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anyasathenaeum · 11 months

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Across Time and Space (Part 2)

A/N: Part 2 time for the Eriks!Vash hurt/comfort fic LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! God I love hurt/comfort, and God I love Eriks. Anyways, here, have this, the some-more-hurt-and-mostly-comfort part of the hurt/comfort! For those who missed the first part, read part 1 here!

Pairing: Eriks!Vash x reader

Warnings: Slight violence, literally still just going off episode 18 of Trigun so potential spoilers for those who haven't watched it, still potential spoilers for episode 12 of Trigun Stampede, lots of emotions, a mix of Tristamp and 98 Trigun Vash/Eriks

When you regained consciousness, you found yourself in what seemed to be an abandoned building of some kind, laying against a wall. It was dark, but you could make out that there were a LOT of bandits around. In your immediate vicinity, there were at least 50. Immediately to your left, you saw Lina, who had her hands tied and was being kept under watch.

"Ahhh, lookie who's finally awake!"

A voice startled you, and as you turned your head, you saw a particularly nasty-looking bandit smiling evilly at you, his eyes filled with malice as he approached you.

"I'm so glad you tried going after the little runt who kicked me in the face, cause now you're both our hostages. Now, you can pay for taking out so many of my men. I couldn't have planned it better myself!" The bandit roared, his accomplices and subordinates laughing with him.

That's right - you had heard the bandits passing by your hospital window, talking about going to kidnap Lina as revenge against both her and Eriks, who had turned out to be Vash. Your Vash. There was no way you were going to let Lina get hurt, so, you swiftly climbed out of the hospital window and went after the bandits going to kidnap Lina. You had actually managed to incapacitate quite a number of them before one had successfully snuck up behind you and knocked you out, taking you as a second hostage to use against Eriks.

'Vash,' You reminded yourself, despite the horrible pain it caused in your chest, 'They're using you against Vash. Eriks is Vash.'

You tried to get up to face the bandit, your anger flaring up within you, but you found your arms were tied together behind your back, making it extremely difficult for you to get up without somebody physically lifting you in support.

"You bastards," You hissed angrily, not even trying to hide your hatred and rage, "She's a child! Let her go!"

The lead bandit just shrugged, still grinning evilly, "I don't think so. She decided to cross me. So now, she's paying the price, just like you are. And soon that blonde fool will suffer, too!"

"You keep Eriks out of this!" Lina yelled, but one hard look from the bandit guarding her and him cocking his gun silenced her immediately.

You had to hand it to her - for somebody so young, Lina was incredibly brave. You were impressed by her spirit.

"Don't you hurt her!" You snapped at the guard, shouting and glaring at him with such intensity that the guard visibly flinched, "If you touch her, the minute I'm free, I'll break every bone in your body, do you understand me?"

The bandit leader just laughed before grabbing your hair and tugging your head back, causing you to cry out in pain as he pulled hard, your scalp burning. You heard Lina scream something in the background, but couldn't make it out, your focus tunneling in on the bandit leader as he sneered down at you.

"You shut up or I'll shoot you this instant, you hear me?"

You found yourself just smirking and letting out a cold laugh, refusing to bend to this monster's will, "I'd love to see you try that. Go ahead, shoot me. Then you're one hostage down and Eriks will kick your ass anyways."

This infuriated the bandit, causing him to pull your head back even harder, a hiss of pain escaping you as he did so as you felt the roots of your hair lifting from the force of the bandit's grip. However, the bandit just spluttered and couldn't actually form any comprehensible argument, so you just smiled bigger - you knew you were right. You called his bluff.

However, you being right about the situation didn't stop the bandit leader from pistol whipping you across the face. You let out a cry as the pistol made contact with your cheek, the pain blinding you and the force of the strike sending you sprawling onto the floor. You could hear Lina screaming in the background for the bandit to stop, but the bandit leader just laughed before walking off, leaving you both with the guard.

As you lay on the ground, you could see stars and your vision was blurry from the force of the hit, the pain disorienting you. Your face was throbbing where the pistol had struck you, and from the intensity of the pain, you knew that your face was going to bruise, if your bone hasn't straight up been broken.

"(Y/N)! Are you okay?!"

You heard Lina crying out to you, and you struggled to sit up so you could face her. Eventually, you shifted enough for Lina to be able to see your face, and you just offered her as best a smile as you could, trying to comfort her.

"Oh, I'm fine! Don't worry, Lina. That guy hits like a wimp," You replied casually, your grin hopefully coming across convincing.

It seemed to work, because you could see Lina relaxing slightly as you smiled at her. However, deep down, you were starting to worry. You knew that Wolfwood and Vash were likely already on their way, but there were so many bandits. They were walking into a fight against 200+ bandits.

'Vash... Wolfwood...' You thought desperately, 'Please be careful.'

MEANWHILE

Vash and Wolfwood walked side by side as they approached the abandoned building. Even from where they were, they could see all the guns pointed at them both from every window of the building. That didn't stop them from continuing to approach.

"How many are there?" Wolfwood asked, glancing from window to window.

"About 200," Vash answered, his expression grim as they both continued to approach the building.

"A hundred for each of us, huh?" Wolfwood replied, smirking slightly as he lugged his cross over his shoulder.

"Yup."

Wolfwood just sighed, "Well, that's not exactly fair to them," before uncovering the Punisher, revealing the gun in all its glory.

"Uh, hey! I don't want you killing anybody, alright?!" Vash exclaimed, causing Wolfwood to become exasperated.

"Why don't you just ask me not to breathe?!"

"Thou shalt not kill, remember?!" Vash shot back, looking thoroughly unimpressed with his companion, "What kind of church man are you, anyway?!"

At that, Wolfwood just smiled a bit and laughed, "Woah, déjà-vu, I've heard that before. Now you're starting to sound like your old self."

Vash just offered a small smile in return. Deep down, he didn't really feel like his old self and hadn't for the past 2 years, but now... his old self was resurfacing. Especially now that you were in danger. Vash wasn't going to let you get hurt ever again. Not after how badly he had hurt you in choosing not to let you know he was alive.

The ground right next to Vash and Wolfwood exploded as the bandits fired a warning shot at them. Vash could see the bandit leader standing on the roof of the building, laughing maniacally as he had fired the shot at them.

Suddenly, Vash heard a voice cry out.

"Eriks!"

Vash's expression became one of worry as he saw Lina being held by a bandit, a gun pressed to her temple. And next to her-

His heart hit the ground.

Your face was bloodied and bruised, your eye swollen shut and black. You had an expression of fear and pain on your face, and the bandit holding you also had a gun pressed to your temple, just like Lina.

Rage. Pure, unaltered rage rose up within Vash - somebody dared to lay a hand on you and hurt you. All because you fought to protect Lina, just as he had.

"Woah, woah, woah," Wolfwood muttered, his arm shooting out in front of Vash for a second, "Hang on a second, Stampede. Take a breather."

Wolfwood could feel the anger radiating off of Vash, and he knew that if he didn't do this, Vash likely would've charged in already and gotten shot. Vash, on his end, knew that Wolfwood was right. He needed to recollect himself and focus, otherwise, there was no chance of him being able to get you out of there safely.

Once he had calmed down, Vash took a deep breath and a small smile appeared on his face, prepared to get you and Lina out of there.

"Time to kill!"

The bandit leader roared suddenly, and every single gun pointed at Vash and Wolfwood began to fire. Somehow, not a single bullet hit either one of them, and they both approached the building, bringing up their guns and getting ready for the fight.

"Showtime."

Both Vash and Wolfwood spoke in tandem, continuing to walk towards the building completely unphased.

Once the gunfire started, you and Lina were pulled back from the windows by your respective guards, and everything became a blur to you. It was hard to see as one of your eyes had swelled up, but from what you could see, the bandits weren't doing a great job of actually hitting their targets.

You found yourself smiling to yourself despite the gun barrel pressed to your temple and the aching pain radiating and throbbing in your face. Given the rising panic in the voices of the bandits, you could tell that Vash and Wolfwood were making headway. You were sure they'd be there for you and Lina shortly.

"Hey, what are you grinning about?! Quit that!" The guard holding you shouted, causing you to wince as he yelled in your ear. However, you refused to stand down, just grinning wider.

"You're screwed," You replied with a gently crazy laugh, "You're so screwed."

"Shut up!" The guard yelled again, and the gun barrel pressed against your temple disappeared for a second as the guard raised his pistol to strike you again.

Two gunshots rang out and the pistol the guard was holding fell to the ground as the guard yelped, as well as the pistol that the guard holding Lina had been holding. You flinched, half expecting the blow, until you suddenly felt the guard release you from his grip and heard him and the guard that had been holding Lina hightailing it as fast as they both could in the opposite direction.

When you looked up and turned to see what had saved you, your heart stuttered in your chest and squeezed painfully.

"Eriks," You mumbled softly, being careful not to call him Vash with Lina standing directly behind you.

The look on Vash's face was one of determination and worry as he sprinted over to you and Lina.

"Eriks!" You heard Lina exclaim happily as Vash ran over, quickly pulling both of you into a tight hug, holding you both close.

You couldn't really process what was happening. Vash was here. Vash was alive. Eriks was Vash. Vash saved you. Vash was here.

Vash, Vash, Vash.

"It's okay," You heard Vash whisper to you both, his tone quiet and calm, "I've got you both. Let's get out of here. Let's get you both home."

Wolfwood must've finally taken out the remaining bandits as it was suddenly quiet, and the preacher was walking over to you all slowly, unhurried.

As Vash untied Lina, Wolfwood untied your arms, double-taking a bit as he looked at your face.

"Woah, (Y/N), what happened to your face?" Wolfwood asked, looking over the wound on your face.

"They were a badass, that's what happened!"

You were surprised to hear Lina piping up, her voice excited and completely in awe of you.

You found the heat rising to your face a bit as you looked down, mumbling, "Not really..."

"You were, though! You refused to let the bad guys push you around! You were amazing! I hope I'm as tough as you someday!" Lina insisted, her eyes glistening as she looked at you.

You just smiled as best you could at her, "Wanna know a secret, Lina? You already are. You're brave, kid. Don't ever lose that."

Lina turned a beautiful shade of pink, and as you gazed at her, you could feel Vash's eyes on you. However, you knew that if you looked at him right now, you'd break down on the spot and this was neither the time or the place.

"Let's get going," You spoke up, straightening up and turning to Wolfwood, "Best we get out of here before any of these idiots regain consciousness."

Wolfwood just nodded before glancing over at Vash, who was still looking at you, clearly worried and wanting to approach you. Once Vash looked at Wolfwood, Wolfwood just jerked his head.

"Come on, let's get back to Grandma Sheryl. I'm sure she's worried sick about you two," Wolfwood stated, glancing at Vash and Lina.

Once you had all returned to town, Grandma Sheryl was in an uproar. She ran around, hugging Lina and Vash tightly and thanking Vash and Wolfwood for saving Lina, then she hugged you and thanked you for keeping Lina safe while kidnapped and for protecting her. After the initial uproar, Grandma Sheryl sent Lina upstairs to take a bath and Vash to go get cleaned up, while Wolfwood stood outside smoking his cigarette. You, however, were asked to stay behind in the kitchen with Grandma Sheryl.

"Oh, goodness, your face," Grandma Sheryl exclaimed, bringing her hands up to your face, gently turning your head from side to side as she evaluated it, "What happened?!"

You just winced a bit as she pressed her fingers against your bruise, hissing a bit as you answered, "Ow! I, um, was pistol whipped. I angered the bandit leader when I protected Lina."

Grandma Sheryl frowned at that before going over to her fridge and pulling out some ice that she wrapped into a kitchen towel and applied it gently to your eye, "Here... Let's try to get that swelling down. I'll clean that cut on your cheekbone too, now, and we'll get you some pain medication, dear."

You smiled as best as you could at the old woman, feeling genuinely fond of her, "Thank you, Sheryl. I appreciate you taking care of me."

"It's the least I can do after you protected my Lina," Grandma Sheryl replied, smiling up at you warmly before proceeding to clean the cut on your cheek and providing you with pain medication.

Once you were fully taken care of, you sat in the kitchen holding a warm drink, just speaking with Grandma Sheryl softly. Eventually, the night crept in and you stood up.

"It's getting late and your household has had a long day. I should go. I'm sure Wolfwood and I will have to find somewhere to stay for the night anyways," You spoke up, nodding your head to Grandma Sheryl, "Thank you so much for taking care of us. I appreciate it."

Grandma Sheryl just shook her head, "Think nothing of it, dear. As for a place to stay, why don't you and the priestly fellow stay here tonight? Eriks has a spare bed in his room and there's another spare room upstairs with a mattress in it. I'm certain we can make it work."

You bit your lip, unsure, "We wouldn't dream of imposing on you and your family."

Grandma Sheryl, however, was having none of it and already stood up, "It's settled. You and Mr. Wolfwood shall sleep here tonight. It's the least we can do in thanks to you both."

Suddenly, her gaze shifted to something behind you and her face lit up, "Oh, perfect. Eriks, can you please escort (Y/N) upstairs to the spare room? They will be staying with us overnight. Would you be alright with Mr. Wolfwood using the spare bed in your room?"

"Of course," came Vash's voice as he walked up next to you, looking down at you with a soft smile on his face. You felt your heart rate speed up, but you just nodded, no longer trusting your voice as you followed Eriks upstairs, yelling a "thank you!" over your shoulder to Grandma Sheryl.

However, once you and Vash were upstairs, Vash stopped outside a door before opening it, letting you walk in first. It wasn't the spare room that Grandma Sheryl had mentioned - instead, it was his room. Vash just shut the door gently behind him before turning to look at you, his heart pounding frantically in his chest.

"(Y/N)..." Vash began, his voice shaking as he tried to voice all his emotions, his thoughts, his fears, but the words didn't seem to want to come out.

Vash struggled, tears filling his eyes and his fists clenched tightly by his sides. There was so much he wanted to say to you, but now that you were here, he couldn't find a way to tell you. He couldn't find a way to tell you how much he missed you, how much he still loved you, how he had thought of you every single day, praying you were safe, wondering if you ever thought of him, how he wanted to fall onto his knees here in front of you and cry and beg for your forgiveness even though he didn't deserve it after hurting you the way he did.

A strangled, sobbing, gasping sound escaped Vash, and all he could do was lower his head - he didn't feel like he could even look at you anymore. It hurt too much, to see the hurt he had left in you in the way you stood, in your posture, the lines on your face, the lack of life in your eyes. And now, to see the wounds another had left on you because you had dared to protect somebody Vash held dear... it was as if Vash's heart had been torn out of his chest and stomped on over and over again.

The silence in the room, asides from Vash's quiet sobs, was deafening. Vash had faced many hardships in his life, and had faced many losses and heartbreaks, but nothing rivaled this. The fact that you stood there, saying nothing... every second that passed broke Vash's heart a little more as he felt you slipping from his grasp.

