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imdoingthismspaintadventure · 4 years

Text

In which we overkill a bird

Dave: Get a towel or something!

Dave: Don’t panic and carry a towel

What in the jesus cartwheeling fuck is this?

Is that a pimp person-sized puppet hanging in front of the door?

Why

You head out to get a TOWEL from the bathroom across the hall. You glance at one of the many RADICAL PUPPETS in your BRO'S collection and nod in approval.

The fact that Dave sees them as awesome is disturbing

Also a contrast to how both John and Rose clearly hate the respective hobbies of their parents.

Is there anything not awesome about your BRO? No, you think not.

Meanwhile Dave here is learning wrong things from his bro about life

.......

I’m not even gonna ask

You enter the bathroom. There's a damp towel on the floor you can probably use for this crisis. You stop to pay a little respect to one of your BRO'S boys up there. Hey lil' man. How's it hangin'?

NO DON’T BRING ATTENTION TO IT YOU FUCK

Why is it in the shower?

Dave: Captchalogue damp towel.

God I had forgoten how incredibly awful his captalogue thing was. I still think Rose’s one is probably worse.

You take the DAMP TOWEL (2+1+2+2 + 2+1+2+1+2 = 15 % 10 = 5), expelling the BOX (2+1+2 = 5 % 10 = 5).

You have to be quite a wordsmith to use this one though.

Dave: Search the bathroom for something slightly less damp.

Nah, you just decide to wring this towel out into the toilet to make it less damp. It is now just a TOWEL (2+1+2+1+2 = 8 % 10 = 8).

Or you could also do this kind of bullshit.

That works too.

Dave: Take towel.

You take the TOWEL, and grab the BOX again while you're at it.

I like when things work out, instead of spending 50 pages wrestling with our inventory : )

SO now we have the blue box, the katana and the towel. Nice.

I can still see that thing on the corner of the image why

Dave: Clean up the juice.

PROGRESS : D

You CLEAN (2+2+1+1+2 = 8) up the juice with the TOWEL and hang the damp BETA ENVELOPES on your line to dry off.

Really clever use of CLEAN (8) with TOWEL (8). When this one works it is awesome

...

nonononono

FAN, DON’T YOU DARE FUCK US OVER!!!

You were the tool for our decisive victory in an adventure past, our giding light! Don’t betray us now! Why are you working so well now of all times??

In the breeze of the FAN, the betas jostle near the OPEN WINDOW. This arrangement is a little disconcerting. If they fell out, it sure would be a stupid way to lose them.

....They are totally gonna fall

Dave: Turn off the fan.

....really???

Everything ....worked out well??

The crisis is easily averted. You can't imagine it will ever resurface later in any way, shape, or form. That beta is as good as yours, forever.

What is gonna happen to make us lose it? Because I can just smell some bullshit coming. No way doing things in a simple way doesn’t have terrible consequences

==>

You should probably go pester Egbert again. You wonder if he found the beta yet. You also might chat about your respective SYLLADICES and FETCH MODI, if the topic happens to come up. You wonder if he is anywhere near as smooth with his sylladex as you are. Probably not. It's probably not even humanly possi...

Oh god it cut off

What the fuck is going to happen when I click the next page, I am afraid.

...

WHAT

WHAT THE FUCK

A CROW????

I give up ever predicting anything in this comic.

This is a dangerously absurd level of shenanigans, right now on display. What in the feathery fuck is a crow doing near your apartment window, where the fuck do you live, Dave??

Suddenly a RAMBUNCTIOUS CROW flies in the open window and snatches the beta, possibly to make a nest with, or maybe just for the sake of being a brainless feathery asshole. You yell at the bird.

This just sounds like a pissed off DM screwing your player character.

It’s kinda amazing.

I think I said before that these kids made dumb choices but I feel like even if you made all the right choices, the universe would just do some bullshit like this to keep you on your toes. A crow grabbed the betas, your argument is invalid.

OH FUCK THIS WAS COOL AS HELL

Weaponized words, yeeted swords

yes

Holy shit we just murderized the fuck out of that bird, with extreme prejudice. Impaled with a motherfucking katana.

...And he just fell out of the window

.....well shit. At least we lost it in a waaay cooler way than I was expecting.

You accidentally launch your NINJA SWORD. Everything goes flying out the window, dead bird and all.

Someone down there is going to find a bird with a weaboo anime sword running throw its chest, and they are going to be very very confused.

==>

okay that is adorable

No one can ever know about this.

You are precious, you cool nerd.

something tells me that your bro would approve of this. If someone told me that the way they lost their sword was by impaling a fucking crow I would lose my fucking mind

Dave: Look out window.

What the fuck I was thinking it was a simple image and then merlin the fucking sorcerer jumpscared me.

Does this mean we are going back to Rose now? It seems like a good point to stop then.

....what even happened today? We murdered a crow, lost a copy, and now I have a petrified wizard that looks high as a kite in front of me

I love this comic so much

#Homestuck #homestuck liveblog #homestuck act 2 #mspaintadventures #mspaintadventures liveblog #act 2 #dave #bird #fucking birds #fatality

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locatingself · 3 years

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Colin McCahon

‘To Colin McCahon the essence of Christian Art appeared to lie in its absolute honesty. It seemed that a work of Christian Art could be produced by a man not living a Christian life and that such a work need not necessarily be good art or its subject matter be religious. McCahon came moreover to the opinion that Christian Art needed to manifest the suppression of the artist’s personality in his work, that is, an utter humility before the spirit of the work. The work hadto be honest and not “declaiming anything about the artist himself”.’30

L. Beiringa. (1975). Colin McCahon: ‘Religious’ Works 1946–52.

https://www.mccahon.co.nz/sites/all/files/Q_of_F-Part1.pdf

Artist. C. McCahon. (1950) Easter Morning. [Painting]. Auckland Art Gallery. https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/5308

‘From the end of 1946 until the early 1950s McCahon’s drawings and paintings reflected his interest in religious art. Selecting his subject matter from popularly-known biblical events and stories, he reinterpreted them in settings of contemporary New Zealand landscapes, putting emphasis on the spiritual and human values implicit in each scene.Towards the end of 1946 McCahon completed I Paul to you at Ngatimote 1946 (page 67), the first painting in which he placed a cast of biblical characters in the New Zealand countryside.

Although the landscape itself is not paramount in the painting, the titling of the work specifically situates the biblical disciple Paul in a particular New Zealand locale, a farming community on the east bank of the Motueka River near Nelson. By choosing Ngatimote – the correct spelling of which is actually Ngatimoti, and which translates as ‘belonging to’ or ‘place of’ Timothy in Maori – McCahon alludes to Paul’s Letters to Timothy in the New Testament.In this year Gordon Tovey, with whom McCahon had studied in Dunedin, was appointed National Supervisor of Arts and Crafts. A significant feature of Tovey’s directorship was his promotion of the idea that Maori art was on a par with art produced by New Zealanders of European ancestry. This recognition contributed to an already growing interest in Maori culture.

Several of the images were based on McCahon’s memory of Renaissance paintings he had seen in books and chosen for their existential human meaning. Equally, people, places and incidents observed in McCahon’s daily life functioned as triggers. To use but one example, a power-line repairman observed climbing a telegraph pole became a figure climbing a ladder leaned against the Cross in Crucifixion (For Rodney Kennedy) 1947 (page 70).’

Artist. C. McCahon. (1947) Entombment (after Titian). [Painting]. Te Papa. https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/44138

‘Colin McCahon’s interpretation of the execution of Jesus Christ on the cross borrows as much from a vernacular New Zealand setting and European Renaissance art as it does from the Bible’s high-tempo Gospel of Mark. McCahon’s plasticine-coloured hills and sky sing with primary school vibrancy. In the background, Jerusalem’s Temple curtain – which tore in two at the moment of Jesus’ death – is flung high from a simple country church. The speech balloons of Christ and those mocking him below, meanwhile, gain their sense of immediacy from the visual language of comic strips and small-town grocery store signage and packaging.’

Christchurch Art Gallery. (2020). As Time Unfolds. https://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/82-50/colin-mccahon/crucifixion-according-to-st-mark

‘While I was at Rodney’s this weekend I saw your Crucifixion painting. It struck me greatly. Not that I am a competent critic of style; but this I found very moving. A Presbyterian rather than a Catholic occurrence. I mean – rawness, Christ suffering, not Christ triumphantly Son of God. The tags of speech are surprisingly successful, recalling (a) cartoon strips and (b) stained glass windows, though there one usually sees only the names of saints.’ James K Baxter in letter

In McCahon’s work, Christianity is contextualised in NZ. This is really interesting because we are so used to seeing Christianity in Greek and Roman settings. But What I love about this is that Christianity is for every nation and is intended for all people, and so it should be linked to people, contextualised to their way of life. McCahon does this by bringing in the vernacular to these scenes . I love this because Jesus was God incarnate, and he lived a total human life - with eating, and being tired, and working for a living. Jesus lived the vernacular life, as well as the spiritual! They entertwine! One informs the other. Coming back to that spiritual linking to the physical world.

It’s also interesting to note that McCahon was influenced by poet James K Baxter, who after sobering up and becoming a Christian, felt God calling him to serve a small Maori community ‘Jerusalem’ - a Maori settlement on the Whanganui River. Baxter went there to serve the marginalised people of the region. These artists also serving people... linking to the marginalised people. showing the relevance of Christ in relationship to us in every day, and to the marginalised in society.

‘In late 1968, as a result of a dream in which he heard the call ‘Go to Jerusalem’, Baxter travelled to a Maori settlement of the same name on the Whanganui River. Here he founded a community based on a fusion of Christian and Maori spiritual values. It provided a base for marginalised people – the drug-addicts, alcoholics, unemployed and homeless whom Baxter called, in Maori, his nga mokai (‘fatherless ones’) – and a place for sanctuary and healing. Here, in 1970, he wrote what is perhaps his best-known and acclaimed poem cycle, Jerusalem Sonnets.’

The pilgrimage of these artists McCahon and Baxter from art to faith, struggles with alcoholism, to serving the marginalised - particularly Maori people in NZ is really interesting to me personally because I am increasingly having dreams that head more this direction... eventually want to live up north with my partner to serve his iwi, having recently gotten involved with some volunteering work in conjunction with Auckland city Mission we have interest in serving marginalised people. And I keep trying to think how this all fits in with being an artist/designer. It’s very cool to know that people have travelled a similar path as creatives.

C. McCahon. (1979). May His Light shine. [Painting] Cornwall Park. https://www.mccahon.co.nz/cm001517

Also interestingly, McCahon’s work - particularly this religious period of work, got absolutely shredded for being ugly and a pretentious attempt at being religious. While quite honestly some of the depictions of Jesus scare me a bit because they are rather ’plasticine’ I think McCahon had a genuine heart that wanted to link these Biblical stories to vernacular Kiwi life, and did not want to avoid suffering. Even thinking about his context - NZ in a time that was filled with poverty Post war and the hard work of the land... these subjects have a deep relevance that in our modern western comfort we think we do not need.

C. McCahon. (1970). Scared. [Painting]. Te Papa. https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/763435

‘A stark, blackboard-like image, Scared contains a brief text scrawled in white: ‘I am scared / I STAND UP’. These two phrases go to the heart of McCahon’s preoccupations: a confession of existential anxiety, couched in the most direct language, followed by a resounding declaration of courage and faith. The sense of urgency is reinforced by the script, which is hastily applied, spattering dots of white paint against the dark background.’

I love this so much. The rawness in McCahon’s work is the communication of a real faith. A wrestling that chooses to trust God regardless. the way faith infiltrates and touches all aspects of life. Someone who had failed and had doubts and struggled and chose faith regardless, and honest as every Christian should be, revealed his need for the grace of God. I also love the way McCahon uses text, this ‘typographical’ work makes me think about the link to design and the use of type to communicate.

