, her vigilante name; and instead refer to her as Babsgirl?!?! Some Cass fans think Stephanie didn't deserve the mantle; and Stephanie fans don't think she gets the respect she deserves. I'm blown away, and slightly entertained by all of this. The rivalry is real among the Batgirls, moreso than what I've seen with the Robins. Let's talk about it.

Transitions of Power

When I think of Batgirls, I think of Robins. They are both equally important to the Batman mythos. At some point, for whatever reason, a Robin or Batgirl has transitioned out of the role. The transitions between the two groups have been slightly different.

Robins do not give up their mantle readily. They become jealous, angry and downright scary when they are "replaced".

Dick wrestling Robin Jason after a mission; Tim defeating Robin Damian in a fight; Damian defeating Robin Duke and the entire We are Robin crew; Jason defeating Robin Tim.

Now let's compare the Batgirl transitions.

In both Batgirl situations, the predecessor supports the transition of power (even if begrudgingly). There is no violence. The Batgirls handle the situation with more dignity and respect than the Robins. In the Robin's defense, their mantles were either forcibly taken from them or they were not aware they were replaced. The bitterness with The Robins is real.

You Deserve It 👏🏽..👏🏼.. 👏🏻👏🏾 ..👏🏿

I have been seeing several posts lately saying Stephanie didn't deserve the Batgirl mantle, and I wholeheartedly disagree. Again, let's compare the Batgirls to their male counterparts. Robin was created by Dick Grayson, however he outgrew the mantle and Batman's control. Missing Dick, Bruce made Jason his Robin after catching him trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile. That's all it took.

Tim truly put in the work to get the mantle of Robin, so it was probably a slap in the face when Dick took it from him and gave it to Damian. At this point in Damian's arc, he was insufferable. He was violent, arrogant and full of rage (not his fault). He did not deserve Robin; but to stop him from leaving Gotham, Dick handed it to him.

So we have 2 Robins who deserved it and 2 who did not, but by the end of their runs, all 4 made the mantle their own and are dynamic characters to this day.

Stephanie 100% deserved Batgirl. Before becoming Batgirl, Stephanie was already in the batfamily and operated as Spoiler. She even had a brief (and disastrous) stint as Robin. Stephanie was an ally to the bats, and "promoting" her to Batgirl was Bruce's way of saying he recognized her efforts and growth. This was a way to show Stephanie that she truly belonged in their ranks. It was well deserved.

The Batgirls love each other

Another difference between the Batgirls and Robins is their love for one another. These girls support each other, which cannot be said for the Robins. While the relationships with the Robins has vastly approved in New 52 and Rebirth, they still have their moments of discord. I say this because it's ironic that the Batgirl characters get along extremely well and have a sisterhood but the different fandoms have issues.

Babsgirl

When I first saw the phrase "Babsgirl", I didn't understand what it meant. It was only recently that I discovered it was a way to not acknowledge Barbara as the current Batgirl. What a slap in the face to her legacy and history. That's like calling Batman "Bruceman" because you preferred Dick's run better.

Barbara first appeared on the 1960s show Batman and eventually made her way into comics in 1967 (52 years). Barbara helped popularize Batgirl in mainstream media by appearing in animated movies, cartoons, live action shows and video games.

Barbara may not have been the first Batgirl to have a solo series but she laid the foundation for the modern day Batgirl (respect also to Bette Kane).

The Real Issue

The real issue isn't who carries the Batgirl mantle but what they are doing with Barbara, Cassandra and Stephanie. Again let's take it back to the Robins. All of the Robins have had their mantles removed but they continued to utilize Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian very strongly in comics and across media platforms.

Dick as Nightwing, Jason as Red Hood, Tim with Young Justice and Damian with the Teen Titans

All of the boys, except Damian right now, actually have personas that are better than Robin. The Robins have been allowed to headline their own comics, lead teams and interact with the larger DC Universe as a whole.

The only Batgirl who has been afforded this luxury is Barbara, which I attitribute to the strong foundation she has built in mainstream media. She has her own comic, she has created and led her own team, and she participates in DC crossover events as a main player.

I believe the divide between Batgirl fans is because the same is not afforded to Cassandra and Stephanie.

After Stephanie stopped being Batgirl, she became Spoiler once again (which is a great character) but she took a supporting role. As far as I know, she has not been on a team outside of a Bat related group. She just showed up in 2 episodes of Young Justice Outsiders that were cameos at best. I haven't seen any plans for her character at the moment, with Tim (her only storyline) being lost in the multiverse.

After Cassandra stopped being Batgirl, she took up the Black Bat mantle (awesome name) but due to legal reasons, DC couldn't continue using the name. Cass dissappeared for a while and returned as Orphan. This name is truly disrespectful because her adoption has been retconned, so it's a constant reminder, in my opinion, that she is not truly family. Things are looking up for Cassandra as she is on a new Bat sanctioned team and is getting a graphic novel. Her live action movie debut is also around the corner.

I think if Spoiler and Black Bat had been priority characters and participated in DC events, and joined teams outside of the batfamily, the discussion of who should be Batgirl wouldn't be a topic. Cass not getting a push isn't a Stephanie or Barbara issue and vice versa. Sometimes characters, no matter how great, don't get the pushes they deserve. There are tons of characters who fit this mold (Stargirl, Vixen, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Firestorm etc...). And this is not to minimize the situation. I can't imagine how it would feel to have your favorite character missued (Wally West, Roy Harper).

The Batgirl mantle has been held by 5 amazing women. The three in discussion have all brought something unique and special to the mantle. They have all deserved that mantle and represented it with dignity and respect. When I think of the Batgirls, I think of strong women who support one another. Role Models. Instead of creating dissension, fans of the Batgirls need to unite and push for better opportunities for both Stephanie and Cassandra outside of that mantle. Batgirl does not have to be the highlight of their career.

**I know this does not apply to all Batgirl fans

Much respect to the Batgirls

#Batgirls Unite #batgirl #batgirls #barbara gordon #cassandra cain #stephanie brown #bette kane #helena bertinelli #tiffany fox #robins #we are robin #red robin #robin #red hood #nightwing #dick grayson #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #duke thomas #batman #bruce wayne #batfamily #batfam #batbros #batboys #dc

[harveywritings92]

One sided friendship Batboys series:Dick Grayson X Reader. p 1/2

The following is a non profit fan based story Batman, Red hood, Nightwing etc. belongs to DC Comics please support the official release.

_

I gain no profit from this nor do I own anything other then OCs  and whatever sprouts from my imagination. Thanks for reading!

Your POV:

"Ah...what happened last night?..." My voice croaked God my mouth tasted awfu, my whole body feels like it went through the spin-cycle...I gotta hurl! I groaned as my joints pop and body protested from standing up, I sigh wincing in pain as sunlight shined my eyes in from the tiny cracks from the curtain, Wait my window isn't that big? 

I swallowed and got up from the bed walked over to the window and drew back the curtain to reveal...Niagara Falls?! that seem snapped me awake faster than a hamster on coffee! 

*When...How did I get to Canada?!* then I noticed what I was wearing a gray button up shirt...a man's button up shirt...My heart was rattling in my rib-cage as I finally got a good look around the room. it was obviously at the Casino...

And I wasn't alone I saw a passed out redheaded man passed out on the floor..in my dress! I'd be laughing right now if I wasn't freaking out! I went to run a hand through my hair and I saw a tiny glint in the corner of my eye...It was ring a wedding ring...my stomach churned as I looked over to Whats-his name and saw a similar ring on his finger too...

"What the shit?" I croaked sobbingly before I was harshly interrupted by the contents of my stomach decided to remind me what I had for dinner the other night, and ran to the bathroom. While making friends with the porcelain throne...I tried to piece together how I got here...

It was all because of Richard 'Effin' Grayson! we used to be thick as thieves, but then he started noticing girls! every time he would go out meet some girl and he'd fall for her, shower her with attention and gifts and then she'd get fed up with him ditching their dates, due to his nightly activities and he go crying to me..the stupid girl who was dumb enough to hold on what little hope I had, that he'd notice me and my feelings. But no, every time I had the courage to speak to him about it...

I'd run into him while he was on a date or introduce me to his new girlfriend and the cycle would start all over again! Which was totally unfair! He can date around and ignore me, but if a guy ever shows a sliver of interest in me. He gets all pissy and tells them to back off or sabotage my dates! and recently he started obsessing over some girl he'd seen at one Bruce's gala...

As Dick described her: she had e/c, glossy [long/short] hair and nice [full/petite.] figure for a small fleeting moment I though he was talking about me...only to be introduced to [similar sounding name] at an old classmate's wedding that the two of us were kind of friends with, and the crazy thing is? 

SS/n looked exactly like me only with a nicer figure,perfect height darker/lighter hair and eyes and dressed more provocatively then me...that was the worst fucking blow to my heart. 

Dick was pretty much telling me that he's wants someone like me...but not Me. After that I remember getting into my car and just drove off, I didn't care where... I just had leave! I had to get away from Gotham, from Bludhaven from Dick, everything...

I vaguely remember checking my phone for flights and came across an ad for Niagara falls...Well I did have vacation days, And Bruce has been badgering me to take some time off. taking a risk I submitted my vacation time and list of temps to cover for me while I'm gone and booked the first available flight which was in four hours and just drove to the airport. 

I must've looked very odd a girl dressed like a nerdy princess walking around the airport a 12 am, a few little girls actually looked a me in awe and asked for a selfies *they must be on their way to Disney world or just got back from Disney world...*  I though and happily obliged to their request their parent were grateful and apologetic at the same time,

When my flight was boarding I got a text from the bride asking if I was alright? and what shitty move Grayson pulled... I snorted a girl I barely talked to in school was more worried about me then Dick! he saw my face he knew I was upset! but, he ignored me in favor of his new girlfriend who was just going to dump him once he starts bailing on her for Nightwing duties. I texted back saying I was fine and shut my phone off...

That was...what was the date? When I was finally done with throwing up...I looked around the room for my phone and some clue as to who and how I supposedly married the redheaded stranger! I eventually I found my phone I've seriously been gone two weeks?! But, I could've sworn I just left! then I noticed the camera... 

It was pink and had a cheesy logo on it Reverend Al's 10 min weddings! taking a leap I hooked the camera to the TV...And my face immediately turned bright red..."Oh god kill me now..." I moaned into my hands mortified as the guy next to me woke up and looked around disoriented before barfing on to my dress...Mental note burn that dress...And learn supposed husband's name....

A few days later..

"Something's wrong, I know it father!" Damian huffed as he followed Bruce downstairs the older Wayne sighed he explained to his son that Y/n was just on vacation and should be back any day now...But his son wasn't having it he knew Y/n would at least call them how her trip was! or how long she was gonna be or a least to see how Damian himself was doing...she pretty much the big sister/mother he never had growing up.

So, of course he freaking out...Someone has to! Grayson was too clouded with infatuation to even noticed Y/n was gone and her cheap plastic knock-off was had overstayed her welcome the second she step foot in this manor, She would act all sweet and nice, but the second Grayson left she would become obnoxiously rude had pig manners.