Which is why when you suddenly walked forward and practically tackled him into a hug, Vash didn't process it immediately. Your arms wrapped tightly around him, your face pressed against his skin as you held him tighter than you had ever done so before. Your whole body was shaking, and you couldn't believe that this was happening.

Vash was here. He was alive. And he was here.

Vash couldn't believe what was happening. You were... hugging him. You weren't yelling, or cussing him out, or telling him that you hated him and wanted nothing to do with him after everything he'd done to you. You were holding him as if... you still loved him.

"You're alive," You whispered hoarsely, your voice trembling as you clutched onto Vash as if he'd vanish for real the moment you loosened your grip, "You're alive."

When Vash heard your voice, heard your gentle, almost disbelieving tone, felt your body shaking as you held him, he realized that you really did still love him. Vash immediately wrapped his arms around you, clutching onto you just as you were clutching onto him, burying his face into the crook of your neck, his scruff tickling your skin. He tried so hard to restrain himself but Vash couldn't hold back his tears as he felt the warmth of you against him, inhaled your familiar scent, heard your voice for real rather than in his dreams.

"I'm alive," Vash sobbed out, tightening his grip on you, "And I'm so, so sorry, (Y/N). I-I just couldn't..."

Again, Vash's words failed him. He couldn't explain to you why he did what he did, but before he could even try, you were shaking your head, tears now pouring down your face but a shaky, genuine smile present on your lips.

"You did what you had to, Vash," You got out, "I know that. You did what you needed to survive."

Vash just began to cry harder as he held you tighter - he didn't get it. How could you be so understanding? He had hurt you, and now, you weren't even angry with him. But you were here, with him, holding him, and that was enough for Vash right now.

"I love you," Vash sobbed out, drawing back and pressing his forehead against yours, cupping your face in his hands, "I love you, (Y/N). I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Stop," You whispered out softly, closing your eyes as you returned the pressure against Vash's forehead, "Stop, Vash. It's okay. I love you. You're alive. God, I can't believe it. You're alive."

You couldn't be more thankful than you were in that moment - Vash was alive. He still loved you. He still wanted you and was here, holding you close. Somehow, all the pain and the suffering that had become your daily companion simply vanished, pure joy and happiness overtaking the space it had occupied in your heart. You couldn't have asked for anything else in your life than to get a second chance with the man you loved.

You and Vash just held each other, sobbing and crying and shaking as you both came to terms with the fact that you were both together again. It could've been hours, days, weeks before the two of you finally separated from your embrace and you wouldn't have cared.

"S-So... what now?" You sniffled, wiping away your tears as you looked up at Vash's tear-stained face.

"I... I don't know," Vash answered truthfully, his voice still thick with emotion, "Just, please don't go. I have no right to ask it of you, I know, but please, (Y/N), don't go."

You shook your head, fighting back another round of tears as you offered a wobbly smile, "I'm not going anywhere without you for as long as I live, Vash."

Vash let out a small chuckle and pulled you back into another hug, "I'm never going anywhere you can't follow me, (Y/N). I promise."

"I'll hold you to that," You replied shakily, burrowing into his embrace again, "You hear me, Stampede?"

Vash leans his head down with another quiet chuckle before pressing his lips against yours in a passionate kiss, "I'd expect nothing less."

The long-awaited kiss set off fireworks in your blood, and both you and Vash managed to channel all your emotions through the kiss, showing one another how much you missed each other, how much you loved each other, how neither of you wanted anything but to stay in this moment for the rest of your lives. From this point forward, nothing else mattered. Vash had you back and Vash was alive, and you were together. It was just you and Vash in the world, and neither of you would trade this for anything.

"So... are we kicking Wolfwood to the spare room, Vash?"

"Oh, you know it. We have a lot of catching up to do, love."

Edit: Tagging people who asked to be tagged + those on my taglist! @aquamarine001, @alphamoon, @ready2readagain, @zukoisbabee (it didn't let me tag you for some reason I'm sorry!), @iceoblivious, @mossygalaxy, @spacioussoul, @ryuukami4

#anya's athenaeum #trigun #trigun stampede #trigun stampede x reader #trigun x reader #vash the stampede #vash the stampede x reader #vash x reader #eriks x reader #eriks!vash #trigun eriks

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honoka-marierose · 5 days

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Spider-Man, Professor Xavier and many more characters from across the all-encompassing Marvel universe drops in as cameos in X-Men 97 Episode 8.

As the first season of X-Men 97 pushes forward to its final moments, the Disney+ series has almost grown a mind of its own vis-a-vis melding a balance between its nostalgic punches and contemporary modernity. Each episode manifests a fictional reality that is more profoundly distinct yet emotionally driven to bring fans to tears for whatever reason necessary.

Stills from X-Men 97 Episode 8, Tolerance Is Extinction, Pt. 1.(Disney+)

The previous few weeks were dedicated to fans mourning the loss of some major characters. The mood eventually lightened up when Captain America unprecedentedly dropped by for a cameo appearance in Episode 7. With X-Men 97 Episode 8, “Tolerance is Extinction Part 1,” even more Marvel cameos have swung into action. Regardless of how fleeting they may be, their awe-inspiring presence and influence in the superhero-verse thoroughly entertained fans, leaving them wanting more.

X-Men 97 Episode 8 recap: Spider-Man swings by the mutant world

Tired of playing by Xavier's rules and bending to humanity's deceptive operations, Magneto lets loose in his fight against Bastion. Setting off his definitive powers, Magento unleashes waves of magnetic energy, compelling the entire world to stand still and take note.

In this scenario, the massive energy was boundless to the extent that even characters from beyond the usual X-Men line-up had no choice but to pay attention. In that sea of crossover references, one of Marvel's most-loved characters of all time - Spider-Man - was also included.

Spider-Man's cameo in X-Men 97 has been a long-teased easter egg. The web-slinger is almost always a point of heavy speculation. This time, too, viewers put their guesses to work to narrow down which variant of the beloved web crawler had made it into the animated series.

Earlier today, a major hunch was confirmed by X-Men 97 creator Beau DeMayo on X/Twitter. Taking to his social media platform, the writer expressed his love for the latest issue of the X-Men, to which a fan instantly replied with a much-asked question.

"Is the Spidey here Christopher Daniel Barnes' Spidey from the 94 series? Or would answering that be a spoiler?" wrote an X user. DeMayo tweeted back a concise confirmation: "It is indeed that Spider-Man."

Much like how the original X-Men: The Animated Series ran through the '90s, Spider-Man: The Animated Series was also a regular feature of the late 20th century. Back then, Christopher Daniel Barnes voiced the character, but his character's feature as an X-Men 97 cameo was more of a visually-driven easter egg.

This same persona of the web-slinger has previously crossed paths with the X-Men squad in his own series, helping fans connect the dots with his potential return in the 2024 X-Men series.

Hopes for a Spider-Man 98 series renewed

The X-Men 97 showrunner had previously even teased the possibility in his talks with ScreenRant: "X-Men '97 fits directly into the continuity of the '90s animated shows, and as you know, there were some awesome crossovers, most notably with Spider Man[: The Animated Series.]"

The much-sought-after comeback of the OG-friendly neighbourhood superhero has reignited hopes for the revival of a "Spider-Man '98 show." Fans are desperately clinging to the hope that the vision will fall in line, seeking inspiration from the animated X-Men revived continuation in the ‘97 saga.

A Spidey fan wrote on X: "TAS SPIDER-MAN HAS OFFICIALLY RETURNED! I don't care if it's just a few seconds cameo, i'm just so happy they showed us the Goat! 😭 WE NEED A SPIDER-MAN '98 SHOW, NOW!"

Soon after that, many chimed in with endless threads of replies, all foregrounding the same sentiment with mind-boggling expressions: "My GOAT returns. Spider-Man TAS and Tobey will always be my Spider-Man."

Other X-Men 97 cameos in Episode 8

Tapping a wholistic vision of the Marvel world, director Jake Castorena had also informed The Direct earlier how "cameos [are] in the DNA" of the new X-Men series. As mentioned, Captain America has already shown in attendance, with What If…?'s The Watcher also joining the chaos.

May 1 has merely brought in the first part of the "Tolerance is Extinction" episodes. The three-part finale saga will continue in the upcoming Wednesday episodes, with expectations for even more cameos shooting through the roof.

As for the brief X-Men cameos included in Episode 8, fans also caught a glimpse of iconic supervillains Doctor Doom, Baron Zemo, Silver Samurai and Omega Red, with the ultimate comeback of the one and the only - Professor Xavier.

X-Men 97 Episode 9, "Tolerance Is Extinction, Pt. 2," will premiere on Disney+ on Wednesday, May 8, 2024.

#marvel #marvel comics #marvel universe #marvel animated universe #marvel animation #xmen #x men #x men 97 #spider man #spider man the animated series #spider man 98 #professor x #professor xavier #cameo #jake castorena #disney+#x men 97 episode 8

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thecommunityoftrustworthysinks · 1 year

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I posted 11,713 times in 2022

That's 3,190 more posts than 2021!

187 posts created (2%)

11,526 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@xxgrimmreaperxx

@sink-drainage

@hollowboobtheory

@universejunction

@densoro

I tagged 1,905 of my posts in 2022

#x - 266 posts

#fave - 117 posts

#ref - 92 posts

#unreality - 61 posts

#big ref - 48 posts

#tua spoilers - 48 posts

#sandman spoilers - 29 posts

#help - 28 posts

#long post - 26 posts

#yeah - 24 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#i had a not like other girls phase in middle school and it had nothing to do with ‘not respecting their inner lives’ and everything to do

My Top Posts in 2022:

packers are cool. stps are cool. strokers are cool. transmascs and trans men and anyone else who likes having a dick sometimes or all the time deserve to have support and easily available information for them

947 notes - Posted October 8, 2022

i really wanna tell all the homophobes so mad about “no straight people in the sandman!” that the ceo and the interviewee in the diner were straight and be like look!!! look see there’s straight people!!! why aren’t you happy with that!!!

1,101 notes - Posted August 24, 2022

oh ym fucking god when i was 14 and repressed trans and wanted to kill myself and rebuilt my life off of mcr they were right when they said it woukd get better and oh my g od this is it he’s in a dress he’s in a catgirl outfit they’re in booty shorts they’re in a skin tight skeleton costume guys it was worth it can anyone fucking hear me

1,257 notes - Posted September 5, 2022

william shatner: WHY DO YOU THINK KIRK IS BISEXUAL

william shatner looking at men:

See the full post

2,169 notes - Posted April 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

star trek is literally such a homosexual show but also star trek will be like “this goo having sex with this goo is still a man and a woman”

3,547 notes - Posted November 4, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#NOT THE FUCKING UNREALITY TAG JUST FROM GONCHAROV #x

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mortwig · 1 year

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He compartido 2325 publicaciones este 2022

¡Son 1776 más que en 2021!

36 publicaciones originales (2 %)

2289 reblogueos (98 %)

Estos son los blogs que más he reblogueado:

@sincericida

@booksandcatslover

@physicallyunwell

@withahappyrefrain

@slightlyrebelliouswriter23

He etiquetado 764 publicaciones en 2022

#dracula daily: 217 publicaciones

#✌️: 202 publicaciones

#eurovision: 43 publicaciones

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#tick tick boom: 19 publicaciones

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#nwh spoilers: 16 publicaciones

#peter parker x reader: 12 publicaciones

#esc 2022: 11 publicaciones

#pride and prejudice: 11 publicaciones

Longest Tag: 134 characters

#also given my trend of falling in love with older men i feel like i'm closer to finding someone who i like who's acceptably old for me

Mis publicaciones más populares este 2022:

masterlist

Hi everyone!

I started writing fanfiction a few months ago. I generally post on AO3 first, but I've decided to post my works here as well. Here's what I have so far:

Spider-man fics (based on TASM!Peter Parker but flexible):

SFW

Four drinks I'm wasted: 600, ex dynamics, angsty short blurb.

NSFW 18+

Cracked Glass: 5,6k, strangers to lovers, fluff, smut

Night Monkey: 7,1k, enemies to lovers, slow-burn, smut

A Fortuitous Reunion: 6,4k, ex dynamics, porn without plot, 100% smut

Flowers In Your Hair: 4,8k, flower shop + sex pollen + professional rivals, entry to Wicked’s “Kink or Treat”

Any and all feedback welcome!

40 notas. Fecha de publicación: 27 de abril de 2022

Cracked Glass

18+ EXPLICIT [minors DNI] - Peter Parker/Spider-man fanfic

Words: 5,6k

Pairing: fem!reader x Peter Parker (based on TASM!Peter but flexible)

Summary: Set after the events of "Spider-man: No Way Home". Reader meets Spider-man under awkward circumstances and they end up spending some time together.

Tags: 18+ explicit, smut, nudity, fluff, minor violence, dark humour, strangers to lovers, mutual pining, vaginal sex, mild praise kink, some swearing, minor mentions of past trauma, reader is kinda goofy, all characters are 18+, numerous Tick Tick Boom! references.

Song inspo: Green Green Dress

[I'm more updated on AO3 than I am here. Check my profile out here. I posted the link to this some time ago, so sorry if you've already come across it!]

Your mouth drops open.

“What the f…“

You’re walking backwards as you speak, trying to put some distance between you and whatever is going on in the dark alley.

You suddenly trip over a bulk, barely hidden between two rubbish bins.

You look down briefly to make sure it’s not a dead body. No, just a backpack. Probably drugs.

You look back up and reassess the situation. So there’s a giant ring of sparks in front of you, in a dirty, creepy New York alley in the middle of the night. And you’re pretty sure it’s a portal because what you see on the other side looks like a river.

And suddenly a figure appears out of nowhere in a flash, crosses the portal running and before you know what is happening, they have body slammed you and you've collapsed the ground. And the person is awkwardly on top of you. It takes you several seconds to react, and then you start screaming and moving your limbs. It feels a bit like a dream, where you want to escape but your body feels heavy and doesn’t move. Except this time it’s not a dream, just some weirdo in spandex crushing you.

They start screaming as well, struggling with their own limbs and finally rolling away on the ground. The light from the main road finally illuminates what turns out to be none other than Spider-man. You assume it’s the real one and not just a cosplayer from the fact he just appeared literally from thin air.

Your mind is quickly getting to all the logical conclusions and calming down, but your body works at a different pace and you realise you’re still screaming and your arms and legs are still flailing around uselessly.

“Oh my god I am so sorry, are you okay?”

“You’re Spider-man!”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He’s looking around now. “What time is it? Hold on. What day is it?”

“Um.” You check the old watch on your wrist. “2.45, I guess the 11th of February now”.

“How much time does multiverse travel take? Does it take longer to different realities?” he’s muttering to himself now, you’re barely catching any of it.

You probably should leave him, but you can’t stop yourself from staring. A real superhero. Right in front of you. No one back home would believe you.

