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superman86to99 · 3 years ago

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Adventures of Superman #510 (March 1994)

Bizarro's World, Part 2! Bizarro has kidnapped Lois Lane and taken her to a warped replica of Metropolis he built in a big warehouse within the real Metropolis, like the plot of Synecdoche, New York but with a defective Superman clone instead of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Despite being a big ol' dumbass, we find out that Bizarro definitely retains some parts of Superman's original personality, like his love for Lois (hence the kidnapping) and of course his profound hatred for Jimmy Olsen (hence the part where he blows up a mannequin dressed like Jimmy with his heat vision).

Meanwhile, Superman thinks it'll be easy to find Lois with his newly augmented powers, but turns out they're SO augmented that he can't even focus his super-hearing and ends up having a sensory overload, so he's pretty much useless right now. Fortunately, Lois is very capable of saving herself, which she eventually does by climbing to the top of the "Daylee Plandit" building and pushing the crude globe replica on top of poor Bizarro.

Before escaping, Lois also figures out that Lex Luthor Jr. is somehow responsible for Bizarro's creation, which she deduces mainly because just hearing Lex's name made Bizarro start screaming and breaking stuff.

So yeah, Superman isn't very useful in this issue, because we've reached the point where his "enhanced" powers have officially become a problem. Lois tries to comfort him saying that she wants a husband, not a bodyguard, but only one thing can make Superman feel better: punching the crap out of Bizarro for a while. Continued!

Plotline-Watch:

The best part of this issue are the Bizarro-speak Easter eggs throughout Bizarrotropolis, like the mouse with a sign that says "Kad" (Cadmus), the mannequin wearing a bib that says "O" (Bibbo), the Daylee Plandit employee whose head is a bottle of Perry water (wait, has “Perry White” always been short for “Perrier White”?), and others I probably missed.

Curious that Lois thinks "This creature really is some Bizarro version of Superman," since the term "Bizarro" comes from, well, Bizarro. Where did it originate in this universe? I was gonna say Seinfeld, but the “Bizarro Jerry” episode aired in 1996, two years after this issue (and was probably called "Guy Who Is The Complete Opposite of Jerry" anyway).

The scene where Superman loses control of his hearing powers is pretty similar to the moment in John Byrne's Superman #10 when the same thing happens, only that time they actually pulled word balloons from various other DC comics that came out that month, which was pretty cool. This time, the only piece of dialogue that sounds like it might be from another comic is "wish I was like Barry," but I checked the March 1994 issue of The Flash and there's nothing like that (it does sound like something early '90s Wally West would say on any given issue, though).

An increasingly Lex Luthor Sr.-looking Lex Luthor Jr. summons his mole in Project Cadmus, Dr. Packard, to find out what they know about the mystery illness afflicting all clones in the city (which includes Lex himself, as Packard is shocked to learn), but Cadmus has no idea what's going on either. All they know is that Guardian seems to be the only clone who doesn't feel like crap right now, for some reason. It's worth noting that none of the other clones are losing their hair like Lex, so presumably that's not the Clone Plague but just regular alopecia.

Time's Up for Vincent Edge! Cat Grant goes off script during her show's live broadcast to #MeToo her boss, who's been aggressively hitting on her for the past few months -- the old incorrigible horndog didn't even give it a rest when Cat's young son was murdered. This issue includes Vinnie's worst line yet when he tells Cat he wants to help her career because "Nothing would please me more than to see you on TOP. If you know what I mean." My headcanon is that he's arrested by the cops at the end of this issue specifically because of that line.

Patreon-Watch:

All of the above was seen ten days ago by our patrons Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Kit, Sam, Hank Curry, and Bol! Find out how to join the kewl kidz club at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99

Don Sparrow’s section below is all-new, though, so click on to keep reading:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

We start with the cover, and I love it—a great callback to Man of Steel #25, right down to the font. I love the detail of the crystalized flesh flaking off of him, showing the deterioration plaguing Bizarro, and his fellow clones.

Inside the book, we get a look at Bizarro’s World, a shanty play-village version of Metropolis. Karl Kesel is one of the funnier writers on the Super-team, so there’s a cleverness to the phonetically constructed signage (which to me also read as a nod to the old “Bizarro #1” sign that Superman’s imperfect duplicate would hang around his neck). But I can’t get past the refrigerator logic type questions, like—wouldn’t it be harder to learn the concept of an egg sitting, rather than “exit”? And how does he have any written language skills, having only been born a few hours ago? But, it’s comics, and as we saw in the Man of Steel mini-series, there’s some sort of intellectual imprint on Bizarros from the original article.

Page 4 has a great flying shot of Superman searching the city for his duplicate...

...and page 10, apart from Vinnie’s painful (and if Max is right, flat out illegal) play on words, we also get a look at some extreme 90’s blazer tailoring on Cat Grant. The panel of Bizarro lost in his rage at the mere mention of Lex Luthor is an appropriately frightening one. Quite a nice drawing of Lois lifting herself through the skylight, later that scene.

It’s a cool detail that Cat’s broadcast uses the same candid photos of Superman and Lois from the previous issue’s broadcast, redrawn here by Barry Kitson.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

Nice to see that Cat Grant does her own re-writes—she has long been established to be a legitimate journalist, having grown out of her gossip columnist roots.

Cute silver-age callback to the cube globe Bizarro world, as Lois tries to scale the top of Bizarro’s ersatz Daily Planet.

We’ve covered this ground before, but it’s astonishing to me that decades after this issue came out, sexual harassment in TV news remains endemic—it might actually even be worse today than when this story is published. But it’s cheering to see Cat Grant take down another powerful Edge, again with the truth of journalism as her weapon. [Max: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this is the second Edge boy Cat brings down... and she didn’t even have to sleep with this one. Progress!]

It’s pleasing that Lois rescues herself, rather than Superman finding her, but it also meant Superman didn’t get up to much Adventuring this week. The “Superman is over-protective” angle gets its first mention here and will come to matter a lot more during the David Michelinie era of stories.

#superman #karl kesel #barry kitson #ray mccarthy #bizarro #project cadmus #carl packard #guardian #cat grant #vincent edge #perrier white #bib-o #clone plague #Bizarro's World

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1990 Review: Still Possesses Turtle Power After All These Years

Cowabunga all you happy people! I freaking love the Teenage Ninja Turtles. I grew up with it from Turtles in Time, which was my first video game, to the 2003 cartoon, which I covered the first three episodes of last month, and on to present day as I re-read the idw comics after finally reading the original eastman and laird run of mirage, and impatiently waiting for Shredder’s Revenge to come out after a LONG drout of no good TMNT games. I”m a fan of these heroes four, their dynamic as a family, the endless possiblities that come from it’s long history and ablitlity to go anywhere in any genre, and the wonderful goofy shit that happens when you have a franchise about mutant turtles learning ninjitsu from a rat and fighting a dude covered in knife covered samurai armor.

So with me finally covering the guys after almost a year last month and with a new movie set to debut at some point this year, I had the bright idea to revisit the FIRST TMNT movie after way too many years of not watching it. This movie is anear and dear to my heart: When I first started getting into the boys big as a kid with the 2003 cartoon, I badly wanted more turtles. But back then it wasn’t nearly as easy to glom onto some more of the sewer shock pizza kings: Streaming sites with all the cartoons on them weren’t all that accesable, dvd’s were expensive for the 87 cartoon, Mirage wasn’t reprinting the comics in any meaningful way and my local comic shop didn’t have any at all and I could only play the SNES when my brother had it set up on occasion like at our Grandma’s farm.

As you probably guessed though there was one exception: the original 1990 movie, which I got at Walmart for 5 bucks and haven’t let go of since. It was one of my first dvds and is still one of my most precious. Said film hit the spot just right as like my beloved 2003 series, it was a mildly goofy but still fucking cool adaptation that stuck closer to the mirage comics, even more than the 2003 series would, while taking a few queues from the 87 series. This film is as precious to me as the 2003 series and a with a brand new movie coming up, I figured it was the exact right time to dig into this classic: what makes it still good to this day, what’s fun to point and laugh at, and how the heck Jim Henson got involved in this. So join me under the cut as I take a look at my boys first theatrical outing and why I still love watching a turtle.

No One Wanted To Make This: Before we get into the film itself some background. As usual I struggled a bit, but thankfully found some help in the form of this Hollywood Reporter article. It’s a fascinating read worth your time, providing an oral history of the film from the people who worked on it.

The film was the baby of Gary Propper, a surfer dude and road manager for the prop comic Gallagher, aka that guy who used to smash watermelons but now has instead opted to smash what little’s left of his career by being a homophobic douchenozzle. He found an ally in Showtime producer Kim Dawson who’d produced Gallagher’s special. I don’t think there will be more of an 80′s sentence than “Gallagher’s surfer dude agent wanted to make a teenage mutant ninja turtles movie”. Propper was a huge fan of the comics, and with Dawson’s help convinced Laird and Eastman to let them option it to studios.

It may come as a shock to you but the road agent for a homophobic watermelon man and a producer at a niche cable channel wanting to make a movie based on an underground comic book about masked turtles at a time when the two most recent comic book movies were Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Howard the Duck, did not go well. Every door in Hollywood got slammed in their face, even Fox> Even the eventual backer of the film, Golden Harvest, a hong kong action film studio, took months to convince to actually back the film.

Things did not get easier from there: The films writer Bobby Herbeck had trouble getting a story agreed on because Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s working relationship had deteroiated horribly from the stress so naturally the two could not agree on a damn thing and argued with each other. Peter Laird made a tense siutation even worse by constnatly sniping at Herbeck and feeling he was a “Hollywood outsider infringing on his vision and characters”

Granted the script was apparently not great... but Pete still comes off as a pretnetious ass who views his weird indie comic as THE HIGHEST OF HIGH CALLINGS HOW DARE YOU SOIL IT. And continued to be kind of a prick like this throughout the rest of his time with the property.

Thankfully the film found i’ts voice, vision and director in Steve Barron. Barron was a music video guy who knew the producers and while reluctant, eventually dove into the project rightfully thinking the film would need to be a mix of the mirage comics and 87 cartoon, keeping aprils’ reporter job, the turtles lvoe of pizza and their iconic color coding from the cartoon but adapting several stories from the comics as the backbone of the film. The guys liked barron MUCH better and things ran smoother.

Barron also brought in one of the film’s biggest selling points and it’s most valuable asset: it’s triumphantly awesome Jim Henson costumes. Barron had worked with good old Jim on the music videos for Labyrinth, and while it took some convincing since the comics were violent as hell and that wasn’t Jim’s style, Barron eventually got him on board. This naturally doubled the budget, but given Henson’s costumes STILL hold up today and look better than the cgi used in the platinum dunes films... it was a good call. And this was brand new tech for jim, having to invent tons of new ideas and mechanisms just to make the things work, and said things still were absolute hell on the actors. Jim later ended up not liking the film for being too violent... which I find hilarious given how many muppets got eaten or blowed up real good on his show but regardless, I thank this legendary and wonderful man as without him this film WOULD NOT have worked. The costumes here look great, feel realistic, and you can’t tell the actors were dubbed much less horribly suffering in those suits. Much like Disney Land.

The film would get picked up for distribution by New Line, and despite i’ts weird as hell origins and the long shot it had.. the film was a MASSIVE hit at the box office, owing to a combination of Batman 89 the previous year having proved comic book movies can work for audiences, the cartoon’s runaway sucess, and a massive marketing campaign. The film made it’s mark. So now we know how we got here let’s get into the film itself.

What’s the Story Morning Glory?:

So the story for this one is largely cobbled together from some of the more notable arcs Eastman and Laird did before handing off the book to others full time as the stress of the company and the mounting tension with each other made it near impossible to work together on the book itself.

To Save time i’m just going through what hte movie takes from the comics plot wise now to save me the trouble later:The movie takes elements from the first issue (The Turtles, Splinter and Shredder’s backstories, Shredder being fully human and the main antagonist, Shredder’s design and the final rooftop showdown that results in Shredder’s death), second and third, (April’s apartment over her dad’s old store and the turtles moving in when their home is ransacked and splinter has gone missing), the rapheal micro series (A tounge in cheek way of cashing in on the Mini-Series craze of the 80s, a one shot by modern standards and something that’s tragically been underused as an idea as only TMNT and MLP have used the idea at IDW, Raph meeting casey and their fight with one another), the return of shredder arc (One of the turtles being ambushed and mobbed by the foot and then thrown though a sky light (Leo in the comic and Raph here), the turtles being horribly outnumbered by them, Casey coming ot the rescue and metting the non-raph turtles for the first time, and them being forced to escape when the place goes up in flames), their exile to northampton (April writing in a journal, casey working on a car with one of the guys and one of hte guys looking over hteir injured brother), and finally, their triumphant return which was very loosely adapted as there are no deformed shredder clones and shredder not being dead yet in this version was not brought back by a colony of super science worms.

So as for how this all comes together: Our story takes place in New York: A crimewave is high with muggings mysterious. There are a ton of phantom thefts going around and at most people have been seeing teens responsibile. And the police.. are at about this level of useful:

The only person doing something is April O’Neil, played by Judith Hoag. Hoag is easily the standout of the film, giving us a strong, confident woman with a wonderful sense of humor. She honestly might be my faviorite April O Neil, and given we’ve had some great ones with 2003, 2012 and Rise, that’s not something I say lightly. I honestly wish I’d recognized her in more stuff as she was both on Nashville and the mom in the Halloween Town films, and most recently was on the ScFy show the magicians. She’s a talented lady and i’m glad she’s still goin.

April is a reporter for Channel 3 like the cartoon, though for some weird reason her boss from the cartoon is replaced by Charles Pennigton, played by Jay Patterson, whose currently dealing with his troubled son Danny, played by Micheal Turney. Pennington is horribly useless at both jobs: At work he tries to ease April off calling out Chief Sterns, who refuses to listen to April’s evidence gathered from japanese immigrants that the crimes resemble similar ones in japan in favor of trying to get charles to shut her up. Danny meanwhile is a member of the foot becase his dad thinks shouting out him and talking about him like he’s not there and generally being a dipstick will actually do anything to help him.