 [like chewing loudly,going days without bathing,eating like a donkey raised her etc.] and was possibly cheating on Grayson judging how quickly Ss/n would openly flirt and throw herself at his father, Drake or Todd and when they rejected her advances she make a scene causing Dick to come and rescue her.

Everyone hated her and couldn't understand why Dick would date someone like her who was obviously dating him for money and attention, when he first hinted that he liked a girl with [y/hc] and [y/ec] they assumed he was talking about Y/n...even Todd boasted that.

"it was about Effin' Time!" But when he showed up with [ss/n] it was slap to the face to everyone...Damian went to go find Y/n and check on her, but found her apartment empty he asked Bruce about it and his father explained that she had just clocked in her vacation days and would be gone for a while...

They got to kitchen and immediately Bruce and Damian's mood soured seeing [ss/n] drinking orange juice straight from the carton and her mouth stained with what appeared to be oatmeal...heaven forbid what was floating around in that juice carton! Damian grimaced as she noticed them She swallowed loudly and put the juice back.

"Oh, good morning Mr. Wayne.~" the girl purred shamelessly showing her exposed bra to the older man who decided that he'd grab breakfast at the office and left then she noticed Damian and her mood soured. "What are you looking at brat?!" 

she sneered before Damian could snark out a reply her phone started ringing and she quickly escaped bumping into Jason who grimaced at her as she passed him. 

"What's miss Piggy's problem?" He asked taking the orange juice out the fridge, his younger brother just blanched as Jason brought the carton up to his lips, but noticed Damian's face and immediately back pedaled.

"The bicycle drank this, didn't she?" he seethed this was his juice! it had his name on it, no one touches Jason's shit! He dumped the carton a looked ready spew when he saw the oatmeal chunks floating down the drain. "And she ate my fucking Oatmeal! Goddammit! Grayson!" Jason bellowed sprinting up the stairs looking for the acrobat.

 Damian rolled his eyes already how this song and dance will go...Drake, Todd or his father will confront Grayson about Ss/n's behavior she'd make scene causing him to make excuses or be defensive and would all end with everyone on both sides the silent treatment...the green eyed boy sighed in annoyance and went to go train in the cave when he saw a taxi coming up the drive.

Strange, they weren't expecting any visitors...."Ummi?" He said heart pounding in his chest as he sprinted to the main foyer just in time to see his father opening the door to Y/n!...and some redhead man who was younger then his father by few years.

the h/c smiled at Bruce sheepishly as Damian noted her attire black jeans, f/c t-shirt that said I <3 Niagara Falls and a worn out Letterman's jacket that obviously didn't belong to her..

"Hi Bruce...Damian sorry I took longer then I sai-" She cut off by the boy running up and hugging her waist "Don't leave again.." he mumbled into her stomach before turning to mystery man who was awkwardly observing them. "Don't you have a route or fares to collect?" the boy hissed at the gray eyed man who stared bug eyed at the kid before rubbing the back of his head.

"o-oh boy, um... I'm not a cabbie I'm Y/n's-" Y/n nervously intervened.

"Say, where's uncle Alfred I need to tell him something..."

"You didn't tell them yet?" 

"It didn't feel right doing it over the phone, sue me!"

The redheaded man winced as Bruce looked between the two and noticed their hands...or rather their ring fingers and shit it the fan. "BOYS! ALFRED! FAMILY MEETING!! NOW!?"Damian gawked at his father stunned he has never been this angry in front of company before! 

"What's going on Ummi?" He asked Y/n who just smiled sadly and readjusted her large framed glasses the photochromic lenses were dark and hid her eyes, as Alfred and the other boys showed up along with Ss/n who sneered when she saw Y/n..."Den. Now.." Bruce said calmly as his sons swallowed wondering what they did?

They, Alfred, Y/n, mystery guy went into the den Ss/n went to follow only for Bruce to blocked her from entering "I said family meeting, you're not family.." he hissed at her the Darker/lighter H/c gaped at him like a fish and pointed at Y/n in disgust "She's allowed!" She shrieked in his face.

 "Y/n is Alfred's niece that makes her family.." Bruce huffed before slamming the door in Ss/n's face they heard her screech stomp her foot like a child before hearing her footsteps hurry away...

"Wait, how come this guy can stay, but not my girlfriend?" Dick demanded eyeing the redheaded man suspiciously and annoyed that he was sitting so damn close to Y/n. who was trying to avoid everyone's stares as she found her voice.

 "I really think this is a little extreme?" Bruce shot her a look that could melt paint steel, the e/c girl swallowed hard "S-so, you guys know that I went on vacation.." Dick cut her off "When did you go on vacation?" he sounded bemused and offended that she hadn't said anything to him, his brother's just looked at him like Seriously? 

"I've been gone for almost three weeks, Richard..." she said ignoring pain in her chest that he hadn't noticed she was gone. while Jason pitched in 

"I seriously thought you would've at least noticed the gremlin whining 'Ummi...where's my ummi?' non-stop for the last two weeks!" Damian turned red and snapped at Jason to shut up as he kept his arms around Y/n's waist glaring at the streaked haired man.

whilst everyone gave Dick shit for not noticing his so-called best friend was missing for almost half a month, Tim commented about how she could've been kidnapped or murdered and he would've been too busy with his "hairpin Cinderella" to notice "That's over the lin-" the oldest brother was about ready to tear into Tim for that, They were cut off by their foster father slamming his hand on the table.

"Could we please talk about the fact she came back married!?" Bruce bellowed a pregnant silence filled the air as the boys slowly turned to Y/n in disbelief who sighed bringing a hand to her forehead showing the gold glint of her wedding band. 

"Hayden say hello to the boys..." she mumbled quickly as Hayden awkwardly waved "Hi boys." he cleared his throat as everyone gawked at the 'couple' stunned then Dick burst out laughing after a few minutes of this he sighed wiping a tear from his eye. "heheh..Good Joke Y/n! you and Bruce almost had us...Right?" he saw no one else was laughing..."Right?" Y/n bit her lip took out the USB from the camera and plugged it into with the den's TV...

[[A faded pink banner read out Reverend Al's Ten minute weddings! is hung haphazardly over what appeared to be a lounge that hasn't been decorated since 1970 lit up by a broken disco ball and fairy lights...

at a graying podium a priest in a sequin jacket and bell bottoms, boredly reads wedding rights to an obvious shotgun marriage as both sets of parents were glaring at the pregnant bride and the groom in disappointment as they walked out of the lounge in annoyance...

Just as the good reverend was about to put bible away he looked up and rolled his eyes muttering "God..are you kidding?" under his breath and sighed as Y/n still in the dress she wore at their classmate's wedding was practically dragged down the aisle by a drunk Hayden who giggling as he tried to hold the possibly more inebriated Y/n up as she kept trying to sit or lay down. The priest huffed looked at his watch "Alright my kid's got a thing in ten and my wife's gonna flip on me...let's make this quick!"

"Do you?"

"Y...Y/n *hic*"

"Take..

"Hey-Dan!" 

To be yer husband and wife?"

"I g-got Neerds in my bra!" Pulls out candy box and pours some in Hayden's hand.

"Aces! Sugar Tits!" pops them in his mouth and smiles at the priest.

The priest gives them a blank stare, but goes with it..."Right then, by the power vested in me by the province of Ontario I pronounce you man and wife, here's coupon book for Cliffton Hill...Kiss n' get out!" the priest sneered handing them the marriage license his assistant was filling out for them, 

He stamped it and and put it in Y/n's purse as she and Hayden gave each other a small peck on the lips and wandered out of the church completely oblivious to what they just did...then came back a few seconds later to steal the camera..]]

Y/n stopped the recording blushing bright freaking red "Trust you don't want to see what's on rest of this..." she mumbled as everyone was staring at the screen stunned, well everyone except Dick who kept his eyes on Y/n who was fiddle with her glasses waiting for someone to say something, he noticed a mark on her neck...

a hickey? this was real? she let that stranger..., the scent coming off her wasn't her perfume it was to rich and musky, the ring on her finger...it...a weird feeling curdled into Dick's stomach it felt tight and his heart felt like it had taken a bath in acid...

He couldn't place the feeling, but knew he couldn't stay anywhere near Y/n's husband out of fear of what he may do to Hayden. "I'm going for a walk..." was all Dick said before calmly leaving the den... Y/n and Hayden both flinched hearing the front doors slam whilst everyone stood stock still.

Till Alfred snapped out of his stupor and punch Hayden in the face "You, disgusting scoundrel! womanizing git!" the old man snarled as Jason pulled the old man away from the ginger who was stunned knocked out of his shoes by an old man,

 "And this is why I wanted to speak to Alfred privately!" Y/n sighed as Damian looked very conflicted, half was angry that  Grayson had finally driven Y/n too far... while the other was horrified that they'll never get rid of Ss/n now that Y/n been wedded! 

Alfred's angry voice cut in "Young lady we are going to city hall this instant for an annulment!" her uncle seethed pointing at the door, but Y/n stood her ground "Well, maybe I don't want an annulment." Alfred and the boys gawked at her.

 "I know you're all hoping that Dick will pull the damn wool off hie eyes...But, considering the girl he wants will never be me, I think it's for the best I move on..." She said meekly as Alfred huffed "No, A thousand times no! I listen dear, I know  how men like Hayden work, and this?" he holds up her hand showing her ring to herself. "Is just a phase to distract him from whatever void he thinks is plaguing his life." Y/n blinked at her uncle bemused then looked at Tim who cleared his throat.

"Alfred saying Hayden only married you because of a mid-life crisis..." the teen explained as said ginger awkwardly raised his hand. "Y'know I'm sitting right here?" he said then all the males in the room slowly turned and glared at him "Shut-up." they snapped Hayden blanched "Ok.." he squeaked and averted his eyes to the floor, and Y/n calmly pulled away from her uncle.

"Look, I understand your all just trying look out for me, But I'm not going to sit around and wait...it's time look at a new chapter in my life and that's just Dick's loss." Alfred still begged that she and Hayden get an annulment but, Bruce stop him. 

"Alfred, Y/n is a grown woman this is her choice and we have to respect that, even if it hurts someone in the end." The billionaire said gently as the butler looked down sullenly and with that the meeting was over.

Y/n and Hayden went back to her apartment to well clean up any expired food. and just get over the jet-lag they were feeling, As they settled in for the night neither noticed Nightwing watching them from the tree outside Y/n’s bedroom gritting his teeth in anger...

#Richard Grayson #nightwing x reader #Jason Todd #Tim drake #Damian Wayne #Bruce Wayne #alfred pennyworth #Batfam #batboys #batbros #dc comics #Reader insert #Dick Grayson fanfiction

[jamesnelsonart]

Batman: White Knight Review

Folks, I can’t always let you know when a comic is bad. I don’t have the energy. A lot of bad comics are created every day, and to catalogue the reasons why Action comics issue 724342 didn’t appeal to me would be an exercise in futility and pain. No, when I see a bad comic usually the most it’s guilty of is being boring or not making a lot of sense and maybe the art isn’t put together very well. So I just ignore said media if I don’t like it. Maybe I’ll joke about it a bit with friends, but why spend my life on such things? You already know where this shit is going-- I’m about to break my code here. Every now and then, I discover something uniquely bad. It’s bad in a way I never could have even considered. It’s bad in a way that demands my attention, and I simply have to think about it, and then share my pain with others. That comic book is Batman: White Knight, and boy does it blow.