Regardless, you try to give him a moment and focus your attention in gathering yourself together. You get up, accidentally stepping on the drug backpack. You’re surprised to hear a bit of a crunch. Drugs are big and solid and... metallic?

You pull it up to inspect whether it’s a murder weapon, taken from a crime scene maybe. Your mind wanders, you could join the FBI, does the FBI get to meet superheroes often?

You pull a vintage camera out of the backpack, the lens cracked. “Oops” turning it around you read the handwritten sticker on it with its owner’s name. “I’m sorry Peter Parker...”.

“What for?” a voice interjects.

You’re still talking to yourself “...unless you’re a serial killer and this is to take pictures of your prizes”.

Your brain takes a few seconds to process what just happened. You look up, the eyes on Spider-man’s mask seem to occupy all of his face. He’s absolutely frozen, and so are you.

“You’re a drug dealing serial killer?”

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41 notas. Fecha de publicación: 27 de abril de 2022

Flowers In Your Hair

Entry for the amazing’s @wicked-remarks ‘ “Kink or Treat”!

18+ EXPLICIT [minors DNI] - Peter Parker/Spider-man fanfic

Words: 4,8k

Pairing: fem!OC* x Peter Parker (based on TASM!Peter but flexible)

Summary: Flower Shop + Sex Pollen + (kind of) Professional Rivals

Tags: 18+ explicit, mostly strangers to lovers, smut, nudity, vaginal sex, mild praise kink, oral sex (both F and M receiving), no bed in sight, some fluff, all characters are 18+.

Song inspo: Flowers in Your Hair by The Lumineers

*[I say OC because it’s written in the third person, but can be read as reader because she uses a codename the whole time and her physical appearance is barely described]

The bell over the door rang for the third time that day, and Peter barely had the energy to look up. It was probably someone “just looking” or a tourist hoping to take some aesthetic shots for their travel log. Slow days like this made him want to close the shop and swing himself far far away from here.

He had been trying for a good hour to focus on the physics problem due for tomorrow evening’s class. Frustrated from the lack of inspiration, he finally looked up to see a young woman admiring the carnations displayed near the door.

“Good morning!” Peter said in his best customer service voice, stifling a yawn. “If you need anything let me know.”

“I will, thank you.” The woman shot him a smile that barely reached her eyes. She seemed focused... Too focused for a simple visit to the flower shop, Peter noticed.

Peter’s tingle rang loudly at the back of his mind, pulling him off his stool. He cleared his throat and casually made his way to the woman.

“They are just beautiful, aren’t they? Those yellow ones arrived only this morning.”

She hummed an approval and took a step away from him, now seemingly inspecting the coloured roses.

“Disappointment.” Peter intended for his tone to be playfully stern, but it turned out harsher than expected. This caused the woman to turn, a mixture of surprise and mild panic taking over her features for a split second, before settling into a controlled expression of confusion.

“Excuse me?”

“Disappointment, rejection. That’s what yellow carnations mean.” Peter smirked, leaning forward as if confiding. “But don’t tell anyone, I don’t think many people buy flowers to express disdain anymore.”

She laughed and took another step away, her hand now on the door handle. The sound of her laugh warmed Peter’s chest, and for a second he forgot he was suspecting her of… of what exactly? Of acting shady in a flower shop?

Come on Peter, get a grip, you’re just sleep deprived from the night patrols. He thought to himself.

“Let’s not give them any ideas.” And with another ring of the bell, she was gone.

Peter stood there for a few moments, taking one last look at the yellow carnations before closing the shop for the day.

It was around 1 am when Peter woke up in a cold sweat. Another nightmare. He got up to get some water. He tried to remember what the dream had been about. It was about work. Conventional work. Flower shop. But also, Spider-man? Carnations. Yellow carnations. The woman looking at the yellow carnations. What was she wearing? Wide-brimmed hat. Red wide-brimmed hat. Like that night about a year ago at the docks. Red wide-brimmed hat amongst diamond smugglers…

Peter’s hand let go of the glass of water he was holding as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in his brain.

By the time the glass shattered on the floor, he already had half his suit on and was headed towards the window.

It wasn’t often that criminals walked in through the door of the local superhero’s side job, Peter thought to himself. He hoped he wasn’t too late as he dropped down to the ground a few buildings away. Approaching by foot, he didn’t see anyone inside, nor anywhere around him.

In the shop, everything seemed to be in order. He approached the carnations. He thought about the new provider who had brought them. Mrs Hernandez had said they had shown a lot of interest in getting the flowers in the shop as soon as possible. This was nothing new, one would think, in the flower industry. But even Mrs Hernandez, with 50 years in the business, thought their approach was odd. “Muy raros, Peter. But the claveles are beautiful, ¿no?” she’d said.

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52 notas. Fecha de publicación: 26 de octubre de 2022

Four drinks I'm wasted

Peter Parker/Spider-man blurb

Words: 670

Pairing: gn!reader x Peter Parker (based on TASM!Peter but flexible)

Summary: Reader's thing with Peter didn't end on a good note, but they still miss him. So they try to drown the loneliness in alcohol.

Tags: angsty, a bit fluffy maybe, ex dynamics, alcohol consumption, drunk characters.

Song inspo: Talia by King Princess

[Check my AO3 profile out here.]

Peter Parker ghosted you for the last time 6 weeks ago, give or take a few days.

You were embarrassed at how much it had affected you, ending things with him. It’s not like you had been together (if you could even call it that) for that long. Nor had he treated you that well. But he was sweet, and thoughtful, and hot.

He just kept leaving you stranded, with no explanation, no apology text, nothing. And you didn’t want to get hurt.

Six weeks without hearing from him. You had done so well, not drunk texting him even once, given your record.

But today is not a good day. The week is going terribly at work. You haven’t been able to call your mum, because she’s on holiday. And you dropped your coffee on your laptop this morning. So you deserve a drink.

Do you deserve four drinks? Maybe not. But the alcohol is burning so good down your throat. And you haven’t indulged in a long time, so it’s going straight to your head…

When the fourth shot hits the back of your throat, you’re positively wasted, and you are loving it. You swear you can see Peter standing right there in front of you, hand stretched out towards you, asking you to dance. He’s smiling, he’s leaning down to kiss you. You’re both lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, laughing at each other, locking eyes, kissing again. But it’s all in your head and you know it, deep down you do know it.

So after enjoying the fantasy in your mind for a long, long time, you feel a few stray tears falling down your face. You feel ridiculous for feeling like this about someone who clearly hasn’t spared you a single thought since saying goodbye. You get up to open the window. The fresh air will clear your head and tomorrow will be a better day. Or so you’re trying to tell yourself.

But you freeze in place, barely a step away from the window. You can’t believe your eyes. Spider-man is sitting on your fire exit, just outside your window. His mask is off, his head is resting against your window but looking down. You see the tear roll down his cheek before you even recognise his face.

He turns to you and you lock eyes just as it all falls into place in your mind. Peter Parker is Spider-man. That’s why he kept ghosting you. That’s why he never gave a good reason for his behaviour.

And now he’s at your window, and he’s crying, and his eyes show a longing that can only be a reflection of your own.

You open the window and you continue to look at each other, neither knowing what to say.

“Peter…” you say softly.

“I’m sorry.” He blurts out in response. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I was so awful. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to commit. I’m sorry I let you go. Now you know why I did it, but it’s still no excuse. And I’m sorry I showed up like this today, it’s creepy and it’s wrong, but it was a quiet night and I got drunk and all I was seeing was you. It was like I could taste your lipstick, and I just needed to see you.”

You could keep listening to him rant for hours, but you have other things in mind. So you put a hand to the back of his neck, and you pull him in for a kiss. He doesn’t hesitate long. He reciprocates the kiss with passion, grabbing your waist and pulling you closer.

He jumps in through the window, and now he’s standing right there in front of you, hand stretched out towards you, asking you to dance, although no music is playing. He’s smiling, he’s leaning down to kiss you again. Soon, you’re both lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, laughing at each other, locking eyes, and kissing again. And this time, it’s not in your head.

55 notas. Fecha de publicación: 7 de mayo de 2022

Mi publicación más popular de 2022

Night Monkey

18+ EXPLICIT [minors DNI] - Peter Parker/Spider-man fanfic

Words: 7,1k

Pairing: fem!superhero reader x Peter Parker (based on TASM!Peter but flexible)

Summary: Peter Parker takes a trip to Europe, where he encounters (and ruins the day of) an unnamed superhero (reader). Reader then demands help in return but they have to go into hiding together for a few days.

Tags: 18+ explicit, enemies to lovers, smut (if this is what you're here for, it's at the very end), slow burn, nudity, lots of sexual tension, minor violence, corruption (the political kind), misunderstandings, anonymity, cocky Peter, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, mild praise kink, mildly dubious consent, light choking, tied hands, some swearing, some mentions of past trauma, all characters are 18+.

Song inspo: Shame by InnerCut & mori

[I'm more updated on AO3 than I am here. Check my profile out here. I posted the link to this some time ago, so sorry if you've already come across it!]

Night monkey.

He publicly called you night monkey. Night. Monkey. On live television. With the whole world watching.

What kind of absolute rubbish superhero name is that. Who gave him permission to say it. Why was he talking about you in the first place.

Your first public appearance after being stung by that god forsaken black jellyfish.

It happened about six months ago. It had been just another normal day at the lab. Being a clumsy person in science had always been a struggle, but that particular day you were feeling unwell on top of it. You don’t remember what happened, you were running late, the lab coat got stuck on a chair, you tripped and banged your head against one of the tanks really hard. You opened your eyes, still lying on the floor, just in time to see the crack in the glass spreading. Next thing you know, the jellyfish that had been genetically engineered to remove plastic from the ocean was wrapped around your neck and the pain was unbearable. Your airways had swollen, you thought you were going to die from asphyxia, but then your vision became clear again. By the time your colleagues had run in from the neighbouring labs, you were actually feeling fine and you insisted to everyone that you did not need to go to hospital because the jellyfish was not dangerous. You didn’t know that for sure, actually, but you despised the doctors in the local emergency room and you really did feel fine. In fact, you felt better than you had all day, maybe even all week.

You still took the day off after the incident, mostly to settle everyone else’s nerves. You were surprised to see that by the time you got home, the swelling on your head had disappeared completely and the pain was gone. The red mark on your neck was still there, but it was painless. It actually looked more like a birthmark than a scar.

You were in the shower when things started to get properly weird. Your skin was glowing blue. That was weird enough in itself. But then when you tried to reach for the towel some kind of filament actually flew out of your wrist. From inside your skin.

You knew, rationally, that you should be freaking out. This was all extremely concerning, health wise. But you hadn’t felt this balanced in years. You also felt energised, almost like you could go for a run. That was very unlike you. But you did. And with every step you took it was more and more obvious that your body was undergoing some serious changes. But also, with every step, you felt you were gaining control over said changes. Not even a few hours had passed and you could control the glowing, the filaments (which you’d found out the hard way they stung), the newfound ability to detect and identify chemicals in the environment without need for any equipment, the ability to stay underwater for long periods of time and even the instant regeneration of your cells when injured or in pain.

You’d since become Rome’s silent guardian. You’d done your best, and mostly succeeded, at staying in the shadows, literally and figuratively. Your existence went by mostly unnoticed, other than a few rumours going about. You didn’t want the fame or the recognition or the drama that others enhanced individuals were attracting. You just wanted to do some much-needed good.

That is until, for whatever reason, Spider-man showed up today in Rome.

You were following a corrupt senator, trying to gather enough evidence of his murky businesses with the local drug-dealing elite. You were just off the Piazza Navona when you saw him on top of Neptune’s fountain. Spider-man. The absolute clown of the superhero guild.

That was enough distraction to lose sight of the senator. You cursed under your breath. You hated this job. But you also knew this was the only way of making Rome, even Italy, a better place.

Irritated, you went back to the Piazza and hid behind a street food cart to watch the scene unfold.

Spider-man seemed to be causing a panic, fighting a fish-like creature that emerged from the fountain. You had no intentions of intervening. It was way too exposed and surely the one and only Spider-man could handle it. But then that absolute moron snapped an arm off one of the stone angels and that was crossing the line.

Dressed in your black suit and mask, you’d dashed to the fountain, had a brief struggle with the creature, stung it with your filaments, and handed it to a stunned and speechless Spider-man. You’d then ran to hide in the nearest dark corner. Too late, however. A local TV station had been filming something for the news report nearby and had instantly shared the images with the city and then the world. It was the first time Spider-man had been spotted outside of New York. It was a big deal. You appearing in all the footage was collateral damage, but damage your regenerating cells could not repair.

You’d just entered a café, changed into street clothes, when you saw Spider-man being interviewed on TV.

“Really who we should thank is... Is... That person. I don’t know their name.” He was stammering.

He was being pressured into giving more information about his “assistant” as the reporter called it.

“Assistance is what he’s going to need when I catch him. Moron.” You whispered to yourself.

And that’s when he said it. “The Night Monkey.” In all fairness, it did sound like he was just desperately trying to get away from the journalists. But that was no excuse for coming up with such a horrendous name.

Your mouth is still agape, eyes glued to the screen, when the barista hands you your change and your coffee. She coughs quietly for you to move along. You finally react and practically run out of the café.

It’s just your luck that you run straight into someone walking past in the street, your coffee spilling all over both of you.

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205 notas. Fecha de publicación: 26 de abril de 2022

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#tumblr2022 #resumen del año #mi resumen del 2022 en tumblr #tu resumen del año en tumblr #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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mostlyiwant-tobekind · 1 year

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I posted 7,445 times in 2022

That's 3,985 more posts than 2021!

117 posts created (2%)

7,328 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@minsulies

@calliettes-posts

@mayfriend

@watchinguwithoutme

@sleepinnyc

I tagged 567 of my posts in 2022

#0 - 30 posts

#this blog is my personal diary - 53 posts

#uquiz results - 25 posts

#1899 spoilers - 18 posts

#answered asks - 17 posts

#thanks for sending - 12 posts

#web weaving - 11 posts

#literary takes - 11 posts

#dark academia - 10 posts

#light academia - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#x men first class put mountains in villa gessel argentina which is a costal town famous for being a very popular destination for argentinian

My Top Posts in 2022:

I love how in the setting of Goncharov, while you know it is the 70s, sometimes you can’t really tell what year the movie is supposed to take place. Like the cars are all from the 40s, each character seems to their fashion sense of a different decade: Katya and the Hollywood glam from the 50s/60s, many of Sofia’s dresses look more like they belong to the late 40s than to the 70s except when she is with Katya in which she also wears dresses from the Hollywood glam (her dress from the bar reminds me of the iconic Marilyn Monroe dress), Goncharov and Andrei seem to dress like the people in the pictures of the bar so also the 40s and maybe late 30s, but the extras in most scenes look and dress in the 70s fashion (in the vendor scene there are a lot of hippie looking outfits, in the bar there is a lot of mini dresses and bell trousers).