M. Bloem, M. Browne. (2002). Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith. Craig Potton Publishing. https://www.mccahon.co.nz/questionoffaith

#maori #nz artist #spirituality #artist with biblical connection #christian art #wrestle #word painting #words

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birlcholtz · 4 years

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do you remember that week n a half when everyone cared about bittyjohnson? can we bring that back?

bitty/johnson.... the forbidden jeric ship

lol yes i do remember that it was a weird fucking time let's bring it back!!!! side note this turned into... well i'll just let you read it. can one really write about johnson without it turning into an ethical debate and a philosophical crisis rolled into one weird metaphysical narrative? i finished this after midnight which also explains the whole ethical philosophical crisis thing

johnson, as someone who is fully aware of This Whole Fictional Narrative thing before it even starts, is also an expert on eric bittle. he knows all of bitty's strengths and his cute idiosyncratic flaws and his deeper issues that are the result of childhood trauma

you can't know that much about someone without loving them at least a little. and johnson, for all his fictionality, is a person, imbued with the same liveliness and sense of self as all of the other characters in the comic, and he meets bitty and thinks oh, shit.

does john johnson know i'm writing this right now

and bitty's like wow. another intimidatingly attractive teammate. his name is john johnson. weird but okay. and he's a goalie which means he's weird too. cool i can handle this

for a while johnson wrestles with the ethics of being in love with bitty??? like bitty hasn't made the choice to share any of this information with him and he KNOWS they're fictional characters and as a result autonomy is more of a high ideal than something that's actually put into practice but isn't it best to at least give bitty a semblance of choice?

so, he plays his part. he does not reveal any information that he should not know— well, that his character should not know— johnson knows all. he knows the conversations that happen behind the scenes too, the ones that get transcribed on twitter or referred to in ask a wellies. he thinks maybe he'll get a twitter someday, if that's something he can do in-universe. just to see what it's like for himself and not have this weird extrasensory knowledge of it.

but he can't stay away from bitty, especially not when bitty seems so determined to like him (johnson knows it's probably because he's not Aggressively Hetero like ransom and holster or rude like jack or in-your-face like shitty. it's a process of elimination. but still)

and he knows that they're in a story, and he knows that the story must have some sort of goal, and bitty swings by his room one sunny afternoon and complains about unsolicited early morning checking practice with jack and johnson thinks, oh. so that's how it's going to go.

he plays his part, commiserates, encourages bitty, all with a bad taste in his mouth

and johnson expects bitty to peel away, and spend more time with jack, and open up to the rest of the team. and he does open up to everyone, but he keeps coming back to johnson, and part of johnson wants to tell him no, i'm just a filler, the team needed a goalie, don't waste your time and part of him just wants to enjoy it while he can

johnson is on the swallow's 50 most beautiful again. four years running. his face isn't in the photo. he knows he has a face, because he sees it in the mirror whenever he goes to brush his teeth, but he can never remember what it looks like. apparently these cartoon cameras can't either. and that's johnson. destined to be there while you look and gone when you turn away.

and he knows bitty sees it because holster snags a copy somewhere and reads aloud the list at team breakfast. ransom sits on holster's right and bitty sits on holster's left, and johnson sits on bitty's left and wonders where he'll be a year from now

but he will remember how bitty takes the copy of the swallow holster hands him, opened to the page with johnson's photo, and lingers on it for just a moment before passing it on, and johnson will remember that for the rest of his existence, however long that might be. especially because jack is in there too. johnson knows jack is in there too. holster has already provided his thoughts on the rankings of johnson, jack, and ransom within the 50 most, loudly and at length. but bitty doesn't flip to it. he doesn't flip through at all. just lingers on that one page and then passes it along, almost as if he doesn't care about the others

bitty likes johnson. he's weird, but he's never overbearing, he asks bitty questions about his life and actually listens to the answers, really listens, and he is thoughtful. he's also beautiful but like half the team is that doesn't make johnson special

and bitty likes how when he talks to johnson he never feels like he's out of place. he never feels like he doesn't fit in. because johnson is weird as fuck but his unabashedly *being* weird as fuck gives bitty license to be who he is, even if that's not who the rest of the team are. johnson is a paragon of not being like the rest of the team and he gets away with it and bitty doesn't know if he wants him or wants to be him but then johnson smiles at him after his game winner at family weekend and says 'congrats', hair wet, eyes sincere, and bitty knows.

johnson doesn't know.

because here's the thing about johnson. he knows everything that has happened. he knows bitty is scared of checking because he knows the history. he knows bitty is gay from the moment he mutters 'men' to his camera in first semester. but he cannot predict the future. he's a character in the story as much as anyone else is and knowing that he's fictional doesn't tell him what's coming next. and he cannot read bitty's mind.

but the second bitty admits it to himself out loud, johnson knows, and even though he feels like this can't be the intended narrative he has the urge to just say 'fuck it' and do what he wants. seize his own free will. ignore what he thinks was supposed to happen.

and that's what he does.

bitty and johnson are an odd couple, to all observers. johnson is just so weird and bitty is just so sweet and nobody can fathom how or why they are together.

but they defend each other. johnson chirps the other team loud enough on the ice that they focus on the annoying goalie instead of the tiny, vulnerable-looking forward. bitty summons up his chilliest southern politeness for the people who talk with raised eyebrows about whether johnson is actually sane behind his back, and he never tells johnson about these people but johnson knows anyway because it happened, and he loves bitty more for it.

they love each other, too, gravitate towards each other whenever they can, and johnson's room in the haus turns into a haven. he helps bitty navigate haus parties and he knows the cup of beer in his hand is fictional but he can taste it anyway and he starts to wonder why it matters if it technically doesn't exist in the real world. does it matter if johnson is a fictional character? does it matter if bitty is a fictional character? they're real enough to each other and this is the only world they will ever know.

johnson is weird. he faces existential crises every day he wakes up from a dreamless sleep, and he can't always keep himself from breaking the fourth wall— although who he's talking to out there, he doesn't know.

but he feels like a real person. bitty had asked, early on, what he was majoring in, and johnson hadn't had an answer, but then he had blinked and said 'philosophy' and it was as if it had been the case all along. he knew what classes he had taken, which professors he had had, the grades he got, the papers he wrote, what he's writing his thesis on. it felt real. it *was* real, to him and to everyone who matters.

he can look at his face in the mirror and hold on to its memory for a little longer. he knows what his mouth looks like now, and he has a vague idea about his nose. he's hoping he'll learn more about himself. it's easier to remember when bitty's reflection is in the mirror next to his own.

johnson knows his favorite flavor of pie is peach now. not because of how it tastes but because he'd helped bitty make it once, smiling and laughing together in the kitchen, and the golden, rosy memory is an anchor for him to when he decided he was real enough to matter.

he graduates and gives his dibs to bitty because who else would he give them to? he was probably supposed to give them to bitty. he knows bitty is protagonist material. but johnson gives his dibs to bitty because bitty is the person he wants to give them to. he receives his diploma on graduation day and knows that leaving samwell does not confine him to an endless future of nothing. he is a character but that gives him power. every word he says becomes canonical. everything he does is something real.

and he paves his own way into the future, a thought and a word at a time— he's hiking the appalachians, but he miraculously has cell service the entire way because that's what he tells bitty when he asks, and he calls bitty with that cell service and thinks that maybe he could be happy. he gets a twitter. the appalachians have wifi too now, because johnson decreed it. he follows bitty and bitty follows him back.

on the day he finishes his hike and returns to visit samwell, he finds bitty in the kitchen, pulling a peach pie out of the oven just in time for johnson's arrival, because he knew johnson was coming, because they planned this together. and johnson glances at his reflection in the window and notices the color of his eyes, and when he turns to look at bitty, he doesn't forget them.

bitty/johnson.... the forbidden jeric ship

does john johnson know i'm writing this right now

and bitty's like wow. another intimidatingly attractive teammate. his name is john johnson. weird but okay. and he's a goalie which means he's weird too. cool i can handle this

he plays his part, commiserates, encourages bitty, all with a bad taste in his mouth

johnson doesn't know.

and that's what he does.

bitty and johnson are an odd couple, to all observers. johnson is just so weird and bitty is just so sweet and nobody can fathom how or why they are together.

#johnson the metaphysical goalie #omgcp #fun with rarepairs #a little bit meta #<- that's my bitty/johnson tag that i found in my tags spreadsheet

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geekmedium · 3 years

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Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen

So I just got through reading the first omnibus in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga. I’m gonna try to make my way through every last one in order to see what the big deal is and analyze why they have such imaginative power while other Jack Kirby creations like the Eternals went down the memory hole.

And honestly this isn’t an auspicious way to start. I had wondered for a while why Jimmy Olsen isn’t really recommended in the New Gods Saga and now I know why. It’s barely a New Gods book. The only connections to the New Gods are:

Mokkari and Simyan as the recurring antagonists

Morgan Edge working for Darkseid (which isn’t resolved in this book)

Lightray appearing for a scene

Clark spending an issue in New Genesis

A few references to the Forever People

Not exactly the best intro to the War of the New Gods. In fact I would describe this book more as New Gods clean up. It spends more time dealing with threats that are the spillover of war rather than confronting the war directly.

The real through line of these tales is “The Project.” A genetics facility that would later be known as Project Cadmus.

Mokkari and Simyan create threats based on Cadmus tech. Superman and Jimmy deal with the monsters of a Cadmus scientist. We meet the D.N.Alien Dubbilex who investigates a secret passage to Cadmus. Heck the entire story starts with Jimmy investigating a wildness group that uses technology left over from Cadmus. If you’re someone who likes Project Cadmus then this is a highly recommended collection for you.

I think the biggest revelation was that Superman was a partner and firm advocate for the Project. Literally every piece of superhero media I’ve watched portrayed Project Cadmus as morally dubious at best, so it’s kind of surreal that Kirby intended them to be good guys. Especially since a lot of stuff they do in this book is still morally dubious. They create human clones (seemingly without permission) and employ mad scientists. Some of their soldiers are children or teens and they seem really intent on keeping all this literal life changing tech undercover. It’s kind of wild that Kirby framed all of this in the narrative as morally good without questioning it at all. Then again, wasn’t eugenics a well thought of science back in the day? I figured it died out in the 50s or so, but maybe a lot of people still agreed with it in the early 70s.

Anyway, the real reason why I think Project Cadmus is the focal point is that it allowed Kirby to work where he shines brightest. Big ideas.

Someone once described Jack Kirby as a hundred ideas per square inch, and it’s hard to disagree when reading through this. Small planets, D.N.Aliens, the Habitat, Zoomway, and the solar phone are just some of the inventions that fill the pages of this collection and I purposely left out the stuff connected with New Gods like the Boom Tube. But more than just making cool technology, Jack gave Superman cool threats.

It can be hard coming up with challenges for any incarnation of the Man of Steel, and I have to imagine the Bronze Age one was one of the hardest. But reading through these I’m amazed with how rarely I felt the threat was below Superman. And I think that comes down to the fact that rarely was Kirby trying to write a cosmic wrestling match. His solution to problems had a more cerebral element to them, and required Superman to get creative or even occasionally play for a more peaceful resolution. I think my favorite was when he saved Cadmus from a collection of atomic energy eaters in like 10 seconds.

In fact, Kirby wrote an absolutely fantastic Superman. Strong, clever, mature, creative, kind, and badass. I said it can be hard to write for Superman, and I think a lot of comic writers think that decreasing him makes him work better, but Kirby knew that all you really have to do is make the threats bigger. And this cosmic war of gods, with Earth as just a casualty in the way, is about as big as you can get. And as a result, the Superman that emerges here is all the stronger for facing these threats as they come one by one while also trying to help start a whole new branch of science that these monsters threaten or distort. While this isn’t much of a New Gods book, I consider it a bit of a hidden classic for Bronze Age Superman stories.

But what about the titular character of Jimmy Olsen? Well honestly, he really ends up playing a side character in his own book. And I’m fine with that, because I think Jimmy only really works as a spotlight character once every couple dozen of issues, but if you are reading these stories for him, you’ll probably be disappointed. It’s not that he has nothing to do, but when your book has New Gods and Superman and genetic warfare and interdimensional schemes of every shape and size, you’re just gonna have to play second or even third billing. To be fair, no other main player in the Superman mythos can really tag along either. Lois is nowhere to be seen, I think Perry White only shows up once, and while Morgan Edge is a small antagonists, he really only acts as an orchestrator instead of a major player. They are all gone to make room for the Newsboy Legion.

And man do the Newsboy Legion just barge into the story. Sometimes literally.

Kirby seemed to really want to make them a thing again like when he wrote them in the 40s. It kind of reminds me of how J.M. DeMatteis tried to put Vermin in a lot of his stories. And just like with Vermin, they really end up over staying their welcome.

They were fine in the first two or three issues, but around the time the Outsiders (no not those Outsiders, a different one) exit the story, the NL should have left too. They could return for a story or two, but no more. Instead Kirby makes sure they appear in every single story in this omnibus, including ones where they aren’t really needed. Oh no! Jimmy has been ambushed and Clark has been sent off to Apokolips with no way to return. Quick, let’s go see what hijinks the Newsboy Legion are getting up to. Like, I don’t hate them, and giving Superman super wacky kids who support him in his adventures isn’t a setup I’m adverse to, since that’s basically what Jimmy was for the Silver/Bronze Age. But man, the 70s slang and rapscallion attitude you see in the panel above is only a little of what shows up, and it gets really grating after a while.

On top of that were some other weird cast choices. I actually really like the Golden Guardian’s setup as a genetically made man with memories implanted with those of a dead man. I really looked forward to him relearning his past life while making a new one in Metropolis as much needed backup for Superman. But he honestly ends up as just a kind of Captain America clone

He also ends up just dropping out of the story later on. Not even leaving, it’s just that one scene he is with Superman exploring the city and the next Superman is off exploring a secret tunnel with Dubbilex and not-Lois character Terry Dean.

And speaking of Terry Dean I find it just hilarious that she is in this panel. Superman and the others are exploring secret entrances and contemplating literal apocalyptic war, and she’s just kind of...there. For those who don’t know or care, according to my research she is a character who showed up once before Kirby came on the Jimmy title, twice after he left it, and then one more time eighteen years later as a deep cut in Superman vol 2. #46.

If I seem to be nitpicking, it’s just that it’s so weird Kirby would go for this character instead of bringing in Lois. And he includes another weird character named Goody Rickels for like two or three issues for a story arc I’m gonna have to reread just to understand what the point of it was.

Still, ignoring these flaws, the Jack Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen Omnibus is a recommend if for nothing else than the fact that it is a good set of Superman stories with incredibly inventive and creative plots that hint at a larger world on the horizon. And I honestly can’t wait to tackle that new world of New Gods.

#review #Jack Kirby #Superman #bronze age #Fourth World

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softgrungeprophet · 4 years

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have now read (almost) all of wyatt wingfoot’s actual comic appearances, can say with great confidence: a lot of them are pretty bad

only one was so bad i stopped reading after like, one issue (that was earth X, an alternate timeline) though to be fair i also have not even bothered to read the most recent issue of slott’s run because that’s also bad, but i know generally what happens and my verdict is: it sucks

anyway my personally most-enjoyed wyatt appearances in chronological order:

-OG meet-cute in 1966 aka Fantastic Four #50 thru #61 which includes their first meeting, and wyatt’s adventure with johnny in africa... this is also the first appearance of black panther i think. it’s definitely dated but surprisingly tame compared to the 70s-80s comics and there are some real good moments... wyatt is immediately ready to throw the fuck down for johnny and he is tall and handsome.