It’s honestly hard to tell where to begin with this review because if you think about any bad part of this book for more than one minute you’ll immediately be reminded of another bad part that relates to the first bad part, and so on and so on. It’s an interconnected network of bad. A true spider web of shit, full of parts all intersecting into an intricately dumb design. A painstakingly-made pyramid of poop, with each brick being laid as the foundation for something even worse than what came before it. I suppose I should start with the premise and work my way down from there.

What if, and hear me out here, what if the Joker became a good guy? And Batman… get this… was a bad guy??????? That’s the whole gist of Batman: White Knight. The white knight in the title is Joker, because he is a very pale dude from that chemical bath he took in his origin story. So that’s the premise. You understand the title. Now usually in superhero comics a shake-up like this might last for about a year before a return to the status quo, but White Knight takes place in an alternate universe, so write/artist Sean Gordon Murphy has the opportunity to make some big changes that will stick since there’s no worry about it impacting the main DC universe. Characters have the potential to die for good or change permanently here, and with the idea of the Joker becoming good you could get a pretty wild story here with some twists and turns. So why the fuck does nothing happen in this story!? Oh sure, this is a comic so actions do indeed occur. Events take place across a series of panels as they do in all sequential storytelling… But damn, this comic is a whole lot of nothing! It positions itself as a big shakeup, Batman as you’ve never seen him before! Only, it isn’t. This story is the safest fucking thing I’ve read disguised as an edgy, you-didn’t-see-that-coming, no-one-is-safe story. In some ways it’s funny, kind of like that Joker. But the only joke here is that I wasted my time reading this shit.

The story starts with Batman pursuing the Joker in his Batmobile, causing tons of property damage and hurting some innocent bystanders. Nightwing and Barbara are with Batman and are upset that they can’t reel in his dangerous impulses. Batman chases the Joker into a pharmaceutical factory where the Joker does his Joker speech. You know the one. The speech every writer ever feels that they have to write for the Joker, as if it adds something to his character. The Joker speech basically has the Joker go on about how he and Batman are polar opposites blah blah blah and how the Joker, in his own twisted way, has some affection for Batman and then Batman will be like NO and punch him or something. Hey, subtext works a lot better when it, y’know, remains subtext and not outright actual text. So Batman gets real riled up here and force-feeds the Joker a ton of pills while someone films him doing this and posts it on the internet. This combination of pills makes the Joker not be psychotic anymore (this is dumb as hell, but the rest of the comic is way dumber so you’d be surprised how the lowered standards allowed me to just roll with this) So this Batman is a pretty rude guy, being down with needless violence, and about as smart as a sack or bricks, but it’s an alternate universe, right? Characters are supposed to be different. Yeah… about that-- when doing an alternate universe it helps to have your universe be well-defined. This is especially important if it’s already similar to the main DC universe. The reader is left unsure as to what has or hasn’t happened in the past. Did the Joker ever commit any mass murder in this timeline? We don’t really know. The Joker has had a lot of incarnations so it’s kind of important to know how evil he is if he’s gonna become a good guy. If he’s committed numerous atrocities then I can understand a lot of peoples’ skepticism to him being good guy. Or was he some guy throwing pies at peoples’ faces and defacing property? Already none of this shit makes any sense if you stop to think about it but I have to keep going or this review will never get around to bashing the important stuff, like everything else about this book.

So the Joker’s mental stability is restored (which somehow also changes his bleached-white skin and green hair back to normal, those pills must have been wild) and he becomes a super-genius and decides to fight Batman’s brutality, and by extension the Gotham Police Department’s brutality. He’s done telling jokes now, he’s now the Woker(ok he never gets called that, but it would’ve been funny if that happened). And with his genius intellect unrestricted by his unstable personality he is now free to… sue the city. Damn, that’s exciting. I feel I should stop here and say there’s a reason the Joker is a fairly static character, and that’s because he works perfectly fine as a clown with a Batman obsession who does crimes and has some good zingers. Those are the interesting things about him, so when you remove all of those traits you’re left with a pretty boring character. What is the Joker without any of his personality or Joker-ness? Just some guy. And that guy is the protagonist of the story now… great. The other characters don’t fare much better. They all act extremely stupid, wildly out-of-character, or perform actions that conflict with prior information the reader has been given about them. Batman does no detective work, largely having the plot fed to him by other characters and falling into every trap imaginable. He can only ever react to situations. Harvey Bullock is deriding Batman for brutalizing the Joker and seems very anti-police brutality, yet later is arresting a black activist, blatantly escalating a situation where there was no violence. Barbara Gordon is hanging out chatting with Mr. Freeze (who appears to be a nicer guy in this continuity) and spills the beans about her secret identity, then is shocked to realize that she’s been wearing her Batgirl costume, thus revealing her name! Why is she so dumb!? Why on earth would she want to talk to Mr. Freeze in her civilian identity, huh? They were in the Bat Cave when this happened, so suit or not, it’d be pretty obvious that the girl in the Bat Cave is Batgirl. What the fuck? See what I mean when I say it’s hard to know where to start and end with bashing this shit? I mean this was like a 2-panel thing. Everything leads into everything else because nothing was thought through or considered while writing this comic so events happen just because they have to in order to move events along, character motivation or personality be dammed. And what happens is… not much if you really analyze the sequence of events in the story. Joker gets better, sues the city, participates in a march against Police corruption/brutality and decides to run for mayor. Batman gets mad about this. Joker then discovers a slush fund that is used to repair all the damage Batman does to the city and exposes it to the public. As a mayoral candidate, Joker proposes using this slush fund to instead heavily arm the police. Doesn’t this kind of contradict his anti-police brutality sentiments by offering the department numerous tanks to drive around in? Ah, fuck it. I doubt any part of this is thought through or any narrative dissonance considered so I’ll just keep going. And that’s… all the Joker does. Well, he does do one more thing. He decides to start dating Harley Quinn. And if I’m gonna talk about the characters, I mean REALLY talk about the characters, I’m gonna have to talk about Harley Quinn. Or rather, the Harley Quinn…s. Plural.

I should preface this by saying it’s pretty clear Sean Gordon Murphy is a fan of Batman the Animated Series. It is good, so who can blame him? What gets weird is he inserts a ton of TAS-centric stuff into White Knight in a way that feels arrogant. He knows what is best for Batman, no one else. So why do I feel this way about his writing here? Because the Joker goes home and is greeted by a Harley Quinn who is like “Wow, can’t wait to have tons of sex and kill a ton of people with you again! My favorite hobbies are not wearing a lot of clothes, staying evil, and being an unpopular New 52 redesign!” Then the revelation comes, the OLD Harley Quinn shows up in her TAS jester outfit and derides the new one as a big tiddy bimbo (not joking about that, her dialogue is actually deriding her for having large breasts and not being a good role model lmao) and says that she will resume her relationship with the Joker now, because he respects women (you really gonna do Poison Ivy like that? Smh). As we all know, when you think an abusive partner has changed, you should definitely restart your relationship with them. This has never, ever backfired in the history of the universe. But back to the point-- in fairness the New 52 Harley did suck, but I don’t know why this whole thing is even in the story. Haha, I’m joking! I know why! It’s because Sean Gordon Murphy probably realized that he needed an antagonist to make some action happen because the story was clearly going nowhere! So the new, unpopular Harley goes off and swears she will return the Joker to his bad self, calling herself “Neo Joker”.  So how does someone with no resources or notable skills become the antagonist? Well don’t worry, the entire cast is very, very stupid and their agency is null and void, so if something needs to happen for this story to move along, it just happens.

Earlier in the story for the Joker to discover the slush fund he had to get the rest of the Batman rogues gallery to do it for him by stealing documents on it out of some building. How does he get every criminal in Gotham to do this for him? By inviting them all over and serving them drinks with bits of Clayface mixed in. You see, Joker used the Mad Hatter’s mind control tech on Clayface so it stands to reason that if you ate some of Clayface’s clay then the mind control would work on you by extension! It only sounds stupid because it IS stupid. I also gotta ask why the entire rogues gallery would accept drinks from the Joker… he’s kind of known for not playing well with others and, uh, frequently poisoning people. But again, these characters need to be dumb for the plot to happen. So Neo Joker discovers the control module thingy because the Joker just left it around (I assume the mind-controlled villains were just shitting their pants in the days leading up to this since they were all stored in a warehouse) so now she gets a villain army. And then she gets a giant freeze gun to use on Gotham City because in this universe Mr. Freeze’s dad was an ex-Nazi who came to America and built that and left it underground. No maintenance required after sitting around for decades, this baby’s ready to blast! So while all that was happening Batman went to jail, Joker let him out to help him with dealing with Neo Joker, and Alfred died. That might sound like things that happened, but let me be clear: nothing happened. Nothing happens this whole comic. Things appear to happen, but that is not the case, that is camouflage. Sure, Alfred dies, but Mr. Freeze starts helping Bruce, so one old man is replaced with another. Actually this is an upgrade, Mr. Freeze knows way more science shit so this new model is great! Batman is finally jailed for flaunting the law but then Joker releases him and reveals that he found out that Batman had been paying for the property damage fund, not the taxpayers! So Batman was a good guy all along! He was just being a brutal dick because Alfred was dying so it’s all in the past now. So if Batman was good all along then what was the fucking point of this comic? The premise is good Joker vs. evil Batman, until it isn’t. What was the point of ANY of the first part of this dumb ass book? But the reader isn’t supposed to think about that. To distract from the fact that there was apparently no conflict at all the Neo Joker starts making threats with her big freeze gun and villain army. So Good Batman and Good Joker gotta team up with the militarized police force to take her down! Yeehaw! But. There is a catch. The Joker’s mixture of meds is wearing off and he will revert soon! The classic ticking clock scenario—as bad as everything is, this should at least inject some tension into the story, right? Wrong. Joker reverts while he’s in the Batmobile with Batman, and then he’s like “I still wanna defeat Neo Joker for stealing my shtick.” So don’t worry, he’s still on your side, Batman. I’m kind of impressed that Sean Gordon Murphy took such an easy opportunity to add some stakes to this bland comic and was like NAHHH, FUCK THAT, I LIKE MY COMICS BAD. So the police ram the villain army with their tanks and uhhh not all of Batman’s villains have super powers you know… some are just regular-ass people. The Penguin gets fucking hit head-on with one of the tanks, how the hell did HE not die? Plus they’re all mind-controlled in the first place so that raises ethical questions as to how they’re being treated since they’re not willfully being evil right now but BATMAN IS GOOD OKAY? HE PAID FOR THE PROPERTY DAMAGE FUND SO IF HE SPLITS SOME FUCKIN SKULLS THAT’S JUST WHAT HE’S GOTTA DO YOU LITTLE BIIIIIIIIIITCH. DUE PROCESS… IS FOR CUCKS. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DIE at this point in the comic I guess. Yawn… so at this point I think they all win or whatever. The freeze ray is stopped or something. Look, this part is kind of a blur. All you gotta know is Harley marries the Joker before he totally, totally reverts for real this time and gets sent back to Arkham. Then the dumbest thing Sean Gordon Murphy has ever written happens. And I read this book, so know that I do not say that lightly.