The characters’ fashion is so well thought and planned to make you doubt when this character are actually living. They got stuck in that moment of their life (Sofia and her childhood trauma), or they are trying to emulate that era in some way (Katya wanting to have a picture perfect life she only truly saw through the movies of her childhood), or they are trying to go back in time (Goncharov wanting to go back in time to change his mistakes, but the mistakes he is trying to change are in his childhood; Andrei’s suit look really similar to the one his father and uncles are wearing in the picture he has at his house). Also, the characters connecting through their outfits, not just in color but also in the time their outfits are from. Sofia choosing a very 50s dress to go to the bar when she has decided to talk to Katya, both of them are wearing black and blue too, instead of a dress similar to the ball gown we saw her wear at the party in one of her first scenes. Andrei and Goncharov wear really similar suit during the entire movie, all are dark and beige tones, they are also very 40s looking (especially compared to the ones the other male characters wear). Finally, Katya and Goncharov are wearing very elegant clothes through the entire movie but they look kind of different, they don’t belong to the same decade: they are trying to live different lives together, but can’t really understand that they have a misunderstanding because their worlds look so similar and yet they are worlds apart.

83 notes - Posted November 23, 2022

I don’t know who I will be when the Taylor Jenkins Reid cinematic universe stars.

92 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

I love you dead character hunting the narrative i love you insane women in fiction i love you teenage girl full of rage i love you character who was always meant to die but doesn’t stay dead i love you fictional murderers i love you morally good character about to commit an atrocity

247 notes - Posted July 18, 2022

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570 notes - Posted July 31, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

See the full post

1,331 notes - Posted April 4, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #I had forgotten to post this #also I am very proud of that tag because it is very true and the truth should be spread

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redbunnydragon · 1 year

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He compartido 13.310 publicaciones este 2022

¡Son 231 más que en 2021!

98 publicaciones originales (1 %)

13.212 reblogueos (99 %)

Estos son los blogs que más he reblogueado:

@ovenroastedtwerkey

@retroactivebakeries

@leg-stealing-bee

@cr0wra

@oarfjsh

He etiquetado 1887 publicaciones en 2022

#me irl: 53 publicaciones

#yeah: 37 publicaciones

#minimalism was a mistake: 35 publicaciones

#spanish: 20 publicaciones

#w: 16 publicaciones

#it looks lovely op: 15 publicaciones

#seven hells: 15 publicaciones

#lmao: 13 publicaciones

#lucifer netflix: 12 publicaciones

#men of the harem: 10 publicaciones

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#and ive been trying to make a story with all the consorts but is so hard to balance out their personalities and not end up just bashing one

Mis publicaciones más populares este 2022:

Honduras fucking expresidente just got sentenced to jail. Is the day the entire nation has bien waiting for so long! Happy Valentines Day fellas!!!

15 notas. Fecha de publicación: 14 de febrero de 2022

Sharp Ones

Pairing: Sir Sonnaught x Latil

Spoilers: up to chapter 413 of the webnovel, but I tried to kept them at minimun as usual.

Summary: A platonic figth.

After a stressful evening loaded with diplomatic affairs, Latil was feeling sore by sitting on her butt the entire day. She stole a glance at Sir Sonnaught by her side. Ever since she knew about his feelings, he got more solemn during work hours, as to not disturb her, but sometimes she can feel his gaze on her.

Sometimes she steps up to hug him when she gets too stressed. He always hugs her back and comforts her, making little circles with his thumb on her shoulder and brushing her hair with his fingers. She would take a deep breath and bury her face close to his heart. She always separates herself from him after a minute or two and resume working. Sometimes he would have a blush on his cheeks that makes his hair stand out more, other times he would look worried, a concerned gaze on his features, and today was one of those days.

“We haven’t practiced in a while. Does Your Majesty want to go to the training grounds with me?”

It didn’t matter if she pulled an all-nighter, paperwork would be longer than that. She groaned.

“Yes please! I need to lash out at anything”

A playful smile rose to his lips. It was close to midnight, the arena used for practicing was mostly empty, only her cup bearer and a couple guards were awaiting them at the entrance. She remembered one of the first swords fights they had and how angry she was at Anaktcha for looking down on her during a banquet. It was a warm night just like this one, and she had found him walking with her brother, her brother had the idea of the sword fight, and Sonnaught quietly agreed, once in the arena she had unleashed her anger at him, with full force, and he was struck with admiration at her tenacity ever since.

Looking back at her opponent at hand, whose smile grew larger by the second, she felt relieved to have him by her side.

Her first blow went to his left flank and he promptly blocked it, tilting his sword upwards as to make her loose her balance. She didn’t fall for the trick and smiled, taking a step back and unleashing another attack to his right side. This time around he blocked again and moved his sword further to the right, making her move one step forward into him.

He enjoyed this, having her this close, at arm’s reach.

Their blades made a circle, fighting for dominance still on their right side, while they were looking into each their eyes. Instead of doing a pass back, she took another step closer, only an inch away from him, their swords were pressing themselves with force almost at the base, her sword pushing towards them, his, pushing it away,

“This is dangerous Your Majesty, you know we shouldn’t be this close.” He said with a playful smile.

“Do you mean in this particular fight or do your words have another intention?”

“I’m talking about our swords; they’re too close to our necks, I would never harm you, but also I don’t want you to do this with a real opponent, or anybody else, for that matter.”

Despite making sense in this context, she could not help but to take his words out of context, even if no one else would do at first hearing them.

‘If he can do this then so can I’

“Do you wish for my sword to only clash with yours, Sir Sonnaught?”

“I would love it if you only desired to fight me.”

He moved his sword down and then back up in a swift movement, and her sword went flying to the other side of the arena. None of them moved. She looked at the sword on the ground and back at him. The full moon was shining above his head, and his gaze was full of affection.

She hugged him by the neck and he placed his free hand on her small back. She moved her right hand to remove a hair strand on his forehead, caressing his temple and moved her fingertips down to his jaw.

She pressed his chin with her thumb, and an urge to kiss him overcame her. He felt the same urge. She tiptoed to get closer to his face, and he took it as a cue to slowly move his head down, a small smile on his lips.

He kissed her tenderly and her hand came down from his neck to grab the hand on his sword, he was still gripping it right next to them but as soon as he felt her hand on his, dropped the sword to the side.

He grabbed her by the waist and spun her around, her head adobe his, looking into her eyes.

“You have no idea, how much I dreamed about this moment, but it was never like this.”

She laughed softly and arched an eyebrow at him, she will indulge him for a little longer.

“Is that so? what happened in your dreams”

Her feet were still on the air, and her face on his eye level. He spoke in a soft voice, almost a whisper, to her ear.

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22 notas. Fecha de publicación: 28 de enero de 2022

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24 notas. Fecha de publicación: 17 de agosto de 2022

Have we done this one already?

30 notas. Fecha de publicación: 21 de marzo de 2022

Mi publicación más popular de 2022

39 notas. Fecha de publicación: 20 de septiembre de 2022

Descubre tu resumen del 2022 en Tumblr →

#tumblr2022 #resumen del año #mi resumen del 2022 en tumblr #tu resumen del año en tumblr #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #holy shit i post so much cringe lmao #im sorry oarfish you are probably being tagged left and rigth for this thing #also paisana! holas!#i love this hellsite #i love you graphics i love you data science i love you data of useless shit i love doing inconsequential math and i say that unironically #also thanks @dictatorsheep i would have never noticed this yir without you te amo wn

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cimmunist · 3 years

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I did Cimmerian, now it's time for Clef! Like before, the one on the left is my main interpretation and the one I use in mine and my friend's, @bluethepearldiver, AU Gods and Pawns. The one on the right is the @ask-dr-cimmerian version. I put a more detailed overview under the cut, feel free to skip the blog version if you don't want spoilers.

GaP/Main interpretation of Clef:

Species: Immortal human (in most of the versions of the AU)

Age: Unspecified, really fucking old

Gender/orientation: Doesn't use labels, but if I have to specify he's non-binary, on the acearo spectrum and mostly prefers men

Pronouns: Any, prefers he/they

Ethnicity/nationality: Middle eastern, comes from Eden

Job: Department Head of training and development, an O5 or field agent in some of the versions of the AU

Appearance: 5'7'' plus size man, though weight fluctuates during the story, as he forgets to eat during a lot of stress. Two eyes, right is green, left is blue and hazel. Has sharp teeth, covered in scars, the biggest one being the x shaped scar on his chest, later on, gets a snake-shaped scar carved into his right arm. Naturally black/dark brown hair that's greying, uses his reality-bending to make it blonde because he's too lazy to dye it. Always carries around a star-shaped pin.

Personality & health:

Outgoing, charming loudmouth

Lies quite a lot, likes to tell clearly exacerbated stories (people just got used to it)

Cheerful and easily excitable

A huge bastard, loves to tease his friends and coworkers

Not afraid to speak his mind when needed, can be quite abrasive

Avoids confrontation when it comes to personal matters

Doesn't get angry easily, but when he does he gets quiet and stern

Will never cry in public, usually just in private or in front of people he trusts

Struggles a lot with PTSD (which is a problem when you can literally bend reality around you) and later on depression

Relationships:

Love interests: Bright, Kondraki and Cimmerian

Exes: Lilly (abusive + a God, bad combination), Kushim (friend's oc)

Friends: Aaron/Administrator/O5-1A (work acquaintance), Joseph Tamlin (brief old friend), Etienne Baudelaire (old friend, friend's oc), Lilith (best friend), Sophia Light (close-ish work friend), Maveth (friend, oc), Dory (old friend, oc), Lucy (old friend), Raphael (old friend)

Family: Brother to Eve/O5-1B and Kineret (oc, deceased), brother-in-law to Adam, uncle to a bunch of kids including Abel/076 and Cain/073. Had a daughter, Rut, with Kushim and a daughter, Meri, with Lilly.

Trivia:

Mostly known for two things: his great distaste and disrespect to gods, and his talent to almost dying but somehow getting away still alive (lovingly called a cockroach by the grim reaper for it)

Has literally fought gods 3 different times and survived, this list keeps on growing, somebody stop this man

Favourite hobby is probably annoying the death itself

How his immortality works: after he dies his body heals and he comes back to life

Loosely followed the 4231 canon, with some big changes to fit his backstory

Deathly afraid of deep water and drowning (ironic for an immortal)

Literally considered a Saint in one of the religions? Absolutely despises that fact

Real name is Abishai, but doesn't mind going by Abby or any of his many, many nicknames

Actually physically fought Adam Bright before, wouldn't mind doing it again

Very close with his sister

His other sister, Kineret, died saving him. He has major survivor guilt over it.

Actually helped create the foundation, since his sister is the founder, but dipped almost immediately after and started working for the GOC

Rejoined many years later, in exchange for protecting Meri and letting him see her from time to time

Meri was born around the time ancient rome still existed and he was actually able to raise her, they're very close

Met Jack sometime in the 1920s-30s, he was Clef's first real friend in the Foundation

Actually the reason Kondraki got recruited

Contrary to popular belief, he can play on his ukulele very well and can write songs, he just chooses not to

Knows a lot of languages

Both a reality bender and a reality anchor, unable to be affected by other reality benders

Actually is a lot more powerful reality bender than he lets on

Got his X shaped scar on the chest from Lilly

Used to travel a lot and didn't liked to be tied to one spot

Blog version of Clef:

Species: Nephilim, half-human half-angel

Age: 98, looks ~40

Gender: Non-binary/genderqueer

Orientation: Oriented aroace/ ace demi-homoromantic

Pronouns: Any

Ethnicity/nationality: Mixed middle eastern, raised in Cornwall

Job: Liaison for the Ethics Committee

Appearance: 5'5'' plus-sized man. Has three eyes, one right green one, two left ones, one blue one hazel. Has sharp teeth, is covered in scars, the biggest one being an x shaped scar on his chest. Has burn scars on his feet. Has naturally black/dark brown hair, dyes it a lighter colour. He usually keeps his hair in a braid. Flowers grow out of his hair.

Personality & health:

The loud, annoying yet charming bastard of the ethics committee

Has generally a laid back, jokester personality

Very devoted to his family and friends

Not the type to get mad easily, when he does get angry he just gets quiet and stern

Never cries in public, just in private

Little bastard man, loves teasing his coworkers and husband

Struggles a lot with PTSD and paranoid delusions, but is slowly doing better

Relationships:

Love interests: Cimmerian, later on Bright and Iceberg

Ex: Lilly

Friends: Kondraki (old friend), Bright (old friend), Tiffany Okely (work friend)

Family: Bastard child of an angel, raised as an only child of a single mother. Had Epon with Lilly, later on, had an "accident" named Melody with his husband, adopted a step-parent role to Cimmerian's older daughters May and Eliza

Trivia:

Roughly follows the events of 4231

Raised Epon for the first few months to year's of their life before they were found to be anomalous and forcibly taken from him

Regularly checks up on his kid and leaves her small gifts

Semi-omniscient, ever since he was born he could just see and know things others couldn't. Perfectly aware of the fact Cimmerian is a demigod, even before their husband finds out himself. Uses his omniscience to check up on Epon and make sure they're okay.

Used to be very close with Bright before Cimmeriam swooped in and stole the man, slowly rebuilding that relationship

Cannot play the ukulele for the life of his and has no intentions of ever learning

Had a lot of bucket and cowboy hats but gave them all to Melody

Cimmerian made the mistake of allowing them to pick out Melody's clothes when they were little, now they have Clef's sense of style, oh no

Is afraid of water, shouting and slamming things is a major trigger of theirs, they also dislike deer and antlers for obvious reasons

Suffers from chronic scar pain in her legs

They have exactly 0 respect for any of the o5s

One of their hobbies is gardening

Pretty much majority of their scars were caused by Lilly

Alto Clef is their chosen name and god help you if you deadname them

Loves cats, they're her favourite animal

The platonic marriage with Cinmerian was their idea

Child of 001 /J

#scp #scp foundation #spooky arts #dr alto clef #dr clef

96 notes · View notes

drabbles-mc · 3 years

Text

Lo Siento

!This Fic Contains Season 3 Spoilers!

Taza Romero x David

Request by Anon: For the 'Touching' ask meme can I request #2 (running fingers through hair) for David and Taza because I'm a hoe for pain?

Warnings: angst, blood, death

Word Count: 900

A/N: This wasn’t originally going to be angsty I swear! But I am also a hoe for pain apparently so it still ended up going there. This is also my first Taza fic!

Join my group-chat here: (X)

General Mayans Taglist: @garbinge @mayans-sauce @thesandbeneathmytoes @paintballkid711 @tomhardydallasstarsgirl @queenbeered @sillygoose6969 @sesamepancakes @yourwonkywriter @chibsytelford @gemini0410 @behindmyeyes-insidemyhead @plentyoffandoms @georgiaaintnopeach @twistnet @themoonandthewicked @bucky-iss-bae @encounterthepast @everyhowlmarksthedead @rosieposie0624 @mylittlelonelyappreciationtoo @mijop @xladymacbethx @blessedboo @holl2712 @lakamaa12 @masterlistforimagines @kkim120 @toni9 @shadow-of-wonder @crowfootwrites @redpoodlern @punkgoddess-98 @black-repunzel99 @lexondeck @mrsstevenbuchananstark (If you want to be added just let me know!)