I love the concept for the foot here. In addition to being a Ninja Violence Gang as always, they now recruit new members by finding kids without families or with troubled family lives and giving them a sense of family with the foot, and sweeting the bargin with a giant cave filled with arcade machines, a skate ramp and general late 80′s early 90′s kids goodies. Is it rediculous? Yes. Is it also clever as it gives Shredder an easy army of plausably deniable theives that he can pick the best out of to put in his elite that will be tirelessly loyal to him and him alone? Also yes.

So April being public about this stuff gets her attacked, which naturally leads to our heroes coming in, first in the shadows and later directly when April wont’ give up on the case and Shredder sends some ninjas to go shut her up.. which he does weirdly as the guy jsut slaps her and tells her to cut it out like he’s on a domestically abusive episode of Full House. Raph saves her, and we get the turtles origin.. though weirdly they cut it in half. We get the ooze portion but Splinter’s past with Saki, Saki’s murder of his master and his master’s partern Tang Shen is left for later in the film and the fact Shredder’s saki is treated as a big twist despite the fact the biggest audience for the film would be kids... and kids would’ve been familiar with the cartoon where the giant brain monster routinely screeches out saki at the shredder. Maybe Barron just thought he was an alcoholic I don’t know. It just would’ve made more sense to have it all at once and let the audeince put it together.

April becomes good friends with the turtles over a night of frozen pizza and camradrie, but the Splinters return home to find it ransacked, Splinter kidnapped by the foot, and are forced to Stay with april. Charles meanwhile tries to get April to backoff because he made a deal with the police to clear Danny’s record, without TELLING her any of this mind you, but I will save my rage on that little plot point for in a bit as Danny who he drug along sees the turtles and tells the Shredder.

So we get the return of the shredder arc as Raph goes through a window, our heroes fight valiantly, and Raph’s friend Casey who he met earlier shows up, the two having bonded as all true friends do.. by beating the shit out of each other ending with raph shouting DAMNNNNNNN really big and dramatically into the sky for some reason. The Turtles and friends escape with an injured raph from April’s burning second hand store. She had a second hand store it was poorly established and only there because she had it in the comics.

Our heroes retreat to a farm April’s grandma owned in Northampton, Massachutes, where Mirage was located at the time the original comics where they were exiled to the place were written and a location that has been a staple of the turtles ever since. The turtles slowly recover, lick their wounds, talk about who hooked up with who on gilligans island etc, before Leo connects with Splinter via meditation, who tells them to come back. Splinter also starts to connect with Danny and convinces him to swtich sides.. or at the very least squat in the boys old home.

The boys return home, find danny, and prepare, Danny goes back and ends up giving away the Turtles are home.. but the turtles are ready and in an awesome sequence kick the fuck out of the foot squad sent for them with some well prepared steam vents. Casey goes to get splinter since Danny told them and with Danny’s help, finds him, since Danny found out they were gonna kill him. Casey beats up Tatsu, shredder’s right hand man, and they get him out.

We get our final fight which is awesome up until the climax.. which is splinter casually tripping shredder with nunchucks and thier bloody history being kind of rushed and unsatsifying. Casey crushes shredder with a garbage truck, April gets her job back, more on that in a moment, she and casey hook up, and we end with the fucking awesome song T-U-R-T-L-E Power by partners in cryme. Seriously check it out it’s fucking triumphant.

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The song is just good.. cheesy? Sure but that’s half the fun. It’s the gold standard for movie theme songs for them and stacks up handily with the various animated series themes.. all of which slap. Okay... ALMOST all of which slap. Fast Forwards is aggressively medicore, which is doubly suprising to me since 4kids was REALLY damn good with theme songs. It was one of the three things they were best at along with finding VERY talented voice actors and setting japan based works in america because merica dammit.

The plot is very solid: It skilfully packed half of eastman and laird’s run on TMNT into 90 mintues while adding things like April’s job at channel 9, the way the foot recurited kids etc. The plot flows well for hte most part and apart from one annoying subplot we’ll get to never has a moment that feel unecessary or dosen’t pay off later. And the stellar plot and fun pacing of it helps boilster the characters that do work... and help paper over the ones that are so thin the’yd fall down a grate...

Our Heroes, Villains and Annoying Middle Aged Guys:

Yeahhhh character is hit and miss here. Some are rather strong, others are the bare basics for the character their adapting and most are just to serve the plot but some work some don’t, So let’s talk about it starting with our boys:

Raph is the most fleshed out of the turtles, being the main focus of the first 2/3 of the film, and having his anger be part of what SHOULD be a character arc, learning to temper it. And while granted MOST TMNT properties do this, to the point that Rise Raph is so loveable in part because his boisterous bruiser big bro attitude is a refreshing break from the usual grumpus we get. But at the time this hadn’t been done in every version but the 87 cartoon, so exploring it was valid.. but despite saying this should be a thing htey just forget about it and the most plot relevance he gets is going thorugh a window. He dosen’t really get a resolution.. his arc just kind of stops dead for the final half and it’s one of the film’s weaker points, one I only just now noticed on this rewatch. He’s still the most entertaining.

Leo is the weakest of the turtles. He really lacks a personality here mostly just being leader and while his spirtual side is touched on, it’s mostly a plot device. He’s just kinda the leader because he was in the comics to the point Partners in Cryme called Raph the leader. His role in getting taken out by the foot was taken by Raph, so he just has.. nothing to do for most of the film other than gripe at raph ocasionally and say orders. He’s probably the worst Leo i’ve seen outside of Next Mutation. I prefice that because after watching Phelous’ review it’s VERY clear those four are the worst versions of the characters, and no personality is still better than either having your team do nothing or yelling at them as your personality. I chalk this up to the Mirage Leo, and the mirage turtles to a poit being kind of bland. Not TERRIBLE characters, especially for the time, but not nearly as fleshed out or individualized as they woudl be in other adpatations, and with most traits LEo DID have, like his badassery flat out gone, he’s just.. nothing here.

Mikey and Donnie are a double act here with both sharing a brain. Interestingly instead of his normal genius character, Donnie is Mikey’s best friend and the two simply trade jokes and schtick together. The two are interchangable.. but easily the best part of the film and a lot of the most memorable gags and lines, from Ninja Kick the Damn Rabbit! to “Do you like Penicllin on your pizza”, are from them. Thier there almost entirely as comic relief but it works, with both clealry being more modled ont he 87 cartoon turtles, a move that helps lighten the mood in darker moments. Their just genuinely charming and it’s intresting to see such a diffrent version of Donnie, and other incarnations, specifically the 2003 and Rise versions, would retain the sarcastic edge.

Splinter is splinter. That’s about it, he’s peformed well and the puppet is amazing but he gets kidnapped a half an hour in and outside of influcencing Denny, more on that in a moment, and finishing Shredder he dosen’t do much but spout exposition. He’s not bad or anything, but he’s essentially a rodent shaped plot device. He was also puppeted by Kevin CLash, aka the guy who does Elmo. So there you go.

April on the other hand.. is truly excellent. This might be my faviorite April. Judith’s april nicely blends the cartoon and mirage versions: She has the cartoons energy and job, but the comics sheer will and casual nature. Judith just oozes personality and her April is just a joy to watch, from her breezy chemistry filled interactions with the guys to her confrntation with Chief Sterns, knowing she’ll get thrown out by the asshole. She’s confident, and even when afraid dosen’t back down to her attackers and even helps out during the sewer ambush. I mean it’s a pot on the head but still it’s neat. She’s easily the best part of the flim and the most fleshed out of the cast. The worst I can say is they kinda shove her store from the comics, Second Time Around, in there for no other reason than it was in the comics: It dosen’t come up until it’s needed for the foot’s assault on her place. But overall.. she’s just fantastic to watch.

Speaking of fantastic to watch, Elias Koteas is fantastic as Casey. Seriously he’s only second to the 2003 version in my eyes, getting the concept of a testorone filled average guy who decided to just go out and hit people with sports equipment after watching too much A-Team.. I mean that part of it’s not in this version but it’s implied, just right. Like judith, Elias is just really funny to watch and his big scenes, showing up just in time during the foot assault on april’s place and his fight with Tatsu are some of the best parts of the film, the former taken directly from the comics. This version isn’t without problems: His friendship with Raph, his most endearing aspect and one that has been carried throughout eveyr version Casey’s important, with the only exception so far being rise and we have a movie to fix that, is absent here. HE does save the guy, but they don’t really bond or anything. In fact he disappears for about half an hour after his big fight with Raph. But... again he’s just so damn entertaining, down to his JOSEEEEEEEEEEE Conseco bats (There was a two for one sale!).

Shredder is just a LITTLE better than splinter, if only because his actor projects a true aura of menace and I feel this version had some influence on the pants crappingly terrifying 2003 version. And the idea of the foot recurting teenagers like I said is a good one: He gives them home and a cause, they give him plausably deniable backup. And his fight with the boys in the climax is really awesome... the conclusion sucks but otherwise h’es okay. Not the deepest villian, but he has enough presence to be enjoyable.

His right hand man Tatsu, whose been adapted ocasionally since this and reimaigned as Natsu in the IDW comics, a female version, is also fine. He’s your standard grimacing goon but has enough presence to work.

So that brings us to the penningtons. Charles, april’s boss at the station and his son Danny who’s joined the foot as he feels his dad dosen’t love him. Charles..is about as interesting and likeable as a dog turd and is the worst aspect of the film. No debate there, he just sucks. He sucks so hard he’s classified as a black hole. The film wants you to see him as a put upon wokring dad whose frustrated with his son’s increased moodiness, skipping school and crminal undertakings and just wants to help him and loves him deep down. The problem is his actor’s delivery instead of concerned.. is just pissed. He just seems pissy and upset about the whole thing and comes off like he’s only mad about Danny doing this because he’s embarassing him and not because you know, it’s bad. When confronting Danny about stealing, he dosen’t consider MAYBE he’s part of a gang or needs help, but just wonders “Why are you stealing when I give you stuff”. Because, Dipshit, sometimes kids do crimes not because they need the stuff but because they WANT to, and because they want to act the fuck out.

The most he does for the kid is agree to try and get April to back off the police when Cheif Sterns offers to let Danny go and not put him on record in exchange for it. The problem.. is this makes him even MORE unsympathetic. While I do get wanting to help your child, I do and it’s a sucky position... he again should be sympathetic.. but he handles the thing so badly it sucks. He just tells april to ease off, with no reason given, then fires her when she SHOCKINGLY dosen’t give up taking the guy whose refusing to take her hard work seriously or actually solve the crime wave problem to task for his shitty behavior as ANY person facing a shitty, corrput cop would. She just wants to hold him acountable and get him to actually do something. He clearly knows her on a personal level too as he talks about his issues with his son freely with her, something you don’t do with an employee unless their also a friend on some level.

He could have TOLD april what was going on. She’d be furious at Stern’s naked corrpution and prioritizing shutting her up over actually solving crimes.. and thus put at least some of that energy into shutting him down or finding a way around it, going to the papers or something like that. Even in 1990 pre-internet, there were ways to get around Sterns blackmail and expose him so someone who’d actually do the job could get the job. Instead he just comes off as a selfish coward who rather than try and fight the guy blatantly abusing his power and using Charles own son as barganing chip, goes along with it because it’s the easier option to simply bow to him instead of TRY and stop this. And it’s not like he’s even going after a beloved public figure or someone who could hide behind his rep: Sterns was blatantly failing a crime wave, April had called him out on his failrues and coverups multiple times. The public was against sterns.. finding out he tried to blackmail the media into shutting up about him would PROBABLY end him... I only say probably not because the public wouldn’t skewer him, but because police tend to escape consequences for blatantly murdering someone on a daily basis and Andrew Cumo is STILl mayor over in new york, the same city this movie takes place, 31 years later, depsite EVERYONE asking him to resign over a long history of sexual harassment and a more recent but still horrible history of hiding death numbers. I don’t doubt people being stupid enough to ignore this or the bilaws with cops being stacked enough for him to get away with it, but just because someone gets away with a crime dosen’t mean you shoudln’t try and go after them in the first place. Fuck. Charles. Pennington.

Danny on the other hand is FAR more interesting and I think gets way too much flack when it comes to this subplot. Unlike his dad, whose dead weight, Danny is intresting: He provides a POV character for the foot’s MO in the film of taking in wayward teens, and his character arc is pretty engaging, slowly realizing the foot dosen’t care and that hte turtles are the good guys. HIs actor does a great job and while not the biggest presence, he’s not a bad addition to clan hamaoto and I wish other adaptations would find a way to use him. The pull between doing the right thing and his found family is a good struggle. My only real issue with his plot is the moviies flawed aseop about family. It tries to contrast shredder and his using the kids blatnatly with Splinter and Charles really loving their sons. And it works with Splinter and the kids because despite being a tad strict, Splinter clearly loves his sons and works with them to help them. The problem is ENTIRELY with Charles and Danny. As I said Charles love comes off as transasctional: He either thinks he can buy it or just expects it because he shot a bunch of goop into Danny’s mom after two minutes of disapointment. It dosen’t work with them because neither option is good for Danny. His father is neglectful, chooses throwing his jounralistic integrity out the window over talking to his son or his best friend about another way, and abrasive. Danny is no saint, he does do crimes, but it’s clearly a result of a shitty upbringing and the shredder and co actually offeirng him the love he desperatly craves. Danny goes to the foot because his dad is bad at his job but the film never adresses that and just expects Danny to go back to his dad because the plot says so. Danny would HONESTLY be better off with Splinter. No really. Sure he’d have to live in the sewers.. but he did so for a few weeks in the course of the movie. He’s fine down there. Splitner actually cares about him and took an intrest to him and knows how to raise a child. Let him become the fifth turtle. An aseop about family is not a bad thing: Loaded subject that it can be given how many outright abusive families exist, i’m one of the lucky ones who dosen’t have that issue, family is an important thing and can be a source of comfort and support. But this film tells you you should love and respect someone who does not love, respect or value you because he spent a minute in your mom’s vagina and that’s not how family should work and is outright dangerous to kids in an abusive situation. Love the film otherwise but fuck this aseop skyhigh.

Final thoughts:

Overall though.. the film is bodacious. It’s funny, well paced, has an awesome cast, and outside of a certain bald asswipe... it’s a really good superhero film. Is it the best i’ve seen? Nope. Not even close and character wise most of them are as thin as a wet paper bag covered in ranch dressing. But it’s still a fun as hell with awesome corepgraphy, a killer soundtrack, seriously the soundtrack is damn excellent and only didn’t get it’s own section because I didn’t have enough to say and some of the best effects work i’ve seen in a film in the turtle suits. If you haven’t seen it I urge you to check it out: it’s a breezy 90 minutes, it’s on hbo max and it’s a shell of a time. Will I do the next film?

