#late 80 and early 90s comics my beloveds......

[nyerusnova]

Glad to see that Tim being a giant Dick Grayson fanboy is finally being highlighted again, and sparking more discussion especially on their early relationship! (Please gimme more!!! I love them so much, augh!)

Probably as a result of that surge, there seems to be reciprocal chatter on the topic of how young Tim actually felt towards Jason, too. It's honestly pretty interesting, because it's more nuanced than it appears at first glance.

Which means it's very fun to dissect! ✨

There's a degree of subjectivity to keep in mind, because readers are going to have different interpretations of the same scenes, or will pull from entirely different scenes than one another to form their individual view on this topic. That's just how it is in comic book fandom, for many things! Regardless, in this case... if the scale ranges from the extreme of "Jason was Tim's Robin" to the other extreme of "Tim actually hated Jason [as Robin] or thought he was a loser that got himself killed" — the actual truth is closer to the middle, as is often the case.

At least, in my opinion.

Mainly I want to focus on those relatively early days with this post, to highlight Tim's initial(-ish) feelings towards his heroes, and touch on the point at which they really begin to change. This turned into a very long post, though. Brevity is beyond my skill, so grab snacks and water lol. Transcripts for each image will be posted at the very end under the cut.

So, the two storylines I want to cover are "Rite of Passage," which is rolls into "Identity Crisis." (NOT to be confused with the major crossover event "Identity Crisis™" which came years later, and is where Jack Drake dies.... But it sure is an interesting coincidence that Tim deals with the loss of each parent in two similarly named stories!) These take place before Tim is even Robin, and I'll be considering them as one arc for this post.

Detective Comics vol. 1 #618 (July, 1990) -- Pages 1 & 2

"When Gotham needed him, he was there. When the Batman needed him, he was there. He was a hero."

"One day, I'll be as good as Jason. One day I'll wear the suit."

To start off, we have this opening from "Rite of Passage." Tim is still in training here, mainly helping Bruce with minor stuff from the cave. His parents are off traveling, alive and well as of these next few pages. He's still bright-eyed and full of wonder. An extraordinarily weird but ultimately innocent kid.

So his view on Jason is positive and fairly simple: a hero, and someone to look up to as Robin. Clearly, Tim here doesn't think Jason was deficient in his role, either as a protector of Gotham or as Batman's trusted partner.

Moreover, Tim already held Dick in very high regard because he was amazingly skilled before he became Robin. To Tim, that's not something he'll ever be able to achieve. Meanwhile, Jason wasn't like that. He was a regular kid without crazy acrobatic training since practically birth. Yet he still went on to be a hero—which is obviously motivational for Tim who finds himself in similar shoes.

It's true that Tim only ever knew or thought of Jason as Robin, and idolized him in that regard. But that's kind of all that mattered to him at that point, because he was this kid who was utterly star-struck by his heroes. Even if he's technically aware of their shortcomings as people, it's overshadowed by the hero-worship.

It was kind of the same with Bruce as Batman at first. (Which was still enough for Tim to risk life and limb to help his beloved hero, before Bruce even knew his name.) Dick was the only one Tim had any sort of "personal" relationship with beforehand, so there is an extra level of attachment—and hence why it was the nidus for his obsession with Batman. Yet even then, it wasn't like he actually knew anything about Dick as a person until later. Until then, Tim's ideas of him were all he had, too. With Jason, Tim just didn't get to know him at any point before his return (oof), apart from what he heard over the years secondhand (also oof).

Ultimately, it's the loss of innocence—along with the ricocheting bullet that is the unresolved guilt of those around him—that begins to change Tim's perception. Not just of Jason, but of things in general.

Batman vol. 1 #455 (Oct., 1990) -- Page 13

"I know why they do it now. Why they put on the suits, and the masks, and go out into the night. They're angry, they're full of rage. They want to hit back."

Losing his mother was a major shift for Tim, obviously. This is right after the previous storyline, and Tim's had the worst week or two of his life (so far). His monologue here is a reference to what happened to both Dick and Jason. The unbearable pain of loss, the rage masking the grief underneath. And importantly, that he feels both of them were justified in their anger. (And Bruce too, indirectly.)

The major theme of the aptly named "Identity Crisis" is to mirror aspects of Dick and Jason and Tim's lives—to show how they converged onto the same tragic road. It's something that Tim notices early in the story, and was frightened by. Now, horrifically, it's become a part of him as well. His parents are gone, and he was entirely helpless to do anything about it. Dick was the same way, Jason was the same way. The cycle is repeated.

In particular, the part about him wanting to go to Haiti for revenge—for his mother—sort of struck me as being an intentional parallel to Jason and Ethiopia. It's a bit of a stretch, especially in isolation, so others may see it differently (e.g. the angry ramblings of a grieving child that does sound like something anyone might say). But it always stuck out to me because of how much Tim is compared directly to Jason in this arc. More on that below.

It's not something I can really give an accurate feel of because it's a lot of subtle things that begin to add up, so I'd encourage folks to read this arc themselves to see what I mean. (Or maybe you'll still disagree which is fine too lol.) Again, many things are in reference to both Dick and Jason in relation to Tim, but it's weighted more on Jason's side.

Batman vol. 1 #455 (Oct., 1990) -- Page 18

"You think my anger will boil over, the way Jason's did. I can assure you, it won't!"

Tim's grief has begun to pull away the veil of idealism that enshrouded his heroes in his mind. It doesn't apply only to Jason, but to the rest of them. Plus add the fact that Tim's keenly aware that he's being managed, even if the adults around him are careful to not outright say certain things. He still knows.

Bruce, Dick, and Alfred are all worried about Tim potentially turning into "another Jason." They (and mainly Bruce) caution Tim to not ignore his emotions, but they're still concerned that he may be overly eager to prove himself in order to cope, and could get hurt or killed as a result. While they aren't wrong for their caution—especially at how unsettlingly similar all the circumstances are—they aren't very subtle about the elephant in the room.

Imagine how that would affect Tim's perception of his predecessor, especially when he's in the midst of a traumatic event he hasn't had time to fully process. The negative association is pretty much inevitable.

Tim's known from day one that he's walking in Jason's shadow, and now it's become inescapable. Tim went from seeing Jason as a goal to reach, to feeling that unless he surpasses him, he wasn't going to be taken seriously by anyone. However, as of this arc, Tim doesn't even fully come to that point yet.

Batman vol. 1 #456 (Nov., 1990) -- Pages 14 & 15

"Drop-outs don't make it. And dead heroes are no use to anyone!"

It's really easy to take away "Tim totally thought Jason got himself killed" as the main thing here, but I think that's missing the forest for the trees.

First some context: Bruce has gone out on a mission to get Scarecrow, and expressly forbade Tim from doing any shenanigans. Meanwhile, Tim is grappling with wanting to prove himself and trying to help Bruce from the cave, all while trying to deal with his emotions. At some point, he falls asleep and ends up having like... exhaustion-grief hallucinations of Dick!Robin and Jason!Robin who confusingly caution yet encourage him. The main theme of this part is facing your fears.

Depending on how you want to interpret the intent of Jason's dialogue here, you could go several ways with it. Ranging from "writer's feelings towards Jason" to "a peek into Tim's mind as his fears manifest as visions of his heroes" or some mixture thereof.

Though Tim argues with Bruce that Batman needs a Robin, we're shown that Tim is understandably scared of joining Batman's "war." He's still not willing to let Bruce go it alone, though, and that's something he feels more strongly than his fear.

Meanwhile, hallucination!Jason's warnings are a lamentation of what happened to him in a way, but it actually exactly describes Tim's current situation even more so. Unlike Jason, Tim is under-trained, under-experienced, doesn't even have a suit of his own yet. But like Jason, he can't sit by and do nothing while someone he cares about is in danger. Tim knows that if he goes out there, he will probably get himself killed, and it will be his own fault. So he's about to disobey Batman's orders, and fly right into danger. If that got Jason killed, then Tim—who is in a way worse position experience-wise—has every chance of ending up the same.

Like... it's about Jason, but it's also about Tim. It's Tim's worst fears made manifest, via the representation of why he is even here in the first place (Jason's death).

That's my theory anyway, but perhaps this is an overly charitable reading of this scene on my end. (Not that I think that makes me wrong lol.) However given that Grant wrote both parts of this arc, and the beginning of which is especially favorable towards Jason, it certainly is something to ponder. I have a lot of thoughts on it I can't expand on here tbh but perhaps that'll be another post.

Anyway, returning to the point of the similarities vs differences between Tim and Jason: since this is the arc that solidified Tim as the next Robin in comic continuity, it makes sense that the writers really pushed the comparisons between the two of them, specifically. (Even though Dick was pretty similar, as going against Batman's orders is the Robin thing to do, it's not his shoes Tim is directly filling.) So making Tim's "debut" story arc mirror Jason's "swansong" is an obvious narrative choice.

To drive home the parallels, I wanted to include this panel from just a few pages prior to the "daydream":

Batman vol. 1 #456 (Nov., 1990) -- Page 9

"The suit is magic."

That so distressingly close to Jason's famous "being Robin gives me magic" line (Batman #385, page 6). Given all the previous context, it's hard for me to just dismiss it as pure coincidence. Even if it is, the point still stands. Tim is shown having the some of the same heartbreakingly naive views as Jason once did, right in front of Jason's memorial, just as he's about to go and run off into the night against orders.

I think that speaks for itself. There's a lot to take away from it, if you so choose. Especially given the context of that specific Jason arc.

Alright, back to the main course:

So in the end, Tim actually goes out in civvies and a ski mask because if he fails, then at least he wouldn't bring shame to Robin's legacy™. When he gets fear gassed saving Batman, it's once again both Dick and Jason that he hallucinates encouraging him to push past his fear. (Shout out to the fact that he's literally more afraid of tarnishing the legacy of Batman & Robin than he is of dying.... I'm sure this will not be a recurring thing for him in the future.)

Tim's ideology is shown to be similar to Jason's, and the actions Tim ultimately takes are similar to Jason's... but the outcome is different. And it really isn't just "Tim succeeded where Jason failed." At least, that's not what I took away from this. Rather, Tim had no reason to succeed any more than he had to fail, just that he did. Luck combined with caution because he knew what happened to his predecessor, and the fact that Batman was there to finish the job all made the difference.

You could say (and I know some will) that it's just classic Jason character assassination and the writers trying to implore readers that this new kid is different we promise pls don't hate us look how much better he is! But in this case, that feels like it undermines the whole point of this story. It doesn't fit with what the characters actually say.

Thus, we return to the question of how Tim felt towards his predecessor. And the answer is different from where we started, because Tim is different. Not that different though. Because even though at this point Tim—like all the adults around him—has probably attributed Jason "going off on his own" being what led to his death, Tim still thought of him as a hero to look up to. It's about Robin, first and foremost, yes. But Tim is fully aware of the people who made that suit mean what it does, because it's all intertwined.

Batman vol. 1 #457 (Dec., 1990) -- Page 20

"I mean--Dick made it into a symbol the whole world knows. Jason gave his life for it."

Even further, Tim thinks of it in terms of Jason having given his life for what he believed in, for the legacy that now falls to Tim. There's a sense of gravitas there. He's afraid of failing both the Robins who came before him.

Ultimately do I think Tim adored and loved Jason on the same level as Dick or something? No. It's not comparable. (Dick was like part of some of Tim's earliest memories and everything! They have a really unique bond ok.) Yet Tim was also far from thinking poorly of Jason so early on. Frankly, it seems that Tim thought of Jason as a noble hero and a cautionary tale. Yes he took risks and sometimes went too far, generally stuff that Tim doesn't want to repeat and all that. At the same time, Tim still saw him as someone whose legacy and memory was worth honoring.

It's complicated, which is why I like it so much—because it feels real. Having conflicting feelings towards someone is... so human. Especially someone you never got to know, yet who plays such an integral role in your life via the shadow of their death. How can you feel anything but complicated towards them?

It has to be said that, yes, Tim's views—even before Jason's return—change over the years. He becomes more jaded as a person and is surrounded by people who are even more jaded than him... and who often mention Jason as the "failed Robin." It's something that's hung over Tim's head all the damn time. The curse of the Robin mantle.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Tim's idea of him becomes more akin to "sounds like a skill issue" as the years go by. All bets are off after Jason's return, and the Titans Tower Incident™. At that point it's firmly "I am better than you, loser" lmao.

And... that's all without getting too into things like authorial intent and general "moods" of different DC writers towards Jason at a given point. Or retcons that played a role in his characterization and how other characters talk about him, depending on what "era" you're reading. That's way beyond the scope of this post though!

TLDR; even though young Tim Drake was obsessed with Dick Grayson as Robin, he still looked up to Jason Todd as well. He didn't think of Jason as a cringefail loser until later. :)

(image dialogue transcripts under cut ↓)

Dialogue Transcript for Image 1 (Detective Comics vol. 1 #618 -- Page 1):

Narration box (Tim): When Gotham needed him, he was there. When the Batman needed him, he was there. He was a hero.

Dialogue Transcript for Image 2 (Detective Comics vol. 1 #618 -- Page 2):

(Scene continued from previous page)

Narration box: But he was nothing special, really. Just a boy, who was taught--trained--brought to his full potential by someone who knew how. Just a boy... like me. I know I can do it. I know I can. One day I'll be as good as Jason. One day I'll wear the suit. One day I'll be a hero.

Dialogue Transcript for Image 3 (Batman vol. 1 #455 -- Page 13):

Tim: I hate him! I hate him! I know why they do it now. Why they put on the suits, and the masks, and go out into the night. They're angry. Full of rage. They want to hit back. They want to fill the hole that's burning inside them.

Bruce: There's more to it than that, son. Much more.

Tim: I know. It's just--I feel--like going to Haiti myself and strangling that creep with my bare hands!

Bruce: The Obeah Man will spend the rest of his life in a prison hospital. He's history. Forget him! But don't fight against your anger. It's natural. Accept it. Live with it. One day it'll be your friend.

Dialogue Transcript for Image 4 (Batman vol. 1 #455 -- Panels from page 18):

Tim: Because you think my mother's death has upset me too much. Well, it did. But I've taken your words to heart. I can cope. You think my anger will boil over, the way Jason's did. I can assure you, it won't. But that doesn't make any difference, does it? Why can't you have a little faith in me?

Dialogue Transcript for Image 5 (Batman vol. 1 #456 -- Page 14):

Narration box (Tim): Blast it! My head's starting to swim. I'm about ready to give up. I almost wish I'd never heard of Batman and Robin!

Vision Dick: Heroes never give up, Tim.

Vision Jason: You know that.

Tim: Dick--! Jason Todd!

Vision Dick: You're training to fight in a war, Tim. It'll last all your life. No matter what, you have to go on fighting.

Vision Jason: Drop-outs don't make it. And dead heroes are no use to anyone! I thought I knew better than Batman. I thought I could run before I could walk. I killed myself, Tim. Because I couldn't wait. Because I couldn't think it through.

Dialogue Transcript for Image 6 (Batman vol. 1 #456 -- Page 15):

(Scene continued from previous page)

Vision Dick: Think, Tim. Concentrate!

Vision Jason: You can do it.

Both: You can do it!

Tim, waking up: What--? Robin...?

Narration box (Tim): I must have been daydreaming. They're right, though. There's a solution to everything. I can find it! So here I go again... Whim. Caprice. Doing something without forethought.

Dialogue Transcript for Image 7 (Batman vol. 1 #456 -- Panel from page 9):

Narration box (Tim): The suit is magic. It gives you power. It hides your weakness. It makes you give it everything you've got. It makes you a hero. If only I could!

Dialogue Transcript for Image 8 (Batman vol. 1 #457 -- Page 20):

Bruce: Are you afraid of it?

Tim: No. It isn't fear. It's more... the suit carries so much history. I mean--Dick made it into a symbol the whole world knows. Jason gave his life for it. Failing them--what they fought so hard to build--that's what worries me!

Bruce: I appreciate that, Tim. That costume weighs a whole lot more than any symbol should... and I'd be failing you if I expected you to bear that weight. So... let me know what you think.