Near the start of the comic when Batman force-feeds Joker the pills it’s stated that this was all part of Joker’s master plan to get Batman to feed him pills that he just somehow knew would cure him and this would trigger Joker’s ultimate plan of… revealing the misallocation of taxpayer dollars? And he came up with this when he was still a bad guy, right? Huh? Well guess what, fuckos? It’s time for a fucking twist. Turns out the original Harley Quinn, who is Good and Pure and Keeps Her Clothes on except when I, Sean Gordon Murphy, draw her and the Joker fucking, is the one who planted the pills at that scene, as she reveals to Batman. Mind. Blown. No, really, my mind is blown as to why Sean thought this would add anything to his comic aside from more questions regarding the logistics of how she did that. How did she know which factory Batman would chase the Joker into at the start? How did she know Batman would force-feed the pills to the Joker? You’re not really a master planner if your plan relies on a ton of variables way out of your control. Then Batman is then like “wow that’s cool that you did that. this is why I always liked you more than the rest of my rogues gallery because I know you can do good things.” Yeah that’s right FUCK YOU Two-Face. Burned-ass bitch. You think YOU were the friend-turned-enemy who Batman hopes will one day turn good again? Wrong. It’s Harley. It’s ALWAYS been Harley. Then Batman reveals his secret identity to Commissioner Gordon and says he’s gonna be a cop in a blatant sequel hook. The threat of a sequel to this is scarier than any cliffhanger. Brr!

Ughhh, and you KNOW there’s gonna be a sequel, too. This can’t just end here. When I said I had to review this comic it was because most of the reviews say shit like “a bold new direction with a much-beloved property… DC, please don’t revoke my blog’s access.” This book demands a thrashing. It deserves to get laughed at, but everywhere I looked online people weren’t laughing. There was praise! Now look, Sean can draw a pretty picture so he has that going for him. And he’s also willing to kiss up to ComicsGate, a hate group populated by unskilled whiners, so that they’ll waste their money buying his bad book with pseudo-progressive politics. But I’m not here to insult Sean Gordon Murphy. This is a review, and I pledge to keep it focused on the comic. It would be unprofessional and rude to call Sean a gutless coward, or a worm, or a hack writer who just throws references around to create the illusion of lore, or a guy who condescends to trans writers and artist who get harassed daily about how they should just befriend their harassers, or a guy who thinks his inability to stick to a narrative theme makes his work deeper, or a guy who shits on indie creators in interviews because he works on Batman and they do not. No, that would all be mean to say, so you won’t hear me saying it.

I will give the comic this much, though. If you enjoyed All-Star Batman and Robin for how absolutely wacky it was, this book might be right up your alley. It fulfills that same feeling of viewing every panel and going “What the fuck? WHAT THE FUCK???” So if you like bad books, this book is for you.

#Batman:White Knight #DC comics #review #lol #The Woker

[totesmccoats]

  Batman and the Signal #1

After years of teasing and buildup, Duke Thomas finally has a suit and a codename. As the Signal, he protects Gotham during the day, when the Bats are all sleeping. Besides being the only non-nocturnal member of the Bat-family, he’s also the first with powers, albeit, powers he doesn’t quite understand. He can “read” light, and is able to reconstruct images of where it’s been and where it’s going. Essentially, he has the ability to rewind and fast-forward his perception.

His first assignment, given to him by Batman, is to investigate the recent spree of metahuman teenagers – like Duke – popping up in Gotham. But even with his training under Batman, there’s no guarantee he’ll even survive his first day.

Duke Thomas has always been a breath of fresh air to the recent Batman mythos. For one, he’s not a dark haired white guy. (I know Todd was blond at one point; and also wish that Damian was more often depicted as half-Asian, but he’s not.) He’s also been a bit of a perpetual outsider; someone a distance removed from the Bats and Robins. So it makes sense to give him an entire 12 hours to himself, to become his own type of hero. He’s also got his own crew, the former members of We Are Robin, whom he’s let into his superhero life. In one issue, he’s already showing how he’s doing things his own way.

On the art side of things, Hammer and Martin are showing us a side of Gotham we don’t often see; what it looks like during the day. But also, Duke takes them into the streets more than the rooftops. Being a daytime hero means more groundwork, and also running into more people as they go through their daily routines. Despite what we usually see of the city, during the day, Gotham can be surprisingly bright and spacious. And the modern style of the new Wayne-funded developments even give the city a few shades of Metropolis. The brightness continues through Duke’s costume, which takes the yellow highlights found in Batman and the Robin’s costumes, and makes it the primary color. Eventually, even his black chestpiece is replaced with a more reflective material, bouncing the light back rather than absorbing it.

Between the half dozen Batman books DC has running at any given time, it’s easy to feel overexposed by Gotham city. Turns out all you need to make it feel new again is let the sunshine in.

  Batman: White Knight #4

Jack continues with his plan to take over Gotham – nicely – announcing his run for city councilman; and turning his campaign launch into a PR stunt when he gets Batman and Gordon to interrupt and arrest him for no reason. Blackport is already overwhelmingly in favor of Jack, and the rest of Gotham is slowly turning. Even Gordon is convinced by Jack’s plan to use the Batman fund to instead fund a new team of super-cops; and Jack hopes that Gordon can convince Batgirl and Nightwing to turn as well.

Meanwhile, Neo-Joker leads the mind-controlled villains on a raid of Gotham PD headquarters to steal files and find a way for her to reawaken Joker. She also tells Mad Hatter how she came to meet, and fall for, the supervillain.

But, for my money, the most interesting development is that Harley senses that somewhere along the line, Jack legitimately turned his plan to get revenge on Batman and the GCPD into a way to save and improve Gotham. And if anyone would know, it would be her, the person who knows him best, and a professional psychologist. Maybe the Joker really is dead.

And, of course, Batman keeps playing right into Jack’s hands – almost causing a riot at his campaign launch, and pushing Gordon away by refusing to listen to a plan that could help them both. If Bruce still has a chance at saving his own hind, he’s letting it slip past him awfully quickly.

SGM is really out-doing himself with the art in this series too, and can switch things from the sweetness of Jack and Harley spending a night out together, to the brutality of this Batman’s ways of taking out criminals, and the pathos of Neo-Joker’s backstory. Plus, there’s a garage full of the GCPD’s idea of what their Batmobiles should be like, and if there’s one thing he goes all out on – it’s cars.

  Batman #38

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, although, I can assure you you haven’t. One rich kid, two murdered parents, a butler, a desire for vengeance. But this isn’t Bruce Wayne. It’s Matthew, the son of a couple who worked on Wayne’s board. As Bruce, he assures Matthew that the person behind the murders will be caught, and that he’ll be taken care of. As Batman, he investigates. The first suspect is Zsasz. Shortly after this discovery, Zsasz’s parents are found dead in their home. But Zsasz didn’t do it. Then, another couple is killed.

Coming off the perfectly delightful Superfriends two-parter, King reminds us he can also write twisted noir Batman with this one-shot story that’s a twist, not just of the Batman origin story, but of all the twists on the Batman origin to come before it. It also plays into King’s larger arc of Bruce Wayne trying to heal past the trauma that’s defined him. Just because Matthew is very much like Bruce Wayne, and looks up to Bruce Wayne, does not make him Bruce Wayne, nor any of the Robins or other heroes with similar backstories. Sometimes, tragedy doesn’t result in heroes.

And, despite the darkness of this issue in particular, King still finds places to inject humor. The clues Batman ends up following to solve the mystery, down to his final deduction, could’ve come straight from the Adam West show – just add blood.

  Justice League #36

Following the opening of a congressional investigation into the Justice League, the chairwoman leading the investigation is assassinated by a Batman doppelganger. The next day, the public pressure from the investigation and assassination, as well as personal agendas not lining up with the team’s charter, further increases fissures in team cohesion as they try to prevent another international incident involving a nuclear sub in Chinese waters.

I can’t remember the last comic book to make me so stressed. If Priest succeeds in one thing this issue, it’s selling how stressed everyone in the League is at the moment. Aquaman’s balancing being part of the League with being the King of his people; Wonder Woman is starting to think that Batman’s rules are interfering with her mission of peace; Superman’s being called to testify at congressional hearings; Simon feels that the League’s charter is preventing him from saving lives; and Batman’s gotta somehow heard all these cats while also dealing with a doppleganger using his example to kill people. It’s a lot to deal with, and adding to all of it, the public ain’t the biggest fan of vigilantism right now.

I’m also really enjoying Wood’s art on this series. It’s bold and colorful, unabashedly heroic, almost to prove by aesthetics alone how necessary the League is in spite of the public’s doubts. On the other hand, he perfectly captures the stress in every heroes face as they deal with each-other and other mounting stressors. They’re larger than life, but also relatably human – a very fine line that he nonetheless walks.

  Green Arrow #38

Another Ferreyra illustrated issue, hell yeah! I don’t think I get this excited over any other artist. He kills it every issue he’s on. This one included. From Dinah kneeing Ollie in the balls, to a sunset on the beach, to an underground fight; he does it all with style and personality.

After Dinah and Henry rescue Ollie from the trench in the Pacific ocean Moira abandoned him in, Ollie has to make things up to Dinah for almost getting himself killed in the pursuit of money. Meanwhile, Moira resurfaces and reconnects with Malcolm Merlyn, and together, hope to pay back her debt to the Ninth Circle. Unfortunately for them, they’ve decided they’re already settled.

How else could this issue end but a three way fight between team Arrow, Moira and Malcolm, and the assassin the Ninth Circle sent to collect their debt? Well, many ways; but none as satisfying.

  Black Bolt #9

Black Bolt and Blinky visit Titania to tell her that her husband is dead. And then the three of them hold a funeral for Crusher Creel. It starts with a toast at his local watering hole, and ends with a visit from Captain America and Odinson, who come to pay their respects to a worthy adversary who died a hero’s death.

This issue got to me. I’m no bastion of emotional fortitude or nothing, but, because of everything leading up to this, this death meant something, and Crusher’s funeral means something too. Within the pages of this story, Crusher found love and redemption. That his funeral drew heroes and villains alike says that his life mattered because in the end, he chose to give his own for someone else’s. It’s a simple story, but a powerful one. We’re all loved. We all matter. No matter where we come from, we can all choose to be heroic. And that will matter too.

  Hawkeye #14

Kate remains captured by Eden, who gives her a moment with her mother to convince her to turn her back on Clint.