The ranch house was quiet. The only noise was the sound of the rain on the roof, a sound that was hard to come by in Santo Padre. Taza and David were both on the couch, watching their pair of puppies play-wrestle on the open floor in front of them. They were trying their best to growl, to sound intimidating to the other, but obviously to the two men looking on it only served to make them smile.

Taza’s arm was draped around David’s shoulders, his fingers wrapping gently around the man’s arm. David settled into the soft touch, leaning farther into Taza’s side. He pulled his legs up onto the couch, tucking them close to his body. Taza turned and silently pressed a kiss to the side of David’s head, causing him to let out a hum of approval.

As the storm continued to rage on outside, the two of them got more and more lost in their own little world. David rested his head in Taza’s lap, looking up at him with a dreamy look in his eyes. The two of them spoke softly to each other, whispering as though someone might overhear them. David idly toyed with the rings on Taza’s fingers as he listened to the man tell one story after another, always glad to listen and soak it all up while he could. Their days together never quite lasted long enough, after all.

“You know,” Taza’s voice was light, happy, “for one of the most talkative people I’ve ever met, you’re awfully quiet.”

David chuckled, eyes barely open, “I just like listening to you, that’s all.”

The sentiment made Taza’s heart beat faster inside his chest. His fingers made their way into David’s hair, gently carding through the long, dark locks. Taza felt him lean into the touch and he smiled, more than happy to keep his hands busy running over David’s head as he picked another story from his memory banks to tell him.

David’s eyes were completely shut, but he still smiled and spoke softly when the timing was right, clearly still listening despite the relaxation that was taking over his body. His body slowly became heavier against Taza’s, but he didn’t mind—David was his security blanket in the midst of a lot of chaos. To see the calm expression on his face, made Taza feel calm too.

“You going to braid it, too?” David’s voice was raspy, almost asleep but still laughing.

“Braiding is Laura’s forte, mi amor,” he chuckled, shaking his head has he continued to run the pads of his fingers through David’s hair, “not mine.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing,” he repositioned slightly, completely melting into Taza, “don’t stop.”

That day felt like it was a million lifetimes ago as Taza took in the scene in front of him. The air got stuck in his throat as he stumbled over to David’s body, sinking to his knees in the process because his body couldn’t support him through the grief.

He collapsed into a kneeling position beside David’s body, hands coming up to cover his mouth, to try and stifle the body-wracking sobs that were trying to fight their way out. There were a million emotions and questions flying through Taza’s brain, but he already knew all the answers that actually mattered. That was an extra layer of pain on top of the rest of it.

He did his best to take a deep breath as he truly took stock of what he was looking at. There was blood, so much blood. It was on the floor, on David’s clothes, now on his own as well. It stained the man’s neck, the trickles that were left led to the pools on the floor beside his head.

Tears streamed down Taza’s face as he reached forward and gently rested a hand on David’s chest, as if that was going to bring him back to life. There was no steady strum of a heartbeat that he was so used to, that he always found so much comfort in. He slid his hands up, past the slit that had been carved into his neck, until they were rested behind David’s head. Taza lifted him, resting his head in his lap like he’d done so many times before. He felt the warmth of the blood soaking through the fabric of his jeans but he didn’t care.

Tears fell from his cheeks down onto David’s as he “Lo siento, mi amor,” a sob finally escaped him, “I’m so, so sorry.”

He traced his thumb along David’s cheekbone before reaching and pushing the hair out of his face. He leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, lips trembling with barely-contained cries as he did so. He tucked a few stray locks of hair behind David’s ears, ignoring the blood that they left on the pads of his fingers as he continued to smooth the hair on his head. He repeated the motion over and over like it would somehow fix everything, like it would turn everything back to normal and David would just be relaxing in Taza’s lap the way that he always was. But he wasn’t, and it didn’t.

“Te quiero,” the words fell from his lips, too little too late, “Lo siento,” he leaned down and rested his forehead against David’s, fingers still tangled tenderly in the man’s hair, “Lo siento mucho.”

#mayans mc #mayansmc #mayans fx #mayans mc imagine #taza romero #che taza romero #che romero

59 notes · View notes

ratherdieasthedevil · 2 years

Text

I posted 241 times in 2021

28 posts created (12%)

213 posts reblogged (88%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 7.6 posts.

I added 277 tags in 2021

#ch: the devil of hell's kitchen - 79 posts

#matt murdock - 77 posts

#daredevil - 40 posts

#your honor i love him - 15 posts

#daredevil season 3 - 12 posts

#nancy drew - 12 posts

#netflix daredevil - 12 posts

#ch: my mom wanted me to be a butcher - 11 posts

#foggy nelson - 11 posts

#betty cooper - 8 posts

Longest Tag: 98 characters

#in front of this god i would rather die as the devil (of hell's kitchen) than live as matt murdock

My Top Posts in 2021

Wanda Maximoff deserved better and deserves better and I will physically go to battle to defend that point.

21 notes • Posted 2021-02-27 13:58:01 GMT

Because this was too true for today 😂

22 notes • Posted 2021-10-26 22:52:47 GMT

NO ONE TOUCH ME IS THAT VINCENT D'ONOFRIO I SWEAR TO GOD

27 notes • Posted 2021-12-01 23:06:06 GMT

Fucking...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Matt: "I still hear neon"

Luke: "Who hears neon?"

Jessica: "My blind but maybe not lawyer"

Luke: WTF

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny: "Are those pork?"

Matt (while visibly having a very stressful 'goddammit I'm not supposed to be doing Daredevil shit but I'm getting dragged into this and I can't hate it because I like doing this' moment): "No, those are shrimp. Oh wait, this guy's got pork."

Danny: "Sweet"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Stick walks in the room talking his mystical shit*

Matt very clearly thinking something along the lines of "forgive me father because I'm about to punch this old man in the face": 🙃

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They're all sarcastic, hilarious assholes and I love them so goddamn much holy shit

39 notes • Posted 2021-01-26 17:05:44 GMT

I'm gonna need everyone writing Kaz Brekker x reader or Kanej fics/smut where there's a lot of touching to slow your roll real damn quick. The show may not have explicitly mentioned his touch aversion, but they've still been showing it in ways.

As a reminder (slight spoilers for Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom):

Kaz Brekker had to lock himself in a bathroom, shaking, crying, and having a full panic attack, because he had to touch someone with his bare hands

Kaz Brekker passed out on the prisoner transport bus because of everyone around him in close proximity

Kaz Brekker, as much as he loves and cares for Inej, had to force himself through severe nausea, mental flashbacks, and almost physical pain to be able to touch Inej skin to skin to help her with her bandages

Kaz Brekker had to use his brother's body as a raft to swim to safety in the icy waters surrounding Ketterdam, and he has severe PTSD as a result of it, and avoids any and all physical contact unless absolutely necessary

Respect his traumas

Stop writing him being all touchy feely or having his trauma "healed" by the reader. It doesn't work like that

And in another note:

Inej Ghafa was sold against her will into a pleasure house, where she was nothing more than an exotic prize for men to take as they wanted

Inej Ghafa doesn't have a touch aversion to the same level as Kaz, but she is canonically still uncomfortable being touched

Inej Ghafa has PTSD from her time in the Menagerie, which has clearly been shown multiple times in canon

Respect her traumas

Stop writing her as the one who only wants to "heal" Kaz. She has been shown to understand and respect his trauma, don't disrespect her like that

65 notes • Posted 2021-05-15 18:09:44 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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davidmann95 · 3 years

Note

So... Morrison’s 10 part interview on All-Star Superman, along with all other older Newsarama articles, just seem to have ceased to exist. One does not simply live without having those interviews available to reread... Can I find them anywhere else?

Rejoice! I finally borrowed a computer I could put my flash drive into, and emailed myself my copy of the Morrison interview. Here it is below the cut, copied and pasted direct from the source way back when, available again at last:

Three years, 12 issues, Eisners and countless accolades later, All Star Superman is finally finished. The out-of-continuity look at Superman’s struggle with his inevitable death was widely embraced by fans and pros as one of the best stories to feature the Man of Steel, and was a showcase for the talents of the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant.

Now, Newsarama is proud to present an exclusive look back with Morrison at the series that took Superman to, pun intended, new heights. We had a lot of questions about the series...and Morrison delivered with an in-depth look into the themes, characters and ideas throughout the 12 issues. In fact, there was so much that we’re running this as an unprecedented 10-part series over the next two weeks – sort of an unofficial All Star Superman companion. It’s everything about All Star Superman you ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

And of course there’s plenty of SPOILERS, so back away if you haven’t read the entire series.

Newsarama: Grant, tell us a little about the origin of the project.

Grant Morrison: Some of it has its roots in the DC One Million project from 1999. So much so, that some readers have come to consider this a prequel to DC One Million, which is fine if it shifts a few more copies! I’ve tried to give my own DC books an overarching continuity intended to make them all read as a more coherent body of work when I’m done.

Luthor’s “enlightenment” – when he peaks on super–senses and sees the world as it appears through Superman’s eyes – was an element I’d included in the Superman Now pitch I prepared along with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid back in 1999. There were one or two of ideas of mine that I wanted to preserve from Superman Now and Luthor’s heart–stopping moment of understanding was a favorite part of the original ending for that story, so I decided to use it again here.

My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the “shamanic” meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.

I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to “reboot” Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short...

Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did...in the persona and voice of Superman!

We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.

My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.

I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman, whose name I didn’t save but who has entered into my own personal mythology (a picture has from that time has survived showing me and Mark Waid posing alongside this guy and a couple of young readers dressed as Superboy and Supergirl – it’s in the “Gallery” section at my website for anybody who can be bothered looking. This is the guy who lit the fuse that led to All Star Superman).

After the 1999 pitch was rejected, I didn’t expect to be doing any further work on Superman but sometime in 2002, while I was going into my last year on New X–Men, Dan DiDio called and asked if I wanted to come back to DC to work on a Superman book with Jim Lee.

Jim was flexing his artistic muscles again to great effect, and he wanted to do 12 issues on Superman to complement the work he was doing with Jeph Loeb on “Batman: Hush.” At the time, I wasn’t able to make my own commitments dovetail with Jim’s availability, but by then I’d become obsessed with the idea of doing a big Superman story and I’d already started working out the details.

Jim, of course, went on to do his 12 Superman issues as “For Tomorrow” with Brian Azzarello, so I found myself looking for an artist for what was rapidly turning into my own Man of Steel magnum opus, and I already knew the book had to be drawn by my friend and collaborator, Frank Quitely.

We were already talking about We3 and Superman seemed like a good meaty project to get our teeth into when that was done. I completely scaled up my expectations of what might be possible once Frank was on board and decided to make this thing as ambitious as possible.

Usually, I prefer to write poppy, throwaway “live performance” type superhero books, but this time, I felt compelled to make something for the ages – a big definitive statement about superheroes and life and all that, not only drawn by my favorite artist but starring the first and greatest superhero of them all.

The fact that it could be a non–continuity recreation made the idea even more attractive and more achievable. I also felt ready for it, in a way I don’t think I would have been in 1999; I finally felt “grown–up” enough to do Superman justice.

I plotted the whole story in 2002 and drew tiny colored sketches for all 12 covers. The entire book was very tightly constructed before we started – except that I’d left the ending open for the inevitable better and more focused ideas I knew would arise as the project grew into its own shape...and I left an empty space for issue 10. That one was intended from the start to be the single issue of the 12–issue run that would condense and amplify the themes of all the others. #10 was set aside to be the one–off story that would sum up anything anyone needed to know about Superman in 22 pages.

Not quite as concise an origin as Superman’s, but that’s how we got started.

NRAMA: When you were devising the series, what challenges did you have in building up this version of the Superman universe?

GM: I couldn’t say there were any particular challenges. It was fun. Nobody was telling me what I could or couldn’t do with the characters. I didn’t have to worry about upsetting continuity or annoying people who care about stuff like that.

I don’t have a lot of old comics, so my knowledge of Superman was based on memory, some tattered “70s books from the remains of my teenage collection, a bunch of DC “Best Of...” reprint editions and two brilliant little handbooks – “Superman in Action Comics” Volumes 1 and 2 – which reprint every single Action Comics cover from 1938 to 1988.

I read various accounts of Superman’s creation and development as a brand. I read every Superman story and watched every Superman movie I could lay my hands on, from the Golden Age to the present day. From the Socialist scrapper Superman of the Depression years, through the Super–Cop of the 40s, the mythic Hyper–Dad of the 50s and 60s, the questioning, liberal Superman of the early 70s, the bland “superhero” of the late 70s, the confident yuppie of the 80s, the over–compensating Chippendale Superman of the 90s etc. I read takes on Superman by Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Alan Moore, Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko and many others.

I looked at the Fleischer cartoons, the Chris Reeve movies and the animated series, and read Alvin Schwartz’s (he wrote the first ever Bizarro story among many others) fascinating book – “An Unlikely Prophet” – where he talks about his notion of Superman as a tulpa, (a Tibetan word for a living thought form which has an independent existence beyond its creator) and claims he actually met the Man of Steel in the back of a taxi.

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential “Superman–ness” that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star’s tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He’s Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles.

Newsarama: Grant, what are some of your favorite moments from the 12 issues?

Grant Morrison: The first shot of Superman flying over the sun. The Cosmic Anvil. Samson and Atlas. The kiss on the moon. The first three pages of the Olsen story which, I think, add up to the best character intro I’ve ever written.

Everything Lex Luthor says in issue #5. Everything Clark does. The whole says/does Luthor/Superman dynamic as played out through Frank Quitely’s absolute mastery and understanding of how space, movement and expression combine to tell a story.

Superboy and his dog on the moon – that perfect teenage moment of infinite possibility, introspection and hope for the future. He’s every young man on the verge of adulthood, Krypto is every dog with his boy (it seemed a shame to us that Krypto’s most memorable moment prior to this was his death scene in “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow.” Quitely’s scampering, leaping, eager and alive little creature is how I’d prefer to imagine Krypto the Superdog and conjures finer and more subtle emotions).

Bizarro–Home, with all of Earth’s continental and ocean shapes but reversed. The page with the first appearance of Zibarro that Frank has designed so the eye is pulled down in a swirling motion into the drain at the heart of the image, to make us feel that we’re being flushed in a cloacal spiral down into a nihilistic, existential sink. Frank gave me that page as a gift, and it became weirdly emblematic of a strange, dark time in both our lives.