Narration box: A mask has a double edged, he said. It hides your own anxiety as it strikes fear into your enemy.

#tim drake #jason todd #dcu #dc comcis #batfamily #meta #I'm so sorry this post got out of hand fr #it was meant to be a quick drabble with some comic panels and instead i just...... kept going #this post is specifically for my one (1) bestie who cares and the like 2 ppl who might be as insane as me about Timmy #idk why I'm like this im just obsessed with Tim's relationship with early Batfam & co lately??? #late 80 and early 90s comics my beloveds...... #anyway if this gets more than 5 notes i'll be shocked and scared lol #nyerus.txt #text post #long post

[arkus-rhapsode]

Are We Returning To 2000s Era Shonen Anime/Manga (A Discussion)

So this is going to be way more of a thinkpiece than I usually do for this blog, but recent trends in the space and niche that I devote a lot of time to, Anime/Manga, have been showing themselves that got me thinking. This is not meant to be a serious sociology case study taken as fact, it's going to be more a theory based on observations of the community that I, like many others, devote a lot of time into than a full on claim, but I do want to ask, is the anime and manga community is experiencing a resurgence in 2000s era shonen manga?

Background

Now let me get this out of the way, there is bias in these observations as I am a western anime fan, but also a North American anime fan. Meaning my gateway and gauges of pop culture are mostly determined by the history of my area of the world’s relationship with anime. From the OVAs of 80s hyper violent and hyper sexual sci fi that you had to purchase from the backs of video rental stores, to the Toonami era of 90s and early 00s programming block the centred around action anime and cartoons, the 4kids era of mass market japanese animated kids shows that were really just giant commercials with some of the earliest memetics in western sphere, and the explosion of shonen battle series in the western sphere in the mid to late 2000s marked by the rise of the colloquially named “Big 3” of shonen jump. I understand that continents like South America or Europe may have undergone a different exposure to the Japanese medium, but as I am going in with some bias in this observation, I would like to make it clear on where the formula is coming from. I also would like to lay down a certain clarification before making this, when discussing the topic of nostalgia I think a lot of people have forgotten what it actually means. If we go by the Cambridge dictionary definition, Nostalgia is “a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past.” This is often invoked when talking about pop culture because people from say 20 years ago don’t seem to enjoy or relate to the interests of today. The belief is that nostalgia is generational ergo if you grew up in the 80s you’re likely wishing to recapture the feelings of childhood that you associate with those trends from 20 years ago. In fact, most revaluation in media has often been catalyzed by a difference of those who grew up in an era rebuffing the opinions of those who didn’t. 

There is the well known “20 Year Rule” regarding pop culture nostalgia. That every decade it longs for what was popular 20 years ago. Probably no better example than “That 70s show” being popular in the late 90s, the return of many beloved 80s-90s franchises like “Ghostbusters” returning in the 2010s as well as series like “Stranger Things” that wrapped itself up in 80s aesthetics. DC's New 52 relaunch that seemed to bring back trends from 90s era comics.

Now it goes without saying that the 20 year rule isn’t a “real” rule, rather an observation that certain trends make a return to popularity because the ones who grew up with a certain media will be the ones who add to the discourse when they come of age and will be the ones having a chance to create consumable art for the masses and that may just be revivals of once popular IP. This isn’t necessarily wrong in regards to nostalgia, but I do believe that one doesn’t need to have been born in a certain era to be nostalgic for something when we discuss pop culture. Pop culture is really just trends and preferences that become en vogue and people can acquire a taste at any given time. Sometimes it can be due to those who grew up with something now having the chance to create and drawing upon their own childhoods, sometimes it's just due to not being exposed, other times it can be a certain feeling of disillusionment of the now, and seeking something that peaks your interest, and even sometimes it can be major corporations or networks looking for things with existing audiences to draw upon that actually expand the audience. In fact one of the most prominent Netflix adaptations of the 2020s has been live Action Avatar the Last Airbender and One Piece, both shows that got their start on American televisions in 2004 and 2005. One of the biggest animated shows right now is Invincible, based on a comic book from 2003

So I want to stress this is not necessarily about how if you grew up with the original Mobile Suit Gundam show you are being replaced by the kids who were watching GetBackers. And or if you are a fan of shows that came out in the 2000s you yourself were born in the 2000s.

But what was the landscape of the English speaking anime community like back in the 2000s? Well let me paint a portrait for you.

What was the 2000s like for anime fans?

The term I used, “shonen boom period”, is somewhat mythologized in the western anime sphere. There was a glut of high profile shonen anime running around the same time that most people identified with this time period and was arguably when we saw the most influx of people getting into the hobby. One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach served as big series known for their massively large casts, MCs with a level of attitude, some of the most hype centric power supernatural/extraordinary power systems, and certain brand of “Japanese-y” humor. We can’t deny that it wasn’t just these series however, as series like Fullmetal Alchemist became many people’s introduction to more narratively intricate series interspersed with a somewhat gothic action style. The gothic and somewhat edgy Death Note became many fans' first ever “battle series that’s not a battle series” that also incorporated many biblical and gothic horror elements into its presentation. And things like Code Geass also incorporated this combination of hyper stylized cat and mouse with ornate and gothic aesthetics and fighting robots. 

Series like Ouran Highschool Host Club and and Haruhi Suzumiya were basically gateways to the more hyper extraordinary slice of life series that didn’t shy away from fanservice and loud comedy. With ecchi like Rosario + Vampire taking it to an even greater extreme. For people willing to go even deeper, series like Fairy Tail began to pop up and share a distinct similar flavor to series like One Piece and Naruto which arguably started the popular conception of it coming from the same magazine as the latter. That’s not also discounting the amount of holdovers from the 90s like Dragon Ball z, Trigun, and Yu Yu Hakusho, which also had an edge towards fantastical combat and comedic oriented series.

All of this is to generally illustrate the media diet of what an average anime fan was expected to have some level of access to. As this was far before the eras of Funimation or Hulu having online services. Not a homogenized spread by any means, and im certain plenty of readers could name more underground or smaller series like Mushishi or Elphen Lied, but generally the popular mainstream you could tell that there was a consistent theme of long form media with a very loud, very flashy, and very action oriented type of series. Which I think is fair to say had skewed some people’s perception. And while I cannot claim with utter certainty that Japan was the same in this regard, you can look at magazines like Shonen Jump and notice a somewhat synchronistic trend. With series like Hitman Reborn, Gintama, D. Gray Man, Eyeshield 21, Bobobobo, etc.making a clear marcation of what was commercially successful at the time. Even series not inside the magazine but had smaller nicher, Tokyo-pop-esque series like Rave Master, Flame of Recca, Air Gear, History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi, Soul Eater, etc all had a similarity to the shonen jump magazine. To the point it was not uncommon to see so many jump characters in a collage and one from shonen sunday or shonen magazine in there as if this was all coming from the same place.

Changing Landscape

Now with the advantages of the modern internet, we have the ability to actually keep up with the jump magazine in real time as opposed to the common practice of relying on scanlation site and fansubs that were often devoted to the most popular works. But with simultaneous publication and services like Crunchyroll, being able to access a wider variety of shows and series that we may or may not have access to. I believe that the 2010s in the english speaking fanbase was the decade we saw a somewhat expansionism of what people perceived as anime. Anime could be One Piece and Naruto, but it could also be Erased, it could be the Promised Neverland, Attack on Titan, K-On, Haikuu, and Durarara. With the representatives of the 90s no longer being holdovers in syndication like dragon ball but rather full on revivals of the likes of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Hunter x Hunter. 

All of these could be "shonen" but also other genres like Seinin, Josei, and Shojo all had their own varying layers of what they could be in their demographic

The mood of what was popular was also changing, not just in the fact that more flavors of anime and manga were becoming mainstream, but new works from shonen jump showed a rise in almost subversive series like My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer that seemed to consciously deviate or place new spins from traditional tropes of the 2000s characters, and we saw works that were derivative of previous serious like Black Clover drawing upon Naruto the same way it was known that Naruto had drawn upon Dragon Ball before them. Series like The Promised Neverland and Doctor Stone offered up more dramatic series that still infused a certain energy of the shonen genre. 

And of course the series like Attack Titan whose much more darker and gorey storytelling seemed to have become one of if not the biggest hit of the generation with a well regarded adaptation, but something that had felt so removed from what were once contemporaries like the then ending Bleach or Naruto. We can also note that the late 2010s saw the rise of series like Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen that began a trend of popular urban fantasy stories. Where fantastical concepts were now in contemporary Japan and the stories that focused on concepts like self identity and the harshness of maturing were juxtaposed to the real world inhabited by monsters. 

It seemed many tropes of the previous decade were still alive in the rise of Isekai anime. Which was particularly the only popular outlet for fantasy stories with an action orientation. But these almost felt disconnected from the wider world of manga as things like heavy harem action series had actually decreased in mags like shonen jump. There was also new tropes being established in this subgenre that became unique popularizations of tropes all on their own, such as the overpowered protagonist whose power everyone believes is weak. But many of these were based on light novels, a form of media that only in the last few years western readers are having official access to and not simply scans found on the internet.

We in North America truly have gone from anime being a niche that was primarily accessible through dedicated TV blocks like Toonami, to a full blown cultural relevance shift.

We also need to talk about this era in its perception of the past also shifted. The 90s and the early 00s often blend together as classics of the anime community. Somewhat encased in amber. However, there is no denying that “feels like a 2000s series” had become a bit of a shorthand for very goofy, Very horny, very action heavy series. Series like Fire Force and and Undead Unluck had their show what more problematic elements be equated to the problematic trends of the past that people just accepted as “a part of the medium.” But lets keep in mind, this is not really describing a time, more a trend. Superficial elements that invoke similar feelings of the past. 

Speaking of anime fans…

Fan Culture

So while I wanted to paint a picture of creatively the landscape has changed, there’s no denying that in the age of internet accessibility, the anime fan community has also changed. It is much much easier now to get in contact with people who are anime fans now than it was to rely on word of mouth like it was back in the day. I can still distinctly remember my anime club which wasn’t even really a club devoted to anime but rather other geek stuff like D&D and TCGs. Our hobbies just happened to have similar overlap.

Now though, anime fan culture is much more relevant and thriving. Going from just posting weekly reviews, to long retrospectives, comedy videos, abridged series, clickbait articles, fan theories, and podcasts. However, I think a defining feature of fans of the 2000s era of anime that were at their most prominent was hype culture. 

Due to many of the biggest anime series at the time being released weekly and focusing on action, many many many discussion boards and videos were often about staying in this cycle of wanting to see what happens next and the action made people very excited to see just how characters were going to win fights or even if they’d have fights at all. 

I want to make it clear that this type of activity doesn’t belong to a certain era, but you can see it shaped by the 2000s era. Especially when discussing “what is the next big 3.” As if it were a true position and title, rather than a moment in time where there were just three very distinct shonen series in the fanbase.This doesn’t necessarily have a “negative” effect on the discussion of anime/manga but you can see that certain genres lend themselves to hyping fans up more and more. 

Someone isn’t reading the most recent chapter of a romance like Blue Box with the same level of anticipation of who will face who like it was One Piece. But there have certainly been series that try.

The Present

Now we reach the 2020s and this decade is still young, so it is hard to say what the future will hold for certainty, but we can look at the last four years and notice some significant waves being made recently in Shonen Jump alone. I already spoke of Undead Unluck, a series that almost wears it would now be considered retro inspirations on its sleeve. With an opening chapter that establishes an MC that seems motivated by a sexual joke, A power system follows a verbal naming gimmick, and a loose enough world that allows for characters of varying aesthetics and to be incorporated into groups. With groups of these powerful characters splitting up to face each other and use their ridiculous power to the extreme. Even in the series' own meta arc about creating manga, the in-universe analogy for Undead Unluck’s manga is commented on as feeling retro. There is no doubt the biggest viral hit of the decade so far has gone to Kagurabachi, a manga about sword fighting and magical crime lords that seems almost indulgent in its stylistic slicing and or dicing of baddies. Its memetic success was primarily due to a somewhat sincere and somewhat ironic belief that it would be the “next big thing” as it promised to be a stylized action series. Another surprise viral success has been the manga Nue’s Exorcist which sees another supernatural swordfighter boy harness the powers of his sexy spirit lady while getting into harem shenanigans that echo a particular form of ecchi of anime’s past that had actually been somewhat absent in the past decade in jump. Both of these series have a somewhat noticeable similarities to Bleach, a long running shonen action series that has seen its own revival in the last few years of writing this with the long awaited adaptation of the final arc of the bleach anime. 

While the other members of the “big 3” never truly went away and became almost inter-generational, Bleach truly did feel like a “come back” as it was absent for so long. And unlike Hunter x Hunter and Jojo which were never really popular in the west and even their older anime are more regarded as anime deep lore. Bleach was one of the most popular series in the west at the time to never receive a conclusion animated. 

Speaking of anime of the 2000s Trigun Stampede was a reimagining of the original late 90s show. This errs a bit similar to Hunter x Hunter’s style of revival, but also seems uniquely its own in actually trying to find a balance between the original series but adding in things cut from its original late 90s early 2000s counterpart. 

And now we must examine other shonen magazines. Series like Gachiakuta created by a former assistant of Okubo, the creator of Soul Eater, carries with it much of the similar energies of that series. Its also noticeable as being a truly dark fantasy series. Not an urban fantasy, but rather a completely new world that had a very grunge and dirty world building. And then there is Daemons of the Shadow Realm, a series by Fullmetal Alchemist creator Hiromu Arakawa. This series is also set in modern day japan with supernatural elements, however Arakawa’s style of writing is practically unchanged from her time on FMA. With an emphasis on action, intricate mysteries, and character building comedy with her trademark over exaggerated blocky style. There is of course Hiro Mashima who has started another new series, Dead Rock, and his style has also not changed that much. Then there is just flat out sequels to 2000s series like Gamaran Shura.

This to me shows that we are  seeing a bit of a combination of people who are now entering the workforce inspired by creators of the past, but also that creators of the past still exist 20 years later and are still making content that hasn’t really undergone significant change. 

Of course, we can’t also forget the implementation of the Manga Plus/J plus service which has opened up a very interesting ground for creators to have some of the most creatively out there series than what you may have expected from the shonen jump brand. I genuinely don’t think series like Make the Exorcist Fall in Love or Fire Punch would’ve ever been acceptable in the pages of a weekly shonen series. However one series in particular does feel like it could've and boy its been quite the success. Kaiju no 8.

Kaiju no 8 almost feels as though it is the AoT of a new generation with the amount of anticipation this one series has as well as the similarities between the series superficial elements. However, I'd say the key distinction between the two has been the tone. AoT took a dark and practically dour tone on its titan infested world. With an MC declaring war on all of his enemies. The pain was realistic, with human bodies being brittle and vulnerable. And the belief that just because you were a good person you weren't going to make it out alive. Kaiju no 8 instead opts for a more action oriented tone. Down playing the bleak realism for more "Hell yeah!" moments. With super science weapons that feel more akin to a tokusatsu show and fights and battles between humans an kanji the feel like the Dragon Ball style wrestling matches of old.

And of course, that’s not to say Jump hasn’t continued with series that feel more modern like the realistic and mellow romance of Blue Box or the dramatic coming of age story of Akane-Banashi. 

But the presence of these series has caused somewhat of a friction with the popular conception of the magazine. Its safe to say that while “shonen” tends to think of action male oriented series, it can really just mean works aimed more at adolescents. But I think many tend to associate this familiar feeling of “what is shonen” with their popular introduction of the magazine. With a saturation of action and brash comedy series. This is further complicated by the fact many action series in jump are actually ending over the last decade. With new ones not popping up to replace them as frequently and series like One Piece and MHA and Black Clover basically stretching out across an entire decade or longer. In fact, I don’t think it's unreasonable to believe that the hype for something like Kagurabachi was in part a belief that it signaled a return of a type of familiar series and genre that had been missing. Or at the very least, looked to fill an inevitable gap the magazine was obviously going to be facing. Followed by the other commercial success of Nue’s Exorcist, we are likely to see these series last for a long time. At the time of this writing, Tokyo Revenger’s author Ken Wakui has released Astro Royale, a series that feels very similar to his previous work yet infused with this almost GetBackers flavor.

