#Frank Morrison cameo

[revolutionaryjackelving]

Do you think DC's superhero characters just inherently can't work in a Marvel-style shared universe? It's a sentiment I've seen among fans, especially those tired of DC's constant (especially in the last few decades) reboots and retcons.

I am not entirely sure that even Marvel characters work in a Marvel-style shared universe (especially lately). So I am not so certain that the DC is *inherently* a problem because I think the shared universe as a concept has inherent drawbacks. I much prefer Spider-Man as a solo standalone character than have him deal with pointless team-ups. The Shared Universe done right can be cool, and it can lend a wider uplift to throwaway moments. The times I've liked reading a DC Shared Universe in comics is Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing where he really does represent the tapestry of the DC Universe in an interconnected way that's similar to how Marvel did things and there's this cool moment where you are following a horror comic about a Swamp Monster and then realize "oh Gotham and Metropolis exist here" and that lends a degree of cool to the story. The other time is Grant Morrison's JLA run and Giffen/Dematteis' JL International. In the case of Marvel, I liked how it was done in the 1980s, during Roger Stern's run. Or how Frank Miller portrayed Jameson in his Daredevil run. The Shared Universe becomes a problem, becomes decadent though when it substitutes for the actual emotional connection and becomes a *flurry* of gratuitous cameos and appearances (as in the MCU). With DC, the movies thanks to Zack Snyder really screwed the pooch there and I think going forward, DC is best served not joining their stuff, not because they're deficient inherently but because A) They've done it badly, B) It serves them better to be standalone to separate them from Marvel (as with Matt Reeves' The Batman).

#dc comics

[okom]

I jumped universes and saw lotms 2 (2009) here’re the highlights:

Frank gives several interviews from his room in the tower but you can’t hear him because it’s videod from the ground and he’s answering out the window since he’s locked up there

Unreleased Mama music video featuring Grant Morrison pole dancing into hell Lil Nas Style

There’s a whole chapter dedicated to Gerard’s hamster (named milk) including but not limited to: a 3 hour DIY hamster play pen building video (you never actually see the hamster during the entire chapter its just Gerard talking about her)

Ray does a 4 part chapter where he vlogs at the various truck stops he’s been left at

A hauntingly beautiful montage sequence of Liza Minnelli beating Bob to (near) death with Gerard’s cane

Pro Rev fight in 4K

Full performance of the Mikey Way 23 minute tambourine solo when My Chemical Romance opened for the 2008 Olympics

An uncensored LA Ink style chapter of Ray and Frank getting matching tattoos on their buttcheeks (I can’t tell you what the matching tattoos are without dramatically altering this timeline sorry🙄)

Nigel gives an interview on what it’s like to be apart of Gerard’s face while Gerard is experiencing divine visions onstage.

Behind the scenes look at the scrapped photo shoot of Gerard dressed like John F. Kennedy. It’s revealed that Bert McCracken did a cameo in the shoot dressed as the part of Lee Harvey Oswald and Frank was dressed as Lem Billings.

Anybody else watched this movie? Lmk if I forgot to mention your favorite part!

#no disrespect to Lem Billings btw #disrespect to the little Catholic president that rejected his fruity friend #unreality #petal.txt #my chemical romance

[mausoleumdoors]

I made my own MCR bingo card, enjoy! Tell my your thoughts, predictions, etc.

Image description/ more thoughts under the cut.

MCR 2021 predictions:

-Gerard steals another celebrities’ gender (in addition to Grant Morrison and Elliot Page, he’s just gonna keep stealing them if we don’t stop them)

-Frank shaves his head, everyone hates it

-Someone on twitter actually reads TUA and goes on a rant about the differences between the show and the comics, Gerard rejoins twitter to defend it (creative liberties are not the end of the world, not every adaptation has to be identical to the original source material, people, chill out)

-Mikey and Kristin have another baby, they name it something JFK related, too

-Teenagers on mcr twitter find out Frank called himself “the f*ggot from mcr” and try to cancel him

-Bob tries to start shit again and is finally bullied into permanent silence

-Ray releases a line of hair care products (not dissimilar to unholyverse, but with less blasphemy)

-FREE gender or sexuality crisis on mcr tumblr

-Someone pays Frank to read unholyverse on cameo, he rejoins catholicism to repent for our collective sins

-More MCR makeup collabs happen, they sell out immediately, I cry

-I meet Frank on a rare outing and he compliments my shoes and/or dog

-Gerard posts photos of his family of semi-tame squirrels and vagues about the band in the caption

-Ray and Mikey hang out and post photos, people claim there’s tension within the band (but they literally just wanted to hang out, there was no drama)

-Mikey puts out an EP of songs he’s made and sang on but doesn’t tell anyone

-Gerard blesses us with a photo of him and Bandit and then deletes it after a day

-A remastered version of some deep cuts gets leaked, drama about if we should listen or not happens

-An entire line of Pepe themed merch is released, it’s a best seller

-The US tour is pushed back again but they go to countries that got their shit together and aren’t in lockdown anymore (Literally Wuhan is out of lockdown and I’m happy for them but I hate this country we are so selfish)

-Ray posts a on of old bullets era photos

-Frank complains about the price of legal weed in NJ even though he can definitely afford it (ps HURRY UP nj i want my weed already)

#mcr #mcr bingo #mcr 2021 predictions #my chem #my chemical romance #gerard #frnk #mikey #ray

[xx-my-chemical-romance-xx]

okay here we go

BINGO tiles:

Gerard releases a full Soundcloud album

Mikey accidentally reposts Fr*rard fanart

The Used show up at a single MCR show

Frank announces he’s writing a comic book

The band officially cuts ties with James Dewees

LynZ and Gerard give an interview about leaving Twitter

Ray collabs with Electric Century

MCR brand hair dye

Frank gets a third dog

Gerard quietly leaves Instagram except brand posts

Iero family matching dyed hair

Gerard publicly acknowledges having read UHV

FREE SPACE (reunion tour news)

Frank stops saying “rad,” starts saying “dope” instead

Scandal over blackface in I Don’t Love You MV

New album drops on 9/11

Gerard cameo in a DC movie

Netflix acquires rights to Killjoys universe

Ugly, branded cloaks as official merch

Ray releases a new song & it’s political

Gerard announces an ID label, citing Grant Morrison + Elliot Page

Pencey Prep reunion before MCR tour restarts

Gerard takes up wooden flute

Fall Out Boy single ft. Mikey Way

Ray posts a selfie with a full length beard

#i think i was even fairly realistic #mcr 2021 bingo card #my chemical romance #mcr #my chem

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 1 Easter Eggs Explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This Star Wars: The Mandalorian article contains spoilers.

Mando and Child return to Tatooine for The Mandalorian season 2 premiere, “The Marshal.” As you’d expect of a modern Star Wars production, the season kicks off full of familiar alien races, locations, and other minutiae from the galaxy far, far away. If you’ve ever wondered what daily life in the deep desert was like for Luke Skywalker and his distant neighbors, this Tatooine-set episode provides a perfect chance to find out.

Plus we get plenty of references to characters from Star Wars‘ past, including one big cameo from galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter. Here are all of the easter eggs and Star Wars connections we spotted in this episode:

Boba Fett

– While the episode spends a lot of time obsessing over Boba Fett’s long lost Mandalorian armor, the bounty hunter himself makes an appearance in the final seconds of “The Marshal,” looking on at Mando as he rides through the Tatooine desert. He is played on The Mandalorian by Temuera Morrison, the Star Wars veteran best known for playing Jango Fett and the clone troopers in the Prequel Trilogy. Here, Morrison portrays an older, scowling Boba who likely wants his armor back.

We wrote way more about what Boba Fett’s return means for the show and the Star Wars universe here.

Stream your Star Wars favorites right here!

– One other thing of note about Boba Fett’s appearance in this episode is that he’s wearing a black robe and spurs, which likely means that he’s mysterious stranger who was first teased at the very end of last year’s episode, “The Gunslinger.” Is Boba Fett showing up only for the briefest of moments at the end of episodes going to become a thread throughout the show?

– If you need to know more about this beloved Star Wars character, here are a few things you might not know about Boba Fett!

Cobb Vanth

– Timothy Olyphant’s charismatic marshal of Mos Pelgo, Cobb Vanth, first appeared as an interlude character in the Aftermath series of novels by Chuck Wendig. A lawman in the books as well, Cobb was a former slave dedicated to protecting a settlement called Freetown. He recruited Malakili, Jabba the Hutt’s former rancor keeper, to fight off the Red Key Raiders, which seem to have been replaced by the mining syndicate revealed on the show during the flashback sequence. As in the books, Cobb doesn’t know the provenance of the Mandalorian armor and wants to use it to protect townspeople.

You can learn way more about Cobb’s backstory here.

– Vanth survives by trading a camtono of valuable crystals for the armor. While it was also used as a container in season one, the camtono was a bit of a Star Wars joke before that as the “ice cream machine” carried by background character Willrow Hood in The Empire Strikes Back.

– A moment during the krayt dragon battle sequence, in which Mando hits Cobb’s jetpack and the marshall goes hurlting uncontrollably through the air, is a direct reference to Han Solo accidentally hitting Boba’s jetpack, which sent him flying into the sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi. It’s a nice touch for the episode that also reveals Boba is alive!

Gor Koresh

– The fast-talking informant with an eye for Mando’s beskar armor doesn’t get much screentime, but Gor Koresh is notable for who plays him. It’s none other than actor and stand-up comedian John Leguizamo, who makes his Star Wars debut in this episode.

– Gor is an Abyssin, a cycloptic alien race native to the planet Byss. This race first appeared as one of the many aliens in the famous Mos Eisley cantina scene in A New Hope.

Krayt Dragon

Cobb and Mando spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to kill the krayt dragon stalking both the people of Mos Pelgo and the Tusken Raiders who live in the Dune Sea. Krayt dragons first appeared as a massive skeleton in the Tatooine desert in A New Hope and The Mandalorian finally brings this monster to life on the screen.

We only really get to see the head and neck of the beast and not its full kaiju-like body. The way we watch the krayt dragon slither underground before popping up to munch on its prey is very reminiscent to the gigantic sandworms in the Frank Herbert sci-fi masterpiece Dune, a seminal novel that was a big influence on the creation of Star Wars, especially when it comes to the planet of Tatooine.

But unlike the sandworms in Dune, Cobb and Mando are more interested in blowing up the krayt dragon than they are in mastering and riding it. It’s very true to the more brutish Star Wars way of solving problems.

In Legends canon, krayt dragons were depicted as having four legs and were generally smaller than what we see in this episode. Maybe this is a krayt dragon queen or something?