Meanwhile, Clint and Kate’s friends make a plan to find where Eden took Kate, and save her. The plan Clint comes up with after finding out where Eden and Kate are? Kidnap Madame Masque, who’s still in a Kate clone body, and pull the ol’ switcharoo on Eden. Like most of Clint’s plans, he hasn’t thought this one entirely through.

This is mainly a Clint issue, and it’s great how Thompson continues the tradition of writing Clint as an almost utter fuckup, but importantly, a likable fuckup who always tries his best.

  Rise of the Black Panther #1

This series, which serves as a retelling of T’Challa’s origins and early years as Black Panther, has two Black Panther’s in it, neither of whom are T’Challa. The book begins with his grandfather Azzuri meeting Captain America and the two working together to defend Wakanda from Hydra; then follows the reign of T’Chaka, as told by his first wife, and T’Challa’s mother, N’Yami. Together, the story tells of two kings who broke tradition for the betterment of Wakanda. Azzuri gave vibranium to an outsider so that he could use it to save the world; and T’Chaka made a common woman his Queen, and gave her the resources she needed to study vibranium and develop new technologies from it. But, it is also a story of Wakanda being pulled onto the world stage as it is attacked by outsiders for the first time. Wakanda is able to repel them, but always at a cost.

This first issue does a great job at establishing the legacy that T’Challa inherits from his forefathers; a legacy of a recently unified country just beginning to expand past its history of secrecy. It presents T’Challa inheriting a country at the height of its power, but also, at its most vulnerable. It also establishes that whatever T’Challa does, he’s following in the footsteps of imperfect men. This issue ends with the stakes being that T’Challa has to be a Black Panther unlike any Wakanda has ever known. The next ones will have to tell us how he begins to become that.

  Paper Girls #19

The Girls, and Chris, decide to find old!Tiff before she gets smushed by the giant robots, and when we meet old!Tiff, she has a run in of her own with some future-folk. And through the whole issue, including the Girls and Chris finding old!Tiff and going to a church for safety, Mac doth protest KJ’s lesbianism way too much, to the point where her edginess begins irking the other characters.

Like pretty much every issue this arc, this one moves quickly, ending almost before you know it. And, a lot of this issue is characters playing catch-up with one another as they go over that Tiff is married to Chris, Tiff can see the fighting robots, and time-war. Like, it makes sense in-universe that the characters have to re-explain everything to the people who weren’t there for the initial exposition, but being that we the audience presumably know most of this, it stalls the issue and the overall story a bit too much.

Crosswind #6

Cason and Juniper finally meet in Seattle and prepare to defend themselves and each-other’s friends and families from the gang coming to kill them all.

Like all great finales, this is an issue full of self-actualization and beautiful bloody coups de grace, mostly from June, who finally stands up to her whimpering douchebag husband. Cason also actualizes, deciding what he wants to do with the rest of his life, being that he can’t go back after today. By the end of the issue, Simone manages to bring all of her characters to satisfying places, while still giving them some room for inferred growth.

Staggs, meanwhile, gets to finally deliver on the action and blood front, and even draws a poignant send off for her recently departed dog.

The final panel of this issue promises more Crosswind, but with such a satisfying ending, I have to hope the series continues as an anthology, showing us another incredibly freaky-friday.

Comic Reviews 1/3/18 Batman and the Signal #1 After years of teasing and buildup, Duke Thomas finally has a suit and a codename.

#batman #black bolt #black panther #crosswind #dc comics #green arrow #hawkeye #joker #justice league #marvel #paper girls #signal #white knight

[wereright]

Who is Batman?

I have loved superheroes since I was two. But unlike most of you, I'm willing to bet, there's one hero who just doesn't work for me.

Superheroes, the ones who last, have a unique life among fictional characters. Superman has had stories written about him and published continuously for 77 years. Spider-man for 53. Wolverine for 41. These are characters whose stories have no end by design. Even death is just another plot point for them. Over the course of their lives the hundreds of writers, artists, and editors who've handled them have helped them evolve and refocused their interpretations to show new facets through the years. The Superman who appeared in Action Comics #1 is not the same one who was killed by Doomsday is not the one written by Chuck Austin is not the one who starred in All-Star Superman.

Over the decades, the most lasting pieces of these characters get distilled by the zeitgeist and the fans to form a more or less cohesive character. There are always comic readers who say things like, "I only liked the Flash while Mark Waid was writing him," or, "Superman would be awesome if he would just get his hands dirty," but they are defining their preferred version of the character by contrasting him or her to what the popular interpretation is.

Which brings me to the character I have issues with: Batman. Like Superman, he's been around for closing in on 80 years and in that time he's been any number of things. There's a version of him for everyone. But it seems that the consensus surrounding the character dictates a hero I just can't get behind. It's seemed that way since Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy ended.

More than any other hero, Batman is defined by tragedy. I think that's my hang up. I don't enjoy, can't have escapist fun with, or imagine a better world built by someone who wallows in the darkest moment of his own life.

The blame for this naturally falls on Frank Miller. The Dark Knight Returns turned Batman away from being a superhero and the World's Greatest Detective and towards being a demigod, a Hades to Superman's Apollo. Miller's Batman isn't a detective, he's omnipotent. He isn't a man trained to physical perfection, he calls on the powers of Hell that visited him the night his parents were murdered to give him the strength to beat alien gods into the pavement. And Miller's subsequent work in the Dark Knight universe--The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All-Star Batman and Robin--have only pushed things further.

What's the counterpoint to this Batman of the Underworld? I think the answer lies in the character's natural progression as a hero.

Batman is born when Bruce watches his parents die in front of his eight-year-old eyes. Something not enough people ask is, "How does this scar Bruce psychologically?" They instead accept that Billionaire + Tragedy + Training + Batsuit = Justice.

Seeing his parents' deaths exposes some of the most common lies parents tell their children: "You are safe. I will always be there for you. I will protect you no matter what."

Bruce's issues all revolve around trust. A stranger came out of the night and took his security away forever. If his parents can be killed, anyone can. If a man on the street can pull a gun and put a life in danger, anyone can. Bruce can no longer trust the unknown to be good or the good not to hurt him by leaving forever. He can only trust himself. So he has to be ready for whatever might come out of the night for him.

But there's one exception. Alfred. Alfred hasn't violated the promises of safety and security. Alfred is the one who has been there for Bruce through everything. He's the one reminder of the world before it became this horrible place full of shadows.

And as we know from the stories, there will be others who will earn Bruce's trust. James Gordon. Dick Grayson. Lucius Fox. Superman.

Yes, Superman. The Batman I could believe in--Batman, the superhero--trusts his allies instead of plotting their eventual deaths behind their backs.

My preference for the prehistory of Batman, that vague five-year span (and earlier) that DC built in before the first issues of the New 52 reboot, includes a teenage Bruce meeting a teenage Clark Kent and the two of them forming the first true friendship either of them has experienced. Clark gets someone he doesn't have to hide his abilities from while Bruce finds the first person who's every bit as good a he appears to be. What's more, he's bulletproof. He's someone Bruce doesn't have to worry about protecting or being abandoned by. Not that this part appeals to Bruce on a conscious level, but subconsciously Clark and his friendship are the antidotes to Bruce's scars. Forming that friendship is the beginning of the healing process for Bruce.

That's the key word in all of this. The thing "my" Batman has that Frank Miller's never will is a chance to heal the wounds his parents' deaths left him with. It won't be quick, and in comic book time it'll never be finished, but here's what it might look like:

--Eight year old Bruce watches his parents' murder. He's left with no family except Alfred.

--A series of psychologists are unable to help Bruce. They never manage to establish trust and Bruce never opens up to them. Bruce begins to read about psychology on his own and later criminology as well.

--Bruce begins taking self-defense classes to try and gain a sense of control over his fears and his environment.

--At Alfred's insistence, Bruce enrolls in private school starting in 7th grade. He can't stand the other students or his teachers, but for Alfred's sake he does his best to tolerate them.

--In his late teens, Bruce meets Clark Kent. They each reveal their true selves to the other and keep in contact when they return to their separate worlds.

--Bruce leaves Gotham on the pilgrimage that will forge him into Batman.

--Bruce returns to Gotham and begins his war on crime. He meets James Gordon and finds in him the first ally he can count on since Clark.

--Bruce meets Dick Grayson and takes him in, eventually training him to become Robin. This is a huge step in Bruce's growth. He's taking responsibility for someone else for the first time. If something happens to him now, there is someone else who will be without a father figure. This likely becomes Bruce's deepest fear, the possibility of leaving someone behind the way his parents left him.

There are more opportunities in there and after, but you get the point. Jason Todd's death would be another landmark, of course, as would Dick leaving to become Nightwing if it's played as a child rebelling against his father. Like in any continuing story with a theme, there would be advances and setbacks for Bruce's ability to trust others.

The important thing is that this makes Bruce human instead of an avatar of rage. People call Superman unrelatable because he's a paragon who always makes the right choice, but Miller's Batman is no better. He's a man trapped for eternity in a place of bitter anger, stuck trying to mold the world in his own image and taking out anyone who stands in his way.

To mourn is human, but all mourning ends someday. We revisit the memories of those we lose and we feel their absence at our core, but that pain stops controlling us at some point. Batman shouldn't be built on the idea of making others feel our pain. He should be an example of what a person can do when he takes his pain and uses it to better himself and the world around him. Even after he stops feeling that pain every day.

#Batman #comics #comic books #superheroes

[specialagentfluffstein]

All the asks! In a really nice way!

All the asks, minus the attitude! Sorry this took forever, I just finally had some time to sit and do it.

1. What was the last present you gave? I gave one of the girls in my EMT class some apples off my neighbor’s tree as a thank you for creating a complete medical terminology quizlet and then sharing it. 

2. What was the last present you received? My stepdad has a 3D printer at work and he made me a little block thing with the Walt Disney castle/signature. 

3. What animal best represents your personality? Bears. 

4. What are you most afraid of? Failure.

5. Who is your favourite villain? Right this second? Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog.

6. Who is your favourite family member? (we all have one, admit it) My sister.

7. If you could name your own planet what would it be called? Fluffsville.

8. Stars or Moon? Stars.

9. Do you have/want kinds? I’m gonna assume this means kids. No. 

10. What is your greatest life goal? Happiness. And also visiting every Disney park.

11. What is something you can’t live without? Music. I almost always have something playing. Right now it’s my ‘Halloweenie’ playlist on Spotify. 

12. What is a place you associate with your childhood? A specific local library.

13. How was your first kiss/how would you like your first kiss to go? It went terribly. I got cornered like a wounded animal and as soon as he left I scrubbed my lips with the fancy sugar scrub I reserve for special occasions. My second first kiss (new boy) was much nicer, even though he missed. 

14. What is some life advice you have acquired? If the worst thing that happens today is that you messed up on the radio, it’s been a good day. And keep a spare pair of boots polished, just in case.

15. Who in history has influenced you? David Bowie and Walt Disney.

16. What is something strange that you think about often? Simulation and consciousness theories. It makes my brain hurt, but also, what if none of this is real, beyond what I can see and experience at this very moment?