Prefacing this with: I’m white, but I wanna point out some shit before I actually continue the list.

Here i have to note that anything from 1970-2000 has a 50/50 chance of coloring wyatt real badly, even in the digital recolors, with only a few exceptions. The worst offender is in the early 90s in Sensational She-Hulk but that is NOT on my list because it’s bad. Most of the comics on this list, especially as we get into later and better-done comics, do not have red skin because there seems to be a correlation between bad art and bad story, but there are a few sprinkled in here with questionable pink-to-red coloring choices, particularly around the issue 200-somethings of Fantastic Four, and in general around the 70s and 80s.

I also wanna add here that around 1973, after stan lee had stopped writing fantastic four, after repeated statements to do with wyatt’s Comanche heritage (aka a real tribe in OK), gerry conway introduced “Keewazi,” a completely fake made-up tribe which then completely supplanted all but a few mentions of wyatt being Comanche (that being like, a brief comment implying his dead ancestors were comanche but that he is “keewazi”) with only one exception for an errant “Konohoti” (also made-up and in a bad comic that i won’t be recommending anyway) Said conway comic is not on my recommended list, either, but it has a notable line in which wyatt says he feels like he’s known johnny since before he ever met him, which i think about constantly...

Also, (and this is from me googling things to get better understandings of IRL stuff, as i read my way through f4 comics, so it’s by no means an expert’s words and i am still just a white person trying to get context) there are many mentions of Wyatt being on the reservation, of his family living on the reservation, teaching on the reservation, the tribe’s land being taken by oil companies, etc. but Oklahoma does not have reservations the way other states do and has not for decades. It also sounds like Wyatt becoming chief based only on being the previous chief’s grandson is pretty unlikely, but that’s a thing in the comics too.

There are a lot of inaccuracies and stereotypes in almost all of Wyatt’s appearances that are pretty blatant even to white-ass people like me, but some are better about this than others, for sure. So, keep that in mind even with the ones I list as enjoyable.

OKAY

the rest of the list

i’m just kinda doing a semi chrono order rather than “best to worst” order

-there’s SOME stuff from Fantastic Four #269 thru #280 that i liked but i really could not tell you specific issues and the way wyatt and jen meet is really not well done. i remember kinda liking the arc about central city being transported to the future, in which wyatt has a pretty brief appearance... but overall I just really don’t like John Byrne’s writing so ehh can’t really recommend but some of it’s like, fine

-Marvel Fanfare (1982) #37 [B Story] is pretty cute and brief. involves a double date between reed/sue and jen/wyatt with johnny as the fifth wheel, and also time travel. and arm wrestling. It’s not heavy on Wyatt but it’s cute in general.

-Marvel Graphic Novel #18 (the Sensational She-Hulk) is like............. i’m VERY torn on this. i think overall it has a lot of fun elements but as always with john byrne there’s plenty of bad mixed in, both in terms of sexualizing shulkie, byrne thinking he’s funnier than he actually is, and a bad scene w/ wyatt but it has some really cute moments too. it’s a real mixed bag, man. the infamous “she-hulk carries wyatt under her arm” scene is from this one... long and short is “shield captures she-hulk and wyatt, and they bust out.” Less racist than wyatt’s appearances in the following sensational she-hulk run john byrne did after this, which is NOT SAYING A LOT because wyatt’s appearances in that comic run were pretty fucking offensive. if you like jenwyatt i guess read this, like, it’s fine, but... eh...

-She-Hulk: Ceremony (only 2 jumbo issues long) is another one I’m veeeerrryyyy torn on but RIGHT off the bat i will say it is worth more than the weight of all john byrne’s wyatt scenes combined. The pacing is kind of really weird, it’s got a lot of odd mystical native stereotypes in it... but it’s got really nice art though and mcduffie gives wyatt i think some of the most depth/nuance of any of these comics... he and jen are both equally important and treated as complex characters from the very first page to the very last... it’s one of those comics where i can’t say, “read it despite its flaws” because I just... don’t know. and it’s a comic which has had almost no impact on the works that followed, but at the same time it does have some really nice stuff for both jen and wyatt’s characters. this is the one where wyatt and jen almost get married and wyatt almost goes to law school. anyway I personally really liked it despite its flaws and it seems more researched than some other things but it’s definitely still lacking in some of its approach to indigenous stuff. dwayne mcduffie being black i think does give it a little something that it would otherwise lack, if it had been written by a white dude like all the other things.

-Marvel Graphic Novel #62 (Ka-zar: Guns of the Savage Land) based on the synopsis I read, I expected this to be bad but it was actually alright? I liked the art, wyatt’s handsome... BUT there’s a lot of weird condescending paternalism to it, wrt the indigenous groups and how they’re depicted, and i think that’s a pretty big, glaring flaw along with some of the usual caveats that come with anything relating to the savage land (including, you know, the name itself), but the rest of it is not half bad. ka-zar’s a jackass though. it’s one of the MANY stories wyatt appears in which feature an oil company as the bad guys (Roxxon in this case) but it’s one of the only ones that’s actually halfway decent.

-Marvel Super-Heroes vol 2 #5 (Treasure) short and sweet, features a sea monster, jen and wyatt on a little getaway together, and wyatt wearing heart-patterned swim trunks. almost forgot this one cause it’s easy to miss, but it’s really cute.

-Fantastic Four #394 was okay if i recall. this is when wyatt, johnny, jen, and some others go out to an archaeology dig and lyja stalks johnny. johnny telling wyatt he ought to bottle his charm and sell it... is good. everything with lyja... less good. jen, wyatt and johnny palling around... great. everything with lyja.... not great. a real mixed bag for me.

-Strange Tales vol 3 #1 i did not hate. if i remember correctly it has the same artist as guns of the savage land. it’s about the power of storytelling. i enjoyed this in particular because it shows wyatt’s grandfather as like... a human with interests beyond just being a Wise Old Man--he reads monster magazines! i liked that a lot. it’s still kinda... iffy in spots, especially with doctor strange involved, but it was still fun and i like when wyatt and his family get treated like human beings.

-Fantastic Force was actually pretty fun, I think. Wyatt is only in issues #12-16 so that’s all I bothered to read but it has this very amusing moment of wyatt saying how it’s unfortunate his and jen’s relationship wasn’t meant to work out but he treasures her friendship... while holding her hand after a date. starting on issue 12 there was some context missing but i didn’t really... care.... my reading style is plowing through random issues without ever reading the context and then going: idk what’s going on

-Fantastic Four vol 2 Listen. I know this comic is not “good” but I liked it and that’s what matters here. This is Franklin’s pocket dimension of the heroes reborn alternate universe... it’s definitely flawed, and i think it tries to cram a lot in for the sake of including classic characters, but i honestly really enjoyed it a lot and wyatt is not insignificant, though he’s not like, majorly important either. reading order gets a little fucking weird around issue 12 at which point you gotta also read issue 12 of the heroes reborn versions of avengers, iron man, and captain america. there are reading guides though, thank god. it’s fun, it’s a different take on the four that nonetheless has lots of small nods to the classic comics... a lot of people think it’s bad and like. i get why. but i think it was enjoyable and engaging minus the parts where i was forced to read avengers comics. wyatt’s actually only in issues 4-6 but i wound up starting from the beginning and reading the whole thing except the final issue cause that continued some new plot i didn’t care about from some other comic--it really breaks up in the end there lmao.... Relatedly, i don’t think heroes reborn: ashema is much worth the read; it’s like, fine, but wyatt’s five second appearance is kind of random and features tomazooma which means i immediately dislike it. like CONCEPTUALLY, wyatt piloting a mech is great. but... not that mech.

-Fantastic Four: The End. this comic... is... weird? it’s fine? i don’t know, i don’t think i’d go out of my way to recommend it but at the same time i didn’t hate it? so i’ll include it here. it’s an alternate future featuring some wild robo doom as the villain. wyatt runs an asteroid mining company for some reason. peter has a goatee. ben has like three kids with alicia. johnny rides the silver surfer’s board. it was... definitely interesting. and one of the comics in which sue has short hair, which is always a bonus for me.

-She-Hulks: (yes, with the plural) It’s a mini. I REALLY liked this. wyatt’s in like, two issues but I genuinely recommend the whole thing (it’s only 4 issues total) I really liked this comic, I thought it was a lot of fun and wyatt and jen’s interactions were really sweet. My biggest crits are that the author falls into the same “failing to write teenage girls” pitfalls as many, many marvel writers, and that stegman draws wyatt literally an entire foot too short. but i prefer this old stegman art vastly to his grungy current art. INTERESTING NOTE HERE is that wyatt’s appearances in this comic were published riiight around the same time johnny straight-up died in hickman’s fantastic four run, which is honestly fascinating to contemplate and also extra heartbreaking that i never got to see how wyatt found out considering he was almost definitely in the city when it happened. anyway. good, bittersweet as all hell on the she-hulk front, really enjoyable for me. i did not bother to read any of the hulk comics preceding it for context and i don’t think you need to, to understand it.

-Captain America Corps --This comic is.... something. wyatt is only in the last two issues in a minor role but the whole series is again only 5 issues and I honestly really enjoyed it? Though I think it tripped over itself in a few places. It involves time travel, captain america, an alternate 21st century which would be heavy-handed if it weren’t for trump. I think it gets its message a little tangled up in parts, especially near the end with the femazon whatever bullshit (so close to talking about white women’s privileges), but overall it was a fun little AU mini-series, with some flaws. it also implies that wyatt goes on to become the president which is the funniest thing i’ve ever read. he would hate that so much, man

-FF vol 2. not fantastic four. FF. just the initials. WITH A CAVEAT. Okay. Wyatt is in issues #3-4, 8, and 16. This one is a tough one, though. This series. I like the art mostly. I like Wyatt’s scenes (tho i will pick a bone with mr fraction about wyatt’s supposed inability to pronounce french or know what to order at a french restaurant when he is multilingual and has gone to several french restaurants before) ANYWAY. Wyatt is really great in these appearances I think, charming, handsome, etc. The issues focusing on the kids, on interpersonal relationships, etc... i really like. But the rest. I do not like at all. The entire doom plot, I hated. Issue 16? Skip to the barbecue on the moon. I mean it. The bulk of issue 16 is a vastly uncomfortable, drawn-out fight scene between ant-man and doctor doom that just made me feel gross to read and just happens to be one of the only comics Victor has ever spoken Romani. So that’s... not great. The plot as a whole--I did not like it, especially not the stuff written by Allred, and I cannot recommend it unless you fucking hate doctor doom and want to watch him get beaten up for like literally 10 pages. That being said... again, the stuff with the kids? with bentley, and the moloids, and tong coming out, and the stuff with she-hulk and wyatt? I really really liked, and I thought was really sweet and fun. Oh also Wyatt looking at old man johnny and just knowing it’s him? chef kiss. So. definitely just. skip around. It’s a REAL mixed bag but there is some good stuff in there amidst the like...burnt peanuts.

-She-Hulk volume 3: wyatt is only in #5-6 and #12, really, with brief shots of his photo in some earlier issues BUT. I read the whole thing. It’s 12 issues total, and I really enjoyed it. The plot you think gets dropped does not get dropped, wyatt punches some demons in the face in the background, patsy is there... I really liked it. The art is a bit all over the place, and is not for everyone--it features Javier Pulido’s work for the majority, and I honestly... really like his work for its style and expressiveness but it REALLY is not for everyone, visually. Obviously Kevin Wada’s covers are gorgeous. The other artist who I forget the name of draws wyatt like... nigh unrecognizably, it’s really weird, and I don’t like his work as much but he does have some good spreads here and there. Colors are fantastic throughout. Again, really liked it. A little iffy on the secretary with the monkey.

-Fantastic Four vol 5 #11-12. These are the issues in which Wyatt gets shot by “hawkeye” and he and spidey hold an intervention for Johnny. I actually started with issue... 9 I think to just read the whole story, and I did enjoy that, though I will pick a fight over the idea that wyatt is a womanizer and would just toy with sharon who prior to this there was never any evidence they were romantically involved ANYWAY. I liked it. I felt feelings about Wyatt and Johnny, as well as the rest of the family. It switches to legacy numbering at one point and goes into:

-Fantastic Four #643-645 which is the rest of the story. I THINK 9-12 + 642-645 is everything.... Either way, I liked it a lot despite the fact that I’m really not a fan of Jesus Aburtov’s color work. Features the Heroes Reborn versions of the Avengers but like, empty, which was a fun nod.

-Hulk vol 4 #11 okay. wyatt’s not actually in this aside from jen reminiscing about her love life and showing like, two flashback panels of him. but. i really liked it a lot and i read the whole run based on the One (1) issue containing those panels. mariko tamaki has a great sense of humor and i found her fourth wall breaking to be actually funny sometimes instead of, like byrne’s, nigh intolerable. she also does some really solid character work for jen (which was later, of course, mangled by the avengers writers 🙄) the following she hulk series is a little less solid but i can imagine it was rushed because of the avengers comic, so, really, i’ll just blame everything on the avengers.

don’t read dan slott’s f4. i’ve read bad comics. i’ve read bad f4 comics. i’ve read bad wyatts. his run pings all of these. how do you write wyatt wingfoot out of character?! ask dan slott. oh, except #5′s bachelor party issue which I do think is fun and has wyatt in the background in a snazzy red tuxedo. #5 is actually my favorite issue of the whole run, which, to be fair, is not saying much. the first like, 2 issues and then issue 5 are really the most solid in there, and it just goes downhill from there.

cool.

anyway.

those are the comics featuring wyatt that i’ve enjoyed the most and coincidentally also the fantastic four and she-hulk comics i’ve read that i’ve enjoyed the most because the venn diagram of “fantastic four comics i have read” and “comics including wyatt wingfoot in some capacity” is a circle.