Alien Races

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

– Mando’s first stop is an underground fight club to meet Gor, who says he has information regarding the location of more Mandalorians, which Mando needs to track down Baby Yoda’s people. The scene is full of familiar aliens from the movies, such as the Twi’lek answering the door just like Bib Fortuna did in Jabba’s Palace in Return of the Jedi, the Gamorrean brawlers with energy shields, and the Zabrak heavy-hitter who gets a knife to the chest courtesy of the bounty hunter.

One other note about this scene: some of the graffiti is reminiscent of the painting style used by Sabine Wren in Star Wars Rebels, which seems like more than a coincidence since it’s been rumored that WWE superstar Sasha Banks is set to play the Mandalorian freedom fighter on the live-action series.

– A friendly Weequay tends the bar in Mos Pelgo. Weequays were first introduced in Jabba’s Palace in Return of the Jedi.

– Jawas and their sandcrawlers are also back this season, but this time to help Cobb when he’s on the verge of death in the flashback sequence.

– The episode also points a more sympathetic eye at Tusken Raiders, who have been portrayed as savage and cruel in past Star Wars movies. Here, they’re given a language, rituals, and a bigger sense of culture than ever before.

True to the movies, the Tuskens ride banthas and we can hear their signature shout from the movies as they try to lure out the krayt dragon from its cave.

Creatures

– Peli Motto, the Mos Eisley mechanic played by Amy Sedaris, is quick to reference womp rats, the little mammals Luke liked to shoot at with his T-16 back in the day.

– The little creatures outside Mos Pelgo are called scurriers, which were introduced in the Special Edition version of A New Hope.

– The Tusken’s doglike guard animals are called massiffs and are reptilian.

– I’m not sure about the creatures that eat Gor in the opening scene. Let me know in the comments if you know what we’re looking at in that scene. Either way, those glowing red eyes in the night are spooky.

Podracer Bike

The episode also features a nice little nod to The Phantom Menace. The speeder bike Cobb rides through the desert is mostly made up of a modified podracer engine. It’s a cool detail that also perfectly fits in with the scrapped-together, worn setting.

The post Star Wars: The Mandalorian Season 2 Episode 1 Easter Eggs Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3jIZLpR

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[rainbowrandom]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Dead by Daylight (Video Game) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face/Frank Morrison, Minor or Background Relationship(s) Characters: Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face, Frank Morrison, Susie (Dead by Daylight), Joey (Dead by Daylight), Julie (Dead by Daylight), Original Characters, Background & Cameo Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Serial Killers, Minor Character Death, Blood and Violence, Face-Fucking, Child Abandonment, Attempted Murder, False Identity, Fingerfucking, Mild S&M, Light Dom/sub, Anal Sex, Obsessive Behavior, Song: Rotten Girl Grotesque Romance, Killing, Psychopaths In Love, alternate universe - No entity realms, Stalking, Frank's first kill, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers

Summary:

Frank Morrison nunca había considerado seriamente en asesinar a alguien hasta que un asesino en serie se muestra en Ormond y le entrega un particular regalo que iniciará su descenso a la locura.

****

Hello, I must admit that I have fallen in love with this ship and I cannot believe how little there is about it. So here I bring you something, I hope you like it and if you are interested I will soon make a series of 10 to 20 Drabbles about the couple and I will be open to requests for topics, I can usually write about everything regardless of the subject. Without more, I hope you enjoy reading it.

Hola, debo admitir que me he enamorado de esta ship y no puedo creer lo poco que hay sobre la misma. Así que aquí les traigo algo, espero les agrade y si están interesadas pronto haré una serie de 10 a 20 Drabbles sobre la pareja y estaré abierta a peticiones de temas, usualmente puedo escribir de todo sin importar la temática. Sin más, espero que disfruten la lectura.

#ghostfrank #Ghostface x Frank #Danny Johnson x Frank Morrison #fanfiction #fic in spanish #Dbd ships #danny johnson #jed olsen #frank morrison #legion dead by daylight #dead by daylight #Smut #Hard content #A 20000 words fic #gay ships

[idasessions]

Famous Muses & Groupies in Rock Music Pt. 39

GROUPIE: Pamela des Barres (born Pamela Ann Miller)

So you might be wondering why, nearly 40 posts into this series on muses and groupies, I haven’t focused on the queen bee herself yet. Well to be completely honest, it’s because I don’t like her I figured everyone already knows her story, lol. But I might as well give it a go just for the sake of continuity. Pamela was born on September 9th, 1948 in Reseda, CA to a housewife and a gold miner. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley right in the middle of where the first wave of rock music history was taking place. She passionately fangirled Elvis Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Paul McCartney was her blueprint for the perfect boyfriend as a teen, and in her first memoir I’m with the Band (1987), Pamela claims she got an ‘A’ on an art project by drawing Mick Jagger’s crotch (….). She quickly met her first musician through high school classmate Victor Hayden—who just happened to be Cpt. Beefheart’s cousin. Through Victor, Pam got to go backstage and to local parties where she met Frank Zappa, the Byrds, the Stones, the Doors and Steppenwolf when she was 16-19 in 1965-68.

Even though she had been meeting and befriending rockstars since 10th grade, Pamela says she was mostly a virginal groupie in the late 1960s, and didn’t sleep with any of them as a minor. With a couple of intimate exceptions—like making out with Jim Morrison when Pamela Courson wasn’t around—Pamela didn’t lose her virginity until she was 19. The guy ended up being bassist Nick St. Nicholas of hard rock band Steppenwolf, and she claims the experience was ~just okay (i.e. she barely remembers it). Since then, Pamela went on to casually date and randomly hookup with stars in the 1970s like previous art class subject Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Keith Moon of the Who, Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Chris Hillman of the Byrds, Gram Parsons, and Waylon Jennings. Her first and only husband would be Michael des Barres of the B-list rock bands Silverhead and Detective from 1977-1991. Her only child, son Nicholas, was born on September 30th, 1978. She also went through a movie star phase and went on dates with former child actor Brandon de Wilde, TV star Don Johnson, comedian Michael Richards (??) and comic-turned-filmmaker Woody Allen (?!?!).

For work, Pamela had random jobs around the Sunset Strip from waitressing and retail to TV hosting and B-movie acting. After she finished school, she briefly babysat Frank & Gail Zappa’s kids and became part of Frank’s side project Girls Together Outrageously (AKA, the GTOs). The group was comprised of local LA County groupies as an experiment to see if they could make their own music too (spoiler: they can’t). During this period, Pamela went by the moniker ‘Miss Pamela’ or just ‘Ms P.’ The girls broke up after only two years together (1968-70) and one album released, ‘Permanent Damage’ (1969). Pam and fellow GTO Lucy Offerall both later had cameos in Zappa’s cult film 200 Motels (1971) alongside Ringo Starr, Keith Moon and Mark Volman. In her late 30s, Pam was inspired to take up writing after gossip journalist Stephen Davis told her she was a good storyteller while interviewing her for the (awful) Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods (1985). Soon she went on to coin the first ever groupie memoir in 1987 called I’m with the Band, which quickly gained notoriety in the music community. Since then, she’s written three more memoirs: Take Another Little Piece of My Heart (1993), Rock Bottom (1996), and Let’s Spend the Night Together (2007). In modern times, she occasionally writes featured columns for publications, her own blog posts and has her own ‘groupie’ fashion line. She’s also still friends with GTO pal Miss Mercy and fellow Led Zep groupie Michele Overman.

But how does she feel about carrying the title of ‘the most famous groupie in the world?’ Well, it’s complicated. Pamela claims the first time she ever heard of the word ‘groupie’ was by a Zeppelin roadie at a Hollywood party in 1969. For a decade she battled with people labeling her the ‘G’ word, as she tried to be taken seriously and not viewed as a slut. But by the time she was writing her books, she changed her tune since it’s the only reason anyone knows who she is. She even goes as far as to argue that groupies are the ‘real’ muses of rock music and feminist. 😒 Another little issue that occurred after living it up in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. There was a new, wilder, less legal breed of groupies in town: baby groupies (or the Star Girls). Teen girls between ages 13-17 who were ~stealing all the rockstars from the 20-something, seasoned groupies like Pamela and Bebe Buell. In 1971, while Pamela was dating Don Johnson, she noticed that 14-year-old Melanie Griffith was hanging around his film sets and neighborhood a lot. Soon ‘a lot’ became all the time, and Don infamously dropped Pam for Mel. Then only two years later the same shit happens again, when Zep guitarist Jimmy Page ditched Pam at the English Disco for 14-year-old Lori Maddox in 1973. (BTW, Jimmy wasn’t even legitimately with either of them. He was living with French model Charlotte Martin. Oh, and Jimmy and Pam’s husband Michael were friends at one point and Jimmy would hang out at their house sometimes…awk.) Now seen as ‘old,’ or ‘over the hill’ as queen baby groupie Sable Starr apparently called her, Pamela went through an existential crisis at age 25 about her exes leaving her for literal school girls.

But rather than, I don’t know, raising her standards on men, she spends the next 30 years shaming these teen girls for being man-stealers or something. In I’m with the Band, she’s a lot more forgiving of Melanie and even claimed they’re friends now, but she still held a grudge at Lori. Then sometime in the mid-2000s, Pamela and Lori are suddenly ~good friends and Lori is subject of a chapter of Let’s Spend the Night Together. When David Bowie died in 2016, Pam finally started publicly stating that teen groupies are unethical. But then #metoo blew up in 2017, and it quickly occurred to people that in an environment where sexism and sexual misconduct are being re-evaluated; music stars getting one-night stands and random blow jobs while partying with young women anywhere from 13 to 30 years old started sounding really, hella sketchy. Instead of owning up to the culture being outdated, Pamela doubled down hard on groupie-ism, defended the statutory rape with the baby groupies, and thinks ‘sex, drugs and rock & roll’ isn’t an issue. In most of her interviews from 2018, like on “Ken Boxer Live,” and in Women Wear Daily, NME and The Big Issue Magazine; she says she’s ‘bored’ with being asked about #metoo and that it’s a whole different vibe in the music industry. (I’m sure the women accusing R. Kelly, Ryan Adams and Russell Simmons of abuse agree.)

I’m sorry, but you can’t claim being a groupie is feminist, and at the same time say all that shit and brag about giving hickeys to Jim Morrison or blowing Mick Jagger. Just admit it was all about partying and being with famous people.

P.S. Penny Lane in Almost Famous (2000) is not based on Pamela, no matter how much she (or any other famous groupie) claim the character is. Penny’s based on Pennie Ann Trumbull. Check out my earlier post on her.