We’ll see how this one does like wise and such, but I will be doing the rise film whenever it comes out this year. So look for that and keep possesing turtle power my dudes. If you liked this review subscirbe for more, join my patreon to keep this blog a chugging, comission a review if you have more turtle stuff you want me to cover, and comment on this. What do you think of the movie, what are your thoughts on the review, what can I do better, what other turtle stuff would you like me to cover/ Let me know and i’ll see you at hte next rainbow.

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles 1990 #leonardo #raphael #donetello #michealangelo #casey jones #april o'neil #the shredder #oroku saki #new line cinema #golden harvest #film #90's movies #the 90's #partners in cryme #judith hoag

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eventual-ghoste · 4 years ago

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TOG rambling

Hello! This post has to do with Andy and some revelations at the end of Force Multiplied. Spoilers I give aren’t super specific but they’re there, and I can’t promise they won’t bite.

This is also in response to a TOG discord question I couldn’t stop thinking about, regarding Andy’s history as compared to Nicky’s, as posited by Em | salzundhonig:

But Nicky's past as a crusader and his growth from his past was well received, surely that'll be the same with Andy right?

I apologize if these ramblings sound like a rant but I swear my intentions are in the spirit of debate/discourse, and they are not an attack on any individuals.

The TL;DR is: Andy has work to do. Hopefully Hollywood and Rucka don’t fuck that up.

Feel free to check/correct/call me out if I’ve misspoke anywhere here (I realize I still have a lot to learn) but IMHO, I don’t think a semblance of Andy’s growth will be well received. Or, at least, I’m not so certain it should be because, in the comics, I genuinely don’t think Andy has grown. At the end of Force Multiplied, she still defends her actions with the “this is how I grew up” argument, and says it was “a long time ago,” and as much as I love love LOVE Andromache the Scythian for her badassery and how she’s a vision of female empowerment, I can’t help but think about how I hear those words all the time from people defending themselves against racist and/or sexist comments from so-called bygone eras.

Wanna know a sad difference between those people and our beloved Andy? They apologize for what they’ve done, or who they were. As hollow as the words will sound, however unforgivable their actions, however self-serving the apology will be— Those Asshats apologize. Comic!Andy never does, not even when confronted by Nile, an African American woman who likely descends from slaves, and has undoubtedly experienced racism and discrimination on a regular basis. It’s been thousands of years and Andy doesn’t even know how to say sorry (if she ever does, kudos to whoever finds a timestamp/panel, and let me know!). Instead, Andy buries the truth of her actions with a load of justifications to the point that she becomes self-deprecating, calling herself “vermin,” concluding she’s no better than the apathetic, selfish, evil POS they hunt. She may have spent the past millennia with TOG, trying to make things right but then—

But then she gives up. She’s tired. She resigns because she doesn’t have it in her anymore to fight the injustice she once willingly and self-servingly participated in. So, on top of being incapable of apology, Andy also doesn’t vow to do better. She doesn’t accede to change.

If there is one reason for why “The Old Guard” is a fucking absolutely shitty title, is that it refers to people who refuse to accept new ideas and progress. We are in a fandom that has four canonically queer characters, three people of color, and two female leads! Maybe the irony is intentional but damn, why is it that Andy, PROTAGONIST #1, hasn’t completely caught up with the program?

And that brings me to why I think Andy’s reckoning will not be on the same level as Nicky’s. Because as popular as Kaysanova is, neither Nicky or Joe are the main protagonists of TOG.

We don’t follow Nicky or Joe (or Booker) into scenes. The men are strictly back-at-the-ranch, supporting characters. We follow Andy or Nile (who also have the most screen time, I believe, but fact-check me). Filmically speaking, we ought to value them with a measure of precedence. Their words and actions matter the most, especially Andy’s by nature of how everyone looks to her for guidance.

So, with all that in mind: How does one reconcile a beloved protagonist with a despicable past in slavery, of all things? In the wake of an international racial reckoning, how is a celebrated, white South African actress going to fulfill that role? How is production going to balance fantasy with reality? How are Rucka and other involved writers (Theron, Prince-Bythewood?) going to alter the original IP, while retaining the nuance of this moral quandry?

Forgive me for the overkill but: How is it going to happen?

I’m well aware that my thoughts are going down a rabbit hole, and I am definitely overthinking this, but as somebody who’s genuinely curious about whether Victoria Mahoney and the rest of the TOG crew will have the guts to confront the issue head-on, or if they’ll take the easy way out. Excise the bits that no one wants to talk about, much less watch in a feel-good film that TOG has become for many fans.

Whatever production ends up doing, I hope that 2O2G doesn’t end on a cliffhanging “pity Andromache” note because, damn, I’m gonna feel real uncomfortable scrolling through fandom posts, reading people defending slavery and giving the same “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” spiel, in order to protect a fictional character played by a conventionally-attractive cis heterosexual white woman.

(Also: If the past is so different from the present, why are there still calls for social justice? Why do ALL industries still lack diverse and equitable representation?)

Now, this is where I’ll go back to the original question and say: While I think Nicky functions well as an example for change/growth/redemption, I don’t think his change serves as a good comparison to Andy’s. I say this, even while I’m aware of double standards in gender, and even between the reception of gay characters vs lesbian characters vs etc. (re: I’m open to critique).

My line of thought stems from the fact that, canonically, Nicky always had Joe. The two have seemingly been inseparable from the moment they first killed each other. It’s likely that Joe would check Nicky whenever he said or did something wrong and offensive, and perhaps this symbiosis was mutual.

(I also have a feeling that many people easily disregarded the Christian/Muslim conflict because A) lack of knowledge in BOTH religions and B) the onscreen couple appear very much in love, especially when one is giving a beautiful monologue on the nature of their relationship. When we meet Joe and Nicky, we meet them at their best. Shout-out to interfaith couples who know more about this than my single (and secular) ass does, and might have more to say about this.)

On the other hand: Andy never had someone who was like how Joe was for Nicky. No one ever calls out Andy because A) she’s the oldest, B) she’s the lead, and C) her business card says ANDROMACHE OF SCYTHIA, WAR GOD. Yeah, she had Quynh/Noriko but— at the risk of yelling at Rucka for vilifying a queer woman of color (or praising him for not leaning on the stereotype of Asian passivity? idk, anyone got thoughts on this?)— Noriko is clearly not encouraging good behavior. Neither will Quynh if Netflix lets 2O2G be as faithful to the comics as TOG1 was.

Which means the Law 282 conversation might be…unavoidable? Somewhere along the line, we still end up in the hotel room with Andy, on the floor, pleading for her crew to not abandon her, even though she is the one who abandoned their cause.

This sets up a circumstance in which Fade Away might be spent trying to redeem Andy/Charlize Theron, bring her back to the “good side,” teaching her to be better— thereby highlighting her experience and “salvation,” rather than making a point of her past, and the reality of her actions. In other words, a “pity the white woman” fest.

(Because I’m crossing my fingers that TOG production/Netflix know better) In an effort to prevent that from happening, I wonder if Rucka will combine Force Multiplied with Fade Away for the 2O2G script. Given the series’ track record, I think it is feasible that FA’s release coincides with 2O2G’s, and that it finally resolves Andy. Whether by revitalizing her energy as a do-some-gooder, or finalizing her vulnerability by putting her 6,000 years to rest, thus handing off the reigns to Nile and a new generation of leadership.

The last thing I want to leave off with is: I don’t hate Andy. It’s a credit to Rucka and fellow writers (from film and fandom) that I don’t.

I might not love her character as enthusiastically as I used to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not amazed by her creation. She’s a female lead whose sexuality is not exploited by the male gaze; whose emotional vulnerability is not considered a hindrance to, nor an explanation for, her battle prowess; and whose unabashed queerness is not reinforced by cookie cutter stereotypes. Andromache the Scythian is AMAZING.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse or ignore her most glaring and contemptible flaw. More than anything, I’d love to sweep her past under the carpet so that 2O2G can be problem-free. Like many people, I just want to enjoy a movie without getting triggered.

I want to see Quynh and Andy kiss and make up. I want to see Joe rocking Those Shorts, and a cheeky shot of Nicky appreciating his ass. I want to see Nile welcoming Booker back to the family again. Some form of group therapy would be chef’s kiss.

But something about glossing over/removing slavery from Andy’s narrative reeks of dishonesty, and reminds me that the (Hollywood) movie industry is full of people who do not want to be tainted with negative perceptions. Understandably, appearances are their livelihood— but that particular truth is something they still have to reckon with.

#the old guard #tog #vi rambles

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81scorp · 5 years ago

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Constructive criticism: The Superman film series

(An editorial originally posted on Deviantart Mar 26 2015)

Superman, created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. A popular character that has remained popular through the years and is considered an american cultural icon. He has appeared on the radio, animated shows and live action TV. Then someone thought "Wouldn`t it be neat to see the man of tomorrow on the big screen?". Because of the special effects they had back then, portraying Ol` Supes most well known and iconic power: flying, was hard to pull of without making it look a tad bit silly. From what I`ve heard they were, at one point, thinking about taking it in a direction similar to the campy Adam West Batman universe. But Richard Donner (to my knowledge at least, correct me if I`m wrong) wanted it to be a movie that people could take more seriously. So, with a more serious script, good casting, acting, well made flying effects and the music of John Williams you would`ve believed a man could fly. It was a critical and financial success, and with financial success comes sequels. Superman II was a little more tongue in cheek than it`s predecessor but was still considered good and did well at the box office. Then came Superman III... and after it came Superman IV... Both were not that good. Let us, in my very subjective editorial, take a look at were they went wrong and how it could have been improved. Truth, justice and SPOILERS Superman Not really much to mention about the first movie. It is, for it`s time at least, an almost perfect superhero-movie. The score by John Williams fits perfectly with the tone and story and, this is probably just me but, the space scenes have a bit of a 2001: A space odyssey feel to them. There is of course one thing that makes it end up on this list. Reversing time by reversing Earth`s rotation/traveling backwards in time In a way it`s an admirable gesture that shows that he is willing to move heaven and earth for Lois and the scene before it is a powerful one where he holds her body in his arms. But still. If he somehow made the planet spin the other way it wouldn`t affect time, the sun would just rise in the west and set in the east. Assuming that the planet and it`s inhabitans would survive the change. Some say that he didn`t actually change the rotation, that it was just a way to illustrate that he actually travelled backwards through time. It would make more sense if he used a wormhole to time-travel. But if he time-travelled, wouldn`t there be two Supermen? The time-travelling one and the one from that time-period? Oh my, I`ve gone cross-eyed! But to be honest, I wouldn`t like that either, I feel it makes him too powerful. Don`t get me wrong, I want Superman to be powerful. But there should be limits. Instead: He`s holding her body in his arms. Superman: "Lois... please... don`t be dead..." (He COULD try to bring her back with CPR. But maybe he`ll accidentally crush her chest with his superstrength or destroy her lungs with his breath? You could argue that he has learned to control his power and hold it back. Yes, but in this scene he`s in a very emotional state. Is he stable enough to control himself that much?) There is silence for a moment... Then: ba-bump! He hears her heartbeat! she`s alive! She regains consciousness and he takes her to the nearest hospital. This shows that despite his god-likeness there are limits to what he can do. Maybe not perfect, maybe it lacks something, but at least it makes sense. Superman II Donner had a different vision of Superman 2 than the one that ended up on the big screen. However, due to off-screen problems between Donner and the producers over shooting schedule and final cut privileges, Donner (who had shot roughly 75% of the movie) was replaced by Richard Lester (who had to shoot 51% of the film in order to get directors credit). I still like the film but I have to admit it lacks a little of what could have made it great in some areas. Zod being amazed by so many things on Earth. I know, Earth and Krypton are two different planets, but still. He could understand what some things are even if they are different from Krypton. Like when he lands in a lake and goes: "strange surface". What? You don`t have lakes on Krypton? Then again, from what I saw of Krypton I don`t remember seeing any, so maybe they don`t. But at one point in Krypton`s history they must`ve had lakes and oceans, right? Not to mention that he`s confused that humans don`t have superpowers. Less of scenes like these. Zod`s telekinesis powers Not poor writing, just a personal opinion of mine. I like it better if all Kryptonians`s powers are limited to the ones Superman usually has. So away with it. That stupid STUPID kid at niagara falls Now this is poor writing. I know that it`s necessary for Superman to save someone so that Lois can get suspicious, but does it have to be in such a stupid way? The kid could have been leaning to get a glimpse of/trying to photograph something and lost his balance, and he could have been on the right side of the rails! (I assume they`re called rails,correct me if I´m wrong, english is my second language.) Not perfect but at least it makes him look like less of a Darwin-award nominee. Real kids are smarter than him... I hope. That female Daily Planet employee Remember the woman who said that the other ones were just as strong as superman? The way she said it made me think she was gonna turn out to be Nelson Muntz in disguise who mocks Lois for rooting on the losing team. She could have said it like: "Oh my god... The other ones are just as strong as Superman!" As if she`s aware that if Supes loses, everyone on Earth is doomed... including her. I know, it`s a small scene, but still. The unnecessarily thrown-in "comedic" moments during the big fight The producers seemed to have thought "this is based on a comic, as in comical. Let`s force in some comedy!" You know scenes like when the man eats an ice cream and it blows away, and the man who tries to make a phonecall and still stays on the phone even when the phonebooth he`s in gets obliterated. Away with scenes like those! Superman throwing the giant "S"-shield and the holographic doubles People think of the "S"-shield thing as another Superpower, but it doesn`t have to be, it could have been a thing that he had prepared. However, since we never find out if it was a power or not and it didn`t really change much, I`d say: loose it. The holographic doubles: From what I remember (correct me if I`m wrong) this is supposed to be a superpower. Why didn`t he use this in other scenes? I would change it to: Supes and Zod and the others fighting each other by moving around quickly with super-speed. The amnesia kiss Added superpower and lazy writing. Instead of Supes erasing Lois`s memory because she can`t handle that Clark is Superman, how about: She feels that having this knowledge is hard, but she can handle it. It would be more mature that way than to reset everything to status qou. Good performance by Margot Kidder though. Superman III Richard Donner was not involved in the making of this movie. Richard Lester was the one in the director`s chair, and the small seeds that hinted the direction of where this franchise was going in the second movie had blossomed to their full potential in this one. (If you can call it "potential".) In this case I don`t feel that it`s enough to list a few points like the previous ones. I`d change most of the plot. Bad guy Since Superman fought a computer in the climax I`d pick Brainiac as the villain. Since it came out 1983 I`d go with the pre-crisis version of him. Plot Earth is visited by an extra terrestrial A.I. that comes in peace, to gather information about us and then leave to continue it`s fact-finding mission (yes, I know, it`s a lot like that episode from that animated series). The A.I. (Brainiac) exposes Supes to a radiation that makes him evil. Some of Earth`s population put their trust in Brainiac since Supes has lost it. Eventually Supes manage to defeat his bad side in a junkyard (I liked that scene so I`m keeping it) and goes to battle Brainiac who, after being defeated, flees back into space. Subplot Since Lois was mostly absent from the third movie she`ll get more screen time in my version. She thinks it`s a bit much to be Supes girlfriend so she leaves Clark to date a more earthbound man. (But she has no trouble keeping his secret though, just so you know.) There could be some scenes where the three meet that could be a little funny but also a litte sad. However, in the end Lois realizes that she still loves Clark and goes back to him. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace This movie was not directed by Richard Lester or produced by Ilya and Alexander Salkind. It didn`t make it any better though. I still kinda liked this movie more than III though. Partly because of it`s so bad it`s goodness but also because it felt more like a Superman movie than a Richard Pryor movie. Still bad though. First... NO CHINESE WALL RESTORING VISION! Nuff said. Lenny Luthor Remove most, if not all of his goofiness or replace him with miss Teschmacher or come up some other assistant of Lex. Lex breaking out of prison Instead of Luthor being freed because the two guards wanted to see what it was like to sit in an expensive car: Have Lenny/miss Teschmacher/new character come flying in with a jetpack, give Lex an extra jetpack that he/she was carrying and have them both fly away together. Badguy Since Nuclear Man was a clone of Superman I`d use Bizarro. The thing with Bizarro though is that he`s not much of a villain. Wether he`s evil or (trying to be) good he`s always mentally slow. Therefore he could be like Frankensteins monster. He may not be as threatening as Nuclear man, but at least he`s 3-dimensional. So technically, the biggest villain in this scenario would still be Lex. Bizarro would just be an obstacle. Also: He wouldn`t be solar powered. Subplots Clark`s mom would be very old but Lana could be helping her take care of the farm. So that scene where a man wants to buy Clark`s farm but he refuses because he only wants to sell to a real farmer wouldn`t be necessary. Since Lois remembers Clarks secret identity in this hypothetical movie and they`ve gotten back together there`s no point in having that scene with the "double date" with her, Clark/Superman and Lacy. This would give more room to Lois`s conflict with David Warfield over what he`s done to Daily Planet, and in some cases she`d have to have this conflict with Lacy Warfield. Plot After Lex escapes from prison he and Lenny/miss Teschmacher/new character gets a hair sample from Supes just like they did in the movie. But they create him in a lab in Lex`s HQ (no rockets in the sun). Lex fills the clone`s head with knowledge through a subliminal "teaching-helmet". The clone is at first a perfect duplicate of Supes but then turns all Bizarro-y. Lex calls him "bizarre" and adds "Oh!" as in "Oh. What the hell am I gonna do with it now!?" But realizes he can still have use for him. Bizarro causes disasters, fights Supes and wins the first round (Beginners luck?). Supes manages got get a piece of Bizarro`s hair during the fight. He gives it to Prof: Phineas Potter (a friend of Supes in the silver age comics) to analyze. Later Bizarro slowly developes a conscience. Round 2: Supes wears a protection suit and tries to use a bit of kryptonite on Bizarro. (It`s the rock that Lex used in the first movie.) Supes gave it to scientists to use against him if he turns evil again like in the third movie (Continuity!). It doesn`t work on Bizarro, they fight. Their battle puts people in danger, Supes has to temporarily incapacitate Bizarro and help them. Bizarro sees how Supes cares about others and then leaves. It ends in a draw. Round 3: Prof Potter has, by comparing Bizarro`s dna with Supes and analyzing how ordinary kryptonite affects Supe`s dna, created blue Kryptonite. Supes uses it against Bizarro. In their fight, civilians are put in danger. Supes try to keep them safe. Bizarro, even though he`s weakened, helps him. They see that they are not enemies and Bizarro turns on Lex who tries to destroy him and sends him to an ambiguous death. In the climax Lex puts on a super-armor-suit, battles Supes, loses and goes back to jail. It is hinted that Bizarro is still alive and travelling the world, trying to do good. In my version there`s no "Supes gets rid of nuclear weapons", but I hope the subplot with Bizarro`s inner journey is enough to make it feel that there are enough plot-lines. Superman Returns After being absent from the big screen for 19 years, Superman (much like the title says) returned to a world with new actors, a bigger budget and digital effects. Directed by Bryan Singer, it completely ignored the last two movies and was a big love letter to Richard Donner`s Superman movies. And it wasn`t very successful. People were not very keen on Supes having a kid with Lois (based on a scene from Richard Donner`s cut of Superman II where Supes and Lois have some nekkid action after he`s given up his powers). Plus Lex`s evil plan was pretty much the same plan he had in the first movie, except with more kryptonite. Lots and lots and lots of kryptonite. How I would have done it.