17. Baths or Showers? I usually take showers for convenience’s sake, but I do love a nice soak with fun bath bombs or Epsom salts.

18. Tea of Coffee? Before 1400? Coffee. After 1400? Tea. 

19. Alcohol or soft drink? What do the hard sodas (Henry’s, Not Your Father’s, etc.) count as? Because the first thing I bought alcohol-wise from the grocery store after I turned 21 last month was a six pack of hard grape soda. I’m kinda a lightweight, I’ll be real with you. 

20. Writing or typing? Both, but I prefer handwriting stuff. 

21. What is you most favourite thing in your bedroom? Ugh that’s like picking a favorite child. I guess, right this second, it’s the Greg (from Over the Garden Wall) figure on my desk.

22. Spontaneous holiday! Where are you going and with who? Disneyland with my Boo Thang. 

23. Introverted or Extraverted? Extravert. 

24. Describe yourself in two words. Attention Whore. 

25. A song that always puts you in a good mood. “Dancing Queen”

26. What makes you feel? Really good music or food. 

27. What was your favourite concert? Chris Isaak. I’ve seen him twice.

28. Any plans for a tattoo? Yes! I just need to buck up and get it.

29. What was the first book you ever read? I have no idea. Probably a Magic Treehouse book.

30. What was the first movie you saw in cinemas? No se.

31. What do you think of when you hear ‘portrait’? An image of something. 

32. Tell me about your partner/ideal partner? I have one of those! He’s funny and has a cat and does competitive pistol and rifle matches. 

33. Tell me about your siblings, if you have any? I have a sister. She’s great.

34. What is a topic you would like to talk about more? I really wish I had more people to discuss religion with, and not just Christianity. I think religion is super interesting, and it’s tough to find people who will discuss it objectively. 

35. What are you a big advocate for? Seeking counseling. Everyone should see a counselor. We’d be much happier as a society. 

36. If you’re comfortable to answer, what is the sickest you have ever been? This past January I got the flu or something after doing a bunch of traveling, and I was so out of it I forgot that I texted the Detective I was interning for at the time that I was sick and not coming in, and that he responded with like ‘feel better’ or whatever and I even responded to that. So I spent the whole day going ‘oh nooooo I’m a no call no show.’ 

37. When were you the most scared in your life? I woke up from a really horrible dream and for about twenty minutes I couldn’t figure out if it was real or not. 

38. Ever had a paranormal experience? Yes! My grandma’s house is absolutely haunted, and when I’d be there alone watching TV in the living room I’d hear footsteps like someone coming to see what I was watching. They weren’t malevolent or anything, but it was a little unsettling. 

39. Biggest celebrity crush at the moment? Henry Cavill. 

40. What is something happening in your life right now? I’m in an EMT class and it’s not awesome at all. 

41. What is your favourite mythological creature? UNICORNS. 

42. Marvel or DC? For movies? Marvel. For comics? DC.

43. What object would be on your family’s banner? Alcohol. 

44. Favourite flower? Carnations.

45. One characteristic you like in a partner? You have to be able to laugh at things. Especially vaguely off color things. 

46. What planet/star would you travel to if it were possible? Jupiter.

47. What is your favourite meal… ever? Thanksgiving. 

48. First time…. doing anything. Describe your first time doing something? The first time I ran an overdose call as a Police Explorer, I got to see the guy get dosed with Narcan. It was rad. And then we ended up arresting the guy later. 

49. Who is your favourite superhero? Nightwing.

50. What is your favourite poem? Recite it? This is Just To Say - William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

51. What is an exercise you despise doing. Running. God I hate it so much. 

52. Secret talent? I can pole dance. Not well, but I can do a couple tricks.

53. Current song on replay replay replay? “Halloween” by Sonic Youth and “All That Heaven Will Allow” by the Mavericks. 

54. Recommend me anything. Seriously… anything. Go listen to the Mavericks. They are great.

55. If you weren’t in your current occupation what would you be doing? Probably going to school for a masters.

56. What is the first thing you notice about the person you fancy? Shoes and smile.

57. If you had one wish that would definitely come true, what would it be? That money would never be an issue. 

58. If you could time travel, when and where would you visit? I feel like I would just go to a bunch of concerts. 

59. What is your lucky number? 21.

60. If you adopt a pet what would it be and what would you name it? Oh man so many dogs. I want five corgis and a pitbull and the pittie’s name would be Korg. Korg and the Corgis. 

61. Do you believe in fate/everything happens for a reason? Kind of. I think personal decisions have a lot to do with it. 

62. What is your favourite thing about your personality? I am so aggressively cheerful. 

63. What is your favourite thing about your appearance? Hair.

64. What is your favourite clothing store? To actually buy stuff in? TJ Maxx. To walk around in? Nordstrom’s. 

65. What is your favourite online store? Tarte, or any makeup site. I love makeup.

66. Use one word to describe your most favourite person? Blond.

67. How do you usually have your hair? Up, unfortunately.

68. What was your favourite subject in high school? English and EMR.

69. What makes you feel empowered? Good outfits and good makeup.

70. What motivates you to do something? Spite.

71. What advice would you give someone who is going through a rough time? Things might not get better per se, but they’ll suck differently, so whatever sucks now probably won’t suck in the future. 

72. Ideal date? Dinner and a Movie. 

73. What is the best date night movie? A comedy. 

74. What is something you are currently looking forward to? Halloween!

75. Tell me a funny joke? You wanna know how I know it’s going to be a spoopy Halloween? I can feel it in my…bones! *skeletons laughing*

76. Do you like musicals? If so, what’s your favourite? I do like musicals, my sister and I really like Something Rotten right now. And I love the Lion King.

77. What is your favourite song currently? “All That Heaven Will Allow” by The Mavericks.

78. What song never fails to make you dance? “Footloose”

79. What is your favourite “classic?” Classic TV.

80. What is the best advice you have ever been given? The radio advice from the earlier question. 

81. Where did you ancestors come from? I think they were Vikings.

82. What have you learned from your parents/guardians? “Yes And” is the best answer.

83. What is a phrase you heard a lot growing up? “Knock it off”

84. Do you believe in magic? yes.

85. What reminds you of your best friend? The pictures I took down because we aren’t friends anymore. 

86. What are you passionate about? Being my authentic self. And Disney.

87. Tell me a story from middle school? I skipped middle school.

88. Who was your favourite teacher and why? Barthe. He was wacky as hell and taught in a way that I retained pretty much everything. I still use stuff I learned from him in college as examples for what I learn now.

89. Can you roll your tongue? Yes, and I can fold it.

90. What made you pursue what you are studying? (including school subjects) I thought I loved it. Now I’m not so sure.

91. Where would you like to travel to? All the Disney Parks. And I’d like to visit all 50 states.

92. What is something on your bucket-list? Visit all 50 states.

93. What is home to you? Wherever my bed is.

94. What do you do in your free time? When I have it, which is like never, I knit and watch TV or hang out with my boyfriend. 

95. If you could buy anything right now, what would it be? A house. 3 Bed 2 Bath with  two car garage, stainless steel appliances, and a yard. 

96. If you could see anyone, living or dead, right now, who would it be? My late grandfather. I could use some of his advice.

97. If you could choose, what would your last meal be? Chicken Wings.

98. How would you like to die? Um yeah that’s not going to happen. If it does I better be like 120. 

99. List five of your favourite pieces of art (paintings, books, songs etc) Everything. Everything is art and I love it all. 

100. What would you change about this world? Equality. I have just as much value as my male counterpart, even if we have different strengths. 

Thanks for asking!

#fluffy answers

[tessatechaitea]

Titans #11

Mike McKone Deathstork Jerking Off Nightwing 2017 Pencils on paper 26.01 x 16.84 cm (10.24 x 6.63 in)

Hurry! Somebody get Garth some water! And a bra!

I guess everything that happened to the Titans pre-New 52 that they've just recently remembered happens in Hatton Corners. Ravager dies of a heart attack while trying to kill the Teen Titans. Deathstork arrives to tell the son he treated like shit for the last decade and a half that the Teen Titans are dead. Ravager dies happy for some reason. I guess he wanted to kill the Teen Titans so that his father would be proud of him. Deathstork doesn't tell him he loves him but he does kind of hug him. Unless he's actually squeezing him so hard that he dies from a lack of oxygen which then gives Deathstork a reason to kill the Titans (and also gets his pain in the ass son out of his life).

Welcome to Illogical and Nonsensical Plot Motivation Comics!

Here we see another prime example of why I stopped reading a comic book about these Teen Titans. The only time they ever battle a super villain is when the super villain brings the battle to them. They've never once saved the world except when saving themselves just happened to also save the world. But in those situations, the world was in trouble because the Teen Titans existed. I'm only currently reading the other Teen Titans book because Damian Wayne is leading them. The initial scene was Slade dreaming before waking up from a corneal transplant. So now he's not blind in his good eye anymore although I bet his body is still being ravaged by cancer caused by his radiation poisoning. At least he didn't become young and obsessed with this testicles again. Now that he's awake and he can see, Slade decides it's time to go kill the Titans due to their not having done anything. Good. They totally deserve it. Meanwhile in New York, Omen shows off her inability to understand secret identities.

Ixnay on the ickday and allyway! You're surrounded by bad guys and pizza fish adverts, dum-dum!

Wally West disappears in the space between panels because Deathstork is just that good and Dan Abnett is just that lazy. Deathstork wants to make a deal with Wally West but he doesn't explain himself yet. First he has to pretend that he cared about Grant so that Wally West feels sympathy for him. Meanwhile back at Titans Tower East, Tempest tries to participate in the team brainstorming session but everybody just shits all over him. Get used to it, Mini-Aquaman! You'll never be respected by your peers!

Maybe if you would stop using his real name and social security number around villains, Dick wouldn't hate your guts and might want to share the truth with you.

Slade wants to go back in time to, presumably, save his son Grant. I think he just wants to go back in time to shit all over him one last time. But Wally West refuses to time travel for Slade. He's all, "Time travel is bad and we don't do it anymore! Why do you think the Cosmic Treadmill is still safe in storage on the Justice League Watchtower and totally not being used irresponsibly by anybody right now at all?" But Slade is all, "If you won't help save my son whom I don't care about at all but feel pretty guilty about the way I treated him and how he died and maybe I loved him in my own way and tried to make him a man but he needed my love more than he needed to be a responsible adult and so he got himself killed and I sort of regret it then maybe Kid Flash will help me!" As if Kid Flash can time travel! Ugh. I can't wait until this story is over and Deathstork can get back to staying within the pages of his own comic book where there's a distinct lack of nonsense and Brett Booth art.

#The Titans #Deathstork #Deathstroke #DC Comics #Christopher Priest #Dan Abnett #Benjamin Percy #Norm Rapmund #Andrew Dalhouse #Brett Booth #Carrie Strachan

[bigskydreaming]

I just read that after Tarantulla raped Dick they were going to marry?! WTF DC THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPP is this true?