So that leaves us with the question at the start, are we seeing a rise in 2000s nostalgia in anime and manga?

Conclusion

So I'm sorry if I disappoint, but the best I can say is, I’m not certain. I do believe that from my observation I think it is reasonable to say that we are seeing a rise in creators in the shonen space being ones inspired by series from 20 years ago. However, I think we are also seeing creators who are from that time period also returning to write how they have always written. 

On the consumer side, I think we can see that fans of anime and manga have changed in the sense their tastes can now be shaped by a much larger catalog of series at their disposal. But in the case of shonen, I think we are simply seeing those who likely got their start in anime at around the 2000s resonating with newer series drawing upon those series, but also with younger fans now likely to grow up with the tail end of what was popular in the 2010s now being influenced by the 2020s. I also believe that one of the defining features of the anime community in the last decade is hype culture. And currently we are seeing a rise in series that actually feel more catered to hype, be it a revival of a series they liked or predicting what will be the next success. 

All and all, this piece was trying to tunnel on the shonen demographic in general, which is more likely than not going to have similar traits relative to itself. I do see us as a community endorsing trends of the past and there’s an excitement for these things to “come back” even if they may or may not have left. If you liked this please drop a like or reblog because I may do more of these think pieces in the future.

#anime #manga #think piece #discussion #shonen #shonen jump #kagurabachi #gachiakuta #nue's exorcist #undead unluck #kaiju no. 8 #bleach #one piece #naruto #yomi no tsugai #attack on titan

[absolxguardian]

"How Much More Star Wars Do We Need" Need? Need? It's a fucking entertainment product, we don't need any of it. If It's bad, don't watch it (being upset about the politics or disappointed because you really wanted it to be good a different issue). If it's good, but you don't give a shit- don't watch it either. There are so many blockbuster movies I never watch! Because they don't interest me. While I'll read every week's new Star Wars comic issue.

The reason why Thrawn is such a beloved character is because there were people who wanted more Star Wars in the late 80s early 90s and read the books that were coming out while the general public never heard of them. In reality, the tv shows aren't creating a sizable increase in Star Wars since the EU really got going at the start of the 21st century.

Yes the reason Disney is making these shows is because of money, and it probably isn't the best allocation of resources for everyone's collective enjoyment (especially when its live action. Your scifi fantasy can be cheaper and look better in animation). But if there's too much of something, you don't have to watch it all.

Disclaimer: I haven't watched the video because I didn't want to get angry for half an hour because I rejected the premise. If Gooden is making a different point, my bad. But this is just a general rant about people acting like there's too much Star Wars while not acknowledging anything other than live action, set of by the specific use of the word need.

#star wars #sw

[cleromancy]

the specific flavor of roydick when they were queercoded, or at least--i mean theres *at least* a *strong* argument that they are, starting around... maybe devins arsenal mini through titans 99, but *definitely* outsiders all the way through roy leaving the team. but like, they're simultaneously queercoded and maintaining that very late 90s/early to mid aughts-specific heteronormativity yk. a swell couple in an erotic butch and sundance kind of way

(and i mean we do know devin in particular was writing with bi dickie in mind, shes gone on record on that, but like specifically roy and dick in relation to each other...)

and im just. thinking about this because in my beloved The Cheshire Contract in the *80s* they are not actually queercoded, the homoeroticism was just. two bros gettin naked in the same hotel room, being touchy feely bros hetero style... idk man theyre really affectionate with each other in it! but then by the time graduation day rolls around you can't even picture them that comfortable touching each other despite like. still being written as... i mean they're close, you know? *close.*

but they don't touch anymore.

and like thinking about. by contrast. my beloved outsiders #11 where. dkdkckflf. god. grace's famous you boys would make a swell couple in an erotic butch and sundance kind of way quote, roy cuts her off with a kiss, they have sex, and-- god im sorry please just read outsiders v3 because this issue is. insane. anyway then dick and roy have what *eye* would argue is a sexually charged sparring scene, particularly bc of the way it was juxtaposed with roy and grace. and it ends when dick pulls a fucking gun on roy *as an expression of care.* like explicitly that's why he's doing it. like oh my god! the rituals are so fucking intricate!

and like FIVE ISSUES LATER they have this massive blowout fight and-- fkflflfm.

the point is. the point is. my last reblog was about fictional male intimacy needing violence as a pretext. and i was thinking about the specific flavor of heteronormativity at the time and. weighing in my mind whether my beloved outsiders 11 or my beloved action comics 613-618 feels more intimate. thinking about the heteronormativity flavor of, these two guys can't be physically affectionate bc of it vs the flavor where they *can* be physically affectionate precisely *because* heteronormativity means it wouldn't be gay if they did. and i think its not quite a fair comparison bc i do believe the point of outsiders 11 *was* the intimacy, compared to the cheshire contract where it was an easy comfortable byproduct of their friendship. but, well! there most certainly is violence as a pretext, huh?

much to think about.

#one of my favorite issues of outsiders after 11 obviously. is the one where #anissa (iirc) says the quiet part loud and compares whats happening to John carpenters the thing #which is such a like... on the nose description of the *entire outsiders run* i love it so much #like outsiders is a little... its nowhere near as solid craftwise as winicks even longer-running run on GA #which is partly bc hester and parks were so solid and consistent that whole time vs the outsiders artists who... 😬 #i mean im even thinking of it had karl kershel on one issue whose art i normally really *like* but it was so lackluster in outsiders & not+ #just because it was ill-suited stylistically. the inks or colors or something i can never put my finger on it #...... where was i going with this. #i think mostly just i think winick does some very interesting things exploring masculinity in outsiders #and its a shame that he didnt have a solid team to work with that whole run #mostly for me. like it sucks to be like this book Changed me and then show you one of the ugliest drawings uve ever seen #(and. so many of the artists. did *not* understand grace is supposed to be butch dkdjfjdn) #and yk the editing was. not as good like even putting the art aside it just wasnt as tight #anyway. #dc

[flange5]

As a longfic writer, I can see the *how*, where you wrote the fic for that happy ending, and fatigue is setting in, and you just wanna. Dump everyone in roses without plucking the thorns. I'm willing to fandom-pass that. *My* line is contradicting one's own premise. Friend is the one who cares! Friend ditches you in a nightclub bc it's twu wuv! Career defines us! Epilogue quits job to have baby herd. Expert now incompetent in own field! AND they have betas complicit in it. That's not on. 1 /2

Yeah those are always infuriating. Sometimes when I see a fic like that and I'm like... is this a me thing, a trends in this fandom thing, or a this particular text thing is I scrub all fandom specific details and have my rant with a friend not in the same fandom and see if it hits them the same.

This got stupidly long so cut

So I'm not familiar with your example or the post, but if that's a new fandom trope re: an in canon rapist stalker, for me personally, if tagged appropriately, I'd fall under YKINMKATO, but it is seriously NMK. If untagged, I'd be side-eyeing hard. I realize that might not be where you fall at all, but regardless of my personal taste re: a fic or trend in fics, I am generally going to take most arguments about the dangerousness of individual fiction tropes (that are not based in marginalization, etc) with a pillar of salt. I don't know why that narrative is resonating with members of that fandom, but it is. If they're tagging it so that people know what they're getting...I wouldn't read it but I'm not going to be mad about them reading it, if that makes sense.

I sort of riffed off of some of what you mentioned up there but as a disclaimer I'm sort of thinking about big fandom trends and not so much talking about you but patterns lately that as a fandom quasi-old have been on my mind the past decade or so.

I'm always going to be super leery of the 'unlike myself, the feeble minded masses know not the effects of what they read and must be protected' slippery slope. It was a bad argument in the Middle Ages, when it was used to make vernacular literacy illegal, continued to be a bad argument in the 18th and 19thc when it argued that women and children were too weak-minded to read without mental and moral damage, and looks real familiar today in discussions about fanfic in particular but we see it in other moral panics of the 80s, 90s, and aughts, re: video games, rap, rock and roll in the 80s, etc.

anyway.

For me, the tagging is a key courtesy but while that fic arc might make me X out... that's kind of it for me. I am not then going to say that it is dangerous for other people to read it and assume that I see the "problem" but they don't or that if they have cognitive dissonance, it's one they can't think through. They might enjoy it as fiction and also see that it's not a thing they'd want in real life, much like... most of what we consume in media.

One thing that complicates a lot of this further is that there often are ... in-fandom givens that newcomers or people outside judge very differently and which consequently don't port well to other fandoms.

So for example, in Marvel comics fandom, identity porn is extremely common because of all the secret identity in early comics, and that's a sort of beloved aspect in a lot of those fandoms and comics. Friends who write and move into other fandoms report back that similar storylines in other fandoms get flamed if they don't get tagged to high hell for noncon and dubcon bc of the identity issues, which... at least when I was more heavily reading in comics fandom... just wasn't an issue because of the givens of the content matter, but ... that's not a portable assumption when you leave those confines.

idk, but I think a lot of times we tend to take more complicated issues of personal response and also issues of what makes some narratives, characters and fandoms attractive to people at certain times to people and reduce it to the same reductive good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, etc. binarisms that are great for setting up false dichotomies of us/them, but not great for conversations or even just saying yeah that's not my thing and I don't get why it's yours but how about that rich tapestry of life, eh?

I think part of what we're seeing right now is the loss of insular fandom community and communities with internal vocabularies and shared norms colliding with an overall cultural hard swing into paternalistic and fascistic discourses about sexual and moral purity that means that often we see a necessary conflict where there is a difference of opinion.

Meanwhile we have people actually framing true dehumanization and violence as a difference of opinion. I just think we've got our polarities and priorities flipped on a lot of this, probably largely because we're super anxious and feel powerless about our ability to effect change in the big picture issues right now, so there's a lot of punching across and down so we can at least feel like we're winning some kind of victories, but... I think when we do that we're just kind of playing into the big picture on the wrong side a lot of the time.

tl;dr totally agree that self-contradictory fics are obnoxious, and that sometimes fandom narrative tics can squick me, but I'm suuuper leery of labeling them dangerous even if they make me say oh hell no.

#long post #fandom wank #purity wank

[clownmoontoon]

@electrozeistyking oh yeah! before the 90's clowns were beloved! they followed that code to the letter and everyone (esp kids!) loved to see a clown!

hence why mcdonald's had a clown mascot for so many years and why it made sense for bart simpson's fave tv personality ever to be a clown

the character of pennywise is disguised as a clown bc stephen king wanted to use an image that p much every kid associated w kindness, goodness and trust to lure in his child victims ;;

in fact the prof clown industry took a major hit after the It mini series was released in 1990 and clowns became a popular horror/villain trope (the book was released in the 70s but didnt have as big of an impact on pop culture as the mini series did)

even if the joker was a villain in the comics for many years he was NEVER as scary as they make him out to be today, he was CAMP! colorful and silly and barely a threat lmao

in the late 80's/early 90's w the release of "The Killing Joke" (1988) comic and "The Batman" (1989) movie (starring jack nicholson) AND THEN the very famous btas (1992) joker (voiced by mark hamill who would go on to voice most animated jokers) the image of "clown" grew way more scary and way less like the original intention

I KINDA WENT ON A TANGENT HERE BUT I JUST FIND HOW CLOWNS HAVE CHANGED IN MEDIA RLLY FASCINATING ESP WHEN CONSIDERING THE CLOWN CODE SDLKJSD

also this isnt to say that i hate edgy jokers by any means!! personally my fave versions of joker are the ones that can combine silly and scary! camp and killer! if its too much one way or the other i feel like its a bit boring, that being said,

LEGO JOKER AND HARLEY MY BELOVEDS

#YOU ACTIVATED MY CLOWN SPECIAL INTEREST MODE LMAO #clown honks #electrozeistyking #moonime #clowns #clown #joker #the joker #the killing joke #lego joker #lego batman movie #harley quinn #btas #batman rogues #simpsons #the simpsons #krusty the clown #burger king #ronald mcdonald #it #horror #scopophobia

[goodolreliablejake]

Tim Drake's Robin Erasure

I think there are certain “Robin” traits that seem utterly inextricable from the character at this point. And unless you’re really into the various batboys and their personas, most people probably think of “Robin” as a character unto himself, rather than the various Dicks, Tims, Jasons, and Carries. But Robin has changed a lot over the years, and the nature of comics is for the most iconic changes to echo backwards through the legend retroactively.

Picture Dick Grayson as he was in 1940 and as he mostly remained for so many years afterwards. Bursting through this little circus drum reveal thing like The New Girl, this green panty-clad, bright yellow-caped circus boy was there for one reason above all others: to play the Watson. One year after Batman’s advent, we knew the World’s Greatest Detective needed an audience surrogate there at all times to explain his cleverness to. So far, so familiar.

Then in the late 80s/early 90s, Tim Drake comes along with a totally radical costume change, and he changes the Robin game forever. His costume still mostly looks like Robin—same basic color scheme and “R” symbol—but with pants and a black cape, with the yellow just the inner lining. And this kid’s got personality, too. For one thing, he’s intelligent. More than Dick, he’s defined as a successor to Batman as a detective, even proving his worth by figuring out B-man’s secret identity. What’s more, he introduces a big idea that lends some much-needed credibility to this whole “child soldier” thing: that Batman needs someone to balance him out, to provide levity and light, to keep him from going to far. Like the Doctor, it’s dangerous for Batman to travel alone. And so Robin isn’t just the Boy Hostage, he’s really the heart of the Dynamic Duo. Wow.

Tim Drake wasn’t the only myth-shaking thing that happened to Batman in the 90s. I’m talking, of course, about Batman the Animated Series. You might have heard that this was a good show. But it was so much more than that. This show defined Batman. It invented Harley Quinn. It invented Mr. Freeze’s tragic backstory. It reinvented The Riddler as a suave intellectual who uses computers. Just like Tim Drake, it rewrote our memories of these things so that we now assume they’ve always been this way.

And Robin was in that show from the beginning. And make no mistake, the Robin that appears in that show from the first few episodes on is the Tim Drake that I just described; he’s wearing Tim Drake’s costume, and he’s got Tim Drake’s personality and significance. But they call him Dick Grayson, and he has Dick Grayson’s orphaned circus brat backstory. Because this was before superheroes had gone mainstream, at least to the extent that they have today. But even then, Batman and Robin were icons. Nobody knew Tim Drake, but they knew Dick Grayson, some of them anyway. And anyway, it’s just good writing. If you’re starting a new continuity, you start from the beginning. You start with Robin I, not Robin III. And if there have been advances in what makes a good Robin character, then you give all the best parts of Tim Drake’s character to Dick Grayson.

Read more here:

#TimDrake #Robin #btas #batman

[popculturebuffet]

New X-Men Xtrospective Part 1: E is For Extinction “They Will Need Us”

I am SO fucking excited for this one. As might not be obvious to ALL of my readers but should be obvious to some, I fucking love the X-Men. They are one of my favorite superhero teams period as are several of their spinoffs such as X-Factor (All versions), New Mutants, and Marauders. I love the wide cast, the hugely vast universe within the already vast and wonderful marvel universe, and the sheer amount of GREAT stories. I own all 11 movies, have several action figures, and two posters from Jonathan Hickman’s current and utterly dynamite run right above me right now as I work, as well as a marvel 80′s themed poster behind me that’s at least half x-men for good reason. I love this gang of mutants and I have not talked about them enough. 

I”ve done some X-Men stuff sure: I’ve talked about hickman’s time as head writer of the books a year in earlier this year, I did a few scattered reviews back when I did single issues of comics, and then we get to the one I beefed big time: covering ALL of X-Men evolution. While it’s a noble endeavor I freely admit to overexerting myself: I recapped the episodes way too closely, gave myself no real schedule and did so while I was already covering two shows a week at the time. My point is it was a good idea, but the timing was REALLY fucking bad and if I do it again, I intend to do it right and iwth a proper place in my now properly paced schedule. I also planned to do the movies which, unlike evolution, I have solid plans to do once I clear out some of my projects. Point is I burned bright and then exploded and took a whole projecet with me phoenix style. 