#pamela des barres #pamela miller #groupies #the gtos #girls together outrageously #i can't stand ha #sry #musesandgroupiesseries

[thecomicsnexus]

TOP 10 WRITERS OF 2019′s REVIEWS

It is very hard to pick the best artists of the year, especially when you know in advance, they will not match anyone else’s list. And I say this because this list is based in all the reviews that scored a perfect 10 during 2019. And these reviews go from 1935 to 2020, so it is definitely not going to match anyone else’s.

There were other writers I would have loved to include in this list but they weren’t as prominent in my reviews as the one here. Those writers that are worth mentioning are: Bub Burden, Carl Potts, Denny O’Neil, Grant Morrison, Harlan Ellison, Jim Lawson, Jim Starlin, John Ostrander, Paul Dini, Peter Laird, Sam Humphries, Stan Sakai, Steve Darnall, Steve Murphy and Tom Taylor. To all of them, thank you for your work!

NUMBER TEN JAMES ROBINSON / JAMES TYNION IV

James Robinson (1963 - present) has been writing for three decades, with an early comics work, "Grendel: The Devil's Whisper", appearing in the 1989 series of the British anthology A1. The series for which he is arguably most renowned is the DC Comics series Starman, where he took the aging Golden Age character of the same name and revitalized both the character and all those who had used the name over the decades, weaving them into an interconnected whole. In 1997, Robinson's work on the title garnered him an Eisner Award for "Best Serialized Story".

He is also known for his The Golden Age limited series, which, despite being an Elseworlds story, established much of the backstory he would later use in Starman. He has written the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series, and served as a consultant and co-writer in the first year of JSA and its subsequent spin-off Hawkman. 

James Tynion IV was born December 14, 1987, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he attended Marquette University High School. While studying creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Tynion met and began studying under Scott Snyder, in the nascent years of his comic book writing career. Following school, he became an intern for the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics, working under Editor Shelly Bond, among others.

After a few years working in advertising, Scott Snyder asked Tynion to co-write the back-up features for the New 52 relaunch of Batman, in the midst of the acclaimed "Night of the Owls" comic book storyline, starting with Batman #8. In this comic, he tied the Court of Owls mythology to Alfred Pennyworth's father, Jarvis Pennyworth, working with noted American Vampire artist, Rafael Albuquerque. 

James Tynion IV is openly bisexual.

These two writers are sharing the number ten spot because they have pretty much the same “rank” in the list of the year. Robinson made it in the list because of his work in “Starman”, and Tynion IV made it because of his work with the “Witching Hour” crossover.

NUMBER NINE SEAN MURPHY (1980 - PRESENT)

Sean Gordon Murphy is an American comic book creator known for work on books such as Joe the Barbarian with Grant Morrison, Chrononauts with Mark Millar, American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest and The Wake with Scott Snyder, and Tokyo Ghost with Rick Remender. He has also written and drawn the miniseries Punk Rock Jesus, as well as Batman: White Knight and its sequel Curse of the White Knight.

Sean Gordon Murphy was born in Nashua, New Hampshire in 1980. He showed an interest in comics during grade school. In Salem he apprenticed to local painter and cartoonist, Leslie Swank. He graduated from Pinkerton Academy high school in 1999, and attended Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, and then Savannah College of Art and Design.

Murphy lives in Portland, Maine with his wife Colleen, having moved there from Brooklyn in 2016. Murphy was raised a Catholic, but is now an atheist.

The reason Sean Murphy made it into the list was “Batman: White Knight”, which is an elseworld story loosely based in the Batman Animated Series.

NUMBER EIGHT FRANK MILLER (1957 - PRESENT)

Frank Miller (born January 27, 1957) is an American comic book writer, penciller and inker, novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer best known for his comic book stories and graphic novels such as Ronin, Daredevil: Born Again, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Sin City, and 300.

He also directed the film version of The Spirit, shared directing duties with Robert Rodriguez on Sin City and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and produced the film 300. His film Sin City earned a Palme d'Or nomination, and he has received every major comic book industry award. In 2015, Miller was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

He created the comic book characters Elektra for Marvel Comics' Daredevil series, and a female version of the Robin character, Carrie Kelley, for DC Comics.

Miller is noted for combining film noir and manga influences in his comic art creations. "I realized when I started Sin City that I found American and English comics be too wordy, too constipated, and Japanese comics to be too empty. So I was attempting to do a hybrid".

Miller was raised in Montpelier, Vermont, the fifth of seven children of a nurse mother and a carpenter/electrician father. His family was Irish Catholic.

Miller was married to colorist Lynn Varley from 1986 to 2005; she colored many of his most acclaimed works (from Ronin in 1984 through 300 in 1998), and the backgrounds to the 2007 movie 300.

Miller has since been romantically linked to New York-based Shakespearean scholar Kimberly Halliburton Cox, who had a cameo in The Spirit (2008).

You can think many different things about Frank Miller, especially on his political views. But his work includes some pieces that really changed the industry. In this case, he made it into the list because of “Ronin” and “The Dark Knight Returns”, both have been influencing comics until our days (with “Ronin” being one of the many influences of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”).

NUMBER SEVEN MIKE W. BARR (1952 - PRESENT)

Mike W. Barr (born May 30, 1952) is an American writer of comic books, mystery novels, and science fiction novels.

Barr's debut as a comics professional came in DC Comics' Detective Comics #444 (Dec. 1974-Jan. 1975), for which he wrote an eight-page back-up mystery feature starring the Elongated Man. Another Elongated Man story followed in Detective Comics #453 (Nov. 1975). He wrote text articles and editorial replies in letter columns for the next few years. By mid-1980 he was writing regularly for both DC and Marvel, including stories for Mystery in Space, Green Lantern, The Brave and the Bold, Marvel Team-Up, and a Spider-Man/Scarlet Witch team-up in Marvel Fanfare #6.

Legion of Super-Heroes #277 (July 1981) saw him take on editorial duties at DC, a position he would hold until 1987. In December 1982, he and artist Brian Bolland began Camelot 3000, a 12 issue limited series that was one of DC Comics' first direct market projects. Barr and artist Trevor Von Eeden produced the first Green Arrow limited series in 1983. When the long running The Brave and the Bold series came to its conclusion with issue #200 (July 1983), it featured a preview of a new Batman series, Batman and the Outsiders by Barr and artist Jim Aparo, which would be described by DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz as being "a team series more fashionable to 1980s audiences." The Masters of Disaster were among the supervillains created by Barr and Aparo for the series. Barr wrote every issue of the original series, and its Baxter paper spinoff, The Outsiders that did not include Batman and introduced Looker. After the series' cancellation in February 1988, it was revived in November 1993 by Barr and artist Paul Pelletier.

He was one of the contributors to the DC Challenge limited series in 1986 and wrote the "Batman: Year Two" storyline in Detective Comics #575-578 (June-Sept. 1987) which followed up on Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One". Barr introduced the Reaper in Detective Comics #575 (June 1987) and returned to the character in the Batman: Full Circle one-shot in 1991. Another project from 1987 was the Batman: Son of the Demon graphic novel which was drawn by Jerry Bingham, proceeds from which reputedly "restored DC Comics to first place in sales after fifteen years." This title, and Barr's work on Batman with artist Alan Davis have been cited by Grant Morrison as key inspirations for his own run on the Batman title. Barr's sequel, Batman: Bride of The Demon, was published in 1991.

Mike W. Barr has been only of the earliest comic-book writers I knew about, and he made it into this list because of his work in “Camelot 3000″ and “Batman and the Outsiders”.

NUMBER SIX CHRIS CLAREMONT, WITH JOHN BYRNE (1950 - PRESENT)

Christopher S. Claremont (born November 25, 1950) is a British-born American comic book writer and novelist, known for his 1975–1991 stint on Uncanny X-Men, far longer than that of any other writer, during which he is credited with developing strong female characters as well as introducing complex literary themes into superhero narratives, turning the once underachieving comic into one of Marvel's most popular series.

During his tenure at Marvel, Claremont co-created numerous X-Men characters, such as Rogue, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde/Shadowcat, Phoenix, The Brood, Lockheed, Shi'ar, Shi'ar Imperial Guard, Mystique, Destiny, Selene, Reverend William Stryker, Lady Mastermind, Emma Frost, Tessa, Siryn, Jubilee, Rachel Summers, Madelyne Pryor, Moira MacTaggert, Lilandra, Shadow King, Cannonball, Warpath, Mirage, Wolfsbane, Karma, Cypher, Sabretooth, Empath, Sebastian Shaw, Donald Pierce, Avalanche, Pyro, Legion, Nimrod, Gateway, Strong Guy, Proteus, Mister Sinister, Marauders, Purifiers, Captain Britain, Sunspot, Forge and Gambit. Claremont scripted many classic stories, including "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past", on which he collaborated with John Byrne. He developed the character of Wolverine into a fan favorite. X-Men #1, the 1991 spinoff series premiere that Claremont co-wrote with Jim Lee, remains the best-selling comic book of all time, according to Guinness World Records. In 2015, Claremont and his X-Men collaborator John Byrne were entered into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.

Claremont was born in London, England. His father was an internist and his mother was a pilot and caterer. Claremont is Jewish on his mother's side, and lived in a kibbutz in Israel during his youth. His family moved to the United States when he was three, and he was raised primarily on Long Island. Alienated by the sports-oriented suburbs, his grandmother purchased for him a subscription to Eagle when he was a child, and he grew up reading Dan Dare, finding them more exciting than the Batman and Superman comics of the 1950s and early 1960s. He read works by science fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein, as well as writers of other genres such as Rudyard Kipling and C. S. Forester.

In the mid-1970s, Claremont was married to Bonnie Wilford. Following the dissolution of that marriage, he married Beth Fleisher, with whom Claremont co-authored Dragon Moon. Fleisher is the cousin (through marriage) of editor Dan Raspler, who was the editor on JLA during the six-issue "Tenth Circle" story arc Claremont and John Byrne wrote in 2004. Claremont and Fleisher have twin sons.

So why not John Byrne? Well, the reason Claremont made it into this list was mostly the Dark Phoenix Saga, but also the Wolverine mini-series. It is hard to separate them from their work in X-Men, but in the end, it is his dialogue that we read. I still think it is worth mentioning Byrne in this spot, as we wouldn’t have one without the other. Perhaps Wolverine solo mini-series wouldn’t be possible without the work of Byrne with the character, but there is more influence from Miller in that one. I am pretty sure Byrne will be in the top 10 next year anyway ;)

NUMBER FIVE NEIL GAIMAN (1960 - PRESENT)

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born Neil Richard Gaiman, 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, nonfiction, audio theatre, and films. His works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.