Plot Supes returns to Earth after having been out in space for a few years, searching for the leftovers of Krypton. His mom is now dead and the farm (like in the last movie) is being taken care of by Lana. She`s glad that he`s back and thinks that he should take care of the farm now because she has plans for her own life and she`s engaged to Pete Ross. Since Supes never found what he hoped to find in space Lana thinks he should try to focus on his life on Earth. Lois is dating a guy (and if there has to be a kid in this movie he/she should be the child of the guy that Lois is dating) and Lex is out of prison. I`d keep the part about Lois writing the "Why the world doesn`t need Superman" article and the part where Supes prevents the plane from crashing. When Supes travelled in space an alien being noticed him and tracked him to earth. Early in the movie Lex seems to be the main bad guy, but then it turns out to be the alien that followed Supes to Earth, and it should be... Mongul! You may ask: "Why not Darkseid?" For the same reason the Avengers didn`t fight Thanos in their first movie, he should come later. Supes fights Mongul and gets unexpected help from Lex who uses his high-tech weapons against the threat. Mongul is defeated and Supes and Lex are celebrated as heroes. Supes however doesn`t believe that Lex has changed, that the heroic act is just for show (and he`s right). Lois leaves the guy she`s dating but doesn`t go back to Supes (at least not yet). Meanwhile: elsewhere, a man is watching the celebration on a big computer-screen (he`s seen from behind and the computer-screen is the only light source in the room). There`s a butler standing next to him. They`re in a cave. With bats. (Sequel-bait!) And those are my ideas. They`re not perfect but I hope they`re not bad.

Have to go now. I have to fight a giant metal spider for some reason.

#superman #richard donner #dc comics #movie #constructive #criticism #editorial #81scorp

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RESOURCES

There are certainly some political questions that have no definite answers, like how much a new government policy will cost. Yes, prefix notation makes ordinary programmers panic.1 It's what revenues depend on. You need to cut and fill to emphasize the central thread, like an illustrator inking over a pencil drawing. In a startup, VCs might try to strip you of your stock when they arrived later.2 A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. We didn't know that, so we were pretty excited when we figured out what seemed to us the optimal way of doing things could only take root in places that were prepared for it. So for all practical purposes, there is not a reference work. Hence the next leap: could you do the same for any firm you talk to. So I decided I'd pay close attention to what he said, to learn how he did it.3 Programming languages are for hackers, and a good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, and that's a much bigger part of being a good speaker. Java has since been remade into a generic replacement for C, but in 1996 the story about Java was that it represented a new model of software.

They didn't know. I know several programmers who are comfortable with prefix syntax and yet use Perl by default, because it would make programs easier to read.4 The first was the rule of law. Icio. And in any case I think good profiling would go a long way toward fixing the problem: you'd soon learn what was expensive.5 When Yahoo was thinking of buying us, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.6 Inventors of wonderful new things are often surprised how quickly investors seem to know when they start to set the social norms.7 Actors don't face that temptation except in the rare cases where they've written the script, but any speaker does. Since it became possible, and that number can and will increase. Questions aren't enough.8 The best way to find out where the bottlenecks are.

A programmer can sit down in front of him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong direction briefly if that will help. It will, ordinarily, be a group.9 Nothing seems to stick. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a media company instead of a technology company.10 Even if Internet-related applications only become a tenth of the world's economy.11 You also need to prevent the sort of big social shift that only happens once every few generations. Users are the only real proof that you've created wealth. Most college graduates still think they have to get a cup of tea. During this period the study of modern literature. And you have to change what I was saying as well.12 You can't say precisely what the miracle will be, or even to use the resources available.13 But it took five hundred years before someone thought of casting hilt and blade as one piece.

There is also a complementary force at work.14 You're thinking out loud. Now the default exit strategy is to get bought, if you want to notice things that seem wrong. We may be better adapted for some things than others; we may be happier doing things we're adapted for; but why assume purpose?15 Perl programs can be almost cryptically dense, while the names of built-in operators in Common Lisp operators are comically long.16 You can ask it of the most egregiously unlispy pieces of syntax in Common Lisp occurs in format strings; format is a language in which the upper is written, in which case the interface can be dictated by the upper level.17 The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that we ought to be possible.

The surprising thing about throwaway programs is that, in a group of people working on startups and their willingness to help one another out, with no expectation of getting anything in return.18 And I don't think we should be religiously opposed to introducing syntax into Lisp, as long as they could. Whereas if you're determined to stick around no matter what, and the first cars. I've ever been able to assume that each user would have an increasingly powerful processor sitting on their desk. There are several reasons.19 Many people seem to continue to exist, is earn money. Will a startup inevitably stop being a startup as a way to finesse our way out of the big galley and put them in a boat by themselves, they could probably go faster. A number of Lisps now compile into byte code, which is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas. Which means the ambitious can now do arbitrage on them.20 Even if you could read the minds of the consumers, you'd find these factors were all blurred together.21 There is also the cost of typing it.22 Mine too.

So if you want to build great things, it helps to be driven mostly by people's identities. Users love a site that's constantly improving. We didn't even know they were recording. People in the Valley is so high that it's still a significant increment on what we can deliver. Startups in other places are just doing what startups naturally do: fail. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a startup idea.23 One of the things that will surprise you if you build something popular is that you are already working as hard as you possibly can for four.24

Now we'd give a different answer. And the fact that I both despise the phrase and understand it is the people.25 When you hear your call is important to us, please stay on the line, do you think, oh good, now everything will be all right? And that in turn means that web-based applications. Start a Startup I advised startups never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. It would only dilute their own judgment to average it with everyone.26 In a company, the work you do is averaged together with everyone else in that company. Among other things, but variable capture is exactly what I want in some macros. They're perfectly justified: the majority of hot new whatevers do turn out to be more complicated.27 All the time you get throngs of geeks.

The other half is expressing yourself well. So, yes, it was meaningless. It's true, certainly, that most people don't choose programming languages simply based on their merits, and so on. With the rise of server-based applications. It's just part of what a programming language. This article was written as a kind of intellectual archaeology that does not need to be designed to suit human strengths and weaknesses as much as possible, what the hell your site is catching on, or it will fry you. Now it seems to have acquired a meaning. We take it for granted. I'm claiming you could be 36 times more productive than you're expected to be in the top 1%. 0 meaning the web as a platform? When you hear your call is important to us, please stay on the line, do you think, oh good, now everything will be all right? Are we heading for a world in which returns will be pinched by increasingly high valuations?28

Notes

It didn't work out. The most important factor in deciding what to do wrong and hard to get jobs. Vision research may be to say because most of them was Webvia; I swapped them to make art that would scale.

If Xerox had used what they made, but starting a startup, you need is a shock at first you make, which means you're being gratuitously troublesome. Cit.

A Spam Classification Organization Program. It's not only the leaves who suffer. Options have largely been replaced with restricted stock, which is as frightening as it might seem, because she liked the outdoors, was one firm that wanted to than because they can't legitimately ask you a termsheet, particularly if a company growing at 5% a week for 4 years. And while it makes sense to exclude outliers from some types of startup: one kind that prevents you from starving.

For most of the year x in a rice cooker, if you don't need empathy to design these, because living at all. This is not to: if you hadn't written about them. In this essay wrote: One way to see it in B.

Change in the definition of property. During the Internet, like a headset or router. At any given college.

The problem is poverty, not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. If only one person could go at a large number of users to observe—e. But this takes a few data centers over the Internet worm of its identity. Economic inequality has been in the preceding period that caused many companies that we should make the kind of protection against abuse and accidents.

There was one firm that wanted to make art that is modelled on private sector funds and apparently generates good returns. It's a strange task to write great software in Lisp, they could not have raised: Re: Revenge of the world's population lives outside the US News list tells us is what people mean when they got to the Bureau of Labor. And even more closely to the sale of art. At some point, there would be to advertise, and once a hypothesis starts to be when I was once trying to upgrade an existing investor, and the older you get to be doomed.

There were a couple of hackers with no valuation cap. From a company. And those examples do reflect after-tax return from a technology startup takes some amount of time on a hard technical problem.

For example, willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy. Instead of the 70s, moving to Monaco would give you term sheets.

So, can I make this miracle happen?

They may not understand you at all.

It seems as dumb to discourage risk-taking.

Lester Thurow, writing and visual design. I currently don't allow duplicates in the Sunday paper. To the extent this means anything, it seems a bit more complicated, because what they're selling and how unbelievably annoying it is because those are the first question is not to have, however, you can eliminate, do not try too hard to say they were already lots of customers times how much of a problem this will be silenced.

Of the two, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Articles of this essay wrote: After the war.

Successful founders are in set theory, or working in middle management at a discount of 30% means when it converts you get of the most part and you make something hackers use. This is why so many people's eyes.

If you can hire a lot of great things were created mainly to make you register to get good grades. 8%, Linux 11.

But because I can't predict which lies future generations will consider inexcusable, I mean efforts to manipulate them. How much better is a dotted line on a hard technical problem. I've talked about convergence.