The story with Bar–El and Lilo has a genuine chill off ammonia and antiseptic off it, which makes it my least favorite issue of the series, although I know a lot of people who love it. It’s about dying relatives, obligations, the overlit overheated corridors between terminal wards, the thin metallic odors of chemicals, bad food and fear. Preparation for the Phantom Zone.

Superman hugging the poor, hopeless girl on the roof and telling us all we’re stronger than we think we are.

Joe Shuster drawing us all into the story forever and never–ending.

Nasthalthia Luthor. Frank and Jamie’s final tour of the Fortress, referencing every previous issue on the way, in two pages.

All of issue #10 (there’s a single typo in there where the time on the last page was screwed up – but when we fix that detail for the trade I’ll be able to regard this as the most perfectly composed superhero story I’ve ever written).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother, more seamless collaborative process.

NRAMA: The story is very complete unto itself, but are there any new or classic characters you’d like to explore further? If so, which ones and why?

GM: I’d happily write more Atlas and Samson. I really like Krull, the Dino–Czar’s wayward son, and his Stalinist underground empire of “Subterranosauri.” I could write a Superman Squad comic forever. I’d love to write the “Son of Superman” sequel about Lois and Clark’s super test tube baby.

But...I think All Star is already complete, without sequels. You read that last issue and it works because you know you’re never going to see All Star Superman again. You’ll be able to pick up Superman books, but they won’t be about this guy and they won’t feel the same. He really is going away. Our Superman is actually “dying” in that sense, and that adds the whole series a deeper poignancy.

NRAMA: Aside from the Bizarro League, you never really introduce other DC superheroes into the story. Why did you make this choice?

GM: I wanted the story to be about the mythic Superman at the end of his time. It’s clear from the references that he has or more likely has had a few super–powered allies, but that they’re no longer around or relevant any more.

For the context of this story I wanted the super–friends to be peripheral, like they were in the old comics. The Flash? Green Lantern? They represent Superman’s “old army buddies,” or your dad’s school friends. Guys you’ve sort of heard of, who used to be more important in the old man’s life than they are now.

NRAMA: Some readers were confused as to how the “Twelve Labors” broke down, though others have pointed out that Superman’s actions are more reflective of the Stations of the Cross (I note there’s a “Station Café” in the background of issue #12). Could you break down the Twelve Labors, or, if the cross theory is true, how the storyline reflects the Stations?

GM: The 12 Labors of Superman were never intended as an isomorphic mapping onto the 12 Labors of Hercules, or for that matter, the specific Stations of the Cross, of which there are 14, I believe. I didn’t even want to do one Labor per issue, so it deliberately breaks down quite erratically through the series for reasons I’ll go into (later).

Yes, there are correspondences, but that’s mostly because we tried to create for our Superman the contemporary “superhero” version of an archetypal solar hero journey, which naturally echoes numerous myths, legends and religious parables.

At the same time, we didn’t want to do an update or a direct copy of any myth you’d seen before, so it won’t work if you try to find one specific mythological or religious “plan” to hang the series on; James Joyce’s honorable and heroic refutation of the rule aside, there’s nothing more dead and dull than an attempt to retell the Odyssey or the Norse sagas scene by scene, but in a modern and/or superhero setting.

For future historians and mythologizers, however, the 12 Labors of Superman may be enumerated as follows:

1. Superman saves the first manned mission to the sun. 2. Superman brews the Super–Elixir. 3. Superman answers the Unanswerable Question. 4. Superman chains the Chronovore.  5. Superman saves Earth from Bizarro–Home. 6. Superman returns from the Underverse. 7. Superman creates Life. 8. Superman liberates Kandor/cures cancer. 9. Superman defeats Solaris. 10. Superman conquers Death. 11. Superman builds an artificial Heart for the Sun. 12.Superman leaves the recipe/formula to make Superman 2.

And one final feat, which typically no–one really notices, is that Lex Luthor delivers his own version of the unified field haiku – explaining the underlying principles of the universe in fourteen syllables – which the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. G–Type philosopher from issue 4 had dedicated his entire life to composing!

You may notice also that the Labors take place over a year – with the solar hero’s descent into the darkness and cold of the Underverse occurring at midwinter/Christmas time (that’s also the only point in the story where we ever see Metropolis at night).

It can also be seen as the sun’s journey over the course of a day – we open in blazing sunshine but halfway through the book, at the end of issue #5, in fact, the solar hero dips below the horizon and begins the night–journey through the hours of darkness and death, before his triumphant resurrection at dawn. That’s why issue 5 ends with the boat to the Underworld and 6 begins with the moon. Clark Kent is crossing the threshold into the subconscious world of memory, shadows, death and deep emotions.

Although they can often have bizarre resonances, specific elements, like the Station Café, are usually put there by Frank Quitely, and are not necessarily secret Dan Brown–style keys to unlocking the mysteries. I think there might be a Station Café opposite the studio where Frank Quitely works and the “SAPIEN” sign on another storefront is a reference to Frank’s studio mate, Dave Sapien. At least he’s not filling the background with dirty words like he used to, given any opportunity

NRAMA: For that matter, do the Twelve Labors matter at all? They seem so purposely ill–defined. They seem more like misdirection or a MacGuffin than anything that needs to be clearly delineated.

GM: They matter, of course, but the 12 Labors idea is there to show that, as with all myth, the systematic ordering of current events into stories, tales, or legends occurs after the fact.

I’m trying to suggest that only in the future will these particular 12 feats, out of all the others ever, be mythologized as 12 Labors. I suppose I was trying to say something about how people impose meaning upon events in retrospect, and that’s how myth is born. It’s hindsight that provides narrative, structure, meaning and significance to the simple unfolding of events. It’s the backward glance that adds all the capital letters to the list above.

Even Superman isn”t sure how many Labors he’s performed when we see him mulling it over in issue 10.  When you watched it happening, it seemed to be Superman just doing his thing. In the future it’s become THE 12 LABORS OF SUPERMAN!

NRAMA: And on a completely ridiculous note: All–Star Superman is perhaps the most difficult–to–abbreviate comic title since Preacher: Tall in the Saddle. Did you realize this going in?

GM: Going into what? Going into ASS itself? In the sense of how did I feel as I slowly entered ASS for the first time?

It never crossed my mind...

Newsarama: I’d like to know a little more about Leo Quintum and his role in the story. He seems like a bit of an outgrowth of the likes of Project Cadmus and Emil Hamilton, but in a more fantastical, Willy Wonka sense.

Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.

I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.

Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.

Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.

What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.

And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.

In one way, Quintum could be seen to represent the creative team, simultaneously re–empowering a pure myth with the honest fire of Art...while at the same time shooting a jolt of juice through a concept that sells more “S” logo underpants and towels than it does comic books. All tastes catered!

I have to say that the Willy Wonka thing never crossed my mind until I saw people online make the comparison, which seems quite obvious now. Quintum dresses how I would dress if I was the world’s coolest super–scientist. What’s up with that?

NRAMA: Was Zibarro inspired by the Bizarro World story where the Bizarro–Neanderthal becomes this unappreciated Casanova–type?

GM: Don’t know that one, but it sounds like a scenario I could definitely endorse!

Zibarro started out as a daft name sicked–up by my subconscious mind, which flowered within moments into the must–write idea of an Imperfect Bizarro. What would an imperfect version of an already imperfect being be like?

Zibarro.

NRAMA: I’d like to know more about Zibarro – what’s the significance of his chronicling Bizarro World through poetry?

GM: It’s up to you. I see Zibarro partly as the sensitive teenager inside us all. He’s moody, horribly self–aware and uncomfortable, yet filled with thoughts of omnipotence and agency. He’s the absolute center of his tiny, disorganized universe. He’s playing the role of sensitive, empathic poet but at the same time, he’s completely self–absorbed.

When he says to Superman “Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so different. So unique. So unlike everyone else?” he doesn’t even wait for Superman’s reply. He doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but his own, ultimately.

NRAMA: The character is very close to Superman, so what does it say that a nonpowered version on a savage world would focus his energy through that medium? Also, does Zibarro’s existence show how Superman is able to elevate even the backwards Bizarros through his very nature?

GM: All of the above. And maybe he writes his totally subjective poetry as a reflection of Clark Kent’s objective reporter role. The suppressed, lyrical, wounded side of Superman perhaps? The Super–Morrissey? Bizarro With The Thorn In His Side?

But he’s also Bizarro–Home’s “mistake” (or so it seems to him, even though he’s as natural an expression of the place as any of the other Bizarro creatures who grow like mold across the surface of their living planet). He feels excluded, a despised outsider, and yet that position is what defines his cherished self–image. He expresses himself through poetry because to him the regular Bizarro language is barbaric, barely articulate and guttural. And they all think he’s talking crap anyway.

It seemed to make sense that an interesting opposite of Bizarro speech might be flowery “woe is me” school Poetry Society odes to the sunset in a misunderstood heart. He’s still a Bizarro though, which makes him ineffectual. His tragedy is that he knows he’s fated to be useless and pointless but craves so much more.

NRAMA: Zibarro also represents a recurrent theme in the story, of Superman constantly facing alternate versions of himself – Bar–El, Samson and Atlas, the Superman Squad, even Luthor by the end. Notably, Hercules is absent, though Superman’s doing his Twelve Labors. With the mythological adventurers in particular, was this designed to equate Superman with their legend, to show how his character is greater than theirs, or both?

GM: In a way, I suppose. He did arm–wrestle them both, proving once and for all Superman’s stronger than anybody! And remember, these characters, along with Hercules, used to appear regularly in Superman books as his rivals. I thought they made better rivals than, say, Majestic or Ultraman because people who don’t read comics have heard of Hercules, Samson and Atlas and understand what they represent.

For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground.

Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon (the original panel description was of something more like the famous shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf from “From Here To Eternity.” Frank’s final choice of composition is much more classically pulp–romantic and iconic than my down and dirty rumble in the moondirt would have been, I’m glad to say).

Newsarama: Tell us about some of the thinking behind the new antagonists you created for this series (at least the ones you want to talk about...): First up: Krull and the Subterranosaurs...

Grant Morrison: We wanted to create some throwaway new characters which would be designed to look as if they were convincing long–term elements of the Superman legend.

We were trying to create a few foes who had a classic feel and a solid backstory that could be explored again or in depth. Even if we never went back to these characters, we wanted them to seem rich enough to carry their own stories.

With Krull, we figured a superhuman character like Superman can always use a powerful “sub–human” opponent: a beast, a monster, a savage with the power to destroy civilization. For years I’ve had the idea that the familiar “gray aliens” might “actually” be evolved biped dinosaur descendants, the offspring of smart–thinking lizards which made their way to the warm regions at the Earth’s core.

I imagined these brutes developing their own technology, their own civilization, and then finally coming to the surface to declare bloody war on the mammalian usurpers! It seemed like we could develop this idea into the Krull backstory and suggest a whole epic conflict in a few panels.

Dom Regan, the Glasgow artist and DC colorist, saw the original green skin Jamie Grant had done for Krull, and suggested we make him red instead. Jamie reset his color filters and that was the moment Krull suddenly looked like a real Superman foe.

The red skin marked him out as unique, different and dangerous, even among his own species. It had echoes of Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur that played right into the heart of the concept. A good design became a great design and the whole story of who Krull was – his twisted relationship with his father the Dino–Czar, his monstrous ambitions – came together in that first picture.

The society was fleshed out in the script even though we see only one panel of it – a gloomy, heavy, “Soviet” underworld of walled iron cities, cold blood and deadly intrigue. War–Barges that could sail on the oceans of heated steam at the center of the Earth. A Stalinist authoritarian lizard world where missing person cases were being taken to work and die as slaves in hellish underworld conditions.

NRAMA: Mechano–Man?

GM: An attempt to pre–imagine a classic, archetypal Superman foe, which started with another simple premise – how about a giant robot villain? But not just any giant robot – this is a rampaging machine with a raging little man inside.

Giving him a bitter, angry, scrawny loser as a pilot turned Mechano–Man into a much more extreme and pathological expression of the Man of Steel/Mild–Mannered Reporter dynamic, and added a few interesting layers onto an 8–panel appearance.

NRAMA: The Chronovore – a very disturbing creation, that one.

GM: The Chronovore was mentioned in passing in DC 1,000,000 and would have been the monster in my aborted Hypercrisis series idea. It took a long time to get the right design for the beast because it’s meant to be a 5–D being that we only ever see in 4–D sections. It had to work as a convincing representation of something much bigger that we’re seeing only where it interpenetrates our 4–D space-time continuum.

Imagine you’re walking along with a song in your teenage heart, then suddenly the Chronovore appears, takes bite out of your life, and you arrive at your girlfriend’s house aged 76, clutching a cell phone and a wilted bouquet.

NRAMA: One more obscure run that I was happy to see referenced in this was the use of Nasty from the old Mike Sekowsky Supergirl stories. What made you want to use this character?

GM: I remembered her from the old comics, and felt her fashion–y look could be updated very easily into the kind of fetish club thing I’ve always been partial to.

She seemed a cool and sexy addition to the Luthor plot. The set–up, where Lex has a fairly normal sister who hates how her wayward brother is such a bad influence on her brilliant daughter, is explosive with character potential.

They need to bring Nasty back to mainstream continuity. Geoff! They all want it and you know you never let them down!

NRAMA: Speaking of Mike Sekowsky, I’m curious about his influence on your work. I have an odd fascination with all the ideas and stories he was tossing around in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Jason’s Quest, Manhunter 2070, the I–Ching tales – and many of the characters he worked on, from the B”Wana Beast to the Inferior Five to Yankee Doodle (in Doom Patrol), have shown up in your work. The Bizarro Zoo in issue #10 is even slightly reminiscent of the Beast’s merged animals.

GM: Those were all comics that were around when I was a normal kid, prior to the obsessive collecting fan phase of my isolated teenage years. They clearly inspired me in some way, as you say, but certainly not consciously. I’d never have considered myself a particular fan of Mike Sekowsky’s work, but as you say, I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into the DC Universe work I’ve done. Hmm. Interesting.

While I’m at it, I should also say something about Samson and Atlas, halfway between old characters and new.

Samson, Atlas and Hercules were classical mainstays of old Superman covers, tangling with Superman in all those Silver Age stories that happened before he learned from his friends at Marvel that it was possible to fight other superheroes for fun and profit, so I decided to completely “re–vamp” the characters in the manner of superhero franchises. Marvel has the definitive Hercules for me, so I left him out of the mix and concentrated on Atlas and Samson.

Atlas was re–imagined as a mighty but restless and reckless young prince of the New Mythos – a society of mega–beings playing out their archetypal dramas between New Elysium and Hadia, with ordinary people caught in the middle – and Superman.

Essentially good–hearted, Atlas would have been the newbie in a “team” with Skyfather Xaoz!, Heroina, Marzak and the others. He has a bullish, adolescent approach to life. He drinks and plunges himself into ill–advised adventures to ease his naturally gloomy “weighed down by the world” temperament.