Gaiman's family is of Polish Jewish and other Eastern European Jewish origins. His great-grandfather emigrated from Antwerp, Belgium, to the UK before 1914 and his grandfather eventually settled in the south of England in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth and established a chain of grocery stores. Gaiman's grandfather changed his original family name of Chaiman to Gaiman. His father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked in the same chain of stores; his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters, Claire and Lizzy.

After living for a period in the nearby town of Portchester, Hampshire, where Neil was born in 1960, the Gaimans moved in 1965 to the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where his parents studied Dianetics at the Scientology centre in the town; one of Gaiman's sisters works for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. His other sister, Lizzy Calcioli, has said, "Most of our social activities were involved with Scientology or our Jewish family. It would get very confusing when people would ask my religion as a kid. I'd say, 'I'm a Jewish Scientologist.'" Gaiman says that he is not a Scientologist, and that like Judaism, Scientology is his family's religion. About his personal views, Gaiman has stated, "I think we can say that God exists in the DC Universe. I would not stand up and beat the drum for the existence of God in this universe. I don't know, I think there's probably a 50/50 chance. It doesn't really matter to me."

Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the works of Dennis Wheatley, where especially The Ka of Gifford Hillary and The Haunting of Toby Jugg made an impact on him. One work that made a particular impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school library, although it only had the first two volumes of the novel. He consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third volume.

For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you ... I'd think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of putting things in brackets." Narnia also introduced him to literary awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing, "if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."

Gaiman attended Ardingly College in Ardingly, West Sussex Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was another childhood favourite, and "a favourite forever. Alice was default reading to the point where I knew it by heart." He also enjoyed Batman comics as a child.

Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77). His father's position as a public relations official of the Church of Scientology was the cause of the seven-year-old Gaiman being forced to withdraw from Fonthill School and remain at the school that he had previously been attending. He lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965 to 1980 and again from 1984 to 1987. He met his first wife, Mary McGrath, while she was studying Scientology and living in a house in East Grinstead that was owned by his father. The couple were married in 1985 after having their first child, Michael.

As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. A lifetime fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe, as a teenager he owned a copy of Monty Python's Big Red Book. When he was 19–20 years old, he contacted his favourite science fiction writer, R. A. Lafferty, whom he discovered when he was nine, and asked for advice on becoming an author along with a Lafferty pastiche he had written. The writer sent Gaiman an encouraging and informative letter back, along with literary advice.

In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984.

When waiting for a train at London's Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he would later write "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".

In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Even though Gaiman thought he had done a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by Penthouse. He refused the offer.

He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. During this he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, and "a couple of house names". Gaiman has said he ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers regularly publish untruths as fact. In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style. Following this he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with fellow English author Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.

After forming a friendship with comic-book writer Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comic books, picking up Miracleman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short Future Shocks for 2000 AD in 1986–87. He wrote three graphic novels with his favourite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean: Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. Impressed with his work, DC Comics hired him in February 1987, and he wrote the limited series Black Orchid. Karen Berger, who later became head of DC Comics's Vertigo, read Black Orchid and offered Gaiman a job: to re-write an old character, The Sandman, but to put his own spin on him.

The Sandman tells the tale of the ageless, anthropomorphic personification of Dream that is known by many names, including Morpheus. The series began in January 1989 and concluded in March 1996. In the eighth issue of The Sandman, Gaiman and artist Mike Dringenberg introduced Death, the older sister of Dream, who would become as popular as the series' title character. The limited series Death: The High Cost of Living launched DC's Vertigo line in 1993. The 75 issues of the regular series, along with an illustrated prose text and a special containing seven short stories, have been collected into 12 volumes that remain in print. The series became one of DC's top selling titles, eclipsing even Batman and Superman. Comics historian Les Daniels called Gaiman's work "astonishing" and noted that The Sandman was "a mixture of fantasy, horror, and ironic humor such as comic books had never seen before". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed that "The Sandman became the first extraordinary success as a series of graphic novel collections, reaching out and converting new readers to the medium, particularly young women on college campuses, and making Gaiman himself into an iconic cultural figure."

Gaiman has lived near Menomonie, Wisconsin, since 1992. Gaiman moved there to be close to the family of his then-wife, Mary McGrath, with whom he has three children. As of 2013, Gaiman also resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2014, he took up a five-year appointment as professor in the arts at Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Gaiman is married to songwriter and performer Amanda Palmer, with whom he has an open marriage. The couple announced that they were dating in June 2009, and announced their engagement on Twitter on 1 January 2010. On 16 November 2010, Palmer hosted a non-legally binding flash mob wedding for Gaiman's birthday in New Orleans. They were legally married on 2 January 2011. The wedding took place in the parlour of writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. On marrying Palmer, he took her middle name, MacKinnon, as one of his names. In September 2015 they had a son.

I am sure Gaiman will make it to next year’s list as well, but in this year in particular, the main reason he made it was “The Sandman”, which had so much quality, almost all the issues I reviewed scored a 10.

NUMBER FOUR MARK MILLAR (1969 - PRESENT)

Mark Millar MBE is a Scottish comic book writer, best known for his work on The Authority, The Ultimates, Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Civil War, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Wanted, Chrononauts, Superior and Kick-Ass, the latter seven of which have been, or are planned to be, adapted into feature films.

Millar was born 24 December 1969 in Coatbridge, Scotland. His parents were also born in Coatbridge, and Millar spent the first half of his life in the town's Townhead area, attending St Ambrose High. He has four older brothers, and one older sister, who are 22, 20, 18, 16 and 14 years older than him, respectively. His brother Bobby, who today works at a special needs school, introduced him to comics at age 4 while attending university by taking him to shops and purchasing them for him. Still learning to read, Millar's first comic was the seminal The Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973), which featured the death of Gwen Stacy. He purchased a Superman comic that day as well. Black and white reprinted comics purchased by his brothers for him would follow, cementing his interest in the medium so much that Millar drew a spider web across his face with indelible marker that his parents were unable to scrub off in time for his First Communion photo a week later. Millar has named Alan Moore and Frank Miller as the two biggest influences on his career, characterizing them as "my Mum and Dad." Other writers he names as influences include Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis. More recent writers that have impressed him include Jason Aaron and Scott Snyder.

Millar's mother died of a heart attack at age 64, when Millar was 14, and his father died four years later, aged 65. Although Millar enjoyed drawing comics, he was not permitted to go to art school because his family frowned upon such endeavours as a waste of time for the academic Millar, who studied subjects like chemistry, physics and advanced maths. He initially planned to be a doctor, and subsequently decided that becoming an economist would be a viable alternate plan, but later decided that he "couldn't quite hack it" in that occupation. He attended Glasgow University to study politics and economics, but dropped out after his father's death left him without the money to pay his living expenses.

When Millar was 18, he interviewed writer Grant Morrison, who was doing his first major American work on Animal Man, for a fanzine. When he told Morrison that he wanted to be both a writer and an artist, Morrison suggested that he focus on one of those career paths, as it was very hard to be successful at both, which Millar cites as the best advice he has received.

Millar's first job as a comic book writer came when he was still in high school, writing Trident's Saviour with Daniel Vallely providing art. Saviour combined elements of religion, satire and superhero action. During the 1990s, Millar worked on titles such as 2000 AD, Sonic the Comic and Crisis. In 1993, Millar, Grant Morrison and John Smith created a controversial eight-week run on 2000 AD called The Summer Offensive. It was during this run that Millar and Morrison wrote their first major story together, Big Dave.

Millar's British work brought him to the attention of DC Comics, and in 1994 he started working on his first American comic, Swamp Thing. The first four issues of Millar's run were co-written by Grant Morrison, allowing Millar to settle into the title. Although his work brought some critical acclaim to the ailing title, the book's sales were still low enough to warrant cancellation by the publisher. From there, Millar spent time working on various DC titles, often co-writing with or under the patronage of Morrison as in the cases of his work on JLA, The Flash and Aztek: The Ultimate Man, and working on unsuccessful pitches for the publisher.

In 2000, Millar replaced Warren Ellis on The Authority for DC's Wildstorm imprint. Millar announced his resignation from DC in 2001, though his miniseries Superman: Red Son was printed in 2003.

In 2001, Millar launched Ultimate X-Men for Marvel Comics' Ultimate Marvel imprint. The following year he collaborated with illustrator Bryan Hitch on The Ultimates, the Ultimate imprint's equivalent of The Avengers. Millar's work on The Ultimates was later adapted into two Marvel Animated Features and the subsequent 2012 Hollywood box office smash Marvel's The Avengers.

In 2006, Millar, joined by artist Steve McNiven, began writing the Marvel miniseries Civil War a seven-issue limited series revolving around the passing of Superhuman Registration Act as a result of the death and destruction unintentionally caused by superheroes and turned Captain America and Iron Man onto opposing sides, the book formed the basis for the film Captain America: Civil War. In 2009 Millar wrote the dystopian "Old Man Logan" storyline, which appeared in the Wolverine series, and was set in a possible future in which Wolverine, having been traumatized by his murder of the X-Men (an event prompted by Mysterio's illusions), became a recluse, after which the United States government collapsed, and the country fell under the control of various supervillain enclaves. Needing rent money for his family's farm, Wolverine comes out of retirement when called upon by Hawkeye.

Millar supports British withdrawal from the European Union.

While Millar is usually not my cup of tea, mostly because of his toxic depictions of masculinity in his stories (this may or may not be on purpose), he did write a lot of sophisticated comics in the reviews I did this year (”The Ultimates” and “Marvel Knights: Spider-man”).

NUMBER THREE GEOFF JOHNS (1973 - PRESENT)

Geoffrey Johns (born January 25, 1973) is an American comic book writer, screenwriter and film and television producer. He served as the President and Chief Creative Officer (CCO) of DC Entertainment from 2016 to 2018 after his initial appointment as CCO in 2010. Some of his most notable work has used the DC Comics characters Green Lantern, Aquaman, Flash and Superman.

In 2018, he stepped down from his executive role at DC Entertainment to open a production company, Mad Ghost Productions, to focus on writing and producing film, television and comic book titles based on DC properties. Some of his work in television includes the series Blade, Smallville, Arrow and The Flash. He was a co-producer on the film Green Lantern (2011) and a producer on Justice League (2017). He co-wrote the story for Aquaman (2018) and the screenplay for Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).