A doctor, P. 5 was released. Of the two, I'd open our own Web site.

The real decline seems to have done all they could imagine needing in their racks for years while they tried to shift back.

If the company is common, but when people tell you that if he were a handful of ways to avoid this problem and yet managed to screw up twice at the mercy of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we funded, summer 2010. You won't always get a small amount, or income as measured in what it means they still probably won't invest in it. Confucius claimed proudly that he transformed the field. The Industrial Revolution was one of them.

A round. VCs suggest it's roughly correct for startups, the jet engine, but those don't involve a lot of investors.

Even in Confucius's time it included what we now call science. For example, the more qualifiers there are no false negatives. Another advantage of having employers pay for stuff online, if we wanted to have done and try selling it to the average reader that they lived in a series A deal flow, then invest in successive rounds, it often means the investment market becomes more efficient, it could change what it means a big brand advantage over the Internet, like languages and safe combinations, and post-money valuation of your mind what's the right mindset you will find a kid. Above.

If you're good you are unimportant. There is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than lose a prized employee. And it's just as he or she would be enough to guarantee good effects. Adults care just as much what other people think, but to do more with less?

You have to worry about that danger. Yes, it would be improper to name names, while everyone else and put our worker on a seed investment in you, they were going back to the next time you raise them. All you have to be good startup founders are driven only by money. As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for the difference is that they don't want to keep the next round is high, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs.

Credit card debt stupidest of all.

And yet if he hadn't we probably would not be true that being so, even if they do for a startup you can do is not such a baleful stare as they are in love with their decision or just outright dismisses it and make a conscious effort. IBM is the proper test of success for a CEO to make money. And if you have to be employees is to tell them about.

Zagat's there are some whose definition of politics: what determines rank in the last they ever need.

If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they will only be willing to provide when it's their own itinerary through no-shop clause. And maybe we should worry, not like soccer; you don't see them, not like soccer; you don't know who invented something the automobile, the best metaphors for hackers are in research departments.

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themyskira · 7 years ago

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Amazons Attack! - part 1

Once upon a time, in the lead-up to the 2005-2006 cesspool of a crossover event that was “Infinite Crisis”, DC had plans for a miniseries called “Amazons Attack!”. The story was to be helmed by then-Wonder Woman writer Greg Rucka and artist Ethan Van Sciver, and it would deal with a conflict between the Amazons and the United States following Diana’s killing of Max Lord (and, presumably, building off the simmering background tensions between the two nations since the floating islands of Themyscira had crashed into the ocean off the coast of the US in early 2004).

The idea was nixed, but it never entirely went away. Over the next few years, it passed through the hands of numerous people at DC before finally landing in the lap of Will Pfeiffer in late 2006. By this stage, the original proposal was no longer feasible. The Max Lord story had been resolved, Themyscira had retreated entirely from the mortal plane, and there was no longer any interaction between the Amazon and American peoples.

But that wasn’t gonna stop DC from achieving their glorious vision of man-hating harpies attacking the US capital with swords and pointy sticks.

Around this same time, somebody else in the company had a genius idea. Jodi Picoult, a bestselling author with a strong following among women readers, had just released a new novel about family relationships and trauma, and one of the main characters happened to be a comic book artist. Why didn't they find out if Picoult was interested in writing an actual comic and, you know, lending DC some of that New York Times Bestseller cred?

Picoult wasn’t sure. She didn’t know if she had the time, let alone the interest, in the project. She’d never been much of a Wonder Woman fan. But her kids talked her into accepting, and so, with no previous comic writing experience and far too little editorial guidance, Jodi Picoult set out to make her mark on Wonder Woman.

Together, Picoult and Pfeiffer would craft one of the most widely-derided stories in Wonder Woman’s history. There would be crimes against the written word. There would be character assassination on a mass scale. There would be bees.

Part 1: Wonder Woman volume 3 #6 -- Jodi Picoult (writer) and Drew Johnson (artist)

Some context: For reasons too stupid to go into, Diana has decided to assume a secret identity. She hopes to can gain a better understanding of those she protects by living a normal human life… as an elite Department of Metahuman Affairs field operative charged with neutralising metahuman threats.

Agent Diana Prince is standing in a scungy restroom trying to remind herself that she’s not Wonder Woman. She’s doing that thing where the hero looks in the mirror and sees their alter ego reflected back at them, but due to some poor art decisions, it instead looks like she’s staring at a Wonder Woman poster that somebody has hung over a grotty sink.

More bad art choices occur in the next panel, where the mirror glowers at her behind her back.

Diana continues to puzzle over how having a secret identity is really hard since she doesn’t know the first thing about how to be a human being. Because it’s not as though a large part of Wonder Woman’s career as a public figure in Man’s World has been working as an ambassador and engaging with people across the world at all levels of society or anything.

Also, Jodi Picoult misspells “Themysciran” twice and both typos are left uncorrected, setting the standard for the number of editorial fucks given in this crossover.

Then she steps out of the restroom and into a superhero-themed amusement park, where we meet Diana Prince’s charmer of a partner, Tom Tresser.

“I can’t believe this is my job!” Tom exposition/whines. “I can’t believe we have to baby-sit some sore loser who won a reality TV show to become the new Maxi-Man! I can’t believe you are my partner! I can’t believe cotton candy costs four dollars now…!”

I can’t believe I’m reading this fucking crossover.

Diana diplomatically replies that she’s not used to working with a partner either, and Tom sneers that, based on what he’s read in her record, she’s “not used to working, period”. Because Batman was skilled enough to build an entirely new identity for Diana, but not smart enough to give her an employment history…? How the frig did she get hired by the DEO, then?

Also, great to see that Diana and Tom are both taking their assignment to prevent a human person from dying so seriously. While Maxi-Man is signing autographs out in the open, a sitting duck for any would-be attacker, Tom is gorging himself on fairy floss and Diana is trying to order a Wonder Woman-branded milkshake.

Diana: One Wonder Woman milkshake, please. Server: It’s been discontinued. It’s now called the Black Canary shake. Tom: Wonder Woman!! Now there’s a partner I wouldn’t mind having…

In case you hadn’t figured it out, Tom Tresser is the love interest. Whatta catch.

Also, no, Jodi. No. Either the Wonder Woman milkshake has been discontinued, or it’s been renamed the Black Canary milkshake. You can’t have it both ways.

This, by the way, is the first of several “hilarious” gags about how Wonder Woman is unpopular and regarded as kind of uncool. Picoult’s going for cheeky meta, but she comes off as ignorant, tone deaf and kind of mean-spirited.

In the real world, Wonder Woman doesn’t share the same level of popularity as Superman and Batman. But in the DC Universe, and particularly in the Wonder Woman comic, she’s consistently portrayed as a hero with a strong public presence and an ability to inspire, to the point where literally the issue preceding this one was a oneshot revolving around Wonder Woman’s influence as an empowering and inspiring hero.

If Picoult was playing, as Rucka did, with the idea that once Wonder Woman started using her public status to express her opinions, a large swathe of the public turned against her, that’d be one thing. But, no, she’s just decided, as a basis for her punchline, that Wonder Woman is a nonentity in the DCU, which is out of step with canon and does a huge disservice to the character.

As a meta joke, this also misses the point, because the fact that Wonder Woman doesn’t sell as many comics as Batman and Superman cannot be divorced from the the historical (and persistent) sexism in what remains a very blokey, male-dominated industry, not to mention the fact that DC put significantly more resources into producing and promoting Batman and Superman comics and merch. Those aren’t the only reason for the discrepancy in popularity, but they’re not things you can just brush off.

It gets even more unfortunate in the context of this particular comic’s publication. See, about ten months prior to this, DC had relaunched Wonder Woman with a new #1 issue penned by Allan Heinberg, who had recently earned much acclaim as the writer and co-creator of Young Avengers at Marvel. Between them, Heinberg and DC then proceeded to royally fuck up the relaunch. Heinberg wasn’t able to balance scripting duties with his TV writing job, causing issues to be delayed for months at a stretch, until it became clear there was no way he’d be able to finish his first arc before Jodi Picoult started her run and DC had to move on without him (he would eventually finish his story in the 2007 annual — over a year after he started the five-issue arc). Picoult’s first issue was only the third Wonder Woman comic to hit the stands in more than six months.

So basically, she’s making her funny-funny “boo, nobody buys Wonder Woman” against a backdrop of DC failing to produce Wonder Woman comics for months on end.

Anyway. Diana and Tom finally get around to doing their job and return to Maxi-Man’s signing table. Maxi-Man asks them to get him a chilli dog (“and a drink! I hear the Black Canary shakes are awesome!” GROANS FOREVER), and Tom has the nerve to be offended. “I don’t remember seeing this in my job description.” Well, gee, Tom, I don’t remember seeing ‘leaving your principal unprotected so you can slack off and stuff your gob with fairy floss’ in the job description either, and yet here we are.

Tom continues to grizzle about how unfair it is that his incredible talents are being wasted on this boring assignment, and this time Diana’s starting to get fed up. Meanwhile, the reality-show superhero they’ve been looking down their noses at is the only one who’s noticed that the rollercoaster behind them is spontaneously falling apart.

Of course, the moment Maxi-Man springs into action, he’s immediately knocked out cold by a piece of flying rubble, leaving Diana to take charge. Tom does what he does best, by which I mean he complains.

Diana: Tom! You get Maxi-Man to safety! I’ll get that crowd away from the roller coaster! Tom: But… I… we… Diana: There’s no time! Now! Tom: Who the heck’s she to order me around?!?

A quick costume change, and Wonder Woman saves the day, but not without internally griping about how stupidly confusing humans are.

Maybe this is what I was born for. To protect them… not understand them. But how can I…? They don’t even understand themselves.

urrrgghghhhhhh haaaaaate.

We never learn why the roller coaster spontaneously fell apart.

Later, as Diana and Tom make their way back to DOMA, Tom is still complaining. This time it’s about the fact that he missed Wonder Woman’s appearance at the theme park, because “I bet she looked hot”.

They stop at a store selling superhero merch so that Tom can get his niece a Wonder Woman action figure for her birthday. Diana comments that she thought Tom was an only child and Tom conspicuously doesn’t answer. And sure, it’s possible that the “niece” is a real human person who’s the daughter of a close friend or non-sibling relative, but given everything we’ve learned about Tom in the last eight pages, I think it’s far more plausible to assume that there is no niece and he’s planning on jerking off to a Wonder Woman action figure.

Diana continues to be terrible at having a secret identity.

“The Batman one’s better. Look — it’s got a detachable Batarang… But my — er, Wonder Woman’s lasso doesn’t even come off.”

All the Wonder Woman merch is 75% off because lol Wondy is uncool, and for some reason Diana is super offended and tries to lecture the poor store clerk about how obviously Wonder Woman is cool because saving the world is cool so there.

Clerk: Wonder Woman’s not cool, I guess. Diana: Doesn’t saving the world all the time make you cool? Clerk: All I know is she’s never sold as well as Superman or Batman… Tom: 75% off! Sweet!

Next, it’s time for a stop off at the gas station for some hilarious comedy hijinks around Diana’s total lack of familiarity with modern society!

Ha ha! Champagne comedy! All of this is just so new to her, don’t you know! It’s not like she’s ever lived among ordinary mortals

or held down a job

or, you know, interacted with any human being at length.

Now, I don’t blame Jodi Picoult for not knowing any of this. I’d be surprised if she’d even read a Wonder Woman comic before DC approached her, and though she would have done some background reading in preparation for this gig, she couldn’t be expected to be across every element of Wondy’s post-Crisis continuity, which at that point already stretched back two decades.

Her editors, however? Were not new to comics. They should have picked this shit up.

So, they go to get gas. Tom asks Diana to pay and she pulls out a ten dollar note. Tom points out this is insufficient in the most patronising way possible.

“Uh, gas is $3 a gallon, sweetheart. That might get us down the block…”

He asks he if she has a credit card, and she blinks in incomprehension. Yeah, because it’s not like Batman would have arranged cards and a credit history when he manufactured Diana’s false identity. Not like he’s known for being detail-oriented or anything. (And by the way, this is a thing that happened four fucking issues ago, so nobody has any excuses.)

Aaaaand Diana continues to suck at the secret identity thing.

Tom: Geez, how do you normally get around? Fly or something? Diana: Ha, ha. Funny. Fly places. Imagine…! Tom: Ten bucks? No credit card? Where are you from? Mars? New Hampshire?

Oh yeah, and this whole scene she’s been internally complaining about how humans are relentlessly acquisitive and materialistic and confusing and booooooo being an ordinary person is haaaaaaard.

Finally, they arrive back at HQ, where Sarge Steel chews them out for allowing a known fugitive like Wonder Woman to slip through their fingers at the amusement park, even though they weren’t at the park for Wonder Woman and this is literally the first they’re learning that Wonder Woman is a fugitive.

He also blames them for the rollercoaster getting destroyed, even though they had nothing to do with the damage and their only contribution was to get people to safety. Although, given how much they were slacking off on the job, it’s entirely possible that some metahuman terrorist snuck in and sabotaged the rollercoaster on their watch. Since Picoult still hasn’t told us how the rollercoaster was damaged, I’m just going to assume that this was the case.

It turns out that Wondy is wanted for questioning over her killing of Max Lord, even though she’s already been cleared of charges, so Tom and Diana’s new orders are to find her and haul her in. Awkwaaaaaard.

So obviously they get straight to work this important government assignment. I’m just kidding, they head straight for the DCU version of Starbucks. In fact, so far I haven’t come across any evidence that either of them do any work at all.

Things we’ve seen Tom and Diana do this issue:

Leave their principal unprotected so they can gorge themselves on junk food

Bicker and complain while a rollercoaster explodes behind them

Shop for superhero action figures

Fill up on petrol

Drink coffee

Things we have not seen Tom and Diana do this issue:

Their fucking job.

We get the usual obnoxious joke about Starbucks coffee sizes being weird and Diana being confused by them, which I’m pretty sure was hack material even in 2007.

Tom: Iced double Vente soy latte with Turbinado sugar, please. Diana: Um… Small cup of coffee? Server: Venti, Duovent, Grande, or Uber? Diana: Um… Small cup of coffee. [Everyone stares at her.] Diana: [whispers to Tom] I don’t think she speaks English…

They sit in the park, drinking their coffee, and Diana cries because humanity is confusing and everybody is mean to Wonder Woman.