I had until this moment yet to do a really big x-men project, something digging into the comics, something that could help fans both of the comics and not get familiar with something really good, and help me dig into both the good and bad of something. I jsut needed the right start. 

Then Christmas gave me that spark, that project that gave me the idea for a butload more x-men content on here and was the perfect starting point for some. See my friend Marco lives in Honduras, and so since i couldn’t afford to send him anything for christmas in the mail, as i’m not exactly rich, I instead offered him three reviews of anything.l He still hasn’t taken up two of them, nor one I gave him for graduating college, but the first one was a doozy, something he hadn’t read due to not liking the art, which is fine as I have some art in comics I don’t like everyone has diffrent tastes, at least for the first arc, and something VITALLY important to x-men as a whole and that’s the backbone of hickman’s current run: the first arc of new x-men, e is for extinction. And given New X-Men is one of my faviorite comics of all time I not only lept on it.. but decided fuck it I’m covering the whole thing. So every so often on here from now until I finish, i’m going to be covering Grant Morrisons ground breaking, mind shattering, status quo destroying run on the children of the atom. This.. is going to be fucking awesome. Buckle up. 

New X-Men came about in 2001. Stop me if you heard this one: The X-Men, once marvel’s best selling title and one of i’ts most beloved, had been set adrift in a seal of editorial bullshit, bad writing, bad storylines and a stale continuity where not much could change or grow and things always reset to about the same place it was last week. If this sounds familiar it’s because it somehow happened AGAIN thanks to Ike Perlmutter’s bullshit, hence the current hickman run, but we’ll get into all of tha tsome other time. Point is as it was in 2018, so it was in 2001: The x-men were in bad straits and marvel reached out to a host of various creators to swing for the fences and find a new direction, something to bring sales and life back to the book. To my shock they actually took a LOT of diffrent pitches in before Morrisons won and from huge names: Geoff Johns, who had not yet returned to DC never to leave, Alex Ross, Keith Giffen.. all huge creative types. but in the end the best man won.

For those unfamiliar with him, Grant Morrison is a gloriously batshit scotsman with a long, storied and delightfully insane history in comics, mostly at DC before and after this comic. This is for good reason: DC scouted Morrison specifically because of his early work at 2000ad. See at the time Alan Moore had hit it really big with Swamp Thing, taking a d list, so so book and making it into an utter masterpiece and giving it thoroughly interesting mythology. Given it was a blockbuster hit that’s still widely loved and discussed, as it should be today, DC decided to repeat the strategy of asking British indie comics creators to come do the same to another property. This same experiment is why Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman exists, so.. yeah it was actually a great strategy and naturally Grant had their first big hit with Animal Man, a metafictional take on a b-list hero that made him a loveable family man, while also putting him through hell and playing with the medium and dc’s vast history, the last two being Morrison’s trademark from then on out.

 They’d next go on to reinvent one of my other faviorite teams: THE DOOM PATROL!  The patrol are a bunch of victims of strange accidents who got powers out of them that are basically curses... and Morrison solidified that concept, taking over after a weak run that ironically enough was trying to imitate the x-men’s success at the time. Instead Morrison just went all out with his weird shit for the first time and made them a team of broken but likeable people with weird powers fighting just the weirdest most incomprehensible shit, a run i’ll likely be digging into eventually along with the team as a whole. It’s also, along with Gerard Way’s recent run, the bedroock for the current and utterly masterful doom patrol series I need to catch up on. They also apparently once wrote a satrical comic starring and lik mocking hitler... a fact I somehow JUST learned but naturally doesn’t surprise me at all. 

Morrison’s career at dc, after doing some creator owned stuff there when Vertigo opened up, hit it’s peak in the late 90′s as they were given the go ahead to reinvent the Justice League, with the wildly successful and awesome JLA, another book I probably need to take a look at that put the big 7 back into the team.  And by now your probably getting the point of me covering his career pattern.. besides giving morrison the praise they deserve, and they’d have some really great runs after this.. and some terrible ones but no one’s perfect. My point is that at this point in their career Morrison’s greatest skill was taking something that had grown stagnant or been forgotten, blowing it up and reworking it into something glorious and new. Taking what worked, scraping away what didn’t and on the whole making something fucking glorious out of it. So here we are. The X-Men needed a new coat of paint and uncle grant had their lcd laced psycadelic paint bucket and brush shaped like a pidgeon at the ready. And for better, way better and admitely sometimes here and there worse,they changed the x-men for good. Some changes were rolled back out of spite, others finally got their chance after said rollback recently, and some were just outright thrown on the grown and smashed with a hammer. But for the most part Grant left a huge impact on the x-men and i’m here to show you why, warts and all. To me my x-men, this is new x-men.  Now naturally there’s even more exposition but i’ts more in what COULD’VE been. Originally while Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Professor X were all part of the team the other two members of the slim roster for this run, Beast and Emma Frost.. weren’t. Originally Morrison was going to have Colossus and Moira Mactaggert, long time team ally, token human until very recently, and now thanks to hickman one of the most important x characters peirod and long before that a fan favorite of mine, on the team, with Moira taking over for beast. 

This.. didn’t pan out since Marvel apparently either didn’t give a shit about their plans or already had things in motion as the climax of the longtime legacy virus storyline killed both off. Colossus until Joss Whedon, bastard he may be, brought him back for his terrific Astonishing X-Men, and Moira SOMEHOW stayed dead until House/Powers of X. See this speaks to one of the big roadblocks morrison faced: Jonathan HIckman currently has absolute power and all his writers working in concert, a new way of doing things comic companies shold honestly copy en masse as it’s really working wonders. Grant.. was just one of many writers and one of three main x books the others being Chris Claremont’s XTREME X-MEN, basically “let the legend do what he wants since he can’t get freedom on the main book” and another writer on uncanny... before eventually chuck austen took over and I will tackle that horrible mess some other time. Point is while Morrison was setting the tone, costume style and making the big waves, they still didn’t have full power and thus had to play nice with eveyrone else.  So their next idea was Rogue, making mer more like her x-men evolution version.. except Chris wanted her, so that was out, though being a decent enough guy he willingly gave up Beast since the moira thing meant Morrison needed a science person. As for Colossus replacement, as it turned out a fan had suggested Grant do something with Emma Frost since Gen X was canceled and while Morrison had zero intention for it clearly Emma clicked with hthem and she was soon both a main part of the cast and one of their biggest contributions to X-Men as a whole.

As for what I think of the needed changes.. they ended up being for the best. I do like Moira... but Hank ended up being a much better fit for the team dynamic wise and power set wise, while Emma was the same. While Colossus, Rogue and Moira are all fantastic characters, I think what we ended up with was just a better mix overall. I DO think the team is incredibly white, but that’s a general x-men problem, even with having an assload of diverse and intresting characters, so it’s not entirely his fault. All in all it’s a fantastic roster: four of the x-men’s best, their leader in the field for the first time in forever, and a new and intresting wild card. IT’s a nice ballance of characters and we’ll get more into it as we go. Now all the expositions done, we can finally dive head first into new x-men. I hope you survivie the experince under the cut. 

After an utterly gorgeous and striking cover, the one used up top, we get one solid page to introduce us to Morrison’s mission statment, how  they feel and how good Frank Quitely’s art looks

I cropped it best i could for tumblr but this one image immidetly says a lot. Our heroes are just.. easily taking down this sentinel, an old model... the same one we’ve seen a dozen times. What were once the grim, possible destroyers of an entire race of beings in days of future past and devistating killing machines in the present.. had become stale easily defeated murder bots There had been noble attempts to really make the sentiinels work again like the horrifying omega sentinels, humans forcibly converted into sleeper agent killing machines, during operation: zero tolerance, but otherwise they were mostly just a prop for the x-men to knock down. And that.. really is morrison’s whole point. Lampshading and mocking the fact the x-men had grown stale, things hadn’t really progressed.. and that it was time to move on. But to Uncle Grant’s credit, they not only uses this as a mission statment but it’s plot relevant: this mission will both be explained soon and explains why Logan and Scott are out and about enough to end up where the plot will soon need them. It also helps, via the sight of the syndey opera house establish something Morrison made a staple of their run: the X-Men going global. While the x-men were never really NOT global post claremont, Morrisons run has them handling rescue missions and what not worldwide far more often than most runs before it sans Claremont, and really made it feel like they weren’t just another super team but a global force of good with a specific goal and mission. More on the global aspect next time, as that’s where it really comes in but I felt it was important to show it was there for minute one. 

So yeah before we move onto the first full scene of the run, let’s talk about the costumes. 

We’ll talk about Emma’s later since she’s not introduced to the story for a while but yeah. There’s a sharp, obvious and immediate change just in the outfits, which take after the movie’s more military look, having the x-men not only look more like a unit but more like a professional orginization. Someone to come and help when needed. While this would take on more siginifigance in a bit, we’ll get to it, it also fits Morrisions own views that the x-men were less of a traditional superhero team and more something different on the edges that fought things out there, sorta what like he did with doom patrol. And it’s honestly a valid interpretation as the x-men are often seen as outlaws and misfits by society for beingn well.. mutants. Not as trusted as the avengers. So having them adopt this look played into that: Having them look more professional and focused as The X-Men have a less blanket mission statement than the avenger.. but also mildly threatning. Something to alarm the humans. It’s an utterly brilliant look thrown best together by the big yellow x’s, still giving it a nice flash of color to show off and show this is still a comic and this is still damn colorful.. this just isn’t your AVERAGE supherhero comic or the x-men your used to. IT’s a real shame the only fox x-men movie to use it was fucking dark phoenix.. a film where it didn’t even fit as xavier was getting flashier and more reckless so why wouldn’t he have more garish and colorful and more traditional superhero outfits. They did look good in their variants in first class though. Props there. Point is this is a classic, utterly stunning look, and tha’ts coming from someone whose fine with goofy superhero outfits and perpetually bitter hawkeye is almost never allowed to wear his actual comic outift and is instead stuck with shades instead of you know.. a mask. Or anything resembling an actual good looking costume. This though this is how you do a less superheroy costume: practical and realistic, but still cool looking and comic book friendly. 

We cut to a mysterious lady, we’ll come to know her as Cassandra Nova and while I know her origin... i’m saving it for later as the comics themselves explain it eventually, and a simpering dolt she brought with her, Donald Trask, a distant relative of the creators of the sentinels who, via holograms she’s showing cro magnons slaughtring the neanderthal. Her point is that Mutants are going to do this and she’s clearly fearmongering him and trying to talk him into genocide: to wipe them out before they wipe out humanity. And it’s here we get one of hte most important plot points of Morrisons run and one of the most intresting: according to cassandra’s research Humanity will be no more in 4 generations. Mutankind is on it’s way to overtaking them at last.. i’ts still a few decades off.. but it’s coming. It’s sometihing that the whole decimation nonsense sadly snuffed.. and John Hickman has thankfully brought back. I’ll get to his run once i’ts complete in a few years, but point is it’s an utterly marvelous plot hook: Humanity, whose already attempted genocide a few times, is now in real danger of what their petty, racist, fearful attacks have been about: being replaced. It’s one of the central themes of the work the other two being “Just what IS mutantkind and what will it be”. WHat are they as a people? We’ll dig into these as we go but the threat of exctincion is the backbone of this arc... and will lead to something truly ghastly. 

It’s then we get our title page.. which nothing really to add it just looks really good and helps show off who are cast is and what they can do with striking simple art. 

And since we’re already talking the art of the book, let’s take a moment to discuss an intresting detail of this run: despite it’s short length there’s quite a few diffrent artist, who we’ll talk about of course as we get to each one. The most common and notable though is Frank Quitely. Frank Quitely is one of Morrison’s closest and best creative partners, having a unique, squishy art style.. i.e. the one my friend didn’t like which is why i’m covering this. And while I like the art style quite a bit, I do get why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea: His art is squashed, weird, and admitely some faces can be good god no incaranate. But it’s also why I like it: his characters feel unique, each body and figure feels like it was custom made and thus feels.. real. Like this is a person before you. And given comics can often surrender to having everybody look the damn same, this is nice. His faces may sometimes look similar but his bodies are where the action is. But while having a realistic feel his work also has a weird alien quality that perfectly fits Morrison, and thus his run on x-men. I will say while I love All-Star Superman, his art fits less there in the more hopeful silver agey story, so he’s not an artist for EVERY STORY OF EVERY TYPE.. but when it comes to sci fi weridness, he fits it like a glove so i’ts unsuprising he and morrison are practicaley soul mates, nor that his art sets the tone perfectly for the run: this is something new, diffrent and strange.. and what says x-men at it’s best more than that?

So after our opening titles we cut to the mansion where Hank is showing off his latest and greatest invention: Cerebra. Cerbebra is a massively upgraded version of Cerebro, aka Professor Xavier’s iconic helmet that allows him to track mutants to help them out.. and covertly backup their conconousness for his long game plan, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone yet that’s not going to be retconned in for a few decades. Though i’m damn certain if Morrison has heard about the current era of x-men and how it both builds on what he built, shatters the status quo and is incredibly weird, he’d be damn proud. As for how it’s diffrent Cerebra not only has a large dome around it but said dome allows the machine to amply Charles powers to a global reach. He can now see mutants all over the world anywhere in the world, something I didn’t realize wasn’t ALWAYS a thing because it seems so simple. It’s also likely to bring it more in line with the movies. And while marvel has done TERRIBLE with bringing things in from the movies or in line with them in recent years, i.e. making star lord more like his movie self while forgetting that’s how he already used to be in canon before later writers thankfully did hte better step of merging the two, Hawkeye’s outfit, Cap’s outfit or Nick Fury Jr.  But for every mistep there’s also been tons of times it’s worked out really well such as here, as well as bringing hulk into the avengers for the first time since the founding, making tony stark more like the mcu version and less like a nightmarish self righetous dicktator who rightfully gets beat up and called out a lot, making Scott Lang prominent since he became prominent in the MCU, Wakanda being a major force in the marvel universe as it always should have been and various titles that have popped up to tie into movies, often bringing back a team or property that hadn’t had a book in some time like Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Shang Chi just to name a few. It’s not always hawkeye looking all jeremy renner is what i’m saying.. though thankfully comics clint isn’t that uninteresting. Hopefully the series will change that. 

So yeah along with a bigger shinier cerebro we’re also introduced to a big change in Hank whose taken on his lion form rather than his classic gorilla with a weird haircut or his return to that except bald. Here he’s more like aslan in a human body and I.. love it. It looks great, helps sell hanks delima of being brilliant while looking like a beast and makes sense: he kickstarted what was likely his own secondary evolution by drinking the potion that made him bestial, so it only makes sense his body wouldn’t be all that stable even if it took years to change again. And even that makes sense as hank was breifly turned back to his original hairless ape mutation during x-factor, easily one of the books.. worse decisions honestly and one that louise simonson thankfully later undid. That probably bought him some time hence why it’s only mutating further now.  It also adds an intresting wrinkle which the run will explore further: how far does this go? Will he regress? and how much hank will be left? And how will society treat his new form? 

For now he’s actually extatic. While he’s going through hormonal changes, and giving out some excellent banter with Jean

Which also includes one of the greatest lines in comic book history, one that’s been in my head for decades and made me absolutely love henry mccoy. 

He’s just great is what i’m saying. As you can tell it’s stuff like this why i’m glad Moira fell through. While I love her.. Morrison’s hank is just a delight and one really questionable subplot aside, we’ll get to that, he’s one of the highlights of this run with an intresting internal struggle, and great chemistry with EVERYONE. And that is the main reason i’m glad Moira fell through as his history with everyone but Emma, who he still has a great raport with, means each interaction has weight. He’s close friends with both scott and jean and thus serves as their needed confidant, while still being able to buddy and banter iwth good old weapon x, and speak with his mentor charles as an equal. While I love moira... Beast just fits into the cast too perfectly and I 100% suspect Morrison was only using her because, while she’s awesome, Claremont wanted her and thus gladly snapped her up when he no longer had a science person. I’ll get into his Jean soon enough but she’s likewise fantastic and easily my faviorite version of the character.. not that until very recently there was much honest competition. 