Geoff Johns was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Barbara and Fred Johns. He is of half Lebanese ancestry and grew up in the suburbs of Grosse Pointe and Clarkston. As a child, Johns and his brother first discovered comics through an old box of comics they found in their grandmother's attic, which included copies of The Flash, Superman, Green Lantern, and Batman from the 1960s and 1970s. Johns eventually began to patronize a comics shop in Traverse City, recalling that the first new comics he bought were Crisis on Infinite Earths #3 or 4 and The Flash #348 or 349, as the latter was his favorite character. As Johns continued collecting comics, he gravitated toward DC Comics and later Vertigo, and drew comics. After graduating from Clarkston High School in 1991, he studied media arts, screenwriting, film production and film theory at Michigan State University. He graduated from Michigan State in 1995, and then moved to Los Angeles, California.

In Los Angeles, Johns cold-called the office of director Richard Donner looking for an internship, and while Johns was being transferred to various people, Donner picked up the phone by accident, leading to a conversation and the internship. Johns started off copying scripts, and after about two months, was hired as a production assistant for Donner, whom Johns regards as his mentor.

While working on production of Donner's 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, Johns visited New York City, where he met DC Comics personnel such as Eddie Berganza, reigniting his childhood interest in comics.

Berganza invited Johns to tour the DC Comics offices, and offered Johns the opportunity to suggest ideas, which led to Johns pitching Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., a series based on the second Star-Spangled Kid and her stepfather, to editor Chuck Kim a year later. Johns expected to write comics "on the side", until he met David Goyer and James Robinson, who were working on JSA. After looking at Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Robinson offered Johns co-writing duties on JSA in 2000, and Johns credits both him and Mike Carlin with shepherding him into the comics industry. That same year, Johns became the regular writer on The Flash ongoing series with issue 164. John's work on The Flash represents one example of his modeling of various elements in his stories after aspects of his birth town, explaining, "When I wrote The Flash, I turned Keystone City into Detroit, made it a car town. I make a lot of my characters from Detroit. I think self-made, blue-collar heroes represent Detroit. Wally West's Flash was like that. I took the inspiration of the city and the people there and used it in the books." John's Flash run concluded with #225.

His younger sister, Courtney, was a victim of the TWA Flight 800 crash. The DC Comics character Courtney Whitmore, whom Johns created, is based on her.

In a 2010 interview, Johns named Steve McNiven as an artist he would like to collaborate with, J. Michael Straczynski's run on Thor as his then-favorite ongoing comic book, and The Flash as his favorite of all time, stating that he owns every issue of it. He credits reading James Robinson's The Golden Age as the book responsible for his love of the characters featured in the book, and for his decision to accept writing duties on JSA. He is also a comic book retailer who co-owns Earth-2 Comics in Northridge, California, with Carr D'Angelo and Jud Meyers.

There are plenty of reasons for Geoff Johns to be in this list, this year. But the main ones are his Justice League and Shazam Origin. At the moment of this writing, Doomsday Clock is not included in these reviews, but his writing there is also very, very good.

NUMBER TWO MARV WOLFMAN, WITH GEORGE PEREZ (1946 - PRESENT)

Marvin Arthur Wolfman (born May 13, 1946) is an American comic book and novelization writer. He worked on Marvel Comics's The Tomb of Dracula, for which he and artist Gene Colan created the vampire-slayer Blade, and DC Comics's The New Teen Titans and the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series with George Pérez.

Marv Wolfman was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of police officer Abe and housewife Fay. He has a sister, Harriet, 12 years older. When Wolfman was 13, his family moved to Flushing, Queens, in New York City, where he attended junior high school. He went on to New York's High School of Art and Design, in Manhattan, hoping to become a cartoonist. Wolfman is Jewish.

Marvin Wolfman was active in fandom before he began his professional comics career at DC Comics in 1968. Wolfman was one of the first to publish Stephen King, with "In A Half-World of Terror" in Wolfman's horror fanzine Stories of Suspense No. 2 (1965). This was a revised version of King's first published story, "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", which had been serialized over four issues (three published and one unpublished) of the fanzine Comics Review that same year.

Wolfman's first published work for DC Comics appeared in Blackhawk No. 242 (Aug.–Sept. 1968). He and longtime friend Len Wein created the character Jonny Double in Showcase No. 78 (Nov. 1968) scripted by Wolfman. The two co-wrote "Eye of the Beholder" in Teen Titans No. 18 (Dec. 1968), which would be Wein's first professional comics credit. Neal Adams was called upon to rewrite and redraw a Teen Titans story which had been written by Wein and Wolfman. The story, titled "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho!", would have introduced DC's first African American superhero, but was rejected by publisher Carmine Infantino. The revised story appeared in Teen Titans No. 20 (March–April 1969). Wolfman and Gil Kane created an origin for Wonder Girl in Teen Titans No. 22 (July–Aug. 1969) which introduced the character's new costume.

Wolfman is married to Noel Watkins. Wolfman was previously married to Michele Wolfman, for many years a colorist in the comics industry. They have a daughter, Jessica Morgan.

There are also many reasons for Wolfman to be in this list. Among them there is: “Man and Superman”, “New Teen Titans”, “Tales of the Teen Titans”, “The Judas Contract”, “Vigilante” and “Crisis on Infinite Earths”. Many of these, were collaborations with George Pérez and that is why he gets a mention in this space (don’t worry, he is in another TOP 10 this year). Not only he destroyed a multiverse and created one of the most stable runs of DC Continuity ever, he also “created” Nightwing and Vigilante and finally published “Man and Superman” this year.

NUMBER ONE ALAN MOORE (1953 - PRESENT)

Alan Moore (born 18 November 1953) is an English writer known primarily for his work in comic books including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Ballad of Halo Jones, Swamp Thing, Batman: The Killing Joke and From Hell. Regarded by some as the best comics writer in the English language, he is widely recognized among his peers and critics. He has occasionally used such pseudonyms as Curt Vile, Jill de Ray, and Translucia Baboon; also, reprints of some of his work have been credited to The Original Writer when Moore requested that his name be removed.

Moore started writing for British underground and alternative fanzines in the late 1970s before achieving success publishing comic strips in such magazines as 2000 AD and Warrior. He was subsequently picked up by the American DC Comics, and as "the first comics writer living in Britain to do prominent work in America", he worked on major characters such as Batman (Batman: The Killing Joke) and Superman (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?), substantially developed the character Swamp Thing, and penned original titles such as Watchmen. During that decade, Moore helped to bring about greater social respectability for comics in the United States and United Kingdom. He prefers the term "comic" to "graphic novel". In the late 1980s and early 1990s he left the comic industry mainstream and went independent for a while, working on experimental work such as the epic From Hell and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. He subsequently returned to the mainstream later in the 1990s, working for Image Comics, before developing America's Best Comics, an imprint through which he published works such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the occult-based Promethea. In 2016, he published Jerusalem: a 1266-page experimental novel set in his hometown of Northampton, UK.

Moore is an occultist, ceremonial magician, and anarchist, and has featured such themes in works including Promethea, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, as well as performing avant-garde spoken word occult "workings" with The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, some of which have been released on CD.

Despite his own personal objections, his works have provided the basis for a number of Hollywood films, including From Hell (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), and Watchmen (2009). Moore has also been referenced in popular culture, and has been recognized as an influence on a variety of literary and television figures including Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, and Damon Lindelof. He has lived a significant portion of his life in Northampton, England, and he has said in various interviews that his stories draw heavily from his experiences living there.

Abandoning his office job, he decided to instead take up both writing and illustrating his own comics. He had already produced a couple of strips for several alternative fanzines and magazines, such as Anon E. Mouse for the local paper Anon, and St. Pancras Panda, a parody of Paddington Bear, for the Oxford-based Back Street Bugle. His first paid work was for a few drawings that were printed in NME, and not long after he succeeded in getting a series about a private detective known as Roscoe Moscow published using the pseudonym of Curt Vile (a pun on the name of composer Kurt Weill) in the weekly music magazine Sounds, earning £35 a week. Alongside this, he and Phyllis, with their newborn daughter Leah, began claiming unemployment benefit to supplement this income. Not long after this, in 1979 he also began publishing a new comic strip known as Maxwell the Magic Cat in the Northants Post, under the pseudonym of Jill de Ray (a pun on the Medieval child murderer Gilles de Rais, something he found to be a "sardonic joke"). Earning a further £10 a week from this, he decided to sign off of social security, and would continue writing Maxwell the Magic Cat until 1986. Moore has stated that he would have been happy to continue Maxwell's adventures almost indefinitely, but ended the strip after the newspaper ran a negative editorial on the place of homosexuals in the community. Meanwhile, Moore decided to focus more fully on writing comics rather than both writing and drawing them, stating that "After I'd been doing [it] for a couple of years, I realised that I would never be able to draw well enough and/or quickly enough to actually make any kind of decent living as an artist."

To learn more about how to write a successful comic-book script, he asked advice from his friend, comic-book writer Steve Moore, whom he had known since he was fourteen. Interested in writing for 2000AD, one of Britain's most prominent comic magazines, Alan Moore then submitted a script for their long running and successful series Judge Dredd. While having no need for another writer on Judge Dredd, which was already being written by John Wagner, 2000AD's editor Alan Grant saw promise in Moore's work – later remarking that "this guy's a really fucking good writer" – and instead asked him to write some short stories for the publication's Future Shocks series. While the first few were rejected, Grant advised Moore on improvements, and eventually accepted the first of many. Meanwhile, Moore had also begun writing minor stories for Doctor Who Weekly, and later commented that "I really, really wanted a regular strip. I didn't want to do short stories ... But that wasn't what was being offered. I was being offered short four or five-page stories where everything had to be done in those five pages. And, looking back, it was the best possible education that I could have had in how to construct a story."

From 1980 through to 1984, Moore maintained his status as a freelance writer, and was offered a spate of work by a variety of comic book companies in Britain, namely Marvel UK, and the publishers of 2000AD and Warrior. He later remarked that "I remember that what was generally happening was that everybody wanted to give me work, for fear that I would just be given other work by their rivals. So everybody was offering me things." It was an era when comic books were increasing in popularity in Britain, and according to Lance Parkin, "the British comics scene was cohering as never before, and it was clear that the audience was sticking with the title as they grew up. Comics were no longer just for very small boys: teenagers – even A-level and university students – were reading them now."

During this three-year period, 2000AD would accept and publish over fifty of Moore's one-off stories for their Future Shocks and Time Twisters science fiction series. The editors at the magazine were impressed by Moore's work and decided to offer him a more permanent strip, starting with a story that they wanted to be vaguely based upon the hit film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The result, Skizz, which was illustrated by Jim Baikie, told the story of the titular alien who crashes to Earth and is cared for by a teenager named Roxy, and Moore later noted that in his opinion, this work "owes far too much to Alan Bleasdale." Another series he produced for 2000AD was D.R. and Quinch, which was illustrated by Alan Davis. The story, which Moore described as "continuing the tradition of Dennis the Menace, but giving him a thermonuclear capacity", revolved around two delinquent aliens, and was a science-fiction take on National Lampoon's characters O.C. and Stiggs. The work widely considered to be the highlight of his 2000AD career, and that he himself described as "the one that worked best for me" was The Ballad of Halo Jones. Co-created with artist Ian Gibson, the series was set in the 50th century. The series was discontinued after three books due to a dispute between Moore and Fleetway, the magazine's publishers, over the intellectual property rights of the characters Moore and Gibson had co-created.