Yeah, in the issues following Blockbuster’s death and the rape, Dick was a total and complete mess, and Tarantula pretty much spent the next several issues taking advantage of his emotional state. She encouraged him to get drunk to feel better, and tried to use his more vulnerable drunken state to do a number of things which included targeting villains like Copperhead for the sake of her own personal agenda and almost getting married at a chapel. I believe she’d gotten a marriage certificate and everything, and the only thing that kept that from happening is right before it did, Dick got a call from Bruce summoning him back to Gotham to help with the War Games storyline, and the city-wide gang war that had erupted. 

(I honestly can’t remember if it was outright stated or textualized in the issues, but it was heavily implied that there was sexual interaction between Dick and Tarantula during this period…..I don’t want to call it them having sex, because Dick wasn’t in a coherent state of mind to be making the choice to have sex based on his normal priorities. My personal interpretation has always been that Dick let Tarantula drag him along from place to place during this time and ‘consented’ to having sex with her because he was kinda trying to….retroactively reframe what she’d done to him on the roof in issue #93, if that makes sense? Like, my take is that Dick was heavily in denial at this stage, and was kinda trying to convince himself that if he made the ‘choice’ here and NOW to have sex with Tarantula, then he could from there kinda convince himself that what had happened on the roof wasn’t any different. Like ‘well maybe I didn’t technically consent at the time, but see, I’m having sex with her now, and that means I probably would have anyway if my head had just been a little clearer.’ Make no mistake - I’m DEFINITELY not suggesting that this in any way makes what happened in #93 any less of actual rape, and there’s no interpretation IMO of the later scenes between them where Dick was making full use of his own agency rather than just unhealthily trying to cope with something he was still trying to process as him having been victimized by rather than a willing party too. It was all just messy as fuck, is what I’m saying. And Tarantula, whatever she thought she was doing, was very much manipulating the fuck out of Dick at his most vulnerable moments through all of this).

Tarantula went to Gotham with him, and even ‘helped’ the Batfam due to the fact that Bruce kinda just….took the fact that she was accompanying Dick and he wasn’t protesting it as a sign of him vouching for her, instead of like….the fact that Dick wasn’t remotely in the right state of mind of to be making healthy decisions, and was pretty obviously on a path to self-destruction. He was extremely reckless throughout the War Games storyline, getting shot in the leg by cops without it even phasing him, heedlessly risking his own life in order to go after Firefly (who just a couple weeks earlier had been hired by Blockbuster to burn down Haly’s Circus), and he basically gave the impression that he didn’t really care if he got both of them shot by the cops while he was going after Firefly - to the extent that it freaked Firefly out and he was yelling wtf are you doing, you Bats aren’t supposed to act like this. 

In the immediate aftermath of the War Games storyline, while still recovering from a gunshot wound in his leg, Dick left Gotham again without a word to anyone, just leaving his Nightwing costume abandoned in the Cave. He went back to Bludhaven, with Tarantula following him, and there he turned both himself and Catalina in for the murder of Blockbuster. (He turned himself in as Officer Dick Grayson, who’d been fired from the force before Blockbuster’s death, and basically presented himself as a cop who’d gone rogue rather than implicating himself as Nightwing, so as not to draw any heat back towards the rest of the Batfam by association). He was in jail for like a day or two, but then his former partner and now the captain of the precinct, Amy Rohrbach, had him released and said she refused to let him throw his life away out of guilt for something he didn’t even do. 

(She’d known his identity for some time, and its the reason he quit being a cop, she told him he had to choose and it was a conflict of interest….BUT the very night Blockbuster died, she came to him, knowing what Blockbuster had been doing and how he’d been targeting everyone Dick loved in his civilian life, and she offered to give him his gun and badge back so he’d be ‘covered’ if he had to shoot to kill Blockbuster in their inevitable confrontation. Dick refused to take them though.)

But anyway, when Amy made it clear that she wasn’t going to sit back and let Dick throw himself on his sword out of misplaced guilt for a murder he hadn’t actually committed, and was willing to drag herself down with him if he pushed it, Dick was released and he continued to spiral….and this is when he came up with his plan to infiltrate the mob and then from there the Society of Supervillains as Renegade. He first worked as an enforcer for the mob, nicknamed “Crutches” for the fact that he was still on crutches due to his leg injury, but this didn’t stop him from being effective….and then once he got what he’d wanted out of that he progressed to developing the Renegade persona and working for the Society and with Deathstroke. Basically, all of this was part of a plan he’d come up with to ensure Bludhaven’s safety in the longterm, without his presence….he was explicitly counting on not being around to protect Bludhaven himself, mostly because he didn’t deserve to be in his eyes, and it was heavily implied that he was at least passively suicidal at this time and was enacting this plan as kinda a form of ‘getting his affairs in order.’ 

Basically, the idea was he used his infiltrations to get leverage over the various mobs and make deals with supervillains notorious enough to ensure other villains obeyed a decree to stay out of Bludhaven….and ultimately his plan was to have Bludhaven become a kinda ‘no-fly zone’ for supervillains, the mob and superheroes alike, a city that was left alone for its citizens to live without outside interference. He’d gotten the leverage he needed to keep the mobs from operating in Bludhaven and had a supposed agreement with Deathstroke to keep the villains out….when Slade went back on his word and cooperated with the rest of the Society to drop the nuclear supervillain Chemo on Bludhaven and destroy the city just before Dick managed to bring his months long plans to fruition.

So, this is why if you’ve seen me post about the Blockbuster stuff before, I tend to say I hate how its been boiled down and reduced to just the rape on the rooftop by Tarantula. Yes that was bad enough on its own, but there was SO MUCH SHIT being thrown at Dick from EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE, simultaneously, with no reprieve. Everything he was working towards was systematically thwarted and dismantled in both his civilian and superhero lives and nothing was going his way, and nobody anywhere was showing up to help him, and he truly was at rock bottom, and I hate hate hate people thinking he only has one or two major traumas in his life because that was like….a good year long exercise in misery for him. He canonically spent months undercover working within the mobs and the Society to try and make his plans happen, months surrounding himself by the worst of the worst and convincing himself all the while that he BELONGED among them. That was part of why he was doing what he was doing, make no mistake…..he fully believed at the time that he’d become no better than them.

And its why I loathe Bruce’s ultimate ‘pep talk’ to him, when Dick was finally recovering in the Batcave after Superman flew him out of radioactive, destroyed Bludhaven, where Dick had RUN BACK INTO in an attempt to save as many people as he could. “I can forgive you for Blockbuster’s death, if you really need me to, but I can’t and won’t forgive you for losing sight of the value of your own life.” REALLY, Bruce? Like, what the fuck is that? First off, why the fuck would you make that conditional like “if you really need me to”….if you think your son needs to feel you’ve forgiven him for something that wasn’t even his fault, just SAY THAT, without qualifiers. But…how the hell do you expect him to keep sight of the value of his own life if YOU’RE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND WHEN HE MOST NEEDS SOMEONE ELSE TO REMIND HIM HIS LIFE HAS VALUE???

Ugh.

So eternally annoyed with the non-resolution to all of that.

Oh, and also keep in mind that in comic book time, relatively speaking, all of this is not that long after Dick killed the Joker and Bruce like….walked off and said Dick needed to figure out how to live with that on his own. With them pretty much never actually resolving this, or addressing how freaking much of the fallout from Blockbuster’s death and his bystander role in it was probably Dick overcompensating for still feeling like he’d disappointed Bruce and betrayed his ideals by killing the Joker, and that Bruce hadn’t and wouldn’t forgive him for that.

He thought he was responsible for Blockbuster’s murder because he was already convinced he was a murderer, because nobody after Last Laugh just went to him and said “Look, who the fuck cares what Bruce thinks, it was the fucking Joker, he murdered your brother and was trying to murder your other brother, anyone who says you were wrong to kill the fucker can fuck off.”

But I mean, hey maybe that’s just me. LOLOL.

#rape cw

[totesmccoats]

Saga #48

We catch up with Ghus, Squire, Upsher, and Doff as they starve on Quietus, waiting for the protagonists to return with supplies. Things are desperate enough for Upsher to consider eating Friendo, and so Ghus decides to take Squire hunting for a Dreadnaught – an invisible apex-predator that only Squire can see; well, he can see it’s innards.

Ghus, with his trusty “chopper,” leads Squire, armed with a bow, on his first hunt into the woods; and Squire asks him about his connection to Friendo and if he’s ever had to kill a person before. But, before things can get too deep, the duo are attacked by the Dreadnaught, which is only seen by Squire as a brain and eyes on top a pile of guts and veins. The creature breaks Ghus’ chopper, meaning Squire has to make the kill-shot. He looks into the Dreadnaught’s eyes…and he can’t do it.

As the two go home the next morning, empty handed, they notice smoke from their camp, and are in for quite a surprise.

I think this might be the first time that BKV and Staples end the arc with a palette cleanser, or at least not, you know, Kalima. Nobody dies; there are no sudden cliffhangers; everything is just kinda, nice. And Staples killed it with the Dreadnaught design, a pile of innards ambling around like some sort of gorilla is creepy as heck. It also appears that there’s been another brief time-skip in this issue, so next arc should fill us in on that. But we know of one very important development – fidget spinners exist in Saga now.

  Amazing Spider-Man #790

Peter and Harry have gone around the world, liquidating Parker Industry assets and apologizing to everyone the closing of the company hurts. They finish Pete’s apology tour by selling their most prized asset, the Baxter Building. But, tired of all the crap he’s getting as Peter, he decides to escape for a while as Spider-Man, taking pictures with his once-again fans, playing skip-rope with some girls, helping little old ladies with groceries, that sorta thing.

But, he’s got to bite this bullet eventually. Unfortunately, Pete’s not the only one mad he has to sell the Baxter Building. Johnny Storm is steamed about his old home going up for sale. And Pete, tired of not being cut any slack, boils over and decides that if Johnny wants a fight, he’s got one.Additionally, Clayton Cole – Clash – wants ownership of all of his work he did for PI, and is willing to steal it back. And his henchmen have plans of their own.

Christos Gage knocks out another issue as the series’ pinch-script writer, filling this book with sharp quips and just enough dialogue to keep the issue moving at a great pace, including the top-half of a spread long montage of Spidey goofing off. Immonen, Gracia, and von Grawbadger continue their run as one of the best art teams on superhero books today, with a distinct cinematic approach; and von Grawbadger in particular does some spectacular work with the Human Torch and how he acts as essentially a second sun, making everything around him seem that much blacker in comparison.

  Black Panther #166

Klaw has found a way to enhance his abilities by using Reverbium, and plans to ascend to godhood through Vibranium. He reveals himself as the voice in the ear of Wakanda’s previous threats over the run of the series so far, uniting Stane, Faustus, and Zenzi under his cause; and convincing the people of Azania that he is their new god.

The motivation behind Klaw’s latest efforts: the memory of his sister, who was lobotomized after having been beaten by their father and because she heard voices – voices that Klaw had always believed were real as well.