So Cerebra fires up showing a massive cloud of mutants, showing just how much of a huge spike theirs been with Xavier wondering what it all means.. and Hank seeing a weird flare on the mointor for just a second with his special eyes. But since Xavier isn’t stupid and isn’t the kind of idiot who just dismisses it as a fulke, and since Scott and Logan are in the field, he decides to confrence call them in to see if they can go take a look. 

And naturally we get to see what their up to and get context for what the hell happened in the first page. Our heroes were on a rescue mission to save Ugly John, tha’ts what people called him, a three faced mutant who ends up passing out as they head out of the atmosphere for a second. Wolverine is regenerating and smoking out of his neck becaue he could still smoke back then before marvel decided “he’s setting a bad example”.. in a comic meant for teens and adults. 

I mean I get it on some level as the x-men cartoon was a huge thing in the 90′s and Ben Grimm is basically a giant children’s toy with the mind of a surly 40 year old jewish man from yancy street, but stilll it’s just.. why. I may not like smoking but it’s not like it was SPIDER-MAN saying

It’s a grown man.. whose not a sterling roll model and who Claremont went out of his way to have Logan point out his healing factor means it really dosen’t hurt him in the long run and when Kitty, an actual teenager, tried one of his cigars she choked. I know it’s a weird thing to get hung up on but while i’m all for keeping kids from smoking, this was a really clumsy way to try and hehlp that that made no sense and will never make any sense. 

One tangent later we find out that Cassandra was showing Trask a simulation on a flight to, unsuprisingly, south america, to a sentinel blacksite. Between covertly funding civil wars as they do, the US Goverment naturally founded an experimental sentinal project, and a second master mold during the production of the first line... when larry trask asks where it could possibly be well...

Subtly was not the trasks strong point.. or common sense... or.. not realizing their creations would dominate humanity too or not dying. 

Anyways we then cut back to the x-men, as their having a psychic zoom meeting with Charlie giving one of his patnted big speeches.. and like a lot of this comic it’s too damn good not to use 

The reason I couldn’t should be obvious: This one speech sums up the x-men, why their great and why their necessary in a nutshell: in a world full of prejucided morons.. there’s plenty of scared kids who NEED the x-men to protect and guide them, and with a surge in the mutant population, their needed now more than ever. We also get a good explanation in universe for the uniform change: Charles had them in the superhero outfits hoping humanity would accept them if they were packaged as something they know. Since that clearly hasn’t worked he’s trying new ways to reach out and thus going with a diffrent more rescue team approach to the uniforms. He assigns Wolvie and Cyke to go check out the flair as you’d expect and the meetings over. On the blackbird we get our first hint at a subplot as Logan noticed Cyclops couldn’t wait to get out of there, and is being a tad distant to his wife. He actually has reasons for being kind of cold for once instead of just bad writing as he just came back from being possed by apocalypse. Yeah that happened. So the experience has rattled our boy some what. More on that as we go. But Jean ducks the subject with hank but does breach the fact that Charles has been going kind of crazy with the spending, new uniforms and ambition lately. Hank explains it perfectly: After all the death, suffering and misery the x-men have endured lately, the aforementioned deaths I talked about that took Colossus and Moira off the roster, have lionzed Charles to make sure it was all worth something and look towards the future. 

But enough hope time for horror as Cassandra makes her first direct move, trying to take over Charles brain , make his body her own and use cerebra to kill lots and lots of mutants. We then get one of the best moments of Morrisons run with Charles response to a horrifying monster trying to take his brain

While it is shocking to find out Charles has a gun..it’s a grim but kind of understandable precaution. The guy once got fully taken over by a brood, assembling the New Mutants in part because the brood wanted to create more of i’ts kind with more super powers. You’d be paranoid too if some of your beloved students were brought together partly due to your good intentions and partly because a space monster wanted to make more space montsters out of helpless teens, and even horribly gaslighted one of them. We’ll get to that some day. Point is Charles brain is one of the greatest weapons on earth and if the wrong person got a hold of it, it’d be the end of said earth. Thankfully Charles does not need plan gun, as Jean yanks Cerebra off him but the sheer HATE Charles felt from Cassandra, the sheer power has rattled him.. and also told him she’s in Ecuador and his X-Men need to be warned NOW. It’s a great way to set up just HOW powerful Cassandra is.  Speaking of which as our first issue of the arc ends, we find out two things: Cass faked being int he government but really just used dead soldiers as prop.. and just what kind of sentinels are out there.. wild sentinels. Easily my faviorite variant of the old killing machines and one that’s barely used despite being really damn awesome. Their adaptive killing machines, designed to mutated just like their pray and take tech from around them, as a result they look like a jumble of guns and parts.. but not only does it give them a unique, cool look.. but it makes them ten times deadlier as instead of being big bricks of robots that while intimidating, the x-men know how to kill... their unpredictable variable killing machines. You can figure out how to kill one sure.. btu the next might be entirely diffrent. They are one of morrisons best creations and I hope someone uses the idea again.. aka hickman. Please use it jonathan I know your focused on nimrod but come on. 

And we end on one of the best lines of the entiire run as we close out the issue

Yeah it goes without saying but i’ll say it anyway; Morrison is really damn good with dialouge and being damn quotable. 

So we open with another great quote “When I got up today I didn’t expect to kill 20 million people”... and Cassandra being aware Wolverine and Cyclops are on their way and sending the Wild Sentinels to dispatch them. Also our heroes brought Ugly John along while while a dumb move, Wolvie does point out how dumb it was to divert to Ecuador with a civlian in tow.. after the plane crash of course. As for “wait what plane crash’, the sentinels attack and start picking it apart... and since letting them have such good tech is a terrible idea, Scotty blows up the damn plane. So to recap our heroes are stuck in ecuador, surrounded by murder machines, and oh look their there and knock off cyclops viser. Fantastic. So yeah our heroes are fucked. And naturally captured by the enemy.

The rest of the x-men are doing SLIGHTLY better. While beast makes a note for his girlfriend, more on that later on, Charles is in bed, half alive, explaning the rationale I gave for why he has the gun with Jean refusing to let him get back out of bed and you know.. put on the device that just nearly killed him. But when beast announces they lost contact with our boys.. yeah that ceased being an option. 

Back in the Ecuadorian Genocide Factory, Cassandra does the obvious and kills donald trask as his real purpose..was to stick around and be stupid for a bit while she copied his dna so she could have full control of her new murder toys.She soon uses them, having a horrifying death chamber slaughter john.. or at least flash fry him. Wolverine takes it how you’d expect and since the sentinels need to “perserve trask dna”.. they can’t fire on him without killing her. Scott escapes.. and in a heart wrenching scene mercy kills john.. before getting badass. 

To anyone who says Scott Summers is boring, unintersting, or a stupid asshole idiot head I present exhbit shut the fuck up. Morrison gets scott just right, deconstructing his emotional suppression, while showing him off as a dedicated, companionate man who gets the job done and who seconds after tearfully having to mercy kill an innocent mutant whose death was partially his fault, wastes no time making it painfully clear to the person responsible she WILL die if she tries that again. Logan however realizes she’s already won in some fashion as she’s grinning.. and yeah never a good sign when a genocidal madwoman is grinning like a loon.. and when we find out why.. it’s even less good>  We cut to Genosha. A lot of you probably know what happned to Genosha but in case you don’t know what it is it was once a horribly racist country that genetically enslaved mutants and used them for slave labor. It was freed, but still struggled to truly move on.. till Magneto showed up, took the country for himself and made it a home for all mutants. When we last saw him he once again tried to take over the world leading to Logan seemingly killing him. Right now though Emma Frost finally enters the scene teaching some mutants.. when a young one named Negasonic Teenage Warhead.. yes that one and yes she was entirely chosen for deadpool for her name, reveals, via precognition, that their all going to die.. right as the sentinels attack. 

Genosha.. is gone. In an eyeblink 16 million mutants are dead, a possible future gone, and one of their greatest leaders is no more. Yeah Magneto WAS alive.. but paralyzed so he could do nothing when his island was utterly slaughtered. Only a handful of mutants will be revealed to survive. Humanity had done a lot to mutants before .. but for once.. they’d succeeded in wiping a massive chunk out. What was an x-men location for DECADES at this point.. was now a smoldering crater. A what could of been that would hant the x-men ever after, even now into utopia it remains the darkest day in mutant history outside of hte decimation. It is a truly horrific moment.. and if the changes already hadn’t made it clear this is morrison saying “NO character is safe, nothing is safe, and nothing will be the same and I damn well mean that”. In one act of hate the world has changed. And it hasn’t finished changing yet. 

Issue Three opens hammering in things, as Jean and Beast are in the ruins of genosha, with Xavier having found ONE surivor among the rubble, and our heroes sturggling to find even them, though Jean eventually picks them up and uses her TK to sift through the rubble. 

They find Emma who emerges from a bunker in shock, clutching NTW... and not realizing she’s dead until later and revealing she now has diamond skin, her own secondary mutation. Secondary Mutation was a birlliant idea, new powers sprouting up within established mutants.. it’s just morrison barely used this great idea as did hardly anyone else. Only X-Men Blue ever really dug into it and those were artifical at that. IT’s a great idea..it’s just barely used and at most heavily implied to explain changes in powers like Jamie Madrox Multiple Personalities later on or Doug Ramsey’s vast increase in power. Disapointing. 

While Charles takes in the tragedy and the fact his old frienmie is dead, the x-men wonder what the fuck Cassandra is and what to do with her.. why did she kill 16 million people, and what the fuck is she. I mean I know, but as I said i’ll explain that when the story does.  IN the other room Beast tends to Emma who wants none of not fucking killing Cassandra.. and is utterly right. Bitchy, because i’ts Emma, but right: she killed 16 million people. Say what you want but while it may not be up to the x-men to kill her.. she shoudln’t be living much longer. She commited genocide. Emma decides fuck that and prepares to leave summoning a cab and making peace with being a glorious living fabrige egg. Emma did apparelty change in generation x.. but Morrison is responsible for returning her not only to being a bitch, but a gloriously delightful one And really I don’t think they reset her character entirely: she’s not the heartless monster she started out as: she has empathy, grace, and caring.. she just buries it under a lair of absolute bitch and after you know, surviving a fucking genocide who can blame her? And honestly.. I love their verison of her. She provides a nice contrast to the more idealistic, even logan, x-men and a nice contrarian voice in the room without being obnoxious and her style and sacrastic swagger makes her endlessly entertaning. Thanks to morrison she’s stuck around to this day and went from a pretty good character.. to a great one. And what makes her this way, or as jean puts it “such a bitch?”

With that settled, Hank explains what Cassandra is: a competing species. As he puts it sometimes evolution takes a quantum leap forward.. and Cassandra is the result. Thus she wants to wipe out the compettition and is so far above humanity, she dosen’t need them... especially since she knows what Hank now knows: humanity is at an end. As hank puts it we have an E Gene, one that basically shuts off a race.. and thus the x-men now know what we learned earlier and that cassandra wasn’t lying: in 4 generations there are no more humans and something has to repalce htem. And Cassandra wants it to be her. 

Before Logan can do what he does best, and asks why she looks like charles, Cassandra escapes, and Scott briliantly urges them to fight only on instict as she’s a telepath. A damn awesome fight insues including Cassandra donning Charles Psoonic battle armor, Scott being put in his black bug room and the general good looking chaos you’d expect from a superhero fight. While this goes on Emma has an ephinany and realizes she likes to teach, the x-men have a school.. and she shoudln’t give up on helping kids just because of what happened and turns around. 

Cassandra is near victory, slipping her way to Cerebra.. and planning to kill only one mind before getting to the millions she wnats, a horrifying slug manifesting around her.. only...

So the x-men accept this and cassandra rises.. seemingly saying “I am charles” Huh... and then charles uncaracteristiacally shoots her saying things must change

We’ll get to what all of that means next time as we close on Jean and Scott in bed. Scott explains why he’s been so distant as what I said earlier: fighting off apocalypse stripped away a lot of illusions about himself and he’s having a hard time walking back from that but Jean is willing to help.. but before they can resolve their  issues.. charles has an annoucnment to make and grant has one last whopper of a suprise to end his opening arc on, and just like genosha...it’s a game changer of titanic proportions

No longer is Xavier’s School hidden. Their walking into the light now and so is charles. Hope they surivive the experince. Obviously this move is brilliant: while it removes the veil of saftey the x-men had it also brings on tons of new possiblities and unlike secondary mutation, this one not only stuck but would impact the x-men for good: no longer would they hide and cower.. their mutant and proud.. and their here to stay.  E For Extinction is one of the best x-men stories period. Blisteringly paced, full of great character, great concepts and utterly terrifying and terrific moments that would impact the x-men all the way to present day. It’s beautifully drawn, well paced, and a masterwork. I highly recommend it and it’s a great kickoff to a great run. Shame the run couldn’t of ended on this kind of high but.. we’ll get to that. For now this is a masterclass in how to start a run and if you haven’t read it do so NEXT TIME ON NEW X-MEN: A bunch of weirdos try to harvest mutant organs, the x-men get a brain in a jar and a new teamate, and Scott maybe cheats on his wife. Until then, goodbye goodbye goodbye. 

#new x-men #x-men #grant morrison #frank quitely #e is for extinction #the x-men #wolverine #logan howlett #cyclops #scott summers #jean grey #henry mccoy #beast #professor xavier #charles xavier #professor x #cassandra nova #emma frost #the white queen #sentinels #genosha

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Tove Jansson Videos!

Here’s a list of some videos on yle that feature Tove Jansson and often others; most are interviews, though there are some that aren’t. These probably aren’t all of them, and there’s also audio recordings you can find, but it’s late and I need to get up early tomorrow so I’m posting this as is lol.

Lars, Tove and Tuulikki in Japan - 15.9.1991 - Short one featuring the iconic trio!!!! Tove once again being a fashion ICON and referring to the others with their nicknames ‘Lasse’ and ‘Tooti’ :’)

Tove's brother Lars and Tuulikki Pietilä travel to Japan to see Moomin animations that have been completed. They are extremely satisfied.

Interview with Tove at Klovharun in Pellinge - 2.9.1991 - Oh this is GOOOOD! Tove is so lovely and cheerful in it (she is in them all, tbh) and we see some 90s Moomin anime character sheets!!!!

Reporter Christian Forsberg siblings Tove and Lars Jansson at Klovharun in Pellinge archipelago. They discuss the Japanese animations, why Tove thinks they are good, and what it's been like to work with them. We also hear more about the advent of Moomintroll.

The Japanese Animations - 6.9.1991 - Tove talks about her love for Snufkin in this one :D

The youth magazine X-tra also speaks with Tove Jansson. Junior reporter Nike Tallqvist interviews Tove Jansson. Tove Jansson and Sixten Lundberg, who has given Moomintroll their voice, talk about the animations. Tove Jansson is very happy and satisfied with the films. They have become good, she thinks. Especially Snufkin is nice. "I'd like to be like that," she says.

The Moomins and the Great Flood - 18.11.1991 - However, Tove Jansson is not so pleased with the new release of Småtrollen and the great flood. She thinks the book is not good.

Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä about art and life -  09.15.1991 - Tove, Tooti, and Pentti talk in this one and we see Moomin figures & tableaux.

Here, Tove Jansson and Too-ticky, Tuulikki Pietilä, are interviewed about the construction of the Moomin House. The idea came from Pentti Eistola, who built a smaller Moomin house. And from that, the idea of ​​the house grew. The gang gathered for play nights where there was carpentry, painting and sewing.

The house travelled around the world, first to a Moomin exhibition in Bratislava, to finally stay at the Moomin exhibition in the Tampere library.