Another comic company to employ Moore was Marvel UK, who had formerly purchased a few of his one-off stories for Doctor Who Weekly and Star Wars Weekly. Aiming to get an older audience than 2000AD, their main rival, they employed Moore to write for the regular strip Captain Britain, "halfway through a storyline that he's neither inaugurated nor completely understood." He replaced the former writer Dave Thorpe, but maintained the original artist, Alan Davis, whom Moore described as "an artist whose love for the medium and whose sheer exultation upon finding himself gainfully employed within it shine from every line, every new costume design, each nuance of expression."

Guy Fawkes serves as physical and philosophical inspiration for the titular protagonist of V for Vendetta. The third comic company that Moore worked for in this period was Quality Communications, publishers of a new monthly magazine called Warrior. The magazine was founded by Dez Skinn, a former editor of both IPC (publishers of 2000 AD) and Marvel UK, and was designed to offer writers a greater degree of freedom over their artistic creations than was allowed by pre-existing companies. It was at Warrior that Moore "would start to reach his potential". Moore was initially given two ongoing strips in Warrior: Marvelman and V for Vendetta, both of which debuted in Warrior's first issue in March 1982. V for Vendetta was a dystopian thriller set in a future 1997 where a fascist government controlled Britain, opposed only by a lone anarchist dressed in a Guy Fawkes costume who turns to terrorism to topple the government. Illustrated by David Lloyd, Moore was influenced by his pessimistic feelings about the Thatcherite Conservative government, which he projected forward as a fascist state in which all ethnic and sexual minorities had been eliminated. It has been regarded as "among Moore's best work" and has maintained a cult following throughout subsequent decades.

Marvelman (later retitled Miracleman for legal reasons) was a series that originally had been published in Britain from 1954 through to 1963, based largely upon the American comic Captain Marvel. Upon resurrecting Marvelman, Moore "took a kitsch children's character and placed him within the real world of 1982". The work was drawn primarily by Garry Leach and Alan Davis. The third series that Moore produced for Warrior was The Bojeffries Saga, a comedy about a working-class English family of vampires and werewolves, drawn by Steve Parkhouse. Warrior closed before these stories were completed, but under new publishers both Miracleman and V for Vendetta were resumed by Moore, who finished both stories by 1989. Moore's biographer Lance Parkin remarked that "reading them through together throws up some interesting contrasts – in one the hero fights a fascist dictatorship based in London, in the other an Aryan superman imposes one."

Although Moore's work numbered amongst the most popular strips to appear in 2000 AD, Moore himself became increasingly concerned at the lack of creator's rights in British comics. In 1985, he talked to fanzine Arkensword, noting that he had stopped working for all British publishers bar IPC, "purely for the reason that IPC so far have avoided lying to me, cheating me or generally treating me like shit." He did join other creators in decrying the wholesale relinquishing of all rights, and in 1986 stopped writing for 2000 AD, leaving mooted future volumes of the Halo Jones story unstarted. Moore's outspoken opinions and principles, particularly on the subject of creator's rights and ownership, would see him burn bridges with a number of other publishers over the course of his career.

Meanwhile, during this same period, he – using the pseudonym of Translucia Baboon – became involved in the music scene, founding his own band, The Sinister Ducks, with David J (of goth band Bauhaus) and Alex Green, and in 1983 released a single, March of the Sinister Ducks, with sleeve art by illustrator Kevin O'Neill. In 1984, Moore and David J released a 12-inch single featuring a recording of "This Vicious Cabaret", a song featured in V for Vendetta, which was released on the Glass Records label. Moore would write the song "Leopardman at C&A" for David J, and it would be set to music by Mick Collins for the album We Have You Surrounded by Collins' group The Dirtbombs.

Moore's work in 2000 AD brought him to the attention of DC Comics editor Len Wein, who hired him in 1983 to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, then a formulaic and poor-selling monster comic. Moore, with artists Stephen R. Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben, deconstructed and reimagined the character, writing a series of formally experimental stories that addressed environmental and social issues alongside the horror and fantasy, bolstered by research into the culture of Louisiana, where the series was set. For Swamp Thing he revived many of DC's neglected magical and supernatural characters, including the Spectre, the Demon, the Phantom Stranger, Deadman, and others, and introduced John Constantine, an English working-class magician based visually on the British musician Sting; Constantine later became the protagonist of the series Hellblazer, which became Vertigo's longest running series at 300 issues. Moore would continue writing Swamp Thing for almost four years, from issue No. 20 (January 1984) through to issue No. 64 (September 1987) with the exception of issues No. 59 and 62. Moore's run on Swamp Thing was successful both critically and commercially, and inspired DC to recruit British writers such as Grant Morrison, Jamie Delano, Peter Milligan, and Neil Gaiman to write comics in a similar vein, often involving radical revamps of obscure characters. These titles laid the foundation of what became the Vertigo line.

Moore began producing further stories for DC Comics, including a two-part story for Vigilante, which dealt with domestic abuse. He was eventually given the chance to write a story for one of DC's best-known superheroes, Superman, entitled "For the Man Who Has Everything", which was illustrated by Dave Gibbons and published in 1985. In this story, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Robin visit Superman on his birthday, only to find that he has been overcome by an alien organism and is hallucinating about his heart's desire. He followed this with another Superman story, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", which was published in 1986. Illustrated by Curt Swan, it was designed as the last Superman story in the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe.

The threat of Nuclear war during the Cold War influenced the setting and tone of Watchmen. The limited series Watchmen, begun in 1986 and collected as a trade paperback in 1987, cemented Moore's reputation. Imagining what the world would be like if costumed heroes had really existed since the 1940s, Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a Cold War mystery in which the shadow of nuclear war threatens the world. The heroes who are caught up in this escalating crisis either work for the US government or are outlawed, and are motivated to heroism by their various psychological hang-ups. Watchmen is non-linear and told from multiple points of view, and includes highly sophisticated self-references, ironies, and formal experiments such as the symmetrical design of issue 5, "Fearful Symmetry", where the last page is a near mirror-image of the first, the second-last of the second, and so on, and in this manner is an early example of Moore's interest in the human perception of time and its implications for free will. It is the only comic to win the Hugo Award, in a one-time category ("Best Other Form"). It is widely seen as Moore's best work, and has been regularly described as the greatest comic book ever written. Alongside roughly contemporary works such as Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez's Love and Rockets, Watchmen was part of a late 1980s trend in American comics towards more adult sensibilities. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Watchmen "called into question the basic assumptions on which the super hero genre is formulated". DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz observed in 2010 that "As with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen set off a chain reaction of rethinking the nature of super heroes and heroism itself, and pushed the genre darker for more than a decade. The series won acclaim ... and would continue to be regarded as one of the most important literary works the field ever produced." Moore briefly became a media celebrity, and the resulting attention led to him withdrawing from fandom and no longer attending comics conventions (at one UKCAC in London he is said to have been followed into the toilet by eager autograph hunters).

Since his teenage years Moore has had long hair, and since early adulthood has also had a beard. He has taken to wearing a number of large rings on his hands, leading him to be described as a "cross between Hagrid and Danny from Withnail and I" who could be easily mistaken for "the village eccentric". Born and raised in Northampton, he continues to live in the town, and used its history as a basis for his novels Voice of the Fire and Jerusalem. His "unassuming terraced" Northampton home was described by an interviewer in 2001 as "something like an occult bookshop under permanent renovation, with records, videos, magical artifacts and comic-book figurines strewn among shelves of mystical tomes and piles of paper. The bathroom, with blue-and-gold décor and a generous sunken tub, is palatial; the rest of the house has possibly never seen a vacuum cleaner. This is clearly a man who spends little time on the material plane." He likes to live in his home town, feeling that it affords him a level of obscurity that he enjoys, remarking that "I never signed up to be a celebrity." He has spoken in praise of the town's former Radical MP, Charles Bradlaugh at the annual commemoration. He is also a vegetarian.

With his first wife Phyllis, whom he married in the early 1970s, he has two daughters, Leah and Amber. The couple also had a mutual lover, Deborah, although the relationship between the three ended in the early 1990s as Phyllis and Deborah left Moore, taking his daughters with them. On 12 May 2007, he married Melinda Gebbie, with whom he has worked on several comics, most notably Lost Girls.

It was pretty clear that Alan Moore was going to end up being in the Top 10 this year. Mostly because I read a lot of his material from DC. The reason he made it into the top 10 is “V for Vendetta” with David Lloyd, “Swamp Thing”, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, “Tom Strong”, Batman: The Killing Joke” and “Watchmen”.

Most of these writers have also done something good, not only for the comic-book industry, but also for the world. And this TOP 10 is a way of celebrating them, because their work really inspired most of the pop-culture we consume today.