I got a really strong B:TAS Mr. Freeze sense from this issue, most likely because it’s the story of a scientist who was irreversibly transformed into a non-human by the product of their own research, and is motivated by the loss of a woman they loved. And being that Klaw is made up of semi-solid-sonics, it would even make sense that his voice would have the same reverb effect as Mr. Freeze. Well, the issue was fun to read with that voice in my head, in any case.

Unfortunately, the art in this issue just doesn’t stand out, mostly because so much of it takes place in gray hallways in Alaska. Klaw is still just a fun character to look at, because frankly he looks ridiculous; one of the worst-aged silver age character designs in my opinion, with his dumb satellite dish hand and featureless red and purple mannequin body.

  Batgirl #16

In flashback, Barbara and Dick drop in on some hackers that Ainsley used to work with, who tell them that they kicked her out of their group for designing nanobot-based drugs for the Mad Hatter. They find Ainsley shortly after and tail her to what ends up being an addicts-anonymous meeting, where they find out that she didn’t know she was designing drugs, and is a recovering addict herself. And after learning all this heavy information, Babs and Dick release some of their own emotional tension.

In the present, Batgirl and Nightwing follow the trail of bodies to a rehab clinic that Ainsley once checked into, but find it already under attack by the Red Queen’s tripped-out henchmen. Luckily, Babs remembers a way to hack the nano-drugs into making their victims docile. And afterwards, digging through the hospital records, they make three unfortunate discoveries: 1. Ainsley died of an overdose, homeless and alone; 2. She has a sister, now with the proper motivation and tools to become the Red Queen; and 3. They just let her slip through their fingers.

As with the earlier issues in the arc, the main draw for me is seeing the evolution in Dick and Barbara’s relationship, both as crimefighters, and as a couple. While there are a couple of quick fight scenes in the issue, Dick/Babs get a lot more mileage in their cases by simply sitting down with people and talking to them. Also by breaking HIPAA and digging through medical records, but hey – who hasn’t done that once or twice?

Wildgoose does a lot with smaller details in their pencils; things like younger Barbara kicking her legs as she sits with Dick on the edge of a building, or the anime-girl posters in the hackers’ apartment. And I’m really enjoying Lopes’ colors on this book, giving everything the impression of softer lighting – moreso in the flashbacks of course, giving a more washed-out effect to those scenes – while still saturating the primary and secondary reds, blues, purples and greens in the duo’s costumes enough to make them pop.

  Wonder Woman #33

Whoever it was that came up with Kid-Darkseid, Johns, Snyder, or Robinson; give them a medal. Kid-Darkseid is hilarious and I love him. I hope he doesn’t grow up too fast – they always do though, don’t they?

This issue is entirely from Grail’s perspective, as she goes around the world, killing the the Greek Gods to provide the energy to grow her baby Darkseid big and strong. But a mother worries: will he be evil enough? Feared enough? That’s not a joke, that’s in Grail’s narration in the book, and it’s darkly hilarious that even when you’re trying to raise the worst kid in the multiverse, you have parental fears that you’re gonna somehow screw up. Kinda reminds me of raising dark chao in SA2.

It’s also interesting for this story to fill in what exactly all these demi-gods have been doing with their immortality on Earth, which is overall, not much. Perseus became a Wall Street bro; others became librarians, fishermen, bears…like, just normal bears. Wonder Woman is the only one who it seems decided to do something good with her powers; likely because she was raised by the Amazons with a strong sense of moral justice.

  Nightwing: The New Order #3

Kate Kane gives orders to the Crusaders not to engage with the captured Dick Grayson in the slightest. One of them disobeys, asking if he’d at least like a glass of water, and Dick takes his opening to escape capture and begin looking for Jake. He goes to one of his oldest allies, Tim Drake, who hacks into the government files to find that they’re bringing Jake to a stasis facility in Central City. But before he heads there, Dick goes to Gotham to gear up. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to break into the Bat-cave, with it having been turned into a Batman museum shortly after Bruce died; but there are still sub-basements that only members of the family have access too. He grabs his old Nightwing gear and rides to Central City before being stopped by one old friend, and saved by a couple more. Congratulations. If you placed your bets on this story going Minority Report, collect your no-prize up front. Come to think of it, old-Dick even kinda looks like a taller Tom Cruise. The issue has the same pacing as that style of action movie, too; cutting from location to location; moving from action beat to exposition beat and ending on an action beat. The story has seemed to stray from the initial “Nightwing, but if fascist” angle, but that may be for the best. And it’s still there in softer strokes. The Bat-Cave museum, for one, is a genius bit of world-building; but smaller even, is that Tim reminds Dick that he was right to set the world on this path, despite what’s happening to his son. The desire to preserve order, any order, is a powerful one, despite the harm it could bring to even family members. The same applies to Kate’s reaction to Alfred’s death. It’s a personal loss, but not worth rocking the boat over. Plus a lighter touch really is just more fun, especially with a character like Nightwing, who was never as dark as other members of the Bat-family. McCarthy’s layouts continue to be awesome at conveying movement across the page. He uses non-traditional panel layouts, non-rectangular shapes, and overlappingoverlapping to match an action director’s camera motions: pans, zooms, cuts, etc.There are almost no gutters in the issue, as panels bleed into the next, making the issue feel fast and kinetickinetic.

Comic Reviews for 10/25/17 Saga #48 We catch up with Ghus, Squire, Upsher, and Doff as they starve on Quietus, waiting for the protagonists to return with supplies.

#batgirl #black panther #dc comics #klaw #marvel #nightwing #saga #spider-man #the new order #wonder woman

[totesmccoats]

Secret Empire #9

I’m honestly just tired of this story at this point. This is, like, the third issue of just spinning tires.

With the shield down and New York back in this dimension, the world’s heroes, united, takes the fight to Steve Rogers, aided by the mutant nation of New Tian.

And there are some cool moments in the book: Magneto finally getting into the frey, refusing to bow to Hydra; Odinson finally doing a thing; Black Ant and Taskmaster switching sides and releasing the younger heroes. Individual panels and pages are enjoyable, but the issue itself is boring. Nothing new happens. It’s another issue of the villains overpowering the heroes until the heroes unite to overpower the villains until a last scene twist where Steve reveals a superweapon. The story has stalled, and, having given up trying to be about anything in particular, has nothing to do or say anymore besides big fight scenes spread too thin across all of Marvel’s characters.

  Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #3

Can Zdarksy write a spin-off series that follows Jameson around as he tries to scandalize everything Spider-Man does and also get his career back? I want that sooo bad after the two pages of this issue he’s in.

The rest of the issue sees Spider-Man, the Human Torch, and Teresa confronting the Kingpin to find out what nefarious scheme he’s planning that involves the encrypted Stark phones. The issue is light on plot, heavy on character humor, including a cameo by a really young-looking Karnak, who reveals Spider-Man’s greatest weakness.

  The Flash #29

Flash’s new powers don’t include his usual healing factor, leaving Barry exhausted after his fight with Shrapnel. Luckily, Kramer’s been pulling enough weight at the office for both of them on the department’s investigation into possible police corruption. But with Barry too cautious to use his powers to help him with his CSI work, he begins to wonder how useful he really is to the force.

This issue reads a lot like a hangover after last issue’s power trip. Barry feels awful – emotionally and physically – after his encounter with Shrapnel and his inability to contribute at work without his usual powers; and it feels as though he resents needing other people’s help to do his job. It’s not quite the “black suit” type story I was expecting going off last issue, but I’m enjoying this twist on Barry’s normal self-loathing.

  Batgirl #14

I haven’t picked this series up in a while, but seeing that this issue began an arc with Nightwing and flashbacks, I had a feeling it’d be right up my alley…and it is!

Batgirl and Nightwing both receive a text from an unknown source, and find a couple of henchman who remind them of someone they knew for a summer back when they were younger. The henchmen tell them that blood is on their hands before committing suicide. They both agree that only one other person would know about that summer, and track down the Mad Hatter.

And in flashback, we find out who that person was – a woman named Ainsley who substitute taught Barbara’s computer science class during her first semester in Gotham. The flashbacks also show us some of the earliest moments in Barbara and Dick’s relationship.

Man do I love me some DickBabs. The flashback scenes make this book worth it for me; seeing tiny Robin trying to flirt with Batgirl…and it slowly working as she realizes he’s actually kind of cute and has his own depth. It’s what I want from my comics, truly. I generally hate teen drama, but throw in some superheroes or murders or whatever – a splash of camp and color – and I am there!

  Nightwing: The New Order #1

One issue in and I can already tell that DC is drinking Marvel’s milkshake with this one. Using the same conceit of Secret Empire, only doing it as an out-of-canon story, setting up that it actually plans to show how a hero could slide into fascistic behavior instead of just having it come from a magic cube, and also limiting it to only six issues.

In 2028, Nightwing is forced to use a device that depowers 90% of the metahuman population on Earth, and in 2040, leads “the Crusaders” in an effort to depower the remaining 10%. His secret identity now public knowledge, Dick is a celebrity, widely applauded for saving the world and doing what’s necessary to keep the peace. And though Dick believes he is doing the right thing, and the hard thing, he’s finding it harder to live with the knowledge that he’s disappointing those closest to him, like Alfred Pennyworth; and refuses to talk about what happened to his son, Jake.

As of this first issue, this story is already doing a number of things better than Secret Empire. Besides what I already noted above, one big thing is that the story makes Dick a tool of a fascist government rather than its leader. Dick is an enforcer and a conduit for the anti-meta laws; but as far as we know, he didn’t make them. They were a reaction to a choice he made in the past – a choice that apparently saved the world – and he’s still trying to save it by doing what he still believes to be the best course of action by catching and depowering supers. The book is already exploring how fascism rewards it’s participants by making them believe that they’re doing what’s best for the world by fighting a force that would mean their end. We can still sympathize with Dick, not just because he believes what he’s doing is right, but because he’s being told by everyone around him that it is, even when he has his own doubts.

  Shipwreck #4 and #5

Dr. Shipwright meets an engineer in the wasteland attempting to build her own trans-dimensional apporter, and we discover the final moments of the Janus experiment that caused him to be stranded on another Earth. Then, the Engineer reveals that she has a piece of Janus, a piece that has a chance of helping Shipwright return home; but he’ll have to make a deal with someone from his past before he can use it.

Neither issue feels like enough of the story on their own, so I’m glad that I managed to pick both up together after forgetting I hadn’t read issue #4 when it came out. Also, unlike the previous issues, there’s no time-skip between these two, making them feel even more like a pair. Being the penultimate two issues, it also makes sense that these finally fill us in on almost all of the missing pieces of Shipwright’s past. But, as close as we are to leaving this world – presumably – issue #5 in particular provides enough out-there imagery of it, such as children wearing brown paper bags on their head using a telephone pole as a maypole outside a burning church, that kind of makes me wish we had more room to explore.

Comic Reviews for 8/23/17 Secret Empire #9 I'm honestly just tired of this story at this point. This is, like, the third issue of just spinning tires.

#batgirl #dc comics #marvel #nightwing #secret empire #shipwreck #spider-man #the flash #the new order