#nadia reads comics #this post is a bit of a long one but if you are curious...#comics #wyatt wingfoot

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wellyoucantliveinfear · 5 years

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There’s Something Rotten in Las Vegas (It’s Clexacon)

Hey y’all, I’m back again with my feelings about Clexacon. This is my 3rd year going to the convention, and sadly it’ll likely be my last. This will be a longgggggg post, so I’ll be putting it under a cut. So if you want to hear about my experience at Clexacon 2019, here you go:

Show! Me! The! Money! (No Seriously, Where’s it Going???)

One of my biggest concerns (among the many that I have) is how this convention is now an opportunity to grab as much money as it can from its LGBTQ audience. I’ll start with the con itself, and then work all the way through to its “affiliates”.

If you wanted to do anything at Clexacon that was not the actual convention itself, you were required to pay an additional fee. I personally went to the Academic Lab, which was an additional $75 on top of the regular $160 3-Day Pass ticket price. The Creator Lab was also the same day and was also an extra $75. Ascension, the Saturday night party, was $50. There was also a comedy show, and unfortunately I don’t have the info on how much that was. And sure, you might say, “Well Morgan, those are all extra events that are optional, so maybe paying for ‘opting in’ makes sense!”. Okay, sure, but there are also plenty of conventions that have additional, “opt in” events that are free for attendees.

Let’s use Dragon Con for example, as I live in Atlanta and am the most familiar with that one currently. Dragon Con has a TON of extra events, including a wrestling show, a burlesque revue, and dance parties. Most of these events are completely free as long as you have your convention badge. The events that aren’t free? An awards banquet and a HUGE ball with celebrity guests. There’s even an academic track for panels, which is also free. And okay, yes, Dragon Con is gigantic and is already established in the convention circuit. There are even smaller conventions that are doing free events too. I lived in Cincinnati for years and went to the Cincinnati Comic Expo, which is much smaller but still runs free events for attendees. So it is doable.

There also needs to be attention drawn to the fact that every organization attached to the “Clexacon” name is ran/owned by the same handful of people (NOTE: The two people in question will not be named here as I do not want to open myself to them potentially taking legal action. However everything stated here is either my experience, the noted experience of others, or easily accessed through organization websites, particularly the website for The Visibility Fund). Those people own and operate Clexacon, DASH Productions, and DASH Photos. They are also on the board for The Visibility Fund, a non-profit organization that gained funds from the Cocktails for Change event hosted at Clexacon this year. Prior to the removal of the Clexacon staff page online (which was removed promptly after the convention ended), the names of people from Tellofilms were also included as staff for the convention. It is deeply concerning that all of the money is being funneled in/through a small number of organizations ran by a small number of people. When I teach Media & Culture I always warn my students of the dangers of a small handful of people owning the means of creation. Often when that occurs, the limits on what the audience is able to see get smaller and smaller, focused on the wants of the corporations and businesses. It seems that Clexacon is moving in that direction.

Who’s Running the Show?

The organization of this year’s Clexacon was a complete and utter mess. I’ll start with the mismanagement of the Vendor Hall. While there was more space in the Vendor Hall this year, this did not lead to better promotion by the Clexacon staff. With the Photo Ops being moved upstairs, the hall was not as cramped, but it did remove a large source of foot traffic for the vendors. A logical next step would have been for Clexacon to tweet something about the Vendor’s Hall to push that foot traffic back into the space, but that did not happen. Instead, the traffic continued to flow upstairs and into the large panel room, with people only coming into the Vendor Hall through word of mouth or to get autographs. As someone who was in the Vendor Hall this year and last year, I noted a significant decrease in foot traffic, and other vendors I talked to noticed it too. This doesn’t even take into account the issues concerning the inconsistent pricing of vendor tables. I cannot speak further about this as I wasn’t involved, but there are multiple tweets in the #clexapocalypse hashtag with more info.

There were also issues with volunteers checking badges and other forms of “security” during the weekend. There were multiple instances where I walked into the Vendor Hall and no one checked my badge. There were instances where I walked into the Vendor Hall without a badge on, and no one questioned me. Bags were rarely being checked. I’m not advocating for more security at Clexacon. I’m against having heavier security or “police” in a queer space, especially a space where queer folks of color are present. However, there at the very least should be volunteers present to make sure that people without badges can’t walk in. Why on earth would I buy a $160 badge if anyone can just walk into the space?

Photo Ops were also a disaster. My friend and I bought a Photo Op for Chantal Thuy and Nafessa Williams. Not only was the picture very washed out, but when we asked about getting an extra print for one of us, we were told by volunteers that extra prints wouldn’t be available, and if we wanted them we’d have to “wait for the digital print and get it printed at a Fed Ex or something”. Y’all, I’ve been to multiple conventions and not once have I not been able to get another print at the con. They also said that it would take nearly two weeks for us to get the digital print, as “it’s just one person processing all of the images”. WHAT. That’s completely unacceptable. Other folks I spoke to at the convention cited similar issues, including being charged for Photo Ops that they didn’t get and poorly shot photos.

Finally, there’s the issue of leadership for this convention. In the previous section I outlined an issue with the heads of Clexacon running multiple organizations connected to Clexacon, which appears to be fairly well known on the internet. What might be less well known is that after last year’s Clexacon, those people pushed out one of the original organizers for the convention. This person questioned the concerning direction the convention was taking and not only were their concerns invalidated, they were given no choice but to walk away from staff and were asked to not return to the convention this year. (Note: slight edit made to previous sentence based on new information) After the removal of that person, the convention morphed into what was presented this year. As you might have noticed on Twitter, many of the Clexacon staff resigned from their positions through each of them sending a public statement tweet. Of my knowledge of the situation, this was due to the management issues concerning the heads of Clexacon, as well as problems with how their labor was used (or misused) by those heads. When multiple people exit their jobs within an organization, that signals an issue with how that organization is run. I hope people will look deeper into this issue than what I’ve outlined here.

I’m going to move on now to more “identity based” issues. I wanted to get all the money bullshit out of the way first because I have a lot of fucking Feelings about how people were continually marginalized at this convention and I didn’t want to run out of anger steam before talking about the money.

Concerns About Accessibility (I Have Them)

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, DO I HAVE CONCERNS. First, let’s review what occurred before Clexacon happened. Multiple people contacted Clexacon with issues attached to their unclear accessibility policy, with many getting poor responses or no responses at all from the staff. Eventually the outcry on Twitter prompted the staff to issue a new statement about accessibility, which was initially done so through an image on Twitter…which was not accessible to those with screen readers. They later reissued the statement through multiple tweets, but this would be foreshadowing of things to come. They stated they were talking to people well versed with ADA compliance knowledge, but it’s clear that either they didn’t do that at all, or they did and then chose to not follow them. This showed at the actual convention itself.

First was the issues with obtaining the program itself. They didn’t have any paper programs available this year, instead telling everyone to use the app. Well, that app was only accessible half the time because getting wifi was impossible, and cell service was horrible in the con space. Also, having the programs through the app only meant that they were assuming everyone had a cell phone and were able to use it throughout the entire con. I’ve been to conferences/conventions where they’ve had digital programs, but there’s always the option of getting a paper program if that works better for you. Not having those options got in the way of people being able to plan what events they were going to.

From just my experience at Clexacon, there was not enough accommodation made for attendees who were deaf or hard of hearing. There were multiple panels, including panels in the large room, that did not have an interpreter present. There were also clearly not enough interpreters available for the number of attendees who needed them. Moog ( @wayhaughtt ) talks more about this in their vlog, which I’ll link here. It is completely and totally unacceptable (not to mention illegal) for Clexacon to not have enough people available to assist attendees.

Along with not having enough interpreters, the space is just totally not accessible for anyone who has mobility issues. Small panel rooms are all the way at the back of the con space, making it hard for people who cannot walk long distances. Aisles were not wide enough for people with mobility devices to use. While there were some things in place to assist with having to stand in line, it was still difficult for many people who couldn’t stand for long periods of time. The elevator on the bottom floor near the Vendor Hall was out of the way enough that I didn’t notice it until Sunday. The Quiet Room shouldn’t have even been called that, as it was sandwiched between the Photo Ops and the Film Festival, making it impossible for people to achieve the quiet they were going there to find. And sure, you might say, “Well that’s not their fault, it’s the fault of the Tropicana”. But at the end of the day if you are really committed to making your event accessible to everyone, to create this “safe space” that you continually advertise, then you will make the effort to not only actually provide people with adequate accommodations at the very least, but also find a venue that will be accessible for your attendees.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (At Clexacon)

Okay, so, I’m really annoyed that I basically have to write the same thing I did last year. I was really, really hoping that white people wouldn’t fuck it up again and would show up, but apparently the small amount of faith I had in my fellow white fandom people was too much. It was very clear AGAIN this year that white fandom will only show up for shows with white characters. I did notice an increase in the amount of people who attended the One Day at a Time Panel, and that’s great! But there were so many other panels with queer folks of color that were either a quarter or half full. I was hoping more people would attend the Black Lightning panel now that they were an established show finished with their second season, but nope, it was maybe half full. The Vida panel had a good number for attendance, but it was in a smaller panel room, so I can’t really gauge it with the other large room panels, but that room was not full. The Queer People of Color Representation panel, a really great panel with an important discussion, was about a quarter full. WHITE FANDOM NEEDS TO BE HEARING THESE CONVERSATIONS. Us not showing up and not putting in literally the minimum amount of work is fucking ridiculous, and shows everyone else where we stand.

There also, again, was a noticeable difference in the length of autograph lines for white actresses verses actors and actresses of color. Jes Macallan’s line was wrapped around the autograph area. Even though this is their third Clexacon, Dominique Provost-Chalkley and Kat Barrell’s lines were long as well. Caity Lotz’s line was also pretty long. On the other hand, Nafessa Williams was sitting at her table with no line for a significant chunk of her autograph time, as was Chantal Thuy and Lesley-Ann Brandt. Just that visual alone makes it abundantly clear who white fandom is willing to give their time and money to. So many of us complain that there’s not enough LGBTQ representation, but then refuse to put in the work when the characters are people of color. Saltygaysianpowerhour on instagram has a great post about this, which I’ll link here. White fandom, if we’re not putting in the work, we cannot complain when we feel there’s not enough LGBTQ representation. We’re part of the problem.

Lastly, I noticed that the Clexacon space was extremely white. When this happened, we as white fandom should have been aware of that and been better allies for attendees of color. That did not happen. I’ve heard so many stories of attendees of color who felt othered or additionally marginalized by both attendees and con staff in a space that should have been just as much theirs as everyone else’s. This convention is not a “safe space” for queer people of color, and some very, very significant changes will have to be made for it to get even close to that.

I Can’t Fucking Believe I Have to Write About TERFs

Just like the fucking subtitle says, I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT TERFS. The complete and utter failure to make this con a positive and safe space for trans folks is honestly stunning. Literally so many people I know got repeatedly misgendered at Clexacon, and so many people didn’t even care to find out what people’s pronouns were. Volunteers misgendered multiple people, which is a problem staff should have addressed at the very beginning. I heard many people say they encountered TERFs at the con and I don’t think I need to mention this, but like, if TERFs think your con is a safe space then that’s a huge problem. I honestly think there were more cishet men on main stage panels this year than trans folks. That’s a problem. This con should have had some way to signify your pronouns on your badge, whether that be a ribbon, button, or even a fucking sticker for people to fill in. I feel like if you’re running a convention that claims to include all LGBTQ people, then you need to do basic things like that. Otherwise change how you market the convention.

What Is it Good For? (Actually, a Few Things)

Okay, now that I’ve aired all my grievances (or at least the ones I can think of), I do want to talk about the good things this con can bring. This con does offer a space for people to create community. Sure, we can do this online with Tumblr or Twitter, but it’s not the same as seeing a living person in front of you. It’s not the same as talking to someone face to face and being excited about whatever media you love. It’s not the same as getting to hug your favorite people. And with all its faults, Clexacon does create a space for this to happen in real time. I know people who have met some of their closest friends at Clexacon. Hell, I met my current girlfriend at the first Clexacon. But that doesn’t erase that this community is currently toxic, and if we want to keep going we’re going to have to deal with those toxic parts or it’s all going to rot. Unfortunately I’m not going to be attending Clexacon in the future unless the current management is removed and significant changes are made. I’m lucky enough to have other places that create positive LGBTQ community like @tgifemslash. I’m not going to shame anyone for going to Clexacon next year, especially if that’s the only community you have. I just hope that in reading this very long post (and thanks if you’re still with me!) you reflect on what Clexacon is and how it can be better. We’re already marginalized by broader society, we don’t deserve further marginalization from our own “community”.

#Clexacon #Clexacon2019 #Clexapocalypse

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xaeneron · 7 years

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I’m not dead! Just busy. With life and with scribbling. So just a few quick costume sketches for my three main derps. Like really quick. They’re kind of awful lul.

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Richter’s primary armor is the aetherblade set in-game, but he would likely have a greatcoat at all times. He is sweet-tempered and empathetic, but he has a materialistic side to him that wants to emulate the nobility he’s envied all his life. Now that he does have disposable income, he’s more wont to use it on looking nice.

Ive’s outfit hasn’t really changed (since y’all have seen him constantly lolol). A mix of practical, fun, and slightly stylish as helped by his friends.

Etiery’s primary armor is leystone, but she would likely remove the physical leystone bits in favor of a more gear/tech-oriented breastplate or attachments, hence why she would likely have the aetherblade attachments where Richter would not. And sass bucket as usual.