You can see it all now. The backstory suggested an unseen, Empyrean New Gods–type series from a parallel universe. What if, when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in 1971, he’d followed up his sci–fi Viking Gods saga at Marvel, with a dimension–spanning epic rooted in Greek mythology? New Gods meets Eternals drawn by Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson? That was Atlas.

Samson, I decided would be a callback to the British newspaper strip “Garth.” Although you may already be imagining a daily strip about the exploits of time–tossed The Boys writer, Garth Ennis, it was actually about a blonde Adonis type who bounced around the ages having mildly horny, racy adventures.

(Go look him up then return the wiser before reading on, so I don’t have to explain anymore about this bastard – he’s often described as “the British Superman,” but oh...my arse! I hated meathead, personality–singularity Garth...but we all grew up with his meandering, inexplicable yet incredibly–drawn adventures and some of it was quite good when you were a little lad because he was always shagging ON PANEL with the likes of a bare–breasted cave girl or gauze–draped Helen of Troy.

(Unlike Superman, you see, the top British strongman liked to get naked. Lots naked. Naked in every time period he could get naked in, which was all of them thanks to the miracle of his bullshit powers.

(Imagine Doctor Who buff, dumb and naked all the time – Russell, I’ve had an idea!!!! – and that’s Garth in a nutshell.

(Sorry, I know I’m going on and the average attention span of anyone reading stuff on the Internet amounts to no more than a few paragraphs, but basically, Garth was always getting naked. In public, in family newspapers. Bollock naked. Let’s face it, patriotic Americans, have you ever seen Superman’s arse?

Newsarama Note: Well, there was Baby Kal-El in the 1978 film...

(Brits, hands up who still remember the man, and have you ever not seen Garth’s arse? Do you not, in fact, have a very clear image of it in your head, as drawn by Martin Asbury perhaps? In mine, Garth’s pulling aside a flimsy curtain to gaze at the pyramids with Cleopatra buck naked in foreground ogling his rock hard glutes...).

Anyway, Samson, I decided, was the Hebrew version of Garth and he would have his own mad comic that was like an American version of Garth. I saw the Bible hero plucked from the desert sands by time–travelling buffoons in search of a savior. Introduced to all the worst aspects of future culture and, using his stolen, erratic Chrono–Mobile, Samson became a time–(and space) traveling Soldier of Fortune, writing wrongs, humping princesses, accumulating and losing treasure etc. Like a science fiction Conan. Meets Garth.

Fortunately, you’ll never see any of these men ever again.

Newsarama: How have your perceptions of Superman and his supporting characters evolved since the Superman 2000 pitch you did with Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer? The Superman notions seem almost identical, but Luthor is very different here than in that pitch, and so is Clark Kent. Did you use some aspects of your original pitch, or have you just changed his mind on how to portray these characters since?

Grant Morrison: A little of both. I wanted to approach All Star Superman as something new, but there were a couple of specific aspects from the Superman 2000 pitch (as I mentioned earlier, it was actually called Superman Now, at least in my notebooks, which is where the bulk of the material came from) that I felt were definitely worth keeping and exploring.

I can’t remember much about Luthor from Superman Now, except for the ending. By the time I got to All Star Superman, I’d developed a few new insights into Luthor’s character that seemed to flesh him out more. Luthor’s really human and charismatic and hateful all the same time. He’s the brilliant, deluded egotist in all of us. The key for me was the idea that he draws his eyebrows on. The weird vanity of that told me everything I needed to know about Luthor.

I thought the real key to him was the fact that, brilliant as he is, Luthor is nowhere near as brilliant as he wants to be or thinks he is. For Luthor, no praise, no success, no achievement is ever enough, because there’s a big hungry hole in his soul. His need for acknowledgement and validation is superhuman in scale. Superman needs no thanks; he does what he does because he’s made that way. Luthor constantly rails against his own sense of failure and inadequacy...and Superman’s to blame, of course.

I’ve recently been re–thinking Luthor again for a different project, and there’s always a new aspect of the character to unearth and develop.

NRAMA: This story makes Superman and Lois’ relationship seem much more romantic and epic than usual, but this one also makes Superman more of the pursuer. Lois seems like more of an equal, but also more wary of his affections, particularly in the black–and–white sequence in issue #2.

She becomes this great beacon of support for him over the course of the series, but there is a sense that she’s a bit jaded from years of trickery and uncomfortable with letting him in now that he’s being honest. How, overall, do you see the relationship between Superman and Lois?

GM: The black-and-white panels shows Lois paranoid and under the influence of an alien chemical, but yes, she’s articulating many of her very real concerns in that scene.

I wanted her to finally respond to all those years of being tricked and duped and led to believe Superman and Clark Kent were two different people. I wanted her to get her revenge by finally refusing to accept the truth.

It also exposed that brilliant central paradox in the Superman/Lois relationship. The perfect man who never tells a lie has to lie to the woman he loves to keep her safe. And he lives with that every day. It’s that little human kink that really drives their relationship.

NRAMA: Jimmy Olsen is extremely cool in this series – it’s the old “Mr. Action” idea taken to a new level. It’s often easy to write Jimmy as a victim or sycophant, but in this series, he comes off as someone worthy of being “Superman’s Pal” – he implicitly trusts Superman, and will take any risk to get his story. Do you see this version of Jimmy as sort of a natural evolution of the version often seen in the comics?

GM: It was a total rethink based on the aspects of Olsen I liked, and playing down the whole wet–behind–the–ears “cub reporter” thing. I borrowed a little from the “Mr. Action” idea of a more daredevil, pro–active Jimmy, added a little bit of Nathan Barley, some Abercrombie & Fitch style, a bit of Tintin, and a cool Quitely haircut.

Jimmy was renowned for his “disguises” and bizarre transformations (my favorite is the transvestite Olsen epic “Miss Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #95, which gets a nod on the first page of our Jimmy story we did), so I wanted to take that aspect of his appeal and make it part of his job.

I don’t like victim Jimmy or dumb Jimmy, because those takes on the character don’t make any sense in their context. It seemed more interesting see what a young man would be like who could convincingly be Superman’s “pal.” Someone whose company a Superman might actually enjoy. That meant making Jimmy a much bigger character: swaggering but ingenuous. Innocent yet worldly. Enthusiastic but not stupid.

My favorite Jimmy moment is in issue #7 when he comes up with the way to defeat the Bizarro invasion by using the seas of the Bizarro planet itself as giant mirrors to reflect toxic – to Bizarros – sunlight onto the night side of the Earth. He knows Superman can actually take crazy lateral thinking like this and put it into practice.

NRAMA: Perry White has a few small–but–key scenes, particularly his address to his staff in issue #1 and standing up to Luthor in issue #12. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this character.

GM: As with the others, my feelings are there on the page. Perry is Clark’s boss and need only be that and not much more to play his role perfectly well within the stories. He’s a good reminder that Superman has a job and a boss, unlike that good–for–nothing work-shy bastard Batman. Perry’s another of the series’ older male role models of integrity and steadfastness, like Pa Kent.

NRAMA: There’s a sense in the Daily Planet scenes and with Lois’s spotlight issues that everyone knows Clark is Superman, but they play along to humor him. The Clark disguise comes off as very obvious in this story. Do you feel that the Planet staff knows the truth, or are just in a very deep case of denial, like Lex?

GM: If I had to say for sure, I think Jimmy Olsen worked it out a long time ago, and simply presumes that if Superman has a good reason for what he’s doing, that’s good enough for Jimmy.

Lois has guessed, but refuses to acknowledge it because it exposes her darkest flaw – she could never love Clark Kent the way she loves Superman.

NRAMA: Also, the Planet staff seems awfully nonchalant at Luthor’s threats. Are they simply used to being attacked by now?

GM: Yes. They’re a tough group. They also know that Superman makes a point of looking out for them, so they naturally try to keep Luthor talking. They know he loves to talk about himself and about Superman. In that scene, he’s almost forgotten he even has powers, he’s so busy arguing and making points. He keeps doing ordinary things instead of extraordinary things.

NRAMA: The running gag of Clark subtly using his powers to protect unknowing people is well done, but I have to admit I was confused by the sequence near the end of issue #1. Was that an el–train, and if so, why was it so close to the ground?

GM: It’s a MagLev hover–train. Look again, and you’ll see it’s not supported by anything. Hover–trains help ease congestion in busy city streets! Metropolis is the City of Tomorrow, after all.

NRAMA: And there’s the death of Pa Kent. Why do you feel it’s particularly important to have Pa and not both of the Kents pass away?

GM: I imagined they had both passed away fairly early in Superman’s career, but Ma went a few years after Pa. Also, because the book was about men or man, it seemed important to stress the father/son relationships. That circle of life, the king is dead, long live the king thing that Superman is ultimately too big and too timeless to succumb to.

NRAMA: There is a real touch of Elliott S! Maggin’s novels in your depiction of Luthor – someone who is just so obsessive–compulsive about showing up Superman that he accomplishes nothing in his own life. He comes across as a showman, from his rehearsed speech in issue #1 to his garish costume in the last two issues, and it becomes painfully apparent that he wants to usurp Superman because he just can’t be happy with himself. What defeats him is actually a beautiful gift, getting to see the world as Superman does, and finally understanding his enemy.

That’s all a lead–in to: What previous stories that defined Luthor for you, and how did you define his character? What appeals to you about writing him?

GM: The Marks Waid and Millar were big fans of the Maggin books, and may have persuaded me to read at least the first one but I’m ashamed to say can’t remember anything about it, other than the vague recollection of a very humane, humanist take on Superman that seemed in general accord with the pacifist, hedonistic, between–the–wars spirit of the ‘90s when I read it. It was the ‘90s; I had other things on my mind and in my mind.

I like Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman?” from Superman #247, which ultimately poses questions traditional superhero comic books are not equipped to answer and is one of the first paving stones in the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Watchmen and beyond, to The Authority, The Ultimates etc. Everyone still awake, still reading this, should make themselves familiar with “Must There Be A Superman?” – it’s a milestone in the development of the superhero concept.

However, the story that most defines Luthor for me turns out to be, as usual, a Len Wein piece with Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson– Superman #248. This blew me away when I was a kid. Lex Luthor cares about humanity? He’s sorry we all got blown up? The villain loves us too? It’s only Superman he really hates? Genius. Big, cool adult stuff.

The divine Len makes Lex almost too human, but it was amazing to see this kind of depth in a character I’d taken for granted as a music hall villain.

I also love the brutish Satanic, Crowley–esque, Golden Age Luthor in the brilliant “Powerstone” Action Comics #47 (the opening of All Star #11 is a shameless lift from “Powerstone”, as I soon realised when I went back to look. Blame my...er...photographic memory...cough).

And I like the Silver Age Luthor who only hates Superman because he thinks it’s Superboy’s fault he went bald. That was the most genuinely human motivation for Luthor’s career of villainy of all; it was Superman’s fault he went bald! I can get behind that.

In the Silver Age, baldness, like obesity, old age and poverty, was seen quite rightly as a crippling disease and a challenge which Superman and his supporting cast would be compelled to overcome at every opportunity! Suburban “50s America versus Communist degeneracy? You tell me.

I like elements of the Marv Wolfman/John Byrne ultra–cruel and rapacious businessman, although he somewhat lacks the human dimension (ultimately there’s something brilliant about Luthor being a failed inventor, a product of Smallville/Dullsville – the genius who went unnoticed in his lifetime, and resorted to death robots in chilly basements and cellars. Luthor as geek versus world). I thought Alan Moore’s ruthlessly self–assured “consultant” Luthor in Swamp Thing was an inspired take on the character as was Mark Waid’s rage–driven prodigy from Birthright.

I tried to fold them all into one portrayal. I see him as a very human character – Superman is us at our best, Luthor is us when we’re being mean, vindictive, petty, deluded and angry. Among other things. It’s like a bipolar manic/depressive personality – with optimistic, loving Superman smiling at one end of the scale and paranoid, petty Luthor cringing on the other.

I think any writer of Superman has to love these two enemies equally. We have to recognize them both as potentials within ourselves. I think it’s important to find yourself agreeing with Luthor a bit about Superman’s “smug superiority” – we all of us, except for Superman, know what it’s like to have mean–spirited thoughts like that about someone else’s happiness. It’s essential to find yourself rooting for Lex, at least a little bit, when he goes up against a man–god armed only with his bloody–minded arrogance and cleverness.

Even if you just wish you could just give him a hug and help him channel his energies in the right direction, Luthor speaks for something in all of us, I like to think.

However he’s played, Luthor is the male power fantasy gone wrong and turned sour. You’ve got everything you want but it’s not enough because someone has more, someone is better, someone is cleverer or more handsome.

Newsarama: Grant, a recurring theme throughout the book is the effect of small kindness – how even the likes of Steve Lombard are capable of decency. And Superman gets the key to saving himself by doing something that any human being could do, offering sympathy to a person about to end it all.

Grant Morrison: Completely...the person you help today could be the person who saves your life tomorrow.

NRAMA: The character actions that make the biggest difference, from Zibarro’s sacrifice to Pa’s influence on Superman, are really things that any normal, non-powered person could do if they embrace the best part of their humanity. The last page of issue #12 teases the idea that Superman’s powers could be given to all mankind, but it seems as though the greatest gift he has given them is his humanity. How do you view Superman’s fate in the context of where humanity could go as a species?

GM: I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. It’s really simple. We can continue to tell ourselves and our children that the species we belong to is a crawling, diseased, viral cancer smear, only fit for extinction, and let’s see where that leads us.

We can continue to project our self-loathing and narcissistic terror of personal mortality onto our culture, our civilization, our planet, until we wreck the promise of the world for future generations in a fit of sheer self-induced panic...

...or we can own up to the scientific fact that we are all physically connected as parts of a single giant organism, imagine better ways to live and grow...and then put them into practice. We can stop pissing about, start building starships, and get on with the business of being adults.

The ’Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.

The key theme of the ‘Dark Age’ of comics was loss and recovery of wonder - McGregor’s Killraven trawling through the apocalyptic wreckage of culture in his search for poetry, meaning and fellowship, Captain Mantra, amnesiac in Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be. Ha hah ha.

Newsarama: The structure of the 12 issues involves both Superman’s 12 labors and his impending death. Do you feel the threat of his demise brings out the best in Superman’s already–high character, or did you intend it more as a window for the audience to understand how he sees the world?

Grant Morrison: In trying to do the “big,” ultimate Superman story, we wanted to hit on all the major beats that define the character – the “death of Superman” story has been told again and again and had to be incorporated into any definitive take. Superman’s death and rebirth fit the sun god myth we were establishing, and, as you say, it added a very terminal ticking clock to the story.

NRAMA: When we talked earlier this year, we discussed the neurotic quality of the Silver Age stories. Looking at the series as a whole, you consistently invert this formula. Superman is faced with all these crises that could be seen as personifying his neuroses, but for the most part he handles them with a level head and comes across as being very at peace with himself. You talked about your discussion with an in–character Superman fan at a convention years ago, but I am curious as to how you determined Superman’s mindset.