No, really, that’s exactly what happens.

Diana: Why don’t you people just leave her alone? Who cares what she’s done? Tom: You talk about people like you’re not one of them, you know that? Diana: [CRIES]

Picoult’s Diana is so outrageously bad at maintaining a secret identity on even the most basic level, even a self-absorbed wanker like Tom Tresser ought to have cottoned onto her by now. Then again, he also failed to notice a rollercoaster collapsing a few metres away from him, so…

In an out-of-character display of ordinary decency, Tom gives Diana a pep talk, then heads off home. As he walks away, Diana hears a scream for help and jumps into action—

—aaaaaaand it’s an attractive young white college girl being mugged by a thuggish, armed black man. Definitely no ugly connotations lurking there.

Diana subdues him with a single punch, and is rewarded with proof that some people do still find Wonder Woman cool because, yes, we’re still on that tired gag.

College girl: I did a paper on you in my feminist theory class! I said you were an icon of womanhood we could all divine strength from… but I didn’t realise you were so… cool! Diana: I hope you got an A.

Tom, driving home, gets a call that Wonder Woman has been sighted in a seedy part of town. In addition to illegally talking on his phone — not hands-free — while driving, he does that thing people do when they’re pretending to talk on the phone, you know, helpfully repeating all the relevant information for the audience.

“Tresser. Wonder Woman? Seen at the Villains and Vixens Bar? I’m there, out.”

If we could hear both sides of the call, I can only imagine that it’d go something like—

Tom: Tresser.

Agent: Hey Tom, it’s Fred; hear you’re on the Wonder Woman case. I know it’s late, but we got a couple reports of sightings at the Villains and Vixens Bar. You happen to be anywhere near there?

Tom: Wonder Woman? Seen at the Villains and Vixens Bar?

Agent: Yeah, that’s what I just sa—

Tom: I’m there, out. [hangs up]

Agent: Jesus, I fucking hate that guy.

Basically what I’m saying is, he absolutely deserves it when he stumbles, ill-equipped, into a suspiciously flirtatious Wonder Woman who is wearing an earlier iteration of Diana’s costume and striking all kinds of ridiculous sexy poses, and instantly gets himself captured by what is obviously Circe in disguise.

Diana gets called back to headquarters, and she’s still wrestling with the question of how she can possibly do her job when her job is to arrest Wonder Woman. (WELL GEE, DIANA, I GUESS YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE YOU TOOK A JOB UNDER AN ASSUMED IDENTITY AT THE DEPARTMENT DEVOTED TO POLICING METAHUMANS LIKE YOU.)

Also turnstiles. She is deeply perplexed by turnstiles.

comedyyyyyyyyyy

Sarge tells Diana that Tom has been abducted and a pair of Amazon bracelets were found at the scene. This is all the evidence Sarge needs to conclude that Wonder Woman has gone back to her old neck-snapping ways and must be stopped. He gives Diana the bracelets in an evidence bag and tells her to take them to the lab and see what she can find out.

I have questions.

Why weren’t the bracelets already being analysed at the lab? Did Sarge Steel wrestle the evidence bag off a hapless crime scene investigator and smuggle them up to his office just so he could play show-and-tell with Diana? How do they know the bracelets are Wonder Woman’s? In this superhero-merch-flooded world, wouldn’t Amazon bracelets be a dime a dozen? Or is Wonder Woman so ~uncool~ that every Amazon bracelet manufacturer immediately went out of business and buried the shameful evidence of their failed ventures in a New Mexico landfill alongside all those Atari cartridges? And why would Wonder Woman leave her bracelets behind? They’re not the kind of thing she’s likely to forget. Yes, we know Circe’s planted the bracelets deliberately, but the DOMA agents don’t.

And most importantly, why does Sarge Steel’s reflection look like Diana?

Diana doesn’t need to take the bracelets to the bag, because she knows they’re replicas and, what’s more, she knows where they come from.

“They were designed to complete a uniform I donated to the Wonder Woman Museum… which closed down over a year ago.”

Okay, now hang on.

I realise we’re back on the hilarious ‘Wonder Woman isn’t popular’ gag, which absolutely has not outstayed its welcome, but a museum is not the same thing as a theme park concessions stand or a pop culture store. A museum does not just go, ‘buhhhhh, I know we’ve amassed this huge collection of great historical, social and aesthetic significance. Indeed, it is almost certainly the largest collection of Wonder Woman and Amazon-related items in the world, and much of it was donated by Diana herself, making it immensely valuable. But — and this is awkward — it turns out people don’t want to visit us because Wonder Woman isn’t cool. Guess we have no other choice but to pack it in and open a Black Canary Museum down the road.” That is not how museums work, Jodi.

I’m also confused as to why Circe needed to steal a Wonder Woman costume from a museum when it would have been far easier to glamour her clothing to look like Diana’s, the same way she glamoured her features. This seems needlessly complicated.

Diana whips off her glasses and does the spinny-transformy thing from the TV show. This is technically a power that Wondy has at this point in continuity — at the end of Allan Heinberg’s first arc, it’s revealed that Circe has given Diana the supremely useless “gift” of being able to turn her powers off, allowing her to switch between Amazon and mortal with a spin and a flourish.

Except, when this issue was published… Heinberg’s last issue hadn’t been. Remember, he flaked on his scripting duties, so the final instalment of his story and the introduction of the dumbass spinny-power-up wouldn’t come out until November 2007 — six months after this issue was released.

The issue ends on Wondy flying to the rescue while Circe lies in wait in the defunct Wonder Woman Museum, predatorily clutching a chained and shirtless Tom Tresser.

#when shamazons attack #comics talk #i have made a terrible mistake #please send help

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Archenemy: Glenn Howerton On Menacing Joe Manganiello

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As eager comic movie fans wait for Marvel to roll out Phase Four, or for Wonder Woman 1984 to hit HBO Max; RJLE Films has a superhero sleeper of its own coming to screens on Dec. 11. Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Archenemy is the story of Max Fist (Joe Manganiello), a one-person crime fighting phenomenon, now powerless and sent to our dimension to live on the streets. Though Max’s homeless life might be bleak and muted, the film is full of colorful and outrageous characters. The larger-than-life menace that looms over Max is “The Manager”. A mustachioed, golden blonde Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, A.P. Bio) brings this 21st century crime boss to life. Think of him as Michael Corleone, by way of Urban Outfitters.

Stepping into the shoes of an overbearing, take no prisoners, big bad is a new venture for Howerton. It didn’t deter him one bit though, as we learned in our exclusive talk with the actor about the difference between living with a character for 15 years (Dennis of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) to having to create a lifetime for one you only inhabit for a short shoot. What follows is our discussion with Glenn Howerton about bringing The Manager to life, and what it takes to create quality entertainment. Oh, and be sure to read Howerton’s thoughts on the Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco over here.

DEN OF GEEK: It’s always nice to see you do pretty much anything but it’s great to see you as this fun, out-of-the-box kind of villain.

GLENN HOWERTON: Thank you, I appreciate it. It’s so fun to play bad guys. I know every actor says that but it really is true, it’s just a chance to follow your worst impulses as a human being. It’s like you’re getting to exercise a part of yourself that you can’t in your normal life because you want to be a good person, hopefully.

Well I also feel like this is the kind of the character that you can also create a very large backstory for.

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s difficult when you get used to working in television because with a character, it would be easy to forget that the reason I know how to play Dennis so well (depending on how well you consider I play the character) is because I’ve gotten to live with this guy for 15 years. I also created the character, I wrote the character so I know that character inside and out. I know that if an improvisation were to break out I would know how to answer as Dennis. That’s how well I know the character, because I know how he would react in any situation.

With a film, you don’t have that luxury. Knowing what makes him tick, knowing what his buttons are…you want to know all that stuff so when you show up to the set no matter what gets thrown at you, you can react in character. I didn’t want it to feel like something that I’d done before so I spent a lot of time talking to Adam Egypt Mortimer. We spent countless hours talking about the character and thinking about it myself and just going over it, and over it, and over it, and over it. Which is not something I normally do, but it’s also not something I normally need to do, because most of my work has been in television.

This is also the type of film where you need a certain confidence in the filmmaker, or it’s going to end up on an episode of Paul Scheer’s How Did This Get Made? What gave you that faith in Adam, for all this?

I had faith in Adam for multiple reasons. One, I’d seen the movie that he made right before this, Daniel Isn’t Real, and loved it. I just thought it was beautiful. It was really moving, and horrifying, and scary, and real, and worked on multiple levels. Then just sitting down with Adam and talking to him about this, I was like, “This guy has a vision for this.” The way he talked about the movie, the way he talked about shooting it, the way he saw the script, the way he saw the world, the way he described it – this guy has definitely got a vision for this. It might be really strange and it might be really odd, but I like really strange and odd things. I didn’t get the impression that there was any world in which it was going to be bad.

Adam’s still technically an up-and-coming filmmaker. So it must be nice to work with someone who is at the point where he could really take chances.

I don’t understand where his confidence comes from. Because as you say, he doesn’t have a ton of films under his belt and we didn’t have a lot of time to shoot this movie, or a big budget to shoot this movie.

As a matter of fact, I’ll give you a perfect example. The very first day that I showed up to set, we were supposed to shoot a scene where we pull up, and we grab Hamster (Skylan Brooks), and throw him in the car. Skylan was super, super sick, and couldn’t show up that day. But we couldn’t afford to lose a day of shooting. So Adam, that morning or late the night before, wrote a whole new scene for me and Amy Seimetz to do.

If you’ve seen the movie it’s the scene where we’re sitting in the car, and we’re talking for a while and then at the end of that scene I go and bash Hamster on the head, and that was just Skylan’s stunt double. We had to conceive of something, pretty much in the moment. Then when we got the script on the day, Adam was like, “I don’t think this totally works,” and me and Amy sat and rewrote it. We really had to be on our toes. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that had I not known the character as well as I felt like I did.

We’ve seen you do action and something like a shootout before, but I’ve never seen you do it in such a smooth and kind of serious aspect. Do all those previous experiences meld into this or is it a different type of training you need to delve into?

I think it’s a product of a few things. I didn’t start out in comedy. I always did comedy, but I really started out down a much more dramatic path. So my approach to comedy has always been a little bit more like the Alec Baldwin approach. It’s really no less real when it’s funny, than when it’s a drama. It’s a really just a slight click of the dial one way or the other where that makes it funny, or serious. That can be kind of a thin line between the two. I’ve always come from a dramatic point of view like making the needs of the character, very, very real. It’s just that when you’re writing it or when the conceits of the character are so ridiculous, that’s what makes it funny – instead of doing some sort of goofy-ass performance.

Then to kind of click over into drama – I mean it’s definitely challenging and it was definitely scary. I think the scariest thing for me in doing something this dramatic was the fact that I’m not a menacing person in real life at all. I’m 155 pounds and Joe Manganiello is 200 pounds of pure muscle, six-foot-four, and audiences have to be able to watch the movie and go, “Joe Manganiello’s character has to be scared of that guy.” Or at least within the world of crime…I’m a crime boss I have to be intimidating to other criminals. That was a little scary for me because I haven’t been asked to do anything like that in a long time, but it was fun.

I gotta say, you definitely had the best running in a different direction while shooting behind you pose I’ve ever seen. It was very smooth.

That was one of those things where Adam asked me to do that and I was like, “Oh my god…” In my head it’s like I went back to being a kid and thought about watching you Die Hard or watching action movies and I was like, “Oh shit, I forgot I’ve always wanted to do that.” I’ve always wanted to do an action scene where I get to shoot a gun and run around doing action-y stuff. It was like playing and being a kid again. It was so, so fun.

During these pandemic times do you find yourself honing different skills like that on your own? Getting yourself ready for when things can return to normal.

I don’t know if other actors do this but I’m a little bit insane. When I read scripts, I often find myself acting them as multiple characters. Even if I’m watching a movie, and I’m by myself; I’ll pause and sort of take on the persona of the character. I’m getting very personal here, this is really nutty behavior for the average person. But as an actor, I really do kind of get off by climbing into the skin of somebody else and just getting to think a different way and behave a different way and I’ve always been obsessed with that ever since I was a kid. Just understanding the psychology behind how someone can behave the way they behave.

I talk about the pandemic as if the world seems to be shut down, but obviously you guys are still getting scripts and you’re still writing. For instance, has it led to any delays in the scripts for season 15 of Sunny?

No, it’s not, because Rob has been working on the second season of Mythic Quest. I’ve just been working on other things, developing other projects that I’m excited about, finishing a script that I’m writing with a writing partner. I’m mostly focusing on reading a lot and writing a lot and kind of studying the craft of screenwriting because I kind of fell into it.

I certainly didn’t have any training but when I’m writing I want to live up to … I take what I do very seriously. I don’t take it for granted that I’ve been offered the privilege of being able to write scripts, so I want to be good at it. I want to know what I’m doing. I don’t want other screenwriters who actually studied and worked hard to become screenwriters to look at what I do and go, “This guy’s just kind of sailing through it.” I want to be educated.

I mean that’s the way to do it right? Even when you consider something like, for lack of better term; slapstick. Doing it right means having the training behind it.

There’s of course nothing wrong with being naturally talented at something. There are a lot of naturally gifted actors who can just kind of do it. Or for whatever reason they’re just good at it. They didn’t have to go to Juilliard to get good at acting.

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That was Brando’s thing, right?

Yeah, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What I do have a problem with is if there’s a sort of an inability to acknowledge that it might be easy for you but it’s not just because the craft of acting is easy. I would also argue that you might be an extraordinarily gifted actor naturally without training, but you’re probably only good at one thing. You might be able to be really good at writing comedy but if you haven’t studied the art of screenwriting, you’re probably not going to be able to write a drama. Whatever you lack in terms of your knowledge of structure, you might be able to make up for a lot of that if you’re super super funny and you can write a comedy, but you won’t be able to do that if you’re writing something else. I like to do a wide variety of things. I like to write screenplays, I like to write TV, I like to work in drama and comedy. I like to work in a lot of different genres; so it keeps me on my toes.

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lycorogue · 6 years ago

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Who Wants to Meet My OCs? (Part 1 - Creating Worlds)

Okay, so I wanted to do this for months now, but was always too lazy to just sit down and do it. Well, I’m feeling motivated now, so let’s give it a whirl.