#writers #comics #reviews #2019 #alan moore #marv wolfman #geoff johns #mark millar #neil gaiman #chris claremont #mike w barr #frank miller #sean murphy #james robinson #james tynion iv

[ljones41]

"AQUAMAN" (2018) Review

I realize that over four months had passed since this movie’s release, but . . . better late than never:

"AQUAMAN" (2018) Review Following the failure of "JUSTICE LEAGUE" to storm the box office during the fall of 2017, Warner Brothers Pictures and the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) turned to the franchise's sixth installment to carry it and the studio to both financial and especially critical glory. That movie proved to be 2018's "AQUAMAN". The character of the DC Comics superhero, Aquaman aka Arthur Curry has made extensive appearances in both television and movie animations. His biggest role proved to be one of the main characters of the 1973-1986 Saturday morning animated series, "SUPER FRIENDS". The character also made occasional appearances in the live-action WB (later, the CW) series, "SMALLVILLE". The WB had plans for a series about Aquaman, starring Justin Hartley (who later became known as Oliver Queen aka the Green Arrow on "SMALLVILLE"), but nothing came from it. In the end, it took Zack Snyder to bring Aquaman to the fore as a live-action figure, when he cast actor Jason Momoa in the role for the DCEU franchise. "AQUAMAN" would prove to be Momoa's third appearance in the franchise, after a brief cameo in 2016's "BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE" and a more prominent role in "JUSTICE LEAGUE", the following year. However, "AQUAMAN" is the first film to feature Momoa as the lead in a DCEU film, but also the first movie that is actually about the "King of the Seven Seas". Directed by James Wan, "AQUAMAN" is a two-fold story that explores the drama behind Arthur Curry's family conflicts. The movie also told how Arthur aka Aquaman went on a quest to prevent his half-brother King Orm Marius from uniting the seven undersea kingdoms in order to inflict war upon the surface world. The story begins in 1985, when a Maine lighthouse keeper named Tom Curry rescues a woman who has washed ashore during a storm. The mysterious woman turns out to be Atlanna, Queen of Atlantis, who had left her ocean world to escape an arranged marriage to another member of Atlantean royalty, Orvax. Both Tom and Atlanna fall in love, marry and conceive a child, whom they name Arthur. Unfortunately, Atlantean soldiers manage to find Atlanna. She decides to leave Tom and Arthur behind and return to Atlantis in order to protect them from Orvax's wrath. Over thirty years later, Arthur has become known as the metahuman vigilante, Aquaman. Months after the Justice League's defeat of Steppenwolf, Aquaman prevents a group of pirates led by the father-son team, Jesse and David Kane, from hijacking a Russian Naval Akula-class submarine. Jesse dies during the confrontation with Aquaman, while David, vows revenge against the hero. Meanwhile, Arthur's half-brother, King Orm of Atlantis attempts to convince King Nereus of Xebel to help him unite Atlantis and the other ocean kingdoms for an attack against the surface world for for harming the Earth's oceans. Orm also hopes to solidify his position as Atlantis' king. Nereus's daughter and Orm's fiancee, Princess Mera, heads to the surface to recruit Arthur in stopping Orm's plans against the surface world and to present himself as the true king of Atlantis. Over a year had passed between the release of "JUSTICE LEAGUE" and "AQUAMAN". I noticed that many film critics and moviegoers seemed willing to heap lavish praise on the 2018 film, following the other movie's poor performance and lack of critical acclaim. I will be honest . . . I did not dislike "JUSTICE LEAGUE". I had mixed feelings about it. I still do. But I must admit that "AQUAMAN" is a better film. To a certain extent. "AQUAMAN" is a curious mixture of a family drama, a political film, an Indiana Jones-style adventure and the usual "save-the-planet" scenario. For me, the best aspect of "AQUAMAN" is the family drama that centered around Queen Atlanna. David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall did an excellent job in conveying the consequences of Atlanna's initial refusal to be dragged into an arranged marriage. Her actions resulted in eventual exile and possible death for her, two sons in conflict with each other, a political vacuum and one of her sons becoming a future costumed hero. The political vacuum left by Atlanna also led to an exciting and action-filled search for a missing magical artifact - the Trident of Atlan, which used to belong to Atlantis' first ruler and had been missing his disappearance. This search would lead Arthur and Mera on a picturesque journey from the Mediterranean region to the depths of the ocean's most elusive worlds, the Kingdom of the Trench. I also liked the fact that Johnson-McGoldrick and Beall's screenplay did not rush in conveying Orm's story arc. They did not rush his efforts to solidify his position on the Atlantean throne or his efforts to convince or coerce the rulers of the other ocean kingdoms to acknowledge and join him in the attack against the surface. And what seemed to be the cherry on the top of this particular story arc is that the two screenwriters managed to utilize Aquaman's other major nemesis - David Kane aka Black Mantis - into Orm's story arc. In doing so, the two screenwriters and director James Wan managed to establish David Kane's own origin story and major conflict against Aquaman for future movies. But what I really liked about "AQUAMAN" is that instead of the outsider or the interloper of a royal court being the main villain, he is the main protagonist. In other words, the main protagonist is the one who shakes up a society and not the villain. I found this refreshing after movies like "THOR" and "BLACK PANTHER". Another aspect of "AQUAMAN" that I enjoyed was the film's visual styles. Bill Brzeski did an excellent job as the film's production designer. I thought he did a competent job in not only re-creating Atlantis and other ocean worlds . . . to an extent. I also enjoyed his designs for those scenes that especially featured Arthur and Mera's adventures in both the Sahara Desert and especially Sicily. Don Burgess' cinematography did a great job in enhancing Brzeski's work. This especially seemed to be the case for his photography of the shooting locations in Australia, Morocco and Italy. I am going to be frank. I am not a big fan of the traditional Aquaman suit . . . at least for Jason Momoa. From a visual perspective, I believe the suit he wore in "JUSTICE LEAGUE" worked better for him. But I must admit that I did enjoy Kym Barrett's designs for the costume worn by Momoa in the Sicily sequence. And I especially enjoyed Ms. Barrett's costumes for the other Atlantean and Xebel characters. Especially those costumes worn by Amber Heard. However, the one aspect of "AQUAMAN" that truly impressed me were the visual effects for the Atlantis scene created by the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) team led by Jeff White. I mean . . . oh my God! Those visual effects truly blew me away with the sharp colors, beauty and originality, as seen in the images below:

How on earth did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences fail to nominate White and the ILM team for their work in this film? It is simply criminal that the organization had failed to do this. The performances featured in "AQUAMAN" struck me as either first-rate or solid. I would certainly describe Jason Momoa's portrayal of Arthur Curry aka Aquaman as first-rate. One, the guy has charisma and presence oozing out of his pores. And two, Momoa did a great job in utilizing both his comedic and dramatic skills, when required by the screenplay. However, a part of me wishes there had been more of a balance between comedy and dramatic scenes for the actor. Another first-rate performance came from Amber Heard, who portrayed Princess Mera of Xebel. If I must be honest, I had been impressed by the way she had taken control of her performance in "JUSTICE LEAGUE". Her portrayal of Mera as a strong-willed and commanding personality seemed even stronger in this film. "AQUAMAN" features the second time I have seen Patrick Wilson portray a villain. In this film, he gave a strong and intimidating portrayal of Aquaman's half-brother, King Orm Marius aka Ocean Master. Wilson's character was not as . . . amusing as his character in 2010's "THE A-TEAM", but I must admit that he did a great job in conveying Orm's arrogance and bigotry. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II portrayed the film's other villain, sea pirate-tech specialist David Kane, who will become one of Aquaman's biggest nemesis, Black Mantis. Since he was not the main villain, his presence was not as extensive. But I cannot deny that Abdul-Mateen gave a very intense and memorable performance. I really look forward to seeing him in future DCEU films. "AQUAMAN" also featured strong, yet solid performances from the supporting cast. Those performances include Nicole Kidman, who portrayed Arthur's mother Queen Atlanna; Temeura Morrison as Arthur's father, Tom Curry; Willem Dafoe, who portrayed Arthur's mentor Vulko; Dolph Lundgren as King Nereus of Xebel; Michael Beach as Jesse Kane, pirate leader and father of the future Black Mantis; and Graham MacTavish, who provided the voice for Atlan, the first king of Atlantis. I also wanted to point out Randall Park, who gave a rather funny and entertaining performance as Dr. Stephen Shin, a marine biologist obsessed with finding the lost city of Atlantis. I was surprised to discover that the movie also featured voice performances from the likes of Julie Andrews, Djimon Hounsou and John Rhys-Davies. As much as I enjoyed "AQUAMAN", I had some problems with the film. My biggest problem proved to be director James Wan. I realize that he has managed to establish a positive reputation from the horror flicks he had directed in the past. The problem is that there were times when I found his direction rather clunky. A good example would be the film's opening scene that featured the introduction of Aquaman's parents. It struck me as a bit rushed. Utilizing slow motion scenes can annoy me in any movie. But what I found particularly annoying in "AQUAMAN" was that Wan did not use slow motion in action scenes. Instead, he used it for shots featuring Momoa in various poses . . . as if he was some kind of fashion magazine model. Also, it seemed as if Wan was incapable of going from action to drama to comedy in a seamless way. Perhaps he will be able to flow his scenes a little better as he become more experienced, but I did not sense such a skill in "AQUAMAN". Also, I am a little . . . confused about Queen Atlanna's position in Atlantis society. Was she the ruling monarch when she first met Tom Curry? Was she ever the ruling monarch? Or did Atlantis society forbade women sovereigns and would only allow the royal spouses of a direct female heiress or sovereign to be considered for the throne? The movie never made it clear. According to the movie, one of Orm's major reasons for planning an attack upon the surface world was humanity's pollution of the ocean. Aside from one minor sequence featuring news reports of piles of garbage washing up on many beaches, I feel the movie did not explore the topic of pollution as much as it should have, considering IT WAS one of Orm's reasons to attack humanity. I realize that "AQUAMAN" is at the moment, the DCEU franchise's most successful film. It is the only one that has managed to earn over a billion dollars so far. But do I consider it the best in the franchise? Not really. Between James Wan's uneven direction, some plot points regarding the Queen Atlanna character and the film's use of the pollution topic; it did not quite impress me as I had hoped it would. On the other hand, I found some of Wan's direction rather impressive, especially the action sequences. The visual effects struck me as stunning, the movie featured excellent performances from a cast led by Jason Momoa and I thought screenwriters David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall wrote a first-rate adventure. I am more than satisfied.

#DC comics #dceu movies #dceu #dc extended universe #aquaman #arthur curry #aquaman 2018 #james wan #jason momoa #Amber Heard #patrick wilson #yahya abdul-mateen ii #dolph lungren #willem dafoe #nicole kidman #temuera morrison #randall park #djimon hounsou #julie andrews #michael beach #john rhys-davies #graham mctavish

[davidmann95]

I feel like public opinions on Superman is higher than its been for a while, thoughts?

I’m afraid I very thoroughly disagree. In fact, thinking about DC’s handling of Superman recently - a common topic of late-night brooding sessions - it really occurred to me what an absolutely hellish decade the dude’s had.

2008: Kurt Busiek leaves Superman, James Robinson takes over (according to some in the place of Mark Waid), the book immediately goes to shit. New Krypton later begins, the entire Superman line collectively understood among fandom as going to shit along with it.

2009: As a consequence of the aforementioned New Krypton situation, Superman is in neither Superman nor Action Comics for the majority of the year, both being taken over by - generously - C-listers.

2010: Superman: Earth One, I would sincerely argue the worst Superman comic of all time and one that even at the time drew snickering comparisons to Twilight, is DC’s major outreach towards the bookstore market. Young Justice begins to considerable approval, portraying him as essentially a deadbeat dad who refuses to acknowledge Superboy as family, or even acknowledge him period to the extent that can be helped until the season finale. New Krypton fades into Grounded, among the most widely reviled Superman stories ever.