Here we hear what Tuulikki likes to make herself as a doll. And why Pentti Eistola made a Moomin House.

Tove and Friends - 1970 - This is literally just a 24-minute-long video of Tove chilling with some mates including Lasse Pöysti and Birgitta Ulfsson and Erna Tauro oh my gosh!!!!

Here we visit Tove Jansson in her studio home with friends of her. Lasse Pöysti sings the Moomintroll show, Tove draws and the gang discusses.

It is a real home for reportage. From time to time, someone puts in a relevant question, and in between you talk gently, cut bread and cheese, and drink wine.

Discussions revolve around the studio home, drawing Moomin films, Moomin visors and Tove Jansson's writing.

Erna Tauro, who wrote the music for Tove Jansson's songs, talks about how it feels to compose to lyrics.

EDIT: This one also has a version with Finnish subtitles!! Here

Tove Jansson on the Moomin House - 1.9.1979 - This one has some pretty good shots of the moominhouse tableau!

With the help of friends Tuulikki Pietilä and Pentti Eistola, Tove Jansson has created a Moominhouse, a dream house that stands for everything that modern architecture does not do.

It took several years to create the perfect house. The decor is complete in every detail. In the Moomin House you can find everything needed in a house.

The Moomin House will travel to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Architecturally, the Moomin House is a concoction of different styles; Karelian style, baroque, empire and rococo.

Tove Jansson is happy and eager. She sees the Moomin House as a fantasy house that stands against the modern beehives where no one wants to live.

About Tove Jansson's childhood - 09.15.1991

Tove Janssons talks about her safe but bohemian childhood and how her life has become with the celebrity.

Tove Janssons' upbringing was bohemian and artistic. If mother Ham (Signe Hammarsten-Jansson) can not tell Tove Jansson, it is difficult to tell if someone you have loved so much.

But about her father (Viktor Jansson) she draws stories. He was a bohemian, with an unavoidable attraction to the bourgeois. He longed for disasters and kept them in good spirits.

You may see where the characters Moominmamma and Moominpappa and really the whole family come from.

About Tove's choice of profession and Moomin's birth - 09.15.1991

Tove Jansson talks about how the little troll was born in a comic book Garm. It was just a coincidence that she started writing children's books, maybe she longed for childhood summers.

The creatures give each other freedom. But the figures evolved. As an example, Tove Jansson takes Moominmamma who can get really angry. And Snufkin, who is totally free and alone, comes and goes as he pleases. He was Tove Jansson's idol for a long time, but he is really self-centred and spoiled. After all, it is easy to be alone and stick out in the wilderness when you are hailed and applauded when you get home. Fillyjonk, on the other hand, goes under by loneliness.

The cartoon was what took Tove Jansson's loss. It was terrible, but Too-ticky helped Tove Jansson write Moominland Midwinter. There she placed Moomintroll in a strange world. He not only experienced adventure, but also difficulties.

The Moomin World, the Celebrity and the Moomin Fan - 15.9.1991

Tove Jansson also talks about the difficulty of being known, all the fans who write and demand answers. She refers to Topelius and Astrid Lindgren who know equally.

When there is talk of all the research in Tove Jansson's books, she just gets irritated, they could wait a bit at least.

Tove Jansson Receives Award - 24.4.1987 - very cool shot of her putting on sunglasses in this lol

Tove Jansson became more and more shy over the years, but she gained recognition for her Moomin books all her life. She talks a lot about fame and trouble.

Anna Savonius wonders if the Moomin books became too narrow when Tove Jansson can no longer write about them. Tove Jansson thinks that they changed the meaning, and she went back to visual art.

And with horrible mothers she switched to short stories and novels.

Mostly she writes well for herself. But children's books need a happy ending, it may be awful, but not cruel and contain justice and honesty. However, you do not need education.

Tove Jansson Turns 80 - 8.8.1994 - from the same article as the video above.

Tove Jansson Becomes a Professor - 5.11.1995

Tove Jansson became an honorary professor and was 80 years old before she died on June 27, 2001.

Tove Jansson on working with books and visual arts - 4.6.1984

Tove Jansson talks about Summer Book and The Dangerous Journey. And about how difficult it is to write for children and for adults.

Tove Jansson has often talked about how celebrity has made it more difficult to write. And how she gets stuck and doesn't move on.

In Charlotte Aira's deep and strong interview, Tove Jansson returns to this. Writing is a heavy job, as heavy and difficult as painting.

This summer book is perhaps the book that is strongest for Tove Jansson and best describes Tove Jansson's life.

In the interview, Tove Jansson also talks about nature, the children and the Moomin role. Tove Jansson does not think she is escapist, everything is in reality.

They talk about Tove Jansson's adult books and visual arts, which journalists are not always interested in.

Tove Jansson receives the Topelius Prize - 9.28.1978

Tove Jansson received the Topelius Prize in 1978 when she published The Dangerous Journey (1977). It is Tove Jansson's last picture book about the Moomin role. Tove Jansson thinks about the dangerous journey, she thinks it may not have been so successful in terms of text, but she likes the pictures.

Tove Jansson in Naantali - 6.24.1993

Moomin mother Tove Jansson took part in a big event when Naantali Moomin World opened.

Tove Jansson thinks it is quite fun to participate when the Moomin characters come alive.

But she had never thought of such a thing when she wrote her first Moomin book.

And she knows that there will be no more Moomin books, now Tove Jansson is just trying to write short stories for adults.

A glimpse of Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson's Moomintroll spread all over the world. Today you can find everything from Moomin soaps to refrigerator magnets. Finally, Tove Jansson started hating her Moomintroll.

Here, Tove Jansson tells Chris Zitting about how fame has affected her. About how she hated to see her beloved character being commercialised and because of that, she began to lose the desire to write about Moomin.

She also talks about the inspiration to start writing more adult books.

Tove Jansson tells us that the book Moominland Midwinter (1957) was very important to her. She was stuck and couldn't write a lot more, but her life partner Tuulikki Pietilä (Too-ticky) helped her by suggesting that she place Moomintroll in a new and strange world. That helped Tove Jansson move on.

The interview was made in 1988, but was shown again after Jansson's death in 2001. The program has Finnish subtitles.

New Year’s Eve 1957 - 3.1.1957

#tove jansson #tuulikki pietilä #lars jansson #reference

[spaceorphan18]

Marvel Movie Night: Spider-Man 2

Something occurred to me while watching - director Sam Raimi really tapped into something with this first trilogy.  If the first film was an ode to the classic, Silver Age era of the 60s, than Spider-Man 2 is the beloved Bronze Age comics of the 70s and 80s.  Which means that Spider-Man 3 is really indicative of the bloated mess that the 90s brought and this whole metaphor works perfectly. And no, I don’t care if Spider-Man No More, the comic this plot was based on, was still Silver Age.  Let me have it. 

Also, it’s funny to me that this film, again, doesn’t feel like 2004.  Though I’m starting to suspect my memories of what 2004 were actually like.  Everything feels like 80s or 90s, though they do in throw in references to things like eBay, and it does feel a little more modern.  Anyway...

Spider-Man 2 is considered the classically-classic of all the Marvel films.  And, since doing this watch through of the Marvel films prior, I can totally see why.  And while X-Men 2 may be my favorite of these early films, that’s completely based on my preferences towards those characters.  This film is a delight, and not just because it’s coherent story telling.  

Is it the best Superhero film ever that it’s always heralded as?  It’s not as cheesy as the first film, the special effects are much, much better, the script is a lot tighter, the action is pretty decent, and the conflict feels genuine and organic.  And, especially after watching such bad films lately, it’s refreshing that this one does work.   While I understand why it remains beloved, the answer is no.  Though I do think it holds up better than many of the others in this pre-MCU world.

The nice thing about the film is that there’s one central story, about Peter’s dueling life of himself and Spider-Man.  I think the classic nature of being torn between responsibility and wanting something for yourself.  And of course, everything else kind of spirals out from that theme (like a web!), most of the other characters have similar struggles throughout the film, which is nice that it all ties together thematically. 

Funny, though, while I praise the script for having depth and emotion, for me personally, a lot of this film feels like a bogged down in its own seriousness.  And while, yes, there are a few moments of humor stitched within, the heaviness of the plot kind of weighs it all down, so much that, effectively, we’re all feeling the burden of being Spider-Man, too.  While I’ll be the first to note that it is a solidly, good film, it’s not one that I find joy in coming back to.  

So, Tobey Maguire is back as Spider-Man, and I feel the same way about him now as I do the other films in this trilogy.  He remains great at being Peter Parker, and showcasing that inner struggle that Parker always has in the comics.  The Spider-Man aspect.  Meh.  Not that Maguire has much to do while Spider-Man - a lot of that is CGI, but a lot of the fun parts of Spider-Man comics seems to be missing in these films.  

Meanwhile, the supporting cast from the first film are all back.  Kirsten Dunst is Mary Jane again, and she’s... fine.  Don’t get me wrong, the writing of MJ is pretty much spot on to what usually went on in the comics, and I love MJ, I just don’t like Dunst in the role (sorry!) - not that she gets to do more than screaming or angsting, nor do I like the tired trope of ‘rescue the girl’ that these films do all the time.  I’m really ready to move past that.  

James Franco is back as Harry, though has a much smaller role, and boy is Franco hamming it up.  Despite the revenge angle, it’s a pretty boring and somewhat forgotten side plot otherwise.  And Rosemary Harris is back as Aunt May.  Again, she’s fine - I feel about her here the same way I did back in the first film.  Consistency is nice.  

Rounding out the cast is Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock, which is one of the reasons this film is heralded so highly.  I do think he gives a good performance here, he’s got a better script to work with than Willem Dafoe did, and he does remarkably well since you know he’s acting with a bunch of green screen.  I do find it a bit hammed up myself, but it’s intentionally done that way to fit in with the tone of the rest of the film.  

The best part of the film, however, remains J Jonah Jameson, and the outlandish, nonsensical world of the Daily Bugle.  JK Simmons’s comedic timing is amazing, and I can’t say enough good things about it.  The scenes at the Daily Bugle are the one part of the film that doesn’t seem 

Other Thoughts

I don’t think MJ is once called MJ in the film, it’s always Mary Jane.  Which often makes it sound like they’re talking about pot, which is kind of funny to me. 

Speaking of MJ, her play is The Importance of Being Earnest, which endearing since it’s Oscar Wilde’s story about telling the truth. 

Daniel Dae Kim of Lost fame has a cameo in this film! Interestingly, he had a cameo in the Hulk film as well...  Coincidence?  I mean, yeah probably. 

Hey, there’s a Dr. Strange mention! It’s kinda weird when these films mention other Marvel properties.  

Shout out to the random horror film-esque sequence of Doc Ock becoming a thing.  There are some neat shots wrapped up in that sequence. 

Aunt May is paying a kid named Henry Jackson $5 to move all her shit.  I know she’s poor, but damn, that’s pretty nice of a nine-year-old.  

There’s a lady that plays the old 60s Cartoon theme on the violin.  I appreciate that. 

You know, I’ll admit, I like the cheesy ending of this film, with MJ just running from her wedding to Peter.  It’s ridiculous, but it’s the one scene of this romance story I really enjoy.  

Final Thoughts: Still a good film, and yes, best film of the ones I’ve seen so far.  It’s just so dreary though.  I’m getting ready for that classic MCU fun to kick in. 

Next Up: Oh, time to finish up that Blade Trilogy. 

#marvel movie nights

[morebedsidebooks]

LGBTQ+ Characters in Comics from the 20th century I like

It’s June, Pride is here and rainbow colours are everywhere. So, I figured I’d be a little retrospective and share a short list of LGBTQ+ characters in comics from the 20th century I have a soft spot for. I’ve organized these by date of the characters first appearing but, happily most are still having stories written about them today.

Let’s start with three ladies from DC: 

Catwoman

Catwoman, specifically Selina Kyle has been around comics for a long time, nearly as long as the turbulence of her relationship with Batman. Though, Bruce isn’t they only character she has involved herself with over the years. I’ve got my share of comics featuring this fierce lady of many lives and antiheroine, including part of the New 52 run by Genevieve Valentine a few years back where her bisexuality was acknowledged as canon. Though, it was the film adaptation Batman Returns in 1992 with Michelle Pfieffer that blew me away when I was young. And remains, I think the most iconic Catwoman costume, which you can see in 4K now. Hear her roar.

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman is another longstanding character and probably the most popular female superhero. I had comics as a child with Diana along with watching the sometimes campy 1970s TV series with Lynda Carter. Perhaps even more interesting than the Amazonian warrior herself is the passions of one of her creators William Marston and the themes of those earliest comics. (I’d suggest the book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peters Comics 1941-1948.) And of course, also the controversy over a strong heroine standing on her own sparked by Fredic Wertham in Seduction of the Innocent.

Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy, or Pamela Isely with her sexual agency and connection to the Green, who admittedly may go about fighting for the environment as well as for women or children in the wrong way sometimes, is my top female character from American comics period. After again some rough treatment in comics recently, I wrote this year about her origins since 1966. Most people these days probably can’t think of Ivy without Harley, since it’s been 20 years since their first meeting in comics (longer for other mediums) but, these gals have a relationship that isn’t monogamous and has had it’s on again off again points too. (And note to DC maybe get it together on just how you define it since you waffle a bit hmm?)

 Taku and Venomm

Black Panther was one of the few Marvel comics characters whose stories I’ve wound up reading. (My mum had this thing against some comics and one of my older brothers mainly passed on DC issues to me.) The Jungle Action installments written by Don McGregor are to this day still memorable. And part of that should be due also to Taku and Venomm (Horatio Walters), the latter first appearing in the “Panther’s Rage” arc. Though, it would take time for the open acknowledgement of this example of early gay characters in comics. Sexuality outside the heterosexual among other topics was taboo in the 1970s yet, McGregor managed with a collection of artists to bring a vision of Wakanda focusing largely on its black inhabitants and difficult social issues in the world to publication.

 Juli Bauernfeind

I read The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio about boys at a German boarding school when I was 21. Juli was a character I connected to and the story had a profound effect on me. And I bawled my eyes out. It still makes me cry and is still one of the best comics I’ve ever come across. I reviewed the English edition a few years back. As well as wrote a post on the French bisexual author Roger Peyrefitte whose novel was adapted into a film which inspired Hagio.

 John Constantine

Full of politics, call it dark with a dose of nihilism but, Hellblazer with John Constantine is just damn good. Sometimes the world is awful, people are awful, you’re awful and well yeah everything is going to hell. Constantine is pretty much dreadful for the women he’s often involved with, or well anybody really. It was in the early 90s readers were first clued into the history of his love life made up of girlfriends and boyfriends. And can we fail to recall the later S. W. Manor from Ashes & Dust: In the City of Angels, one of the most visceral takes thru a character that is basically a stand in for Bruce Wayne, and his twisted relationship with John? I’m not. It’s been a strange trip over the years some adaptations really glossing over his sexuality. Though of late handling this aspect of his character appears to have gotten better.

 Stormer and Kimber 

The madcap Jem and the Holograms was one of my favourite cartoons as a child in the 80s. I even had some of the dolls and cassette tapes. Stormer aka Mary Phillips part of the Misfits was the rock star I loved the most. Dedicated to music and actually quite sweet with the optimum blue hair. I had to try the colour myself. The episode where she teams up with Kimber after both have differences with their respective bandmates is a classic. So, it was truly outrageous when the series was revived in 2015 in comic book form by Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell, and the Stormer and Kimber relationship that had been brewing came fully out for fans. (Btw the comic also added a new character, Blaze who is a trans woman and girlfriend of Misfit’s fan Clash.)

  Ash Lynx and Eiji Okamura

It’s been interesting to experience Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida in different ways from first encountering the comic when I was a teenager, picking it up again in my twenties, and yet again the animated TV series last year. I wrote about the comic and first few episodes of the 2018 adaptation when it was airing. Though, I haven’t posted much more on it because there’s a tiny percentage of its fandom I want to avoid, as well as 30+ years on the series is still— pain. This one is a tragedy folks. However, it also has a beautiful healing love story and touched on a variety of hot button issues that are sadly still relevant today. My love for these two teen characters in a gritty USA will live forever.