#guild wars 2 #gw2 #art #sylvari #asura #Ivaris Dalmora #Etiery Velvare #Richter Thorne #I have a lot of thoughts about these guys #they're fun to work with #all their weird little tics #\o/#also help life is hard #so is wrestling with 50+ pages of comic #wtf did I do #rofl

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the-girl-who-loves-monsters · 5 years

Note

1-59

1.Selfie

2.What would I name my future kids? Morgan, Aidan, Conor

3.Do I miss anyone? I miss a few people. Old friends I miss my dad.

4. What am I looking forward to? My little nerd heart is looking forward to Captain Marvel😸

5. Is there anyone who can always make you smile? There are a couple people who can, but on my worst days my son can make me smile with a joke or his kindness to me and others.

6. Is it hard for you to get over someone? It depends on the situation, type of relationship, and how it ended.

7. What was your life like last year? Confusion, heartache, loss, pain, and finally clarity.

8. Have you ever cried because you were so annoyed? Yes a few times lol.

9. Who did I last see in person? My mum!

10. Are you good at hiding your feelings? I can be very good at hiding my feelings, until I reach that breaking point.

11. Are you listening to music right now? No, Child's Play and Chucky is screaming obscenities.

12. What is something you want right now? My head and throat to stop hurting from being so sick.

13. How do you feel right now? Content for the most part.

14. When was the last time someone of the opposite sex hugged you? Today, my son.

15. Personality description. Shy and quiet til I'm comfortable, then ridiculous and sarcastic.

16.Have you ever wanted to tell somebody something and didn't? Yes frequently.

17. Opinion on insecurities? they suck

18. Do you miss how things were a year ago? Not at all. On top of everything else, I was highly unwell mentally. Things are changing for the best now.

19. Been to New York? No

20. What is my favourite song at the moment? Pet Semetary Ramones

21. Age and Birthday? 33 and January

22. Description of Crush? Small, pink, adorable, beady black eyes. Sucks up his enimes.

23.Fears? Loosing myself to depression again.

24.Height? 5'5

25. Role Model? My mum. Don't always agree, but she has inspired me.

26.Idols? Bettie Page, Cassandra Peterson, Guillermo del Toro list goes on.

27. Things I hate? Stupidity, racism, douchebags who can't just respect others and mind their own business. Decaf coffee

28. I'll love you if...are a good honest and respectful person.

29. Favourite films? Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Shadow of a Doubt, Rope, The Bad Seed, Evil Dead, What We Do in the Shadows.

30. Favourite tv shows? Doctor Who, The Office, Man Down, Farscape, Absolutely Fabulous, Jessica Jones, Chewing Gum, The Young Ones and tons more.

31. 3 random facts. When I can I love to go on runs at night, it's the perfect time. I have read Mists of Avalon 8 times I adore it. I used to be scared of the dark, now I love it.

32. Are your friends mainly guys or girls? I have more girls than guys as friends.

33. Something I want to learn? How to not let my anxiety overtake my thoughts.

34. Most embarrassing moment? Rather not say😊

35. Favourite subject? Psychology

36. 3 dreams I want to fulfill? Finish college. Go to Norway. Find peace and balance in my life.

37. Favourite actress? Cate Blanchett😍

38. Favourite comedians George Carlin, Robin Williams, Eddie Izard, Roy Wood Jr. Sarah Silverman, Illiza Shlesinger Patton Oswald and tons more.

39. Favourite sports? Hockey and soccer. Used to watch wrestling with my dad all way back as a kid, but haven't in awhile since he had been sick and then passed.

40. Favourite Memory? It would be every horror movie my mom took me to go see or we would watch at home. Bonded over those.

41. Relationship status? Content

42. Favourite books? Mists of Avalon, The Stand, Frankenstein, list goes on. On top of all the comics and graphic novels Watchmen, Loki, and The Dark Kight and Xmen vs. The Avengers just to name a few.

43. Favourite Song Ever? Paranoid Black Sabbath

44. Age you get mistsken for? 28

45. How you found out about your idol? My parents usually showing me things they liked.

46. What my last text message says? "Good night. Talk to you tomorrow after my appointnent." To my bestie she always checking up on me😊

47. Turn ons? Honesty, respect, a love for nerd things, funny personality, romantic and caring.

48. Turn offs? Dishonesty, disrespect number of things.

49. Where I want to be right now? I don't really want to say, kinda personal. 2nd choice would be in a cabin in the mountains chilling outside waiting for the sun to come up.

50. Favourite pic of my Idol (Gif is better)

51. Starsign? Capricorn

52. Something I'm talented at? Writing

53. 5 things that make me happy? Music, books, comedy, my son, and going on a run or hike.

54. Something worrying me at the moment? My anxiety has me worry over everything, but at this point for once nothing. Things are for once going slightly in my favor and I'm as content as I can ask.

55. Tumblr Friends? So many wonderful people on here to remember all the tags but @salems-mystical-misfit @shaylalovebug @mywayforward18 @devilmingy @aciddayydreamss @cinnamonbritches @song-of-the-reaper @squish-monsterr @e-a-t-m-y-d-e-a-d-c-o-c-k @my-heart-fiction-superstition @order-of-kinky-beeings @thesolitarysubmissive @richard-is-bored and so many more awesome people old and brand new who have been so lovely💕🌸🌸

56. Favourite foods? Pasta, pizza, spinach salads, and spinach and rice.

57. Favourite animals? Foxes, wolves, penguins, turtles, bats, octopus, elephants, meercats,dogs and cats.

58. Description of my best friend. 5'7 average body type with a booty to be proud of, long brown hair and a sweet face.

59. Why I joined Tumblr? Couple old friends were on it and I checked it out and enjoyed what I saw. Made a few cool friends and enjoyed it better than Facebook.

Thank you 😊

#asks

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eligrantbooks · 6 years

Text

gotta vent about my day real quick

highlights of the day

> be professional ghostwriter.

Agreed to edit a 25000 word segment of a finished manuscript for a much loved regular client, who said the MC’s dialogue needed to be punched up. Easy enough. I figured it would take a few hours.

Was briefly excited to discover the manuscript was for a concept I had outlined and written several chapters for a few months ago.

Excitement rapidly dwindles as I realize that beloved client has hired another ghostwriter to write the majority of the book. Which would be fine, except this other ghostwriter has no fucking idea what they are doing.

Formatting is a god damn disaster and I spend several hours just getting the document into a workable condition.

You ever open a word doc, look at the navigation pane, and just see a wall of blank links, because someone applied the header formatting somewhere and then just hit enter a million times instead of using a page break like a civilized god damn human being?

in the middle of this forest of blank headers, actual chapter titles are scattered at random, and also they only applied the header to roughly one out of every five chapters or so, you know, just, when they felt like it. when the spirit took them. when the stars aligned. when the feng shui was right.

Also, apparently they like the way first line indenting looks but don’t know how to make word do that (spoiler: its easy as shit and takes like two clicks) so every once in a while they start manually hitting tab before every line, until they get distracted and stop for a while, luring you into a false sense of security before they remember and start doing it again.

Sometimes, when a scene transitions but they dont want to just end the chapter for some reason, they break it up with spaces. Other times, they like to use asterisks. Once or twice, just for flavor, they throw in one of those page width lines that word makes when you type a line of hyphens.

There is random highlighting in places, for no discernible reason.

Once I have the document formatted in a way I can bear to work with, I start actually reading through it. About the first seven chapters were written by the client. They’re cheesy but solid.

Then I get to chapter eight, and the suspicions i had begun to form while putting the formatting through traction (namely that whoever did this was a fuckwit) quickly crystallized into a shining certainty that my beloved client had mistakenly hired An Ass Clown.

Not just An Ass Clown, but An Ass Clown who thought 50 Shades was a beautiful love story, actually.

And they gave This Ass Clown, this literary reprobate, this paste eating remedial english mother fucker, my outline.

let me clarify that i did not expect to have sole control of this story when i produced the outline for beloved client, and I was okay with that. That’s how it works. If I’d been dead set on writing this myself, i wouldn’t have sold the outilne to beloved client. but it really rubs salt in the wound to have spent hours of my life crafting the bones of this story, which i really liked and was excited to see take shape

and then find out it has been put into the pie fondling hands

of An Ass Clown.

first hint that something has gone drastically wrong: the arrival of completely unnecessary and ridiculous fantasy names for things.

“oh we dont drink coffee in this book. it’s kofee. at least until three chapters from now when i forget and it becomes kofe. Oh, and watch out for those thornaby bushes! I’m going to misspell that one literally every time I use it! It’s entirely possible that this isn’t a fantasy name at all and I just have a small seizure whenever I try to type the word thorn bush!”

second omen of my impending anuerism: phonetically written accents which are so comically stereotypical and inaccurate that native speakers of that accent should be entitled to financial compensation, except they can’t even stick to the stereotype accurately, producing gems such as “It’s not safe in that there pen with ‘em swine, young miss.” I don’t even know what accent that’s supposed to represent. To top it off these accent abominations are sprinkled in with all the consistency and reliability of a lactose intolerant cheese enthusiast’s bowel movements.

But this, I tell myself, moving on, is not my problem. I just need to punch up the mcs dialogue. It’ll be fine. I can do this. I just need to take this shit: “A fond idea, but I doubt I have that ability.” I joked. “I can’t imagine living without true sunshine. Even the triplet moons must shine less brightly without their sister sun.” and make it… not like that.

Except, and here’s where I start hitting the real roadblock guys

this book is in first person.

essentially, the entire novel is the MC talking.

So sure I can change the spoken lines, but her internal monologue

which is, i remind you, the entire narrative

her internal monologue is going to keep being maggie gyllenhal’s character from The Secretary if her copy of the script had been swapped with just a binder full of sonnets written by a middle school english class during the Shakespeare unit.

I get to chapter ten around three in the afternoon. I have been working steadily, with an unusual degree of focus thanks to my recent adderal prescription, since ten in the morning.

this is where shit begins to go truly bananas.

this is a YA beauty and the beast type fantasy

that good fun indulgent shit that’s almost as enjoyable to write as it is to read

usually. previously. before i had to endure this traumatic twelve hour experience.

Chapter ten is the first big “dinner” scene. this book isn’t being shy about pulling from the source material, but that’s fine. the beast “apologizes” (heavy quotes there) for having earlier used magic to force the heroine to answer his questions truthfully. They talk and almost seem to making progress for a bit, and then have a fight and storm off. Standard stuff.

Except, uh, the beast’s apology is, essentially “Yeah I shouldn’t have done that.” “so you’re apologizing?” “no but it’s the best you’re going to get so deal with it.”

and the headstrong, independent heroine who wears pants and wrestles pigs and dont need no man

just kinda rolls with this. There’s giggling.

They have their big dramatic fight, exit stage left, much angst and todo.

The next morning heroine wakes up to find the beast has (presumably) snuck into her room while she was sleeping and dumped a bunch of new dresses on her. he has also (apparently) replaced her brain with Bella Swan’s more vapid cousin.

She forgives him instantly. Because pretty dresses. She also starts calling him master, because why not. She has, over night, become the darling submissive Tumblr doms dream of.

This is not a bdsm book. I am eighty percent certain it doesn’t even include soft core smut. I’m telling you this so that you understand this transformation was not a contrivance in order to facilitate kinky sex. I have written a contrived set up to a sex scene or two in my day. This is not that. This is Not what is in the outline. I know, because i wrote the outline. It is My Outline.

No, The Ass Clown just… decided to do this. Apropos of nothing. I’m beginning to think the Ass Clown’s decision making process involves whipping pies at a comically large dartboard. And all the options on the dartboard are just “lol whatever”

By the time I get to chapter eleven, wherein our newly lobotomized heroine is “excited to wear a new frock and please the master!” - direct quote I have given up any pretense of editing dialogue and I am just straight up rewriting shit using the previous garbage as a loose outline.

I have eaten, maybe, three bites of a bowl of oatmeal all day. I have not taken a bathroom break since before noon. I have missed my deadline. Beloved client is concerned. I’m sure I can still do this, I just need a few more hours.

the words sound like truth but my soul knows i am a liar

I frantically restructure scene after scene, deceiving myself each time that it will be the last, and I will be able to get this crazy train back on the rails. But this crazy train has no interest in being on the rails. It’s a direct line no stops right off the edge of the cliffs of insanity.

The beast jumps unpredictably from homicidal rage and threats of violence to jokes and flirting as though he did not just declare her his property and threaten to rip her tongue out a few paragraphs ago. Heroine swoons and sighs and giggles regardless of whether she is dealing with Dr.Jekyll or Christian Gray on PCP.

But I’m still sure I can do this. I’ll just adjust these two full chapters to make her appropriately scared and angry, and then replace this weird conversation here with a heartfelt apology from him and an effort to do better. That will totally work. Unless, you know, it turns out that conversation I want to replace only starts out with them joking and laughing together, and turns into him berating and abusing her mid paragraph of a fuckin montage a page later! But, haha! Why would The Ass Clown ever do that? It would be completely irrational, tonally jarring and out of character! Only a seltzer slinging rainbow suspender-ed peanut butter fumbling son of six fucks would do that.

so of course The Ass Clown did that.

It’s eleven at night. I know when I’m beaten.

I inform beloved client that the Ass Clown has bested me and I can do no more.

She is very understanding.

I send her what I managed and I check the added word count while im at it

i added a full 6,000 words to that manuscript just trying to patch up this sloppy motherfucker’s lopsided prose and gossamer thin understanding of narrative structure

son of a bitch had about as firm a grasp of romance as i currently have on the trembling shreds of my sanity.

their grip on character writing could not be more tenuous if they had first dipped the target brand Hulk Hands which I assume they always have on their person into a barrel of adult-film-grade silicon lubricant and then taken their Leapfrog 2-in-1 Leaptop Touch down a waterslide.