I’d like to introduce each of you to my OCs with their own individual posts. You are more than welcome to AMA about them or send me asks requesting for a specific character to answer. I want YOU to know more about them, because that helps ME learn more about them. :D The thing, though, is I’d also like to let you guys know the IRL background for each character. I’d LOVE to let you guys in on the process of how I came up with these OCs in the first place. So I’m starting my Meet My OCs series with exactly that: a break-down on how I came up with them. I’ll be posting a new one every Sunday for the next few months. It became quite lengthy though, which is why I’m splitting them up into a mini-series. However, if you really don’t care, and wish to just jump to the info posts for the characters themselves, you can check out my first character intro: Willow Driver If you ARE interested in my character creation process, feel free to check below the break, and thank you for indulging me. :)

My main OCs come from one of two places, both of which includes role playing. I guess that means I can’t discover a character for a full-length story unless I’ve ran around in their skin for a few months...

For this first part of the series, I’m going to start large: introducing the main Inspiration Spring for my OCs and the worlds they live in.

Those two worlds/stories are:

1) Gyateara

2) Glitches

The second part of my series will talk more about the IRL origins for my Gyateara characters. And the third part will explain where my Glitches characters came from.

Then I’ll get into the actual character intros.

But first: the worlds!

Gyateara

The characters for Gyateara are (mostly) from D&D campaigns. This original world of mine (of which I’m still painfully building) is your classic High Fantasy/Tolkien-esque/D&D setting. However, Gyateara itself refers to the world a series of not-necessarily-interconnecting stories will take place on. There may even be multiple book series written within the overall Gyateara universe. Much like how Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind are all the Ender Series, meanwhile Ender’s Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, and Shadow of the Giant are all the Shadow Series (following Bean), but they are both series within the overall Enderverse. Buuuuut, I’ll have to FINISH CREATING THE WORLD before I think of anything that in-depth.

My original inspiration for Gyateara was the Xbox game Fable, way back in 2005. I sort of took the world build around the country of Albion in that game, added in some Hyrule from the Legend of Zelda franchise, sprinkled in Feudal Japan as presented in the anime InuYasha, and finished off with a dash of Gaea from the anime The Vision of Escaflowne. Once I mixed that hodge-podge pot of environments and world-builds together, I poured it out into the half-baked cake that became The Northern Isles. This was the main setting for my failed first NaNoWriMo attempt: The Race for Destiny. (The story is so bad, you guys! TT^TT)

As years crawled along, I got introduced to the webcomic Order of the Stick (which is excellent and still going, btw). Strip #273 started a mini-series called The Crayons of Time, which told the world creation story. It also discussed the four main pantheons; which were typically the Main Four that D&D players use if they don’t want to put in the effort to create their own gods. The Northern Gods are the Norse pantheon, Eastern Gods are the Greek pantheon, Southern Gods are the Chinese Zodiac, and Western Gods are the ones created for D&D and presented in the Player’s Handbook. The gods battled each other frequently, and so they went to the four directions, promised not to really intervene with the other regions, and kind of ignored each other.

I LOVED this concept, and wove it into my world, where there are multiple pantheons, much like there was IRL, except, Gyateara’s gods are KNOWN to be real, but they don’t intervene outside their region of rule, so it’s rare for non-travelers to even know of the other gods/pantheons.

I’ll have to dedicate time to go more in-depth with Gyateara and it’s build in the future.

Glitches

While Gyateara refers to the world, and not the intended stories themselves, Glitches very much refers to one intended series/saga. I envision it as a large-cast project I’d love to one day create as a webcomic. Sadly, I can barely draw stick figures, and I have yet to accomplish the task of writing a comic script. I’ve written movie scripts before, but not comic scripts. I did debate waving the white flag and just going with my trusty skill as an amateur novelist, but Glitches just seems like such a visual story to me. Which is probably why I have multiple character images for Glitches, but not so much for my Gyateara characters.

Glitches actually originated as a message board play-by-post role play game.

Back in 2012, my husband and I rewatched the TV series X-Men: Evolution. Hubby loved how the show re-imagined a lot of the canonical X-Men characters, and decided he wanted to host a role play game using that universe. Hubby wondered what the Evolution characters would be like as adults in this universe. More importantly, he wondered what THEIR CHILDREN would be like. So he started up the game we titled X-Future.

In the RP, each player got to pick a parent off of a list Hubby provided and regularly updated. Then, because life is random, Hubby rolled on a chart to determine the second parent for the player’s character. Once that’s figured out, Hubby rolled on yet another chart to see what powers the character inherited. The player then had fairly free-rein to create from that moment on. Sadly, most of the parental pairings were suuuuuper random, and the players not THAT creative, and so we had a LOT of “one night stand souvenir” kids. Regardless, the actual character creations, development, and interactions were fairly good.

In fact, after a solid year or so of playing on X-Future, I realized I loved our overall story so much that I wanted more than just our players to experience it. At first, I attempted to just rewrite our game sessions as story chapters. It... got long and messy, especially when I tried to go back and re-organize the order of the posts. We... didn’t focus on continuity and timelines as much as we should have in those early sessions.... Nearly 70,000 words and 14 chapters in, and I had only recapped the first couple months of the game.

Perhaps someday I’ll attempt to continue (and complete) the project, but for right now it’s just too much for me to work on with everything else.

Eventually, while working on my rewrite project, I realized I wanted to polish things up, tweak others, and kind of just go down my own storytelling road. That’s when I decided I wanted to take some of the more prominent characters from X-Future and drop them in an original, non-X-Men-related, story.

For whatever reason, I pictured X-Future as being a sort of baby cyberpunk environment. Not as extreme as say Ghost in the Shell, or Blade Runner, or Johnny Mnemonic, or Æon Flux or anything like that. It’s more like the cusp of cyberpunk, like the world just as it’s transitioning into a cyberpunk one. Because of this, I thought that instead of “mutants”, my characters would be called “glitches.”

I talked a bit more about the world of Glitches in three posts back in November:

Generic History of the World

Explaining The GRID: Part 1

Explaining The GRID: Part 2

The Characters

Alright, now that you know a bit about the worlds and the IRL inspiration for them, how about the characters I’ll be introducing you to in this series?

From Gyateara:

Amara Yori

Jolene Crisslebalm

Natalie [last name TBD]

Connor [last name TBD]

From Glitches:

Willow Driver

Amelia “Lia” Mordeaux [last name not set]

Patricia “Trish” Morrison

Chayse LeBeau [last name TBD]

Matteo [last name TBD]

Emily [last name TBD]

Ryder [last name TBD]

Keahi [last name TBD]

Cody [last name TBD]

Ignatius “Iggy” [last name TBD]

I’d also like for you guys to meet Devon St. James from Glitches, but he’s actually my friend’s OC for X-Future, and I haven’t received permission to officially include him in Glitches yet. Likewise, I would LOOOOOOVE to include the characters Lucas and Lincoln from X-Future, but the player who created them specifically requested that he is the only one who writes them. So, sadly, they will not be making the transition into Glitches.

Also, all of those “Last name to be determined” for Glitches is because they all still have their Marvel Canon last names right now. I still have to tweak those.

Matteo, Emily, Ryder, Keahi, Cody, and Ignatius were all originally Marvel-owned X-Men canon characters that were parents and/or mentors for the characters within X-Future. While I reworked their looks, personalities, backstory, and even their powers a bit, I only focused on new first names. Eventually I’ll figure out their last names...

Chayse and Lia have their fathers’ last names, and their fathers are X-Men canon characters, and so I still have to tweak their last names as well.

As for the “Last name to be determined” for those two Gyateara characters? Well, they’re from “The Race for Destiny”. That failed NaNo project I talked about above. One of the failures was that I never really put in the effort to come up with last names for them... so I’ll need to work on that as well.

Phew... that... was a lot. Thank you so much for reading through it all!

Next up, further IRL creation stories for my Gyateara characters.

#writing #LycoRogue Writing #OCs #Meet My OCs #world creation #IRL inspiration #IRL creation #writing process #long post #Gyateara #Glitches #series post #1 of 17?#LycoRogue original

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kaaramel · 8 years ago

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a long and very disjointed list of webber HCs in no particular order

i don’t necessarily think this is all Untouchably True Game Canon but when i write about webber or play them in RP servers consider these.. my guidelines??? i don’t know it’s all pretty nebulous

wild spiders:

Eusocial - warriors and workers (the default black kind) are non-reproducing; queens develop from workers who are exposed to high concentrations of magic/nightmare fuel (provided in the wild by dark petals and primitive, instinctive ritual). I don't have a specific headcanon re: sexual reproduction namely Where the Males Are At - I could come up with something elaborate about much smaller males who never leave the dens or possibly do the anglerfish thing but if it's my call I'd like to take the path of least resistance and call it parthenogenesis

i made up the thing about nightmare fuel just now while i was writing but i'm into it - i say it because it follows from webber's triumphant appearance, assuming it’s the result of high exposure to nightmare energy, if we interpret the growing claws and the narrowed eyes as the beginnings of a queen-transformation (and i do)

all nests contain a primary queen at their base and center protected by swaths of webbing, laying eggs continually, & being defended by her children. a tier 2 nest contains a queen and one developing heir, who will take over the nest when the primary queen emerges, carrying the tier 3 nest's final and youngest queen on her back as she wanders looking for a place to establish a new colony.

the queen's use of dark magic allows her to grow to her full size and strength, & telepathically direct her colony; her strong insanity aura vs. players is partially a side effect of this magical nature

depth dwellers and cave spiders have queens too, but they confine themselves to the cave ceiling/underground respectively, so you'll never meet 'em

all castes are venomous but the venom has little to no effect on anything as big as a human, & doesn't linger. it has antibacterial effects when extracted and treated properly, hence the use as a base for healing salve

spiders have good night vision but are pretty miserable at color, & have an excellent sense of smell but hear mostly through vibration

their eyes faintly reflect ambient light like a cat's

spiders groom each other communally within the den and share food among the colony members

webber-specific anatomy:

after the resurrection event (character unlock - and by the by, should we establish who found and buried webber's skull in FFverse? did that happen?) their respective anatomies were reshuffled and merged into a single more-or-less coherent organism

one uninterrupted digestive tract; two hearts; one set of lungs; two brains but probably somehow interwoven nervous system. uhh, my house my rules, I'm gonna say the spiderbrain has ended up more as like.. a knot of ganglia running along the spine? (this is my retroactive justification for writing a fic where a blow to the head only knocked out the child and left the spider piloting the body solo)

their blood and muscle tissue is redder than a spider's and purple-er than a human's; the human skeleton is all present and anchoring standard-issue muscles and everything, but their outer skin is pretty tough and more or less exoskeletal..? we'll gloss right over how that one works for spiders i guess, magic kinda bones the square-cube law

the spider's nightvision is gone but colorvision has sharpened; they can tolerate bright sunlight where the spider couldn't before, and they see better in twilight than the human could, but are totally blind in the dark like any other player.. i think maybe spider vision would track strongly to movement, but not have clear focus on small things?

the spider-legs have very rudimentary digits at their tips and can hold things, although not as well or with as much strength as the main arms. webber can also get down and crawl on all eights but it's awkward for long distances. mostly in practice the extra limbs end up being used to gesture

raised and spread out wide: threat display. tucked close: fear/submission. up/down position corresponds roughly to mood and energy (held high when happy and sagging when unhappy). they use some recognizable human gestures as well: pointing, waving, covering their eyes, etc.

webber isn't very good at judging whether they've eaten the right amount, and will put basically anything in their mouth if it seems edible; they're pretty much constantly low-key hungry (standard for spiders - their next meal is wildly uncertain so they're fully prepared to scavenge at any moment) and simultaneously have a sensation of fullness without getting anything from it (the last lingering echo of "i, the spider, just ate a huge meal and it's not digesting properly at all," even though their internals have rearranged since)

their fur is stiff and bristly, & can stand on end or relax; lacking denmates they mostly groom themselves (combing claws through it) which means they are probably a bit grubby and matted in the hard-to-reach places

they have two tongues i swear to god you'll pry their use of "tongues" plural, in one shipwrecked line, out of my cold dead hands. this one’s real true canon that i could not possibly have made up and you’ll never take it away

they get pretty miserable in the heat, considering jet-black fur and all. mostly they have to resort to panting; the only sweat glands left to them are in places where the fur is thinner, mostly along the soles of their feet and palms of their hands

on the flipside of course, their fur isn't actually much insulation against the cold.. got them coming and going

they've tried before to file down the small, sharp claws on their fingertips against rocks, etc. and it never takes for longer than a single night; their blunted claws are back to how they were by the next morning. they've pretty much resigned themselves to having them and are able to be careful with fragile objects and hold hands and everything, it just takes some effort

they are able to communicate between themselves directly mind-to-mind but it was disorienting for a long time since one's mode of thought was very verbal and the other's very much based on images and emotions; it clarifies things to say them out loud and they do talk under their breath to each other, although not usually when other people are around unless their sanity's slipping

related: yes, the spider has learned to understand & use language, pretty competently. it likes playing with all the new sounds their mouth can make, and with rhyming words ("vroom vroom mushroom" and similar)

when their sanity drops it causes friction between the two halves, who are usually much more in sync - their perceptions of the world around them start diverging and it's a lot of strain to simultaneously see a shadow creature and not see it, or maybe see it a few feet to the left instead, etc etc

oh, also, one hideously specific thing: webber can see dark swords as, simultaneously, the sword and the simple stick of wood it's built around, and they find the double-vision sensation deeply unsettling

in general their sensitivity to magic is heightened beyond a normal human's - the spider is native to the islands and sensitized to these kinds of energies - but that mostly just means extra headaches and unpleasantness

uhh, they probably molt once in awhile, sure, my city - not often tho - their instinct is to go somewhere safe so they mostly go off on their own to do it, and the old exuvia crumbles into dust almost immediately. they're a little more soft and sensitive for a short period of time afterward and probably steal the opportunity to discreetly touch as many textures as they can before the new exoskeleton hardens up, because the rest of the time, all sensations are dreadfully dulled from what the human was once used to

they get mildly cramped and achy during the few days leading up to a molt, although a sense of being just a little too big for their rigid skin is never super far away

if they're jonesin' to feel textures at a time when they haven't recently molted, they lick things/put small objects in their mouth, ain't nothing wrong with the sensation coming from their tongue(s)

human family: i don't have a lot of original thoughts on this matter, tbh, i just have my interpretations of stuff hinted at in the script, but you can have 'em

his father kept goats

he remembers his mother cooking, sewing, & gardening; he probably helped around the house with at least basic tasks of that sort; he remembers some of her advice/sayings although some of it has gone kinda vague in his memory (same with grandpa: "you live in what you eat," are you Sure kiddo)

imo he seems like he was closer to his mom than his dad (mom is almost always "mum" and dad is always "Father," for one thing)

only child, no siblings

visited his grandfather reasonably often for fishing trips, chess lessons that he doesn't remember very well, bothering grandpa's cat Whiskers

imo: liked the outdoors but wasn't super athletic - he says he wasn't good at football. was probably always kinda short and scrawny even before growth was permanently stunted by being trapped inside a monster, but is at least a tough little nugget now

really liked superhero comics

i don't have a location more specific than "rural-ish england????" for where he comes from

mm.. i don’t know under what specific circumstances webber was brought to DSworld and again i hesitate to speculate, but if you make me pick a narrative i'll pick this one: just as people are occasionally drawn into Their world from the mundane world, things very rarely slip through going the other way, and a monstrous, magical spider from the islands managed to cross over. maybe a queen that wasn't fully/properly developed..? in order to be the correct size to swallow a lost/wandering child whole..