  Chihaya and Kagetsuya

I’ve written before how the sci-fi title Earthian was what introduced and endeared respect for m/m comics from Japan for me. The art style of Yun Kouga has changed a bit over the years, nevertheless still stands out from the crowd. And Earthian with a taboo love between androgynous male angels remains my favourite of her work.

Michiru Kaiô and Haruka Tennô

Sailor Moon has become a multimedia sensation and is beloved around the world. Many kids and even adults of all sorts in the 90s will remember it in one form or another and cite it as an influence for pursuing careers in all sorts of creative fields. Along with countless fans recognizing or discovering something of themselves in the characters. There are several different characters for rep in the series. But particularly for me Michiru and Haruka were an opportunity in a very anti-LGBTQ+ climate (their relationship was even refashioned as being cousins when brought out in English for the first time) to nevertheless see such a loving, positive relationship.

Tomoyo Daidôji

Love is a theme the creative team CLAMP revisits and revisits and Cardcaptor Sakura is the magical girl comic series with a theme on all different forms. It is one of the first all ages titles from Japan that I will recommend to people. (Despite fyi containing a whopping four student-teacher relationships. Not the purpose of this post to go into right now though.) The best friend to Sakura, Tomoyo is one of my favourite characters. Always supportive, maybe a bit alarming popping out of bushes or other spots with her camera at the ready to catch either Sakura’s everyday life or battles, and possessing boundless fashion sense. (Btw, there are other characters in the series that are or could be interpreted as examples for my list as well. Sakura among them.)

  Isabella Yamamoto

Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa, a sequel of sorts to one of the huge girls’ comics titles of the 1990s Gokinjo Monogatari, introduced a group of teenagers on the verge of graduating, some with an idea of what to do with their lives and others questioning the path they’ve so far taken. Isabella from an affluent background but, who struggled for acceptance from her family or nearly anyone until she was gifted a handmade dress by her childhood friend George (who is Bi btw), studies pattern drafting at the same art school as Gokinjo Monogatari. The most mature of the main cast, refined, always listening and offering a cup of tea, she achieves her dream career and self-actualization in fashion. Since I have a degree in fashion design, I have to agree that clothes are so much more than just something we wear.

#lgbtq characters #comics #catwoman #wonder woman #poison ivy #taku #venomm #juli bauernfeind #john constantine #stormer #kimber benton #ash lynx #eiji okumura #chihaya #kagetsuya #michiru kaiô #haruka tennô #tomoyo daidôji #isabella yamamoto

[thecollectorsector]

Did you know...

That Danzig’s classic logo:

Was originally designed and created for a Marvel comic book cover?

Crystar

Today, not many comic book fans remember the Marvel character Crystar. This relatively obscure 80s character was originally created and developed for a line of toys. Crystar was a crystalline warrior who came from the world known as Crystallium-where everything was made of crystal and most characters had bad, rock-themed pun names like Ogeode, Feldspar or Stalax. Marvel Comics later created a Crystar comic book to accompany and promote Remco’s Crystar toyline. This is one of Michael Golden’s many classic comic book covers and is probably recognizable to any die-hard Danzig fan. I doubt Michael Golden imagined when he first created this cover, that someday one aspect of this image would be the identifying symbol of a major band. I’ve always wondered if Michael Golden receives any kind of compensation or recognition for creating the original comic cover that formed the basis of that now famous and highly-merchandised Danzig logo.

Marvel partnered with the now-defunct toy company Remco to produce a comic book series to expand the Crystar line of action figures and playsets. This was a common practice in the 70s and 80s. Marvel had also found success with such toy/comic crossovers like the Shogun Warriors, Micronauts and ROM: Spaceknight line of toys. Since the storytelling abilities of the toy industry were so limited, many toy companies benefited by having a comic book expand upon the characters and universe of a limited toy line. Companies like Marvel benefitted by having a large captive audience of kids who were familiar with the toys but would never have bought a comic book otherwise. This would not be the last time Marvel would create a comic series to promote a line of toys. G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers and even the beloved Secret Wars line of toys were all popular toy lines that Marvel published comic books to accompanying and promote. He-Man actually had the rare distinction of being one of the only toy lines to have a promotional comic book published by both Marvel and D.C. Toy companies like Remco used to view comic books as an advertising mechanism to draw in new kids while also being a cheap, easy way to create new characters that could eventually become new toys.

The Punk Connection

I’ve always loved the Misfits and by extension Glenn Danzig. Back in my punk days, The Misfits were always my favorite band, usually tied with the Dead Kennedys and the Germs (but I also loved T.S.O.L, the Buzzcocks, The Adicts, Crass and Minor Threat). As a fan of classic horror, sci-fi, and monster movies, I always appreciated The Misfits’ and Danzig’s use of horror and sci-fi imagery in their lyrics and album art. That was actually one of the things that I loved about the Misfits above all other bands; the imagery. All that Vincent Price and Plan 9 imagery really appealed to a kid like me. When I was a punk, comic books were the last thing on my mind. I hadn’t read or collected comics in years by that point. So I never made the connection between Danzig and comic books, despite being aware of Crystar as a character. I remember owning several issues of the Crystar Marvel series as a kid. After all, I am a child of the late 80s and early 90s who grew up owning many toys from some of the most iconic toy lines of the 80s. I was initially surprised that Glenn Danzig would show an interest in comics and co-opt the cover of a Marvel comic book series that targeted kids and was designed to promote a corresponding toy line. That fact is even more surprising looking at some of his later, solo-era imagery and lyrics.

Looking at that kind of album art, I don’t know why anyone would be surprised Danzig digs comics. As it turns out, Glenn Danzig has been into comics for years. This is why he used so much of that sci-fi/horror imagery in his early days in the Misfits and borrowed themes and concepts from comic books like Crystar and Conan. The misfits often used a comic book/Lichtenstein-esque pop-art art style as evidenced in their Bullet imagery with JFK and their Horror Business album art. Danzig also chose an HR Giger painting as one of his later albums. When you compare Frazetta-era “barbarian/warrior” artwork with Danzig’s comics or album art, you can see the obvious inspiration. In the 90s, Danzig actually began publishing his own line of comic books, Verotik comics (Verotik was a portmanteau of the words “violent” and “erotic”). It would be easy to looks at some of the comic books he’s published and dismiss them as immature or sophomoric. After all, they do feature most of the things pubescent boys are into-big pecs, bigger boobs and the biggest swords. It would also be easy to view Danzig’s foray into the medium of comics as a cash grab. This was the era that outsiders and speculators were coming into the comic book field en masse. Many people who had zero interest in producing quality comics came into the field with delusions of making a fortune based on the newfound popularity of comic books.

The Bubble Goes Burst

When the comic book speculator bubble burst in the mid-to-late-90s, many of these new imprints and comic lines went under; never to return to publication. Verotik has managed to outlive Homage, Wildstorm, Continuity, Legend, Malibu, Chaos!, Caliber, Comico, Defiant, Kitchen Sink Press and Eclipse (to name a few). It’s important to remember that those were among the most acclaimed indie comic companies during the 90s comic boom. All of those companies were either bought, closed or are otherwise now defunct. While it is true Verotik published way fewer comics than most of those other companies, Verotik still publishes comics today. Glenn Danzig outlasted them all. Surprisingly, Danzig’s line of Verotik comics have been continuously published since 1994, with Glenn Danzig himself still involved. While other, more mainstream comics have been adapted into the Hollywood Blockbusters we all know, Danzig adapted one of his comics, Grub Girl, into a porno that came out in 2006. Say what you will about adapting a comic book into pornography... it shows that Danzig has found a way to maintain an almost entirely adult audience while simultaneously promoting his line of comics and spinning those characters off into another medium (film).

Mainstream comic readers have not spoken kindly about some of Verotik’s offerings. I certainly don’t like everything that Dark Horse, or Marvel, or Image publish. Many comic fans have dismissed Danzig’s line of comic books for their perceived “low quality.” However, if you go back and examine some of his earliest works, you’d be surprised by some of the names you’d recognize. Many well known, popular writers and artists of today had work published in one of Verotik’s comic books. Grant Morrison actually had a story published in the first issue of Verotika, something he never mentions. Simon Bisley contributed some really solid artwork on many Verotik comics, as did Frank Frazetta.

Some of the most iconic Frazetta artwork (beyond his legendary Conan art of course) appeared in Verotik comics. The “Death Dealer” image has come to typify the classic Frazetta “barbarian” style. The Frank Frazetta style of heavily painted Barbarian/Warrior art has almost completely disappeared from the today’s modern comics. In my opinion, Danzig and his line of Verotik comics are almost solely responsible for the preservation of that kind of 80’s barbarian/sword-and-sorcery/heavy metal comic book aesthetic. By the 90s, that genre of comic and it’s associated art style had fallen out of favor with the general public and was considered dated by many critics and fans alike. This kind of hyper-masculine Barbarian imagery existed only on the fringes of pop culture and is virtually nonexistent today. What had been an industry staple was now relegated to a tiny niche audience. Fantasy artwork like that is sorely absent from today’s comic book marketplace. Rafa Garres, Eric Canete, Liam Sharp, Arthur Suydam, Dave Stevens and Kent Williams all contributed artwork to at least one of Verotik’s many comic books. When you re-examine some of the covers to Verotik titles like Jaguar God, Valkyrie or Weird Voodoo, they still look pretty damn good even by modern standards. Painted covers like these have withstood the test of time; good writing and artwork often endures and stays relevant for years.

Legacy of Brutality (and Comic Books)

It‘s a shame that Danzig doesn’t get more recognition for his contribution to comic books from the modern comic book community. I’ve never heard anyone mention Danzig and comics in the same sentence. For a guy who’s written songs for Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, owns his own label (Plan 9), had a long history with the Misfits, found renewed success with Samhain and again with his solo project Danzig...the guy has quite a resume. Even many punks don’t know that Samhain was essentially a punk supergroup, since their debut album featured former members of Minor Threat, Rosemary’s Babies and Reagan Youth. To switch gears entirely and begin writing and publishing comics shows how seriously he took his interest in comic books. He never compromised his artistic integrity and made exactly the kind of comics and music he wanted. Whether you personally like the results or not, you should respect that kind of commitment and discipline. It’s unfortunate for Danzig since many people in the punk/metal community would mock his comic book pursuits, and the comic industry often resents outsiders coming into the field from another medium, he rarely gets recognition from either community.

His contribution to music cannot be understated and his foray into comics cannot be dismissed as a mere cash grab or way to stay relevant. He put his money where his mouth was and was willing to invest his own money and time into his life-long love of comics. I honestly wish more people would do that. Danzig teamed with some of the best fantasy comic artists in the field at the time and wrote many of Verotik’s comics himself. He is also a graphic artist in his own right who is known to do sketches at signings and conventions. Danzig has created music for over 41 years and for 24 years he has also been involved in the production of comic books. That alone makes you a pretty cool guy in my book. His comics are about as “creator owned” as it gets and in that 24 years he has made the kinds of comics that he wants to make. You can’t dismiss that kind of artistic determination. For a guy who has always been known as the “Heavy Elvis” of punk music, his artistic portfolio is surprisingly diverse. Danzig should be accepted by the comic book community as being every bit as worthy of inclusion as any other, more accepted comic book creators.

Don’t sleep on @therealglenndanzig-blog, the dude might just surprise you.

-AG

#glenn danzig #crystar #comic writer #marvel comics #comics #comic art #comic books #did you know #punk rock #misfits #urban legend #article #comic book artifacts #fantasy #swords and sorcery #fun facts #random facts #horror #sci fi #frank frazetta #dave stevens #samhain #the misfits #comicmemes #comicart #comic book art #michael golden #factoid #its the truth

[rustbeltsinologist]

Final Fantasy IX Review

Am I the only person who didn't like playing Final Fantasy IX? I just finished it and I gotta say it's the second worst in the series of the ones I've played so far. So far I've played 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 15. But everywhere I look on Steam, Youtube, and Reddit, this game is absolutely beloved and cherished by some as the best in the entire series. There are, broadly speaking, a few major types of Final Fantasy games: story heavy vs customization heavy, 2D vs 3D, fully customizable characters vs set character jobs, turn-based vs action RPG, etc. There are the best and worst games in each of those categories. For me, 9 was the worst of the PS1 generation and only second to FFII as the worst FF I've ever played so far. I don't know if the MMO's (11 and 14) are really includable in these discussions because those are just a totally different kind of gaming experience. There is a difference between saying a "least favorite" and a "worst" game, and this one is definitely one of the worst, not worth calling a "least favorite." This game is actually bad in my opinion.

First, I will get the good out of the way because obviously it's not all terrible and I understand that many people love this game. If I grew up in the late '80s to early '90s playing the original NES and SNES FF games, I can see how 9 would seem like a loving tribute and last hurrah to the classic style after seeing how much 7 and 8 changed up the franchise so much. The best parts of this game, to me, were the characters Quina and Steiner for comic relief, and Vivi's story. In gameplay, I guess I enjoyed grabbing blue magic spells from enemies for Quina and beating some of the tougher bosses. The movie cutscenes were very good quality for an original Playstation game. But that's about where it stops for me.

The bad: battles are too slow, designs are unappealing to look at, most of the main cast of characters are unlikable, and the equipment-based ability learning system is just the worst to grind through. The amount of time it takes from the start of a random encounter to when you can actual do anything in combat is too long. After that, some of the battle animations from enemies are way too long, and when you fight three of them at a time who all cast the same 20-second long spell every turn, you're in for a long battle. Leveling up is easy in this game, and you can reach your desired level with little grinding, but the real big kicker in this game is the ability learning system. You have to learn new spells, upgrades, and abilities by equipping the right items and then grinding with them for AP. The problem with this is that some abilities can take over 100 AP to learn, and you usually can't earn more than 3 AP per random encounter. Boss fights dole out more, but on your first run through this game good luck with being able to predict and plan all that out ahead of time. I spent a good 10+ hours of my playthrough of this long, long game just trying to gain AP for abilities. That's too much. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I think that even FFVIII's junction system was better than this because at least it didn't take tens of hours to utilize properly.

Regarding the art style, I just cannot get past it. For me, this was not a Wind Waker effect. I do not enjoy the aesthetics of this game after some time. Specifically I do not like Zidane's giant hair, Vivi's overly bulky clothes, Steiner's armor shorts, and the fact that you can see Dagger's buttocks the entire time you play the game. It's like they made everyone's head too big and smushed everyone down into hamburgers in this game. I get that it was supposed to be a stylized 3D version of the older 2D sprites, but this did not look good to me. The Nintendo DS remakes of 3-6 in 3D did a better job with that attempt, I think. I can't be the only one who doesn't like the visual style even after all this time, can I? It seems that every glowing review acknowledges that they are perhaps unappealing but that they don't care and eventually it grew on them. That never happened to me.

I sat through this game because I thought that it has to get better at some point. It's gotta pick up eventually, right? Some other Final Fantasy games are way better in the latter half or final third, but this one did not satisfy.

#ffix #final fantasy 9 #final fantasy ix #ff9 #psx games #psx #psone #playstation #jrpg #jrpg games #final fantasy

[aion-rsa]

Animorphs: The Challenges of Adapting the Books into Graphic Novels

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If you were alive in the ’90s, you know the name Animorphs. The sci-fi book series following the adventures of a group of kids who fight a race of invading aliens using the power to morph into animals has continued to has remained a pop culture mainstay even after it finished its run in 2001. It earned a fanbase the world over which to this day still discusses the series in detail.  And for 20 years, fans have had their own images of the series in their heads, imagining what the epic battles and deep characters looked like beyond the page.

This made Chris Grine’s job exceptionally difficult.

An Eisner-nominated comic book author and illustrator, Grine was given the opportunity to adapt the much beloved books into multiple graphic novels and was met with a mountain of a challenges. How could he adapt the story without including the internal narration of the novels? Should the new covers match the iconic original covers? What’s the right way to draw an Andalite? And biggest of all, how would he handle the first Tobias focus book which has long stretches of the character, stuck in the body of a hawk, talking to himself?