Do you know how much I usually make for 6000 words?

$180.

Do you know how much I made for enduring this ass blasting, which I naively believed I could tackle in a matter of hours?

$100.

You owe me $80 Ass Clown. And I aim to collect.

Also I lost my damn mind for a minute and said the words "i dont know shit about fuck my guy” to my actual father on facebook

so there’s that.

#reposting from my rp blog #i need to get better about not using it as a personal

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ask-de-writer · 2 years

Text

About FIENDSHIP IS MAGIC (Part 50 of ?) : (work in progress)

@mordenheim who READ, LIKED,

and REBLOGGED

FIENDSHIP IS MAGIC (Part 50 of ?) 18+ readers only

Age Restricted 18+

(work in progress) to

@nevermord who noticed:

I am glad that you like my Fluttershy. First, the official comics characters were canon according Lauren Faust. Flutters is based on a comic page that one of my long lost followers posted, In it, the others (not sure how many) come to Fluttershy’s place and find her wrestling bears FOR FUN. My first use of her was in Fluttershy Meets Kris which is a Hearthwarming tale. In it, as a plot point, she is just finishing up healing Bruin. She accidentally broke some of his ribs while wrestling him.

When unloading the earthquake victims from the train, She carries the heavy end of the beds with patients while TWO bears carry the other end!

With her courtesy, it is only natural that she shares food with them. (By the way, some horses DO eat meat when they find it, so that is not as far fetched as you might think.)

As for the sauce, I was just being silly. Some blood with lemon juice and some sweetener to balance the flavor perhaps. The vitamin C in the lemon would act as a preservative and anti clotting agent. THIS SHOULD NOT BE EATEN BY PEOPLE! Raw blood MUST BE COOKED TO BE SAFE, which would ruin the color.

About the two, besides the charges that they face from the Gryphon Hospital, the deadly IV bottles were STOLEN from Ponyville General. Not needed in this tale but gonna happen to them, will be an audit of unexpected deaths there. They are in such hot water that adding vegetables would make them stew!

#@mordenheim #@nevermord #FIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #Part 50 of ?#age restricted 18+#MLP Fan Fiction #Written by De Writer #WORK IN PROGRESS

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vintagegeekculture · 7 years

Text

Dead Fandoms, Part 3

Read Part One of Dead Fandoms here.

Read Part Two of Dead Fandoms here.

Before we continue, I want to add the usual caveat that I actually don’t want to be right about these fandoms being dead. I like enthusiasm and energy and it’s a shame to see it vanish.

Mists of Avalon

Remember that period of time of about 15 years, where absolutely everybody read this book and was obsessed with it? It could not have been bigger, and the fandom was Anne Rice huge, overlapping for several years with USENET and the early World Wide Web…but it’s since petered out.

Mists of Avalon’s popularity may be due to the most excellent case of hitting a demographic sweet spot ever. The book was a feminist retelling of the Arthurian Mythos where Morgan Le Fay is the main character, a pagan from matriarchal goddess religions who is fighting against encroaching Christianity and patriarchal forms of society coming in with it. Also, it made Lancelot bisexual and his conflict is how torn he is about his attraction to both Arthur and Guinevere.

Remember, this novel came out in 1983 – talk about being ahead of your time! If it came out today, the reaction from a certain corner would be something like “it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that tumblr is at it again.”

Man, demographically speaking, that’s called “nailing it.” It used to be one of the favorite books of the kind of person who’s bookshelf is dominated by fantasy novels about outspoken, fiery-tongued redheaded women, who dream of someday moving to Scotland, who love Enya music and Kate Bush, who sell homemade needlepoint stuff on etsy, who consider their religious beliefs neo-pagan or wicca, and who have like 15 cats, three of which are named Isis, Hypatia, and Morrigan.

This type of person is still with us, so why did this novel fade in popularity? There’s actually a single hideous reason: after her death around 2001, facts came out that Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her daughters sexually. Even when she was alive, she was known for defending and enabling a known child abuser, her husband, Walter Breen. To say people see your work differently after something like this is an understatement – especially if your identity is built around being a progressive and feminist author.

Robotech

I try to break up my sections on dead fandoms into three parts: first, I explain the property, then explain why it found a devoted audience, and finally, I explain why that fan devotion and community went away. Well, in the case of Robotech, I can do all three with a single sentence: it was the first boy pilot/giant robot Japanimation series that shot for an older, teenage audience to be widely released in the West. Robotech found an audience when it was the only true anime to be widely available, and lost it when became just another import anime show. In the days of Crunchyroll, it’s really hard to explain what made Robotech so special, because it means describing a different world.

Try to imagine what it was like in 1986 for Japanime fans: there were barely any video imports, and if you wanted a series, you usually had to trade tapes at your local basement club (they were so precious they couldn’t even be sold, only traded). If you were lucky, you were given a script to translate what you were watching. Robotech though, was on every day, usually after school. You want an action figure? Well, you could buy a Robotech Valkyrie or a Minmei figure at your local corner FAO Schwartz.

However, the very strategy that led to it getting syndicated is the very reason it was later vilified by the purists who emerged when anime became a widespread cultural force: strictly speaking, there actually is no show called “Robotech.” Since Japanese shows tend to be short run, say, 50-60 episodes, it fell well under the 80-100 episode mark needed for syndication in the US. The producer of Harmony Gold, Carl Macek, had a solution: he’d cut three unrelated but similar looking series together into one, called “Robotech.” The shows looked very similar, had similar love triangles, used similar tropes, and even had little references to each other, so the fit was natural. It led to Robotech becoming a weekday afternoon staple with a strong fandom who called themselves “Protoculture Addicts.” There were conventions entirely devoted to Robotech. The supposed shower scene where Minmei was bare-breasted was the barely whispered stuff of pervert legend in pre-internet days. And the tie in novels, written with the entirely western/Harmony Gold conception of the series and which continued the story, were actually surprisingly readable.

The final nail in the coffin of Robotech fandom was the rise of Sailor Moon, Toonami, Dragonball, and yes, Pokemon (like MC Hammer’s role in popularizing hip hop, Pokemon is often written out of its role in creating an audience for the next wave of cartoon imports out of insecurity). Anime popularity in the West can be defined as not a continuing unbroken chain like scifi book fandom is, but as an unrelated series of waves, like multiple ancient ruins buried on top of each other (Robotech was the vanguard of the third wave, as Anime historians reckon); Robotech’s wave was subsumed by the next, which had different priorities and different “core texts.” Pikachu did what the Zentraedi and Invid couldn’t do: they destroyed the SDF-1.

Legion of Super-Heroes

Legion of Superheroes was comic set in the distant future that combined superheroes with space opera, with a visual aesthetic that can best be described as “Star Trek: the Motion Picture, if it was set in a disco.”

I’ve heard wrestling described as “a soap opera for men.” If that’s the case, then Legion of Super-Heroes was a soap opera for nerds. The book is about attractive 20-somethings who seem to hook up all the time. As a result, it had a large female fanbase, which, I cannot stress enough, is incredibly unusual for this era in comics history. And if you have female fans, you get a lot of shipping and slashfic, and lots of speculation over which of the boy characters in the series is gay. The fanon answer is Element Lad, because he wore magenta-pink and never had a girlfriend. (Can’t argue with bulletproof logic like that.) In other words, it was a 1970s-80s fandom that felt much more “modern” than the more right-brained, bloodless, often anal scifi fandoms that existed around the same time, where letters pages were just nitpicking science errors by model train and elevator enthusiasts.

Legion Headquarters seemed to be a rabbit fuck den built around a supercomputer and Danger Room. Cosmic Boy dressed like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror. There’s one member, Duo Damsel, who can turn into two people, a power that, in the words of Legion writer Jim Shooter, was “useful for weird sex...and not much else.”

LSH was popular because the fans were insanely horny. This is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the thirstiest fandom of all time. You might think I’m overselling this, but I really think that’s an under-analyzed part of how some kinds of fiction build a devoted fanbase.

For example, a big reason for the success of Mass Effect is that everyone has a favorite girl or boy, and you have the option to romance them. Likewise, everyone who was a fan of Legion remembers having a crush. Sardonic Ultra Boy for some reason was a favorite among gay male nerds (aka the Robert Conrad Effect). Tall, blonde, amazonian telepath Saturn Girl, maybe the first female team leader in comics history, is for the guys with backbone who prefer Veronica over Betty. Shrinking Violet was a cute Audrey Hepburn type. And don’t forget Shadow Lass, who was a blue skinned alien babe with pointed ears and is heavily implied to have an accent (she was Aayla Secura before Aayla Secura was Aayla Secura). Light Lass was commonly believed to be “coded lesbian” because of a short haircut and her relationships with men didn’t work out. The point is, it’s one thing to read about the adventures of a superteam, and it implies a totally different level of mental and emotional involvement to read the adventures of your imaginary girlfriend/boyfriend.

Now, I should point out that of all the fandoms I’ve examined here, LSH was maybe the smallest. Legion was never a top seller, but it was a favorite of the most devoted of fans who kept it alive all through the seventies and eighties with an energy and intensity disproportionate to their actual numbers. My gosh, were LSH fans devoted! Interlac and Legion Outpost were two Legion fanzines that are some of the most famous fanzines in comics history.

If nerd culture fandoms were drugs, Star Wars would be alcohol, Doctor Who would be weed, but Legion of Super-Heroes would be injecting heroin directly into your eyeballs. Maybe it is because the Legionnaires were nerdy, too: they played Dungeons and Dragons in their off time (an escape, no doubt, from their humdrum, mundane lives as galaxy-rescuing superheroes). There were sometimes call outs to Monty Python. Basically, the whole thing had a feel like the dorkily earnest skits or filk-singing at a con. Legion felt like it’s own fan series, guest starring Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day.

It helped that the boundary between fandom and professional was incredibly porous. For instance, pro-artist Dave Cockrum did covers for Legion fanzines. Former Legion APA members Todd and Mary Biernbaum got a chance to actually write Legion, where, with the gusto of former slashfic writers given the keys to canon, their major contribution was a subplot that explicitly made Element Lad gay. Mike Grell, a professional artist who got paid to work on the series, did vaguely porno-ish fan art. Again, it’s hard to tell where the pros started and the fandom ended; the inmates were running the asylum.

Mostly, Legion earned this devotion because it could reward it in a way no other comic could. Because Legion was not a wide market comic but was bought by a core audience, after a point, there were no self-contained one-and-done Legion stories. In fact, there weren’t even really arcs as we know it, which is why Legion always has problems getting reprinted in trade form. Legion was plotted like a daytime soap opera: there were always five different stories going on in every issue, and a comic involved cutting between them. Sure, like daytime soap operas, there’s never a beginning, just endless middles, so it was totally impossible for a newbie to jump on board...but soap operas know what they are doing: long term storytelling rewards a long term reader.

This brings me to today, where Legion is no longer being published by DC. There is no discussion about a movie or TV revival. This is amazing. Comics are a world where the tiniest nerd groups get pandered to: Micronauts, Weirdworld, Seeker 3000, and Rom have had revival series, for pete’s sake. It’s incredible there’s no discussion of a film or TV treatment, either; friggin Cyborg from New Teen Titans is getting a solo movie.

Why did Legion stop being such a big deal? Where did the fandom that supported it dissolve to? One word: X-Men. Legion was incredibly ahead of its time. In the 60s and 70s, there were barely any “fan” comics, since superhero comics were like animation is today: mostly aimed at kids, with a minority of discerning adult/teen fans, and it was success among kids, not fans, that led to something being a top seller (hence, “fan favorites” in the 1970s, as surprising as it is to us today, often did not get a lot of work, like Don MacGregor or Barry Smith). But as newsstands started to push comics out, the fan audience started to get bigger and more important…everyone else started to catch up to the things that made Legion unique: most comics started to have attractive people who paired up into couples and/or love triangles, and featured extremely byzantine long term storytelling. If Legion of Super-Heroes is going to be remembered for anything, it’s for being the smaller scale “John the Baptist” to the phenomenon of X-Men, the ultimate “fan” comic.

The other thing that killed Legion, apart from Marvel’s Merry Mutants, that is, was the r-word: reboots. A reboot only works for some properties, but not others. You reboot something when you want to find something for a mass audience to respond to, like with Zorro, Batman, or Godzilla.

Legion, though, was not a comic for everybody, it was a fanboy/girl comic beloved by a niche who read it for continuing stories and minutiae (and to jack off, and in some cases, jill off). Rebooting a comic like that is a bad idea. You do not reboot something where the main way you engage with the property, the greatest strength, is the accumulated lore and history. Rebooting a property like that means losing the reason people like it, and unless it’s something with a wide audience, you only lose fans and won’t get anything in return for it. So for something like Legion (small fandom obsessed with long form plots and details, but unlike Trek, no name recognition) a reboot is the ultimate Achilles heel that shatters everything, a self-destruct button they kept hitting over and over and over until there was nothing at all left.

E. E. Smith’s Lensman Novels

The Lensman series is like Gil Evans’s jazz: it’s your grandparents’ favorite thing that you’ve never heard of.

I mean, have you ever wondered exactly what scifi fandom talked about before the rise of the major core texts and cultural objects (Star Trek, Asimov, etc)? Well, it was this. Lensmen was the subject of fanfiction mailed in manilla envelopes during the 30s, 40s, and 50s (some of which are still around). If you’re from Boston, you might recognize that the two biggest and oldest scifi cons there going back to the 1940s, Boskone (Boscon, get it?) and Arisia, are references to the Lensman series. This series not only created space opera as we know it, but contributed two of the biggest visuals in scifi, the interstellar police drawn from different alien species, and space marines in power armor.