2011: Smallville, the last ongoing TV series to star Clark Kent, ends; many (even if I’m not among them myself) are understandably enraged that Tom Welling never actually appears as Superman aside from a split-second shirt rip, seeing it as a betrayal of the premise of the series and ten years of buildup. Meanwhile, the comics reboot him with a Jim Lee design that, at arguable best, works in few hands but his own (or more honestly is flat-out bad). Grant Morrison’s seemingly sure-thing relaunch of Action Comics, while greatly enjoyed by some such as myself, rapidly faces negative comparisons to his All-Star Superman work, which paired with dismal showings for the character in Justice League and Superman proper, along with publisher statements attempting to reinforce him as a brooding, violent, lonely avenger, result in a substantial and enduring fan backlash.

2012: The reboot separation from Lois Lane and tone-deaf efforts towards making Superman cooler culminate in a painfully stiff new relationship with Wonder Woman, to even further fan backlash. Noted sexual harasser Eddie Berganza, already internally acknowledged by DC as such, is demoted and handed custody of the Superman books in what was apparently considered an appropriate punishment. Scott Lobdell, already under fire for his treatment of Starfire at the beginning of the New 52 and facing a generally tepid creative response to his DC work, including Superboy, is given Superman proper.

2013: Man of Steel debuts to…let’s say divisive results. Injustice becomes his most prominent video game incarnation since Superman 64 by default. Grant Morrison’s Action Comics concludes, with incoming Andy Diggle leaving the book before his first issue is even released, and ending up under Scott Lobdell for a bit before finally finding its way to Greg Pak.

2014: At the tail end of a mercifully pretty dang good year, with even the customary bloated crossover Doomed ending up better than most (in spite of a shoehorned in pair of instances of Superman being forced to kill to match the movies), Superman Unchained concludes after months of devastating delays, signalling the beginning of the end of the creative triumvirate of Scott Snyder/Jim Lee, Geoff Johns/John Romita Jr., and Greg Pak/Aaron Kuder/Jae Lee attempting to rehabilitate his comics image. Before long, Johns leaves his book to Gene Yang’s hands in what ended up an unpredictably disastrous tenure, while Pak and company are buried under crossovers.

2015: Truth begins to - aside from a headline-grabbing early segment by Pak and Kuder with Superman standing with protesters against police - near-universal hatred by the fanbase, seeing it as DC’s latest cringingly tone-deaf and desperate effort at making Superman conventionally cool, while severely undermining Lois Lane’ character in the process.

2016: Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice is released, almost immediately becoming the most ubiquitous cultural shorthand for ‘bad movie’ since Transformers. Tyler Hoechlin debuts as Superman on Supergirl to the most mainstream praise the character has received in literal decades, with the CW and WB responding by publicly stating that they have no intention of developing a series for him. Superman dies in the comics after a short and ignominious crossover, replaced - to be fair, to no small degree of fan acclaim, even if I didn’t share in the love - by his own past-continuity self, a state of late-90s X-Men-esque continuity bugfuckery lasting about a year. Superman: American Alien, the most generally well-received Superman story for years in either direction, concludes; its author would flee from public life the following year after being repeatedly accused of sexual assault.

2017: Justice League’s attempt at reorienting Superman towards a more classic take, while winning some praise, is generally useless in the face of critical antipathy towards the film and crushing financial failure relative to expectations, with the bulk of Superman-related discussion spinning out of it focusing on his unfortunate CGI mouth. Injustice 2 is released, with no ‘good’ universe Superman this time to contrast the games’ take on him as a tyrannical mass-murderer.

2018: Action Comics #1000 dropped to broadly positive results…with the exception of the story by the actual incoming writer of the line, which while I enjoyed it, was hated by a significant number of readers as far as I can tell. Additionally, if the new rumors are true, the team behind All-Star Superman had a story prepared for it that was spiked to avoid somehow clashing with Doomsday Clock - a company-steering comic advertised as being largely about him that has yet to feature him in any meaningful capacity one third of the way through aside from him cameoing having a nightmare - and if that’s true, whether as a matter of unfortunate logistics or ego, if there’s a metaphor for everything wrong with modern DC comics more potent than Superman being so profoundly screwed over for his 1000th issue on his 80th birthday for the sake of not maybe spiritually contradicting them doing more Watchmen knock-off comics, I can’t think of it. As of this writing, Superman is one of the two Justice Leaguers not officially known to have a movie in active development; by next year there will be TV shows starring Supergirl with Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane with Lex Luthor, and Jor-El’s father with Adam Strange, but no indications have emerged that Tyler Hoechlin might reemerge in any capacity, nevermind get his own series; aside from the Bendis run, the only major Superman comics project on the horizon is his one book for the Black Label (where Batman and Wonder Woman get two projects apiece, largely by fan-favorite creators), Superman: Year One by Frank Miller and Romita Jr., the former being the writer of the infamously racist Holy Terror.

So no. Superman is not doing good. Not on any front. There has been good stuff to be sure, but on the macro scale? Superman hasn’t been doing good in a very, very long time.

#Superman #Opinion

[lynchgirl90]

#TwinPeaks: Agent Cooper Unleashes the Cobra and Makes His Move in Episode Seven

Kyle MacLachlan — both versions of him — gets downright deadly in the seventh installment of the Showtime revival.

If you mess with the bull, you get the horns. And if you mess with the cobra? Well, you get Dougie Jones.

The waking dream formerly known as Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and currently known as Lucky Seven insurance salesman Dougie Jones showed some new signs of his old life in the seventh chapter of David Lynch's and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks revival, thwarting an assassination attempt with spectacular serpentine style. Elsewhere, Cooper's other doppelganger — the flesh-and-blood vessel of the nefarious Killer BOB — made some killer moves of his own, putting the two versions of the same man on a deadly collision course yet again.

That's not even scratching the surface of the classic Twin Peaks callbacks in the latest episode of the series, among the most intriguing installments yet. Read on for the highlights.

The Spike versus the Cobra

Ever since returning to our mortal plane of existence after years trapped in the Black Lodge, Dale Cooper has been a little bit...well, off, to put it mildly. He's lived out the life of a salesman named Dougie Jones, taking on his corporate woes, trouble he's engendered with local criminals, and a strained marriage with the tough-as-nails Janey-E Jones (Naomi Watts).

Until this week's episode, Dougie was doing little more than bumbling his way through life, discovering the simple pleasures like coffee and doodling all over important paperwork. But he returned to his Agent Cooper roots in one of the most satisfying moments of the series thus far, as Ike "The Spike" Stadtler (Christophe Zajac-Denek) attempts to assassinate Dougie in broad daylight. Cooper reacts immediately, pinning Spike to the ground, and removing the man's gun with an assist from the evolved form of the Man From Another Place.

In the aftermath, witnesses declare that "Douglas Jones moved like a cobra," giving viewers some hope that the Agent Cooper we know and love is closer to returning than ever before.

Diane versus "Dale"

Laura Dern debuted last week as Diane, Agent Cooper's offscreen confidant from the original Twin Peaks. What was little more than a cameo before becomes a full-on role in this week's outing, as Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and Albert Rosenfield (the late Miguel Ferrer) manage to convince the foul-mouthed Diane to accompany them to South Dakota, in an effort to get to the bottom of the matter of the imprisoned man who claims to be Agent Cooper.

At first, Diane hesitates to engage with "Cooper," cursing off anyone and everyone involved in the investigation. Eventually, she concedes, allotting no more than ten minutes for her interrogation of Dale's long-haired look-alike. Turns out she doesn't need more than a few quick words before she knows that this Cooper is not the genuine article. Despite the fact that Bad Coop knows that the last time they saw each other was in her apartment, Diane can tell that there's something very wrong with this man.

What's more, Diane tells Cole that there's something important about the final conversation she ever had with Cooper — but that's a story for another day.

"Dale" versus Murphy

As if the situation in Yankton Federal Prison couldn't get any weirder and worse, Bad Coop delivers some bad news for Warden Murphy (James Morrison).

Shortly after Diane's visit, Bad Coop tells a guard that he wants to have a meeting with the warden in his office. "Tell him we need to speak about a Strawberry," he says. The warden accepts the invite, albeit without security cameras and with a gun trained on the prisoner at all times. But the power shifts as soon as Bad Coop starts talking about some skeletons in Murphy's closet — skeletons that include a set of dog legs, and a man by the name of Joe McClusky. The shaken warden accepts Bad Coop's terms and releases him from prison later that night, gifting him a rental car, a "friend in the glove compartment" and even fellow criminal Ray Monroe (George Griffith) as a traveling companion.

What's Bad Cooper going to do next? That's anyone's guess — but it can't be good news for Diane, Cole, Rosenfield and anyone else wrapped up in this investigation.

Past versus Present

Of the many tensions in this week's episode, the collision of past and present ranks right at the top of the list, with a few tremendous callbacks to the original series, not to mention some satisfying answers as well.

For one, Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) lets Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster) in on the news that he found missing pages from Laura Palmer's (Sheryl Lee) diary in a bathroom stall door. The missing pages come with Laura's ominous warning that "the good Dale is in the Lodge and he can't leave." Hawk fills Truman in on what happened when Cooper returned from the Lodge all those years ago, and comes to a scary conclusion: "If the Good Cooper is in the Lodge, then the one who came out of the Lodge with Annie that night was not the Good Cooper."

Later, Frank makes two calls, first to his brother Harry (Michael Ontkean), who is too sick to field the updates about Cooper. The next day, Frank participates in a memorable Skype session with Doctor Hayward (the late Warren Frost), to get his take on what he remembers about the last time he saw Agent Cooper 25 years ago. He recalls the tale, and in the process, casually answers one of the original show's biggest cliff-hangers: Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) survived the bank explosion, and was rendered comatose as a result.

Elsewhere in Twin Peaks, there are two additional echoes from the past: a man who appears to be Jacques Renault (Walter Olkewicz) is seen tending bar at the Roadhouse, despite his apparent death at the hands of Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) back in the original run. Then there's Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer) and his assistant Beverly (Ashley Judd), who hear a distinct hum ringing throughout the Great Northern. Could it be that Josie Packard is returning to Twin Peaks after all, or is that too much to wish for?

Finally, far away from Twin Peaks itself, there's the return of Major Garland Briggs (the late Don Davis)...in a manner of speaking, anyway. It's confirmed that the decapitated body found in the first episode of the new series does indeed belong to Major Briggs, but there's a confusing caveat: The body belongs to someone in this 40s, who was killed just a few days before, which doesn't jive given that Briggs would be in his 70s by now. Then again, seeing as we saw Major Briggs' head floating through space all the way back in episode three, it would seem the answer lies somewhere in the stars above.

link (TP)

#Twin Peaks #Kyle MacLachlan #Agent Cooper #DoppelCooper #Mr. C #Part 7 #The Hollywood Reporter