We spoke with Grine after the second graphic novel was announced to discuss all these challenges and more.

DEN OF GEEK: One of the bigger elements I noticed about the graphic novel is the cover. The original book covers are very iconic. Now though the morph is on the top and the main image is one from the story. For the first graphic novel, you had the shot of the kids watching the spaceship crash. With book two, it’s Rachel unmorphed. What made Scholastic go with the decision to not completely focus the cover on the morphs?

CHRIS GRINE: That was a very long ongoing conversation between several of us there. I was pretty pro nostalgia on that. I thought we should definitely not stray too far from what the original covers look like. Even if that meant just fully illustrating the character morphing, or in similar stages like the original covers. But they ultimately decided that they didn’t want to necessarily be too beholden to that. Since this was a new generation of kids that are literally coming up with these books, they decided to go with what would be considered more of a traditional cover design nowadays. But we definitely kept the morph along the top, which I thought was a really good idea by the designer, Phil Falco, who was working closely with me. 

I must’ve done like 30, 35 sketch ideas for the cover. We were back and forth for months trying to figure out what the trade dress was going to look like. It was the most important obviously for the first book, because that sets the tone for the entire series. We listened to just about everybody’s perspective and ideas. Everybody was allowed; anybody who had an idea could bring it to the table and we’d weigh it, discuss it. A lot of thought went into that cover.

One of the things that I really liked about the comic was that you drew the characters to really look like kids. Even though original books made it clear they were kids, the cover models on the old books always made me think they were older. Was it a conscious decision to go, “Okay, I’m going to make sure that these look like kids?”

Yeah, it was. I have two kids and my daughter is the oldest. She just turned 13, literally like a week ago. So I have a pretty good idea of where her head’s at. I see them playing with their friends and everything so I tried to keep that in mind. 

So I didn’t want the (Animorphs) kids to look too old because they were supposed to be in middle school. It’s kind of ambiguous, but I know that they’re supposed to be like 12 to 13. It was important to me that I got that part right. The danger just felt way more real when the kids were younger. 

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The graphic novel is set in the ’90s, but it also does feel time agnostic in a way where, okay, it is in the nineties, but if you are a kid now, it doesn’t really take you out of it by making it a ’90s period piece. How do you tow this line?

Well, I think that was a conversation we definitely had. Is this going to be contemporary? Or are we going to try to set this in the ’90s? And I think right from the beginning, we were all pretty much unanimous that it should be set in the ’90s. If for no other reason then things like cellphones. Like, if all the kids had cellphones in Stranger Things, it would have been one episode.

But even though it’s the ’90s, it feels like it’s timeless to an extent like you said. Just removing so much technology from it kind of does that on its own. It works surprisingly well. I thought there was going to be a little bit more pushback maybe from fans who wanted it to be updated a little bit. I did remove some of the pop culture references that were in the books just because they were so specific. I still thought they were funny because I got them since I was getting ready to go to college in the late ’90s when these books came out. I was very much in the pop culture at that time. But nowadays, I mean, David Letterman references and things like that? No kid is going to know what that is. I didn’t want [kids] to be thrown out of the story because they weren’t getting the references.

That’s completely understandable. It reminds me of when they did the re-releases of the first few books back in the early 2010s where they tried to take out as many references as possible.

I definitely noticed that, too. I have the original versions of the books and then they sent me copies of the re-releases because I wanted to be able to write notes and highlight stuff and everything, and just kind of write right in there. They definitely took out a lot of the references. Some of them were updated and they felt like, I don’t know, a little too forced maybe. I think it would have been better if they had just left them more ambiguous, like, instead of being on The David Letterman Show, we could have been on a late night talk show or something.

When doing your research for the graphic novels, are you desperately flipping through to find every description for the series’ aliens to make sure they’re consistent? The first few books are a little shaky in terms of what everything looks like. There are also those posters they released later in the books run with pictures of all the aliens, too.

Yeah, I am. Especially for the first book, I took a lot of time to just do research. Even getting involved in some fan fiction type stuff and fan art. After 25 years, there’s still so much fan art coming out all the time. It’s pretty easy to see what fans’ ideas of what these characters look like. What has stuck along the way. So that was stuff that I really used to inform the way I designed everything. But then there was things like Seerowpedia.

The Animorphs wiki, yeah.

People have broken down every single book on there, like to a point where it’s ridiculous what they’ve done. But it’s so incredibly helpful for what I’m doing because there’s even sections on there that focus on inconsistencies and it has a list of things that were inconsistent from books before or books that came after. That was really good for me to see because it’s allowed me to fix a few things as we go.

Yeah, I noticed that even in the first volume, where you fixed one of the most famous inconsistencies with Jake thought speaking to Tobias even though he’s not morphed.

There were so many people who had pointed that out. Number one on the inconsistencies list on book one. That was really easy for me to fix. There was another thing with the descriptions of the aliens. One of those things that I found luckily in time was the way Andalites were described. So I had basically inked the whole book, right? I was fully in color mode and people on Twitter were like, “Well, which version of Andalites did you go with?” I had no idea what they were talking about.

I come to find out that there’s the version of the Andalite that looks a little bit more like a centaur with like a regular horseback. And then there’s the version that has more of an arch back that kind of goes from about mid back, up. It makes it hard for them to be ridden, because that was something that was talked about later but that’s not in book one.

So that was something that the fans actually pointed out, and maybe they don’t realize how much they helped me with that. It helped side step some people who maybe would have been upset that I didn’t do it right. Then if I had changed it later in the later books, then it would have been inconsistent on my end. 

You’ve mentioned you’ve been contracted to do the first three books. Do you hope to do all 50-plus books if it came to that?

Oh my God. I would like to. My goal for now is just like, I would love it if I could just get the first 10 books. I mean, at some point, I’m 45 years old, so at some point, I can’t do all 54 books, right? I’d be in my 80s or 90s. I love what I’m doing. I feel so kind of blessed to be part of this fandom now and kind of accepted. I just really enjoy these books.

Normally, I’d do my own stories. I prefer that, but in this situation I’m really, really loving the interaction and the stories themselves. And the original authors, Katherine [Applegate] and Michael [Grant], have just been wonderful to work with. The few times I’ve gotten to hang out with them even virtually, it’s just been a pleasure. 

So if I could get to like 10 books, that to me would be great. If I could get more than that, then that’s fine, too. But I think a nice round number like that would be pretty cool.

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The first graphic novels are already pretty thick, but I’m just imagining how thick would a Megamorphs or an Andalite Chronicles comic be?

Oh my gosh. What I’ve noticed is once you get past about book seven or eight and maybe a little before, the page counts drop. They go down to about 170 pages or 160 some pages on average. And there’s a lot of filler. They started bringing ghost writers. There was just lots of scenes. There’d be entire chapters talking about, “Hey, remember that time when we met Visser Three at the construction site? Oh yeah. And you did this.” There’s so much of that stuff that I just skipped right over.

So the first book was 230 pages. My book, the graphic novel, and the second book clocked in at about 201 pages. I’m guessing that’s probably the sweet spot for most of them now. Probably somewhere between like 190, 200. It doesn’t feel too scary. When I start getting sub 200 pages, I start feeling a little better.

Right, and Scholastic doesn’t necessarily have to adapt every single book. I’m sure somebody out there will say, “No book 27 is my favorite book,” but not every book is critically important. To get the main plot points you could do…  I’ll arbitrarily say at most two-thirds of the books.

Right. There’s even some books that I believe could probably just be adapted into one book because there’s so little actual connective tissue that you could have maybe two or three books combined in the one. But I don’t even know how we go about that because I assume you’d have to re-title the book. I don’t know. But yeah, there are options. Scholastic definitely has options. They could also do what they did with The Baby-Sitters Club and have multiple artists working on them.

I’ve had people say that about Animorphs and I’m instantly hurt. I shouldn’t be, but I’m like, “No, no more artists right now. Damn it. This is mine.” I love this. I don’t want to share just yet. I’m not at the point where I’m ready to share.

You’ve got to at least get through Ax’s first book, then you’ve covered all the main characters.

Yeah. And that’s what I’ve been saying. I’m going to be really disappointed if I don’t get to do books four and five. I’m going to be super disappointed.

Looking forward, you’ve found a lot of ways to get around the internal narration because that’s such a big part of the books. But coming up in book three you’ve got a Tobias book and he’s by himself a lot. How do you deal with long stretches where characters are just thinking?

Yeah, and I was thinking, that is going to be a terrible book. I had to figure out a way to make that interesting because I can’t just have a character constantly talking to themselves the whole book. He’s already doing thought speech to others, then internal thought speech to himself. I’m afraid it’s going to be confusing and it could get boring. I don’t want to lose the thread. So what I did visually, I grabbed a few panels from book one and two that I’d already finished up, just Tobias, whether he was on a branch or whatever when he’s a bird. I was just messing around with the panels themselves, trying to figure out, “Okay, how can I do this? Is there like a clever way I could pull this off simpler?”

I kind of figured it out, at least for now, and this could completely change, but I basically took the selection tool and I selected one half of the panel, kind of in a jagged selection. Then I went in and threw a color over that. So it would be almost like color grading on a movie or something. Just on half of it. 

And so there could be a word in blue in the full color art, where maybe he’s talking to somebody or maybe he’s thinking something, but then in the same panel, but in the part that I had colored coded he’s almost having, not like split personality type of a thing, but having an internal conversation. I thought it might be a way of showing that he’s talking to himself. It seemed like it was working in the images that I did, but we’ll have to see. I’m still a little nervous about getting to book three because of that.

You made it work in the first graphic novel. You had the scene with Jake when he morphs into the lizard and you frame it as he’s telling the story to the other kids. So that works well there, it’s just getting to do that for a whole book. You can’t just have Tobias say, “Guys, I had a really rough morning. I was thinking some deep thoughts.”

And he’s had so many thoughts I don’t think he would even share with the other kids, right? About just his new reality and about maybe being slightly in love with that other Hawk or just having a personal crisis. That’s not something I’m going to be able to take care of just in dialogue alone. So I’m going to definitely have to figure that out.

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This has been looming like a dark cloud over me since I started book one. Knowing that book three is very important to a lot of people and for a lot of really good reasons. I don’t want to mess that one up too badly, so I’m going to have to figure it out.

Stay tuned for the second part of this interview where Grine will break down his process in adapting a scene from second graphic novel. The Visitor (Animorphs Graphic Novel #2) is now up for pre-order on Amazon.

The post Animorphs: The Challenges of Adapting the Books into Graphic Novels appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[punchlinesf]

The Punch Line and The Pit Bull

Bobby Slayton: (Picks Up Phone) You're 3 minutes late. It's 2:03. If you're 3 minutes late every day, eventually that's over 20 minutes late a week which is over 1,000 minutes a year that you wasted of my time. I'm a busy guy. I don't have time to waste.

That's actually the abbreviated version of how the infamously sharp-tongued comedian answered the phone. There was no attempt at a compulsory greeting. He was immediately (and hilariously) ranting, raving and calling me out on my tardiness. Slayton is one of the few comics that was both around at Punch Line's inception in 1978, and who has routinely performed here yearly since. Taking his lead, I didn't even attempt to slow things down and introduce myself. I just played along...   

Ronn Vigh: So, is this why you're known as "The Pitbull of Comedy?" 

BS: Well, Alex Bennett came up with that. He was a big SF radio guy in the 80s and 90s. He really was the first guy in the country to have comics on the radio and I was the first guy. Then one day, I lost the radio station a big account they had with McDonalds because I made an innocuous little joke about them. Who even knows what it was. That was when Bennett told me, "Slayton, you're like a pitbull. You bite the hand that feeds you." It just stuck.

RV: And, so you've been-------- 

BS: I don't really like it anymore. I told my people to take it off my website. So, what are we doing here? What's this for anyway? 

RV: Well, this is for Punch Line San Francisco's comedy blog. Since you're hosting our 40th anniversary celebration shows, I really wanted to get the chance to talk to you comic-to-comic and hear about the early days of our beloved club and how things have progressed or regressed over the last 40 years. 

BS: Yea, well when it started, the place was a real dump! There was a big club just next door - The Old Waldorf. Where the Punch Line is now was kind of the back stage area when there was a show. It was a beat up shitty bar with a big pool table. One Embarcadero wasn't even built yet, there wasn't action downtown, it was pretty dead. Jon Fox started doing comedy there first and he used me a lot and Bruce Balm, George Wallace, Elayne Boosler, we were all coming up and around then.... but it wasn't a nice place. I was kind of embarrassed. 

RV: We're you simply living in the moment and doing gigs at the club because they were available to you? Or, did you recognize early on that the place was a diamond in the rough?

BS: Yea.... I had started doing comedy about a year before that and was kind of the house MC. I was so embarrassed by the joint. There were plastic sheets nailed to the ceiling, old beat up couches with nails coming out of the side, the microphone was mounted from the ceiling and would fall down during the show. The place was a fucking wreck. The guy running the place was such a cheap fuck. So, I went out and bought movie posters, posters of old time comics and tried to make it look decent. When Bill Graham took it over, he finally put some money into it. 

RV: I technically started comedy in New York. However, Punch Line has been highly influential in my development as a comic during the 2000's. It sounds like it was both the infancy of your career and the club when you were performing here regularly. How do you think it has influenced your career? 

BS: When Old Waldorf was next door, they were paying like 25 or 50 dollars a set at both places and Dana Carvey, Kevin Pollak and I worked the rooms the most. You would go up before the band, then over to the Punch Line and back to the band and then back to the club for the late show. By the last show, between the booze and probably the coke too, I'd be on my ninth set and forgot what the hell I talked about already. But, that's what got me good.... getting a lot of stage time. It was kill or be killed. It was really very good training! 

RV: So, your career has spanned 4 decades. Being the "Pitbull of Comedy" that you are, have you found it harder or easier to do your act in more recent years? 

BS: It's really much harder now. You think at this point audiences would be better trained but the attention span of millennials is that of a fucking fly. 

RV: Yes but with the current political and social climate, do you think people tend to have more knee-jerk reactions rather than just listening to the material as a whole? 

BS: All they hear are buzzwords. Holocaust. Autism. AIDS. Then they are quick to judge and get all caught up in a fucking bandwagon. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't name any of The Beatles then you should be dead. And then the millennials will complain, "Oh well The Beatles were before my time." It's like fuck you! George Washington was before my time and I still know that he's on the fucking one dollar bill. 

RV: Do you think social media and sites like YouTube have ruined the live stand-up comedy experience? 

BS: I never liked social media. I tweet once a week and I lose followers once a week. I don't give a shit anymore. The whole game has changed. You had guys like (Don) Rickles and dozens of comics in the 60s who would go on stage in 3 or 4 piece suits, jacket and ties... Now it wouldn't even matter. Everyone is a slob, in dirty shorts. Flip flops. It's disgusting now. It was a different time, a different era. 

RV: In all 40 years, what are your best memories of performing at Punch Line? 

BS: Robin Williams stopping by all the time and a lot of hot waitresses.  

RV: I've heard stories of Robin popping in a lot. Though, I've also heard this club referred to as "The House That Bobby Built." 

BS: You know where that comes from, right? 

RV: Um. (Long Pause) I'm afraid to tell you no. 

BS: Didn't you say you were from the fucking East Coast? It comes from Babe Ruth. Yankee Stadium. The house that Ruth built. Listen, I don't know if I contributed that much to the long term success. I was certainly a part of it and so was Dana Carvey, Kevin Pollak, Jon Fox, Bill Graham. It really was a big group effort. 

It will certainly be a group effort again as we celebrate our 40th anniversary throughout October. Bobby Slayton is coming back to MC a series of shows featuring comics that have helped shape our club throughout its 40 years of serving up live comedy. 

Bobby Slayton & Friends 40th Anniversary Celebration At Punch Line San Francisco on Oct 11, 12, 13. One show Thursday. 2 Shows on Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $25 - $30.