My favorite sign of how big this series was and how fans responded to it, was a great wedding held at Worldcon that duplicated Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa’s wedding on Klovia. This is adorable:

The basic story is pure good vs. evil: galactic civilization faces a crime and piracy wave of unprecedented proportions from technologically advanced pirates (the memory of Prohibition, where criminals had superior firearms and faster cars than the cops, was strong by the mid-1930s). A young officer, Kimball Kinnison (who speaks in a Stan Lee esque style of dialogue known as “mid-century American wiseass”), graduates the academy and is granted a Lens, an object from an ancient mystery civilization, who’s true purpose is unknown.

Lensman Kinnison discovers that the “crime wave” is actually a hostile invasion and assault by a totally alien culture that is based on hierarchy, intolerant of failure, and at the highest level, is ruled by horrifying nightmare things that breathe freezing poison gases. Along the way, he picks up allies, like van Buskirk, a variant human space marine from a heavy gravity planet who can do a standing jump of 20 feet in full space armor, Worsel, a telepathic dragon warrior scientist with the technical improvisation skills of MacGyver (who reads like the most sadistically minmaxed munchkinized RPG character of all time), and Nandreck, a psychologist from a Pluto-like planet of selfish cowards.

The scale of the conflict starts small, just skirmishes with pirates, but explodes to near apocalyptic dimensions. This series has space battles with millions of starships emerging from hyperspacial tubes to attack the ultragood Arisians, homeworld of the first intelligent race in the cosmos. By the end of the fourth book, there are mind battles where the reflected and parried mental beams leave hundreds of innocent bystanders dead. In the meantime we get evil Black Lensmen, the Hell Hole in Space, and superweapons like the Negasphere and the Sunbeam, where an entire solar system was turned into a vacuum tube.

It’s not hard to understand why Lensmen faded in importance. While the alien Lensmen had lively psychologies, Lensman Kimball Kinnison was not an interesting person, and that’s a problem when scifi starts to become more about characterization. The Lensman books, with their love of police and their sexism (it is an explicit plot point that the Lens is incompatible with female minds – in canon there are no female Lensmen) led to it being judged harshly by the New Wave writers of the 1960s, who viewed it all as borderline fascist military-scifi establishment hokum, and the reputation of the series never recovered from the spirit of that decade.

Prisoner of Zenda

Prisoner of Zenda is a novel about a roguish con-man who visits a postage-stamp, charmingly picturesque Central European kingdom with storybook castles, where he finds he looks just like the local king and is forced to pose as him in palace intrigues. It’s a swashbuckling story about mistaken identity, swordfighting, and intrigue, one part swashbuckler and one part dark political thriller.

The popularity of this book predates organized fandom as we know it, so I wonder if “fandom” is even the right word to use. All the same, it inspired fanatical dedication from readers. There was such a popular hunger for it that an entire library could be filled with nothing but rip-offs of Prisoner of Zenda. If you have a favorite writer who was active between 1900-1950, I guarantee he probably wrote at least one Prisoner of Zenda rip-off (which is nearly always the least-read book in his oeuvre). The only novel in the 20th Century that inspired more imitators was Sherlock Holmes. Robert Heinlein and Edmond “Planet Smasher” Hamilton wrote scifi updates of Prisoner of Zenda. Doctor Who lifted the plot wholesale for the Tom Baker era episode, “Androids of Tara,” Futurama did this exact plot too, and even Marvel Comics has its own copy of Ruritania, Doctor Doom’s Kingdom of Latveria. Even as late as the 1980s, every kids’ cartoon did a “Prisoner of Zenda” episode, one of the stock plots alongside “everyone gets hit by a shrink ray” and the Christmas Carol episode.

Prisoner of Zenda imitators were so numerous, that they even have their own Library of Congress sub-heading, of “Ruritanian Romance.”

One major reason that Prisoner of Zenda fandom died off is that, between World War I and World War II, there was a brutal lack of sympathy for anything that seemed slightly German, and it seems the incredibly Central European Prisoner of Zenda was a casualty of this. Far and away, the largest immigrant group in the United States through the entire 19th Century were Germans, who were more numerous than Irish or Italians. There were entire cities in the Midwest that were two-thirds German-born or German-descent, who met in Biergartens and German community centers that now no longer exist.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a lot about how the German-American world he grew up in vanished because of the prejudice of the World Wars, and that disappearance was so extensive that it was retroactive, like someone did a DC comic-style continuity reboot where it all never happened: Germans, despite being the largest immigrant group in US history, are left out of the immigrant story. The “Little Bohemias” and “Little Berlins” that were once everywhere no longer exist. There is no holiday dedicated to people of German ancestry in the US, the way the Irish have St. Patrick’s Day or Italians have Columbus Day (there is Von Steuben’s Day, dedicated to a general who fought with George Washington, but it’s a strictly Midwest thing most people outside the region have never heard of, like Sweetest Day). If you’re reading this and you’re an academic, and you’re not sure what to do your dissertation on, try writing about the German-American immigrant world of the 19th and 20th Centuries, because it’s a criminally under-researched topic.

A. Merritt

Pop quiz: who was the most popular and influential fantasy author during the 1930s and 40s?

If you answered Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, you’re wrong - it was actually Abraham Merritt. He was the most popular writer of his age of the kind of fiction he did, and he’s since been mostly forgotten. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has said that A. Merritt was his favorite fantasy and horror novelist.

Why did A. Merritt and his fandom go away, when at one point, he was THE fantasy author? Well, obviously one big answer was the 1960s counterculture, which brought different writers like Tolkien and Lovecraft to the forefront (by modern standards Lovecraft isn’t a fantasy author, but he was produced by the same early century genre-fluid effluvium that produced Merritt and the rest). The other answer is that A. Merritt was so totally a product of the weird occult speculation of his age that it’s hard to even imagine him clicking with audiences in other eras. His work is based on fringe weirdness that appealed to early 20th Century spiritualism and made sense at the time: reincarnation, racial memory, an obsession with lost race stories and the stone age, and weirdness like the 1920s belief that the Polar Arctic is the ancestral home of the Caucasian race. In other words, it’s impossible to explain Merritt without a ton of sentences that start with “well, people in the 1920s thought that...” That’s not a good sign when it comes to his universality.

That’s it for now. Do you have any suggestions on a dead fandom, or do you keep one of these “dead” fandoms alive in your heart?

#fandom history #lensman #robotech #prisoner of zenda #mists of avalon

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megasilverfist · 6 years

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Chatlog with Blackoutlandish

((As normal this is private IC)) megasilverfist Hey, no guarantees, but would you be interested in moving up from shared pseudonym to loosely connected to a celebrity cash grab? Because I'm probably getting a comic book series. Last Thursday at 12:24 PM blackoutlandish It'd depend on the details, of course. What brought me to your attention? (And you understand I'm limited in my ability to provide a portfolio of previous work, of course.) Last Thursday at 6:57 PM megasilverfist We've been mutuals for like 4 years, and I could be getting you mixed up with a different blackout RPer (I used to know quite a few) I think we reviewed each others fanfic back when I still had time for that stuff. Also they have a prompt they want people to use. Last Friday at 12:58 AM blackoutlandish I'd be happy to take a look. megasilverfist Well two prompts. One based on me an the other on one of the characters from an ongoing series they run. Haka is having a day on the town, when suddenly, a desperate cry rings out! A baby has been kidnapped! And noble Haka, Our Hero of Tapa, must rescue them! Silver visits Ereith, and wrestles a bear. megasilverfist Action is a major part of the franchise, but they do get they grey's they're working with to do fight scene consulting so they're mostly looking at your ability to do smooth transitions into and out of it, and snappy dialogue. megasilverfist So like make sure to give Haka and the villains some good banter and come up with a cool excuse for me to wrestle a bear. blackoutlandish _nod_ megasilverfist They don't have a fixed length the expect, but a page or two each in script format is about right. Pay rate is ((more than you currently make but not by a ton)) megasilverfist Also they like more or less realistic caste dialects rather than the everyone speaks standard convention some people go for. I mean you can cut some of the parts that can be confusing to people like position words, but overall the greys should sound grey, purples purple ect. blackoutlandish I think I can make that kind of thing clear enough to out-of-caste readers. Last Friday at 9:09 AM megasilverfist Cool Today at 10:50 AM megasilverfist ((ooc how to you want this to go)) Today at 12:35 PM blackoutlandish ((For the money you're offering, you can probably find a better writer, but it's not inconceivable Nisa could get the job. She's not a *great* writer, but she's okay. She writes disposable pulp.)) megasilverfist ((Silver wouldn't frame it this way, but if you ask him for the name of the publisher/franchise then do some research you'll see that the only reason its not disposable pulp is because people with very bad taste *cough silver cough* treat it as collectable and that the relatively high pay is because the celebrity tie in angle creates both more profit and lots of headache)) blackoutlandish ((Neat, so this is actually at about her level. Let's do it.)) megasilverfist ((Yeah, I planed it so it would be enough of a step up that taking it would be a no brainer but close enough that she would make sense as a candidate with only a teeny bit of favoritism from a not that close friend)) megasilverfist ((p.s. you will probably receive death threats IC, the fanbase is toxic, as are several of the other grey partners)) blackoutlandish ((oh dear ^_^)) Awesome, you should get the official call latter today, but it looks like they liked what you sent. blackoutlandish Glad to hear it! megasilverfist Yeah, I'm super excited to get this going. blackoutlandish :D megasilverfist ((if you want me to make up specific characters at the publisher and chat rp them I can, if not I can just give you a loose run down of how I picture this place working)) blackoutlandish ((rundown's fine)) megasilverfist ((I'm leaning towards saying that its Echo Bridge Press, but not sure if that fits with your picture of them. Anyway the pro is that it well paid for a place willing to hire *you* and that the other writers + Silver are nice, the cons are tight deadlines, a toxic fanbase and a totem pole that you are at the bottom of)) blackoutlandish ((the publishers I listed are specifically publishers of collective-pseudonym fiction, though some of them could also publish nonanonymous authors)) megasilverfist ((Oic, will make up a new one then, probably the same people that do youth leap.)) blackoutlandish :+1: megasilverfist ((The greys’ reputations and a few pieces of setting ip are what makes the franchise work, you suspect your boss values them more than your life. I don't know if you believe the rumors about what happened to the author that threatened to go public with complaints about sexual assault/beatings/harassment from friends in the police but you've heard them. After that come the artists who are more talented at art in general than most of the writers are at writing, and have lots of specialized knowledge about how to do the sorts of art needed for this, e.g. panel layouts for fight scenes and how to follow a dancer's description of a dance scene. They have a strong tendency to take over storyboarding and other parts of the writing duties. On one hand this can be helpful giving the deadline pressure on the other hand its pretty clear that they are considered the creators and you're just filling in speech bubble that half the audience probably doesn't read anyway. Also people are very considering about the audience in ways that have pretty open castist tones)) blackoutlandish (("very considering about the audience" - condescending?)) megasilverfist ((yes)) megasilverfist ((there is a certain weird chemistry by which this manages to consistently keep the audience engaged and occasionally even come up with something legit good like Jackie Chan Adventures, but overall this is a celebrity tie in cash grab for kids and the kind of adult who watches DBZ and the people making it know it.)) blackoutlandish ((awesome)) blackoutlandish ((Nisa is gonna try to make it actually good but she Knows Her Place. Any ~arrogant artistic vision integrity~ she ever had has been safely shelved long ago.)) megasilverfist ((cool, it is weird in that is some parts of the process you have no freedom, but you have almost complete freedom in every other respect because they just don't devote many resources to monitoring your work)) megasilverfist Btw, one of the big benefits is thats its not collective pseudonym so you can get other jobs from it, but by tradition it is per author pseudonym. You don't have to use one, but they'll ask if you have one picked out. blackoutlandish Interesting. I'll have to look up what kinds of pseudonyms previous authors have used. megasilverfist I liked the Bard of Light's stuff when I was reading it as a kid, but they're a lot of variety. blackoutlandish _nod_ megasilverfist ((mind if I cleanup edit then post this log?)) blackoutlandish ((go for it)) blackoutlandish ((I might need some more examples to get a sense of how namelike/titlelike they are -- Starlit Cowl? Shadowscribe?)) megasilverfist ((Leans title like but with a lot a variation on the principle of nobody cares, Shadowscribe would work)) megasilverfist ((You going with shadowscribe?)) blackoutlandish ((yeah))

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f4liveblogarchives · 6 years

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Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #53