GM: I felt we had to live up to the big ideas behind Superman. I don’t take my daft job lightly. It’s all I’ve got.

As the project got going, I wasn’t thinking about Silver Ages or Dark Ages or anything about the comics I’d read, so much as the big shared idea of “Superman” and that “S” logo I see on T–shirts everywhere I go, on girls and boys. That communal Superman. I wanted us to get the precise energy of Platonic Superman down on the page.

The “S” hieroglyph, the super–sigil, stands for the very best kind of man we can imagine, so the subject dictated the methodical, perfectionist approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I keep this aspect of my job fresh for myself by changing my writing style to suit the project, the character or the artist.

With something like Batman R.I.P., I’m aiming for a frenzied Goth Pulp-Noir; punk-psych, expressionist shadows and jagged nightmare scene shifts, inspired by Batman’s roots and by the snapping, fluttering of his uncanny cape. Final Crisis was written, with the Norse Ragnarok and Biblical Revelations in mind, as a story about events more than characters. A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.

The subject matter drives the execution. And then, of course, the artists add their own vision and nuance. With All Star Superman, “Frank” and I were able to spend a lot of time together talking it through, and we agreed it had to be about grids, structure, storybook panel layouts, an elegance of form, a clarity of delivery. “Classical” in every sense of the word. The medium, the message, the story, the character, all working together as one simple equation.

Frank Quitely, a Glasgow Art School boy, completely understood without much explanation, the deep structural underpinnings of the series and how to embody them in his layouts. There’s a scene in issue # 8, set on the Bizarro world, where we see Le Roj handing Superman his rocket plans. Look at the arrangement of the figures of Zibarro, Le Roj, Superman and Bizaro–Superman and you’ll see one attempt to make us of Renaissance compositions.

The sense of sunlit Zen calm we tried to get into All Star is how I imagine it might feel to think the way Superman thinks all the time - a thought process that is direct, clean, precise, mathematical, ordered. A mind capable of fantastical imagination but grounded in the everyday of his farm upbringing with nice decent folks. Rich with humour and tears and deep human significance, yet tuned to a higher key. We tried to hum along for a little while, that’s all.

In honor of the character’s primal position in the development of the superhero narrative, I hoped we could create an “ultimate” hero story, starring the ultimate superhero.

Basically, I suppose I felt Superman deserved the utmost application of our craft and intelligence in order to truly do him justice.

Otherwise, I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t watched my big, brilliant dad decline into incoherence and death. I couldn’t have written it if I’d never had my heart broken, or mended. I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t known what it felt like to be idolized, misunderstood, hated for no clear reason, loved for all my faults, forgotten, remembered...

Writing All Star Superman was, in retrospect, also a way of keeping my mind in the clean sunshine while plumbing the murkiest depths of the imagination with that old pair of c****s Darkseid and Doctor Hurt. Good riddance.

Newsarama: This is touched on in other questions, but how much of the Silver/Bronze Age backstory matters here? What do you see as Superman's life prior to All-Star Superman? (What was going on with this Superman while the Byrne revamp took hold?)

Grant Morrison: When I introduced the series in an interview online, I suggested that All Star Superman could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne‘s New Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?

This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended All Star Superman as a direct continuation of the Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘Age’ specific.

I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. All Star isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.

All Star Superman is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.

Which is to say, we wanted our Superman story be about life, not about comics or superheroes, current events or politics. It’s about how it feels, specifically to be a man...in our dreams! Hopefully that means our 12 issues are also capable of wide interpretation.

So as much as we may have used a few recognizable Silver Age elements like Van-Zee and Sylv(i)a and the Bottle City of Kandor, the ensemble Daily Planet cast embodies all the generations of Superman. Perry White is from 1940, Steve Lombard is from the Schwartz-era ‘70s, Ron Troupe - the only black man in Metropolis - appeared in 1991. Cat Grant is from 1987 and so on.

P.R.O.J.E.C.T. refers back to Jack Kirby’s DNA Project from his ‘70s Jimmy Olsen stories, as well as to The Cadmus Project from ’90s Superboy and Superman stories. Doomsday is ‘90s. Kal Kent, Solaris and the Infant Universe of Qwewq all come from my own work on Superman in the same decade. Pa Kent’s heart attack is from ‘Superman the Movie‘. We didn’t use Brainiac because he’d been the big bad in Earth 2 but if we had, we’d have used Brainiac’s Kryptonian origin from the animated series and so on.

I also used quite a few elements of John Byrne’s approach. Byrne made a lot of good decisions when he rebooted the whole franchise in 1986 and I wanted to incorporate as much as I could of those too.

Our Superman in All Star was never Superboy, for instance. All Star Superman landed on Earth as a normal, if slightly stronger and fitter infant, and only began to manifest powers in adolescence when he’d finally soaked up enough yellow solar radiation to trigger his metamorphosis.

The Byrne logic seemed to me a better way to explain how his powers had developed across the decades, from the skyscraper leaps of the early days to the speed-of-light space flight of the high Silver Age. And more importantly, it made the Superman myth more poignant - the story of a farm boy who turned into an alien as he reached adolescence. I felt that was something that really enriched Superman. He grew away from his home, his family, his adopted species as he became Superman. His teenage years are a record of his transformation from normal boy to super-being.

As you say, there are more than just Silver Age influences in the book. Basically we tried to create a perfect synthesis of every Superman era. So much so, that it should just be taken as representative of an ‘age’ all its own.

In the end, however, I do think that the Silver Age type stories, with their focus on human problems and foibles, have a much wider appeal than a lot of the work which followed. They’re more like fables or folk tales than the later ‘comic book superhero’ stories of Superman when he became just another colorful costume in the crowd...and perhaps that’s why All Star seemed to resemble those books more than it does a typical modern Marvel or DC comic. It was our intention to present a more universal, mainstream Superman.

NRAMA: In your depiction of Krypton and the Kryptonians, you show the complexity of Superman’s relationship between humanity and Earth even further. Krypton has that scientific paradise quality to it, but the Kryptonians are also portrayed as slightly aloof and detached, even Jor-El. But from Bar-El to the people of Kandor, they’re touched by Superman’s goodness. What do you see as the fundamental difference between Kryptonians and Earthlings, and how has Superman’s character been shaped by each?

GM: My version of Krypton was, again, synthesized from a number of different approaches over the decades.  In mythic terms, if Superman is the story of a young king, found and raised by common people, then Krypton is the far distant kingdom he lost. It’s the secret bloodline, the aristocratic heritage that makes him special, and a hero. At the same time, Krypton is something that must be left behind for Superman to become who he is - i.e. one of us. Krypton gives him his scientific clarity of mind, Earth makes his heart blaze.

I liked the very early Jerry Siegel descriptions where Krypton is a planet of advanced supermen and women (I already played with that a little in Marvel Boy where Noh-Varr was written to be the Marvel Superboy basically). To that, I added the rich, science fiction detailing of the Silver Age Krypton stories and the slightly detached coolness that characterized John Byrne’s Krypton, which I re-interpreted through the lens of Dzogchen Buddhist thought, probably the most pragmatic, chilly and rational philosophic system on the planet and the closest, I felt, to how Kryptonians might see things.

We also took some time to redesign the crazy, multicolored Kryptonian flag (you can see our version in Kandor in issue #10). The flag, as originally imagined, seemed like the last thing Kryptonians would endorse, so we took the multicolored-rays-around-a-circle design and recreated it - the central circle is now red, representing Krypton’s star, Rao, while the rays, rather than arbitrary colors, become representations of the spectrum of visible light pouring from Rao into the inky black of space. In this way, the flag, that bizarre emblem of nationalism becomes a scientific hieroglyph.

Showing Krypton and Kryptonians was also important as a way of stressing why Superman wears that costume and why it makes absolute sense that he looks the way he does. I don’t see the red and blue suit as a flag or as rewoven baby blankets. There’s no need for Superman to dress the way he does but it made sense to think of his outfit as his ‘national costume‘.

The way I see it, the standard superhero outfit, the familiar Superman suit with the pants on the outside, is what everyone wore on Krypton, give or take a few fashion accessories like hoods and headbands, chest crests and variant colors. In fact, all other superheroes are just copying the fashions on Krypton, lost planet of the super-people.

Superman wears his ’action-suit’ the way a patriotic Scotsman would wear a kilt. It’s a sign of his pride in his alien heritage.

Newsarama: Although All–Star Superman ties in with DC One Million, you style of writing has changed dramatically since then. How do you feel about One Million now?

Grant Morrison: I just read it again and liked it a lot. Comics were definitely happier, breezier and more confident in their own strengths before Hollywood and the Internet turned the business of writing superhero stories into the production of low budget storyboards or, worse, into conformist, fruitless attempts to impress or entertain a small group of people who appear to hate comics and their creators.

NRAMA: Obviously, this book is the most explicit SF–Christ story since Behold the Man, only...happy. Superman/Christ parallels have existed for decades, but this story makes it absolutely explicit, from laying his hands on the sick and dying to...well, most of issue #12. You’ve dealt with Christ themes before, particularly in The Mystery Play, but outside of the comics, how do you see Superman as a Christ figure for the “real” world?

GM: The “Superman as Christ” thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.

When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?

The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone. This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.

It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements that have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman. I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.

NRAMA: Continuing the religious themes, in issue #10, you have Superman literally giving birth to himself, both philosophically and as a character – a nice little meta–moment showing how Superman inspires a world where he is only fiction. How did that idea come about?

GM: It came from the challenge we’d set ourselves: as I said, issue #10 had been left as a blank space into which the single most coherent condensation of all our ideas about Superman were destined to fit.

I wanted to do a “day in the life” story. So much of All Star had been about this threat to Superman himself, so we wanted to show him going about a typical day saving people and doing good.

Then came the title “Neverending,” which comes from the opening announcement – “Faster than a speeding bullet!...” of the Superman radio show from 1940, and seemed to me to be as good a title for a Superman story as any I could think of. It seemed to distil everything about Superman’s battle and his legend into a single word. And the story structure itself was designed to loop endlessly, so it went well with that.

On top of that went the idea of the Last Will and Testament of Superman. A dying god writing his will seemed like an interesting structure to use. Then came the idea to fit all of human history into that single 24 hours. And then to show the development of the Superman idea through human culture from the earliest Australian Aboriginal notions of super–beings ‘descended” from the sky, through the complex philosophical system of Hinduism, onto the Renaissance concept of the ideal man, via the refinements of Nietzche and finally, down to that smiling, hopeful Joe Shuster sketch; the final embodiment of humanity’s glorious, uplifting notion of the superman become reduced to a drawing, a story for kids, a worthless comic book.

And also what that could mean in a holographic fractal universe, where the smallest part contains and reflects the whole.

Of course the next panel in that sequence is happening in the real world and would show you, the reader, sitting with the latest Superman issue in your hands, deep within the Infant Universe of Qwewq in the Fortress of Solitude, today, wherever you are. In “Neverending,” the reader becomes wrapped in a self–referential loop of story and reality. If you actually, seriously think about what is happening at this point in the story, if you meditate upon the curious entanglement of the real and the fictional, you will become enlightened in this life apparently. According to some texts.

NRAMA: On a personal level, you’ve explored all types of religions and philosophies in your work. What is your take on religion and how it influences humanity, and the Christian take on Jesus Christ in particular?

GM: I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars. At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.

Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.

Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic ‘divinity” at work.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf: just close your eyes and say hello. “God” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).

This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists...but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of 4 cannot do but children of 6 can.

Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it.  This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.” However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.

Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics. Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.

Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.

As Peter Barnes wrote in “The Ruling Class”, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”

Newsarama: When we spoke earlier this year, you talked about some of your ideas for future All Star stories. Are you moving forward on those, or have you started working on different ideas since then?

Grant Morrison: I haven’t had time to think about them for a while. I did have the stories worked out, and I’d like to do more, but right now it feels like Frank and Jamie and I have said all there is to be said. I don’t know if I’m ready to do All Star Superman with anyone else right now. I have other plans.

NRAMA: You end the book with Superman having uplifted humanity – having inspired them through his sacrifice and great deeds, and with the potential to pass his powers on to humanity still there. Do you plan to explore this concept further, or would you prefer to leave it open–ended?

GM: I may go back to the Son of Superman in some way. At the same time, it’s best left open–ended. I like the idea that Superman gets to have his cake and eat it; he becomes golden and mythical and lives forever as a dream. Yet, he also is able to sire a child who will carry his legacy into the future. He kicks ass in both the spiritual and the temporal spheres!

NRAMA: The notion of transcendence – always a big part of your work. But the debate about All Star Superman is whether or not it "transcends its genre." Superman becomes transcendent within the series itself, and inspires the beings on Qwewq, but does the work aspire to more than that? Is it simply the greatest version of a Superman story, and that’s enough?

GM: That would certainly be enough if it were true.

It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

It’s a big old Paul Bunyan style mythologizing of human - and in particular male - experience. In that sense I’d like to think All Star Superman does transcend genre in that it’s intended to be read on its own terms and needs absolutely no understanding of genre conventions or history around it to grasp what’s going on.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent, ‘Zibarro’ crap. That’s what my Final Crisis series is about too.

NRAMA (aka Tim Callahan): Continuing with the theme of transcendence: The words "ineffectual" and "surrender" are repeated throughout the book. Discuss.

GM: Discuss yourself, Callahan! I know you have the facilities and I should think it’s all rather obvious.  

NRAMA: What was the inspiration for the image of Superman in the sun at the end? (I confess this question comes as the result of much unsuccessful Googling)

GM: I didn’t have any specific reference in mind - just that one we‘ve all sort of got in our heads. I drew the figure as a sketch, intended to be reminiscent of William Blake’s cosmic figures, Russian Constructivist Soviet Socialist Worker type posters, and Leonardo’s ‘Proportions of the Human Figure‘. The position of the legs hints at the Buddhist swastika, the clockwise sun symbol. It was to me, the essence of that working class superheroic ideal I mentioned, condensed into a final image of mythic Superman, - our eternal, internal, guiding, selfless, tireless, loving superstar. The daft All Star Superman title of the comic is literalized in this last picture. It’s the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the Enlightenment project - an image of genius, toil, and our need to make things, to fashion art and artifacts, as a form of superhuman, divine imitation.

It was Superman as this fusion of Renaissance/Enlightenment ideas about Man and Cosmos, an impossible union of Blake and Newton. A Pop Art ‘Vitruvian Man‘. The inspiration for the first letter of the new future alphabet!

As you can see, we spent a lot of time thinking about all this and purifying it down to our own version of the gold. I’m glad it’s over.

NRAMA: Finally: What, above all else, would you like people to take away from All Star Superman?

GM: That we spent a lot of time thinking about this!

No. What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that?

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colorist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.

My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honoring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.

#All Star Superman #Grant Morrison #Superman

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