Fri Nov 7 2016 [21:52:15] <Wackd> Now on to issue 53, Black Panther's origin story! [21:52:33] <Wackd> Poor guy. Always having to have his origin story in other people's titles [21:53:19] <maxwellelvis> So has T'Challa explained why he basically hunted and attacked the FF like a villain yet? [21:53:55] <Wackd> Not yet [21:54:00] <Wackd> I just started reading, dude, calm down [21:54:33] <Wackd> REED: Another example of the old and the new! Look at that elaborate stereo system--complete with tape player! [21:56:09] <Wackd> First appearance of vibrantium! [21:56:31] <Wackd> REED: Rockets made of vibrantium would never go off course due to vibrations! [21:56:40] <Wackd> Is...is that a frequent problem with rockets [21:57:30] <Bocaj> Sounds legit [21:58:07] <Mukora> It actually is I think. Rockets need to maintain a pretty stable vibration to keep the right course for orbit [22:00:38] <Wackd> Okay so Wakanda was apparently always a stereotypically primitive society until T'chala sold a buncha vibranium and decked it out with sci-fi bullshit [22:01:04] <Wackd> Also he fought the F4 because he knew if he could kick THEIR asses, than he could take down Klaw no problem [22:03:50] <Bocaj> Why are people in marvel always beating up people to prove they can beat up other people [22:04:17] <maxwellelvis> It's like wrestling; always gotta prove you're the best. [22:04:23] <Mukora> Toxic masculinity [22:04:49] <maxwellelvis> Except unlike wrestlers, the superheroes don't get paid to beat each other up. [22:05:41] <Wackd> Anyway Klaw attacked with giant red animal sound constructs [22:05:44] <atticus> what mukora said in a way [22:05:47] <Wackd> But Black Panther kicked his ass [22:05:54] <atticus> our culture has a weird relationship with violence [22:05:54] <Wackd> While the F4 basically did nothing [22:06:00] <atticus> we put it on a pedestal, but we also condemn it [22:06:17] <atticus> and I can't exactly say I don't perpetuate it to shit [22:06:19] <Wackd> Anyway T'challa only created the Black Panther guise to revenge himself on Klaw [22:06:32] <Wackd> So he's like "welp guess that's over" [22:06:40] <maxwellelvis> I thought his father was the Black Panther too. [22:06:43] <Wackd> And the Four are like "why not become a superhero?" [22:06:49] <Wackd> And T'challa is like "eh why not" [22:07:16] <Wackd> His father was not the Black Panther as of this writing [22:07:21] <Wackd> Musta been a retcon [22:07:29] <Wackd> Anyway LETTERS PAGE! :D [22:07:54] <Wackd> "Why does Galactus have a big G on his chest?" "Because a big W would've looked silly." [22:08:30] <Mukora> Walactus [22:09:04] <Bocaj> Walactuigi [22:09:14] <atticus> Walgalactus [22:09:40] <Mukora> I mean I'm sure plenty of people are already doing that. [22:09:42] <Wackd> "Why doeskin Stan Lee write novels instead of comics? He's more than good enough." "I'm waiting for the day book writers are clamoring to write comic mags!" [22:11:52] <Wackd> Oh my fucking god [22:11:54] <Wackd> Someone wrote in [22:11:55] <Wackd> Asking [22:11:59] <Wackd> What the colorer does [22:12:14] <atticus> do they [22:12:15] <atticus> color [22:12:56] <Wackd> "It may come as a shock to you to learn that the colorer--now hold on to your hat--the colorer is the pussycat who COLORS the pages! And we wish ALL our frantic fans' queries were as easy to answer as yours was, tiger!" [22:12:58] <Mukora> Actually they do the letters [22:13:03] <Mukora> It's very confusing [22:13:04] <Bocaj> In the Marvel Untold History book they quote an interview where Stan Lee actually lamented never having written his own novel or screenplay, that he wasted his whole life on comic book and comic book related things [22:13:54] <Mukora> Can you fucking imagine a Stan Lee novel [22:14:13] <Mukora> That would be... bad [22:14:26] <atticus> it'd be interesting to know which flaws carried [22:14:28] <atticus> and which ones did not [22:14:48] <Wackd> Some fan's asking why the Watcher is so fat now [22:14:57] <Wackd> Comic fans have always been badwrong [22:15:04] <Mukora> Yes [22:15:24] <MousaThe14> Actually for a period of time Stan was off in Hollywood with a director friend to write a screenplay that never went anywhere [22:15:54] <Wackd> "Don't let Alicia fall for the Silver Surfer" AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHA [22:17:23] <Wackd> LOTS of folks want Johnny/Crystal to be a thing [22:17:36] <MousaThe14> Shoppers are eternal [22:17:36] <Wackd> Which is weird because Crystal is barely a character and Johnny barely knows her [22:17:40] <Bocaj> "Can you fucking imagine a Stan Lee novel" I was just reminded that in his comic book autobiography, Stan spends a fair bit of time just gushing about how his wife wrote a novel [22:17:53] <MousaThe14> They were standing next to each other, Wack'd

#1966 #Stan Lee #Jack Kirby #The Main Book

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scottwinters714 · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://comicbookheros.everythingonlinenow.com/7-most-cringe-worthy-moments-from-tom-kings-batman-run/

7 Most Cringe-Worthy Moments from Tom King’s Batman Run

We’re several months into the new James Tynion IV-led run of Batman, which means we’re now a healthy distance away from the both beloved and maligned Tom King run that dominated Batman comics from June 2016 through December 2019. Whether you saw King’s run as transformative or were in the house-divided sect of Batman fans who couldn’t wait for it to end, this run was legendary. It challenged readers, brought new ideas to the table, and workshopped the character of Batman in a way that hadn’t been done previously — for better and for worse. Comic scribe Tom King added his own style and fascinations to Batman lore, and we can expect many of these additions will most likely turn out to be permanent fixtures on the character’s history.

Earlier this month, we released a list of “7 Greatest Moments from Tom King’s Batman Run” that celebrated a handful of the fresh ideas and arcs King brought to the Batcave over the past few years. This time around, we’re highlighting some of the missteps. These moments from King’s run made us cringe. Some of the featured moments are silly; others work in contradiction of how they were intended.

As any creator knows, you can’t win them all! At the very least, we can point out the ideas we didn’t like and commiserate together over issues that made us avert our eyes and cover our collective Bat-shame.

One note — we’re only showcasing moments where Tom King arguably exhibited the most creative control. We know the “Night of the Monster Men” arc is a much-maligned Batman story, but it’s not King’s fault. As such, you won’t see that diabolically disappointing crossover on this list. The “Prelude to the Wedding” series or “The Price” arc won’t be included either.

Of course, if you want to commiserate over how cringe-worthy you found any of these, feel free to join us in our Discord server. Without further delay, we present to you…

Honorable Cringe: Batman #69

One of King’s recurring mysteries in his Batman run is his insistence of showing us a naked Bane. Naked Bane shows up semi-frequently throughout the run, and for the life of us, we can’t figure out why. We didn’t ask for it, yet it keeps coming up on the menu

The most cringe-worthy appearance of naked Bane, however, can be found in the pages of Batman #69, where our nude arch-villain can be seen wrestling Batman’s dad. Avert your eyes in 3, 2, 1…

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #7: Batman #50

One of the most hyped and highly anticipated moments during the first half of Tom King’s Batman run was the wedding between Batman and Catwoman. Passion quickly reignited between the two under King’s stewardship, and before readers knew it, Bat popped the question to his beloved Cat.

The lead-up to this wedding was, arguably, wonderful. We had fun moments like the double-date between Superman and Lois and Bat and Cat, Selina stealing a wedding dress, a whole spin-off prelude series, an annual that showed Bruce and Selina growing old together, and so much more. The anticipation built for months and months, and DC Comics pulled no punches in advertising and promoting this wedding as something of a summer event. Tom King even went on Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote the wedding, and when asked if Batman and Catwoman were going to get married, he gave a definitive answer of yes.

A few days before the wedding issue was released, tragedy struck. The New York Times released an article about the penultimate issue early. Before we even had a copy of Batman #50 in our hands, we knew the bad news. The wedding wasn’t meant to be. Catwoman left Batman at the rooftop, and comic fans abandoned their copies of Batman #50 at retailers.

It’s true that King’s hands were tied and the hype wasn’t necessarily his fault. He didn’t write the prelude series, and he doesn’t control DC’s marketing. Still, he went on national TV and told everyone otherwise. And when we finally got the issue in our hands, we found out that Catwoman broke up with Batman through a note!? What kind of grade school breakup is this? To jam that knife in further, we got to read snippets of the note to the backdrop of full-page Bat/Cat posters by some of DC’s most celebrated artists. The issue also culminated in a reveal that this was some sort of plot by Bane. UGH!

The wedding issue was a slap in the face, and it represented a turning point in how readers treated King online. He always had his naysayers, but after our trust was broken, these groups online grew louder.

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #6: Batman #9-13

You know what’s a cool line to repeat to death to anyone and everyone who will listen? “I’m going to break your damn back!”

In the “I Am Suicide” arc of King’s Batman run, Batman repeats this phrase over and over and over again. He says it to Bane, to others about Bane, and near the end of King’s run, Batman brings it up again in the “City of Bane” storyline.

We’re highlighting it, specifically, in the “I Am Suicide” arc because this is where it first appears in King’s run. Unlike “City of Bane,” it also sticks out more here because we’re less invested in the arc overall. When writing this arc, King tried a unique approach by having Batman assemble his own Suicide Squad and have each member play an integral role in stealing the Psycho-Pirate from Bane.

Unfortunately, readers are left clueless as to what purpose each member of this Suicide Squad serves. This is a cool technique when there’s some sort of investment in the characters, but in this instance, it steals all the tension from the action. Since we don’t exactly know who’s doing what and we don’t necessarily care about these characters, we’re left in the wind. That “I’m going to break your damn back” ultimately gets amplified in the deafening silence of a struggling storyline, and we’re probably cringing harder than we would have otherwise.

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #5: Batman #45-47

Right before the wedding, readers were greeted with a little, three-issue story called “The Gift.” In it, Booster Gold tries to capture a world where Batman’s parents hadn’t died as some sort of a wedding gift for the real Batman.

Besides being a vehicle to set up King’s miniseries Heroes in Crisis, this was a strange story with an off-key Booster Gold, bizarre humor, and a mind-bogglingly dumb plot that leaves readers guessing as to its purpose.

Moments of humor and tragedy are blended in a way that makes it indecipherable to audiences as to how they should be reacting. Should we find this silly and funny, or is it sad? And why is this alternate reality Catwoman content with just saying “Meow” over and over again?

“The Gift” was reminiscent of a sillier, more bumbling “goofus” style of humor we would have expected from Jar Jar Binks, and we’re not sure why it’s found in the pages of Batman. And while Booster Gold is often depicted as a clown, this representation feels uniquely out of character for him.

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #4: Batman #67

We’re singling this issue out of the seven-part “Knightmares” arc in King’s run. This particular nightmare, “All The Way Down,” embodies everything wrong with this arc as a whole. In this issue, we have almost no dialogue as Batman chases a masked goon across Gotham. We do get the occasional Looney Tunes sound effect though. Clearly, this is a tribute to King’s much loved Batman/Elmer Fudd special. It’s also a super meta dissection of Batman comics in general, as it toys with the convention of Batman repeatedly chasing the same criminals over and over again. That’s cool in theory, but it’s not an idea worth having its own issue.

Worse still, this issue (and seven-part arc), comes at a time when tensions are rising in the series. Batman’s mentally gone off the deep end, and unexplained happenings (like the reappearance of Flashpoint Batman) are driving the mystery and narrative forward. Suddenly, “Knightmares” interrupts and makes readers suffer through literal months of Batman recapping and workshopping the King run in his dreams. Not. Cool.

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #3: Batman #51

Immediately after the wedding that wasn’t, Bruce Wayne inserts himself into a fun 12 Angry Men scenario where he’s going to undo what Batman’s done to Mr. Freeze. The story itself is exciting and thoughtful, but it also leads to one of the most unintentionally funny moments in Batman history — Bruce Wayne ripping a urinal off of the wall of a public restroom with his bare hands and then throwing it.

That’s public property, Bruce. Come on…

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #2: Batman #30

Love or hate the “War of Jokes and Riddles,” it ultimately gets recalled and referenced quite heavily in King’s Batman run. The core concept of the war is neat, but it also contains the most “un-Batman-like” Batman we’ve ever read.

To sum up what makes us cringe, Batman decides he has to pick a side in the war between Joker and Riddler. He sides with Riddler and starts taking down Joker’s army of villains. To make matters worse, he makes Kite Man the last of Joker’s villains on his list to eliminate because Kite Man will talk and reveal Joker’s location. Batman does this despite knowing that Riddler murdered Kite Man’s son. It’s sick, twisted, and the most egregious, un-Batman-like thing in this storyline as Batman is knowingly taking advantage of someone who is mentally broken.

It’s true that in Batman #31, Batman helps Kite Man get his revenge on Riddler. He also expresses some remorse when telling the tale of the War of Jokes and Riddles to Catwoman. However, this remorse is shrouded by Batman upset that he nearly murdered Riddler and endangered Catwoman. Overall, Batman comes off as uncharacteristically cold and self-centered, and it makes us cringe hard. We’d like to forget this storyline ever happened.

Most Cringe-Worthy Moment #1: Batman #58-60

Remember when we mentioned earlier how Tom King has a weird sense of humor that sometimes makes us cringe? In these three issues, Penguin switches teams from working for Bane to aiding Batman because Bane murdered Penny Cobblepot, a seemingly secret wife of Penguin.

King is slick about the introduction and reveal of Penny Cobblepot, toeing the line between defining her as a human or a literal penguin.

Who is Penny Cobblepot? We know through Penguin’s monologues, that she was passed around from “man to man,” and that she could have had a soul, though no one might have known it. King leans into teasing us with this idea that Penny was perhaps a prostitute around the age of twenty that Penguin took in. She had no family that cared for her, and Penguin denied them at her funeral, choosing to bury her next to his own grave alone.

However, penguins also live to the age of twenty, and Penny is also described as having black feathers and a sun-drenched beak. At first, it was a toss-up as to whether King was using poetic language to describe her or if he was being literal. Tom King later confirmed that he was in fact being literal in Batman #60, where Cobblepot revealed that Penny was ultimately an actual penguin.

This makes us question Penguin’s relationship with Penny, and we want so much to believe that it was wholesome. Please?

What are your most cringe-worthy moments from King’s Batman run? Think any of the mentioned comments above aren’t cringe? Tell us in the comments below!

Original source: http://thebatmanuniverse.net/batman-334/

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