i figure webber's "indigestible" status is roughly analogous to how willow is impervious to fire, just, a way more specific and unpleasant circumstance, but nevertheless he survived in there much longer than he should've; the spider was pretty distressed over its inability to actually complete this weird meal and maybe the gradual establishment of a very rudimentary telepathic contact; maxwell offered carefully nonspecific help to the pair of them (somehow. broken-down radio in a junkyard?) and returned/brought the spider/child to the island dimension

behavior:

polite and respectful child. was probably always a pretty polite kid, and the spider understands hierarchy and respect from a rigidly eusocial organism's perspective, but it's also to a certain extent a really deliberate choice, namely "if we are meek and emphasize having human good manners then we are less likely to be feared or thrown out for being a monster"

yes, they are worried about this. they hear how enthusiastically the others rag on and murder mundane spiders

basically they consider themselves low in the hierarchy of this loosely-organized human den and aren't super great at refusing orders they’ll just ask what needs done and do it without complaint

particular respect for the authority/knowledge/power of women

intensely loyal to their friends

you are all their friends

even you WX

once they're sure that someone will tolerate it and not freak about.. Giant Spider, they like to be physically affectionate with friends.. they'll comb claws through people's hair, or just hug and cuddle

bad, bad dreams. could you possibly blame them in even the slightest

eating/being eaten and the lines blurring between those two states is a big one. being lost and trying to call for help but not being able to form the words. the child's parents not recognizing him. the dark

they are a staunch lil optimist and willing to believe the best of everyone

they like having something to do with their hands or fidget with or chew on

seeing the adults argue and fight among themselves is stressful and frightening

their response to stressful and frightening things is to run off solo for a little while and hang underground or with a spider nest until it sounds like things have cooled off

that’s all i can think of at the moment and if you read through all of that i’m in awe

#i'm gonna tag this as #famine's friends #cause thats who this is for #ds headcanons #it's like 60-70% talking about spiders and spider anatomy and spider physiology no prizes for guessing my priorities #some of these things i can give text citations for out of the script if pressed #spider psychology* is what i meant fuckin. fuck words

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twogargs · 8 years ago

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How To Make Your Comic Better - 1

I want to start sharing some of the stuff I’ve picked up along this journey of creating comics. I’m no master, and so I must eagerly recommend you check out such amazing resources as Words for Pictures by Brian M. Bendis and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud and basically every resource you can get your hands on– always read, always learn, always strive to improve!– but even so, I think it might be of some worth to share some real, on-the-ground indie comics experience with my readers.

At the Panel One convention this year, I was privileged to have a table beside Steve Colle, who among other things is an editor for comics. He had a great set-up on his table with laminated, published comic pages and a grease pencil- and invited folks to circle what they thought was wrong with the comics pages. It was a great game designed to help us see the page better, to really understand what we were looking at. I felt like I learned more listening to Steve in one day than I had absorbed in a year!

As a writer, I have to plan a page in my mind, see the flow of action and ensure that what I write is going to make sense visually. However, I don’t control the outcome as such: that’s the artist’s purview, and hopefully they and I have reached that magical telepathy that lets us each understand what the other meant. In a best-case scenario, the page I get back is a wonderful fusion of what I intended blended with the artist’s unique flavour and vision.

Sometimes though, it needs tweaking. I need to stress that this is not a failure on anyone’s part– it’s a progression. It’s step three of the process: Write, Draw, Edit. If you don’t think your work could benefit from editing, you’re fooling yourself.

Let’s look at today’s Hello, Punch! page. Here is the script I wrote:

As you can see, my panel breakdowns (in blue) are minimal. Because Jeremy and I have worked together for a long time, and because he knows the character of Punch, I only use a very light amount of “stage direction” for the purpose of narrative flow.

“Punch dodges the bullets.” As the writer, I don’t need to obsess over how he does it. I’ll leave that up to the artist to decide. I have faith in my partner – my ARTner- to deliver something suitable and cool.

“Punch’s eyes glow and his hands light up with magical energy.” What’s that look like? Who knows? All I care about is that his eyes are magical, and his hands are the direction and focus of what’s about to happen on the next page.

As the writer, I know I will be referencing Punch’s eyes a lot throughout his story; he’s the type of character who talks directly to the audience, looks directly at the camera, hypnotizes with his eyes. They’re important, they’re core to who he is. His hands are the device that directs what he’s thinking into becoming reality, and the way the audience sees how things happen, how they begin with Punch and end up with an effect. So: eyes and hands are mentioned, but the execution of them is up to the artist.

This is the first draft of the page Jeremy sent:

As you can see, all the elements are there. Punch dodges the bullets. Runs down an alley, turns with a “ready” stance at the end – and doesn’t it just look like this was his plan all along? Great visual, here. And then- the payoff that is also a cliffhanger. Close-up, his eyes are holding the reader, while his hand floats in the foreground. Love it!

But there are a few problems:

One, this is a black and white comic; we won’t get to use colour to make things pop, fade out the background, highlight, accent, differentiate. We have to deal with what we’ve got right in front of us.

Panel one looked confusing to me. As the writer I knew that Punch was dodging bullets, but that doesn’t come across very clearly from a visual standpoint. There seemed to be TWO Punches, each with an almost equal footing in the visual “real estate.”

I double-checked with Jeremy what his intent was, to see if I was interpreting it correctly: the bottom Punch was actually the foreground Punch, and the top Punch was in the background, and was the Punch from a second ago before he dodged.

I felt that all the action lines were a problem; they created a flurry of confusing motion for the reader (to the point where we almost miss the actual bullets whizzing by his head).

So I tried a bit of a Photoshop edit to see if I could clean up the panel. Here’s what I came up with:

I faded the background Punch, to make him look more like an afterimage; I added grey tones to his make-up to help his face “pop” a bit; I also removed all the lines from the foreground Punch to make him look more solid, more present, more “now” and in the moment. Jeremy came back with this suggestion. Note how the grayscale gradient in the back helps the characters pop and implies motion. However, I still felt that the action lines on the foreground Punch visually confused him with the background Punch. Finally, we decided to use inks instead of grey tones for foreground Punch; I coloured in his hat and Jeremy coloured in his coat and fingernails to give him a strong, anchored, “present and in the now” feel.

Too, the motion lines around his shoulders and under his arms are now more visible.

….and also I realized that the fist behind his right shoulder should be faded as well. Whoops! Editing, kids. Sometimes you get so close to your own work that you stop being able to see things- a second set of eyes always helps!

We gave similar consideration to the other three panels, and we ended up with the page we published today. Here it is again for your consideration:

I think you’d agree that this was worth the journey; visually, Punch is now much more the central character, all in black; the “phantom Punch” in panel one has been relegated to the background (with a bit of narration panel placed over him to further de-emphasize his visual importance); and the all-important fourth panel has a full complement of rich black and intense greys that keep us focussed on the character.

I’m sure there are other ways this could be improved, and perhaps even better ways than Jeremy and I discovered here; but the point of my sharing this with you is to show you my process, share what I’ve discovered, and hopefully inspire you for your own work (which I then hope you will share as well)!

Good luck, and keep creating!

–Michael

How To Make Your Comic Better – 1 was originally published on Two Gargoyles Comics

#comics #how to #twogargs

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duhragonball · 8 years ago

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The thing about part 5 is (granted I'm a anime-only with some manga knowledge) it's Araki's experimentation phase. He tries to explore the boundaries of what he can do with stands. Also David Productions loves part 5. The eastern fandom love part 3 and 5 while the western prefers 2,4,6 and 7 in general.

Sorry this took so long to answer, but I was waiting until I was done with Part 5 so I could respond to this properly.The problem I have with that idea is that experiments are supposed to be well-documented. Like the man said, the difference between science and screwing around is *writing things down.*To me, the actual hook of Part 5 was the mafia theme, the idea of a morally ambiguous JoJo isolated from the rest of the JoJo World embroiled in a power struggle rather than a quest to save the world. But a lot of that got lost along the way, mainly because the villain ended up being so powerful that defeating him became tantamount to a quest to save the world. Giorno fancies himself a crook with a sense of honor, but the only real crime he commits in the story is stealing Koichi's stuff. I'm supposed to be suspicious of his motives because he's Dio's son, but that relationship is overlooked in favor of playing up his resemblance to the other JoJos.This isn't to say that Part 5 is *bad*; I enjoyed it a lot. The problem is that it really didn't utilize the gangster theme as much as I would have liked. A lot of Part 5 feels like a retread of Parts 3 and 4. The Boss feels a lot like a combination of Dio and Kira, the good guys' travels remind me a lot of the Stardust Crusaders' journey to Egypt, and a lot of the characters seemed to echo the quirky personalities in Morioh.The main difference is that the Stands are more complicated in Part 5, probably because Araki realized he was entering his third arc of Stand Users and he didn't want to get complacent. After all, he introduced Stands in Part 3 to shake things up. The big thing I picked up on early in VA was that Giorno's Gold Experience breaks the mold. Star Platinum is a big blue muscleman who can kick your ass. Crazy Diamond is a big *pink* muscleman who can kick your ass *and* put it back together again. Both are very simple, easy-to-understand power sets. They work, but a third one of these would probably get tiresome. I feel like Araki wanted to make Gold Experience a little more diversified, something physically weaker but with a broader range of abilities.But if you're going to do that, then you have to define those abilities very carefully. More importantly, you have to communicate them to the reader. There's a reason Superman is such a popular character. He's extremely powerful, but those powers are very simple and easily digestible. He can fly. He's super strong. Super speed and super breath are mostly just outgrowths of his strength. Actually so is flight, since the original version of Superman could only jump really high, and this eventually evolved until he could stay airborne. X-ray vision was probably the biggest curve ball they ever threw at the guy. Once upon a time, he could just see really well in the dark, and then someone decided he could see through things too. Then someone got the science confused and decided he has to shoot X-rays out of his eyes in order to do that, and this morphed into a separate power: heat vision. But all of this developed very slowly across a decade, and then stayed stable ever since. In 1997, DC Comics tried to experiment with the concept by changing Superman's powers into something completely unrecognizable. In essence, he became an energy being with energy manipulation powers. So instead of flying he could zap himself to another location as a bolt of lightning. Instead of super strength he could move heavy things with EM fields. The idea was to make Superman's life difficult by forcing him to do the same work with unfamiliar abilities. Readers hated this storyline for two major reasons.First, DC never clearly defined what the new powers were or how they worked. This was probably because none of the characters really knew either, so there was never a chance to have one of them tell the audience what the deal was. Superman was supposed to figure it out for himself, except he kind of half-assed it. Once he figured out how to use his new powers to replicate his old abilities, he stopped worrying about it. So you'd see all these comics with "New" Superman flying and punching things just like the "Classic" Superman used to do, only now he was using magnetism to do it all.Second, DC never bothered to explain why his powers changed or how they changed back. He just turned into pure electricity one day, and then a year later he nearly got himself killed saving the world, only to wind up back to his old self, no explanation given. The whole thing was a non-story, because the mystery of the power change was never investigated. Superman just shrugged and kept doing what he always did in spite of the mild inconvenience.I feel the same way about Giorno's Gold Experience as it compares to Star Platinum and Crazy Diamond. Giorno has a broad range of abilities, and he develops new ones as the story progresses, but there's never any explanation for *how* he learns these new applications for his powers. Also, he seems to forget abilities he used earlier in the story. His living constructs reflect any attack back upon the attacker, so why didn't he use that against Notorious B.I.G. instead of cutting off his own arms? I know I'm nitpicking, but the problem is that I can't tell if Araki forgot about this or if he has a good explanation and I just missed it. And this is where people will tell me that I read the "Bad" translation of Part 5, but there's been a "Good" translation out for a long time, and people *still* can't make sense of King Crimson's ability. He can erase up to ten seconds of time, but how did he get all of his stuff out of his hotel room before the maid came in? There's no way he did all that in ten seconds. This leads me to believe there's simply a communication gap baked into the original script. No translation is going to fix it.The point here is that Star Platinum and Crazy Diamond and their ilk never gave me this kind of difficulty. I'm pretty sure I could read a lousy scanlation of Part 3 in broken English and still figure out that The World stops time. Now, to be fair, I do find a certain charm in Part 5's inexplicable powers, because in the end it's all just metaphor anyway. Giorno's the hero, and somehow he finds a way to beat a seemingly invincible bad guy through perseverance, sacrifice, and teamwork, just like all the other JoJos before him. *How* he does it is less important than *why* he's doing it, and that message stands out more when you can't tell what the hell is going on, which is kind of an anime tradition, I guess...

#2017jjbaliveblog #golden wind

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loopy777 · 8 years ago

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Smoke and Shadow out of all AtLA comics received the most negative reaction. You said "Gene Yang has some good ideas but fails at the basic storytelling level in his AtLA comics." How do you think Smoke and Shadow plot would handle better if you were to re-write the comic?

Huh. I’ve never really considered this type of thing. I don’t think I’ve ever had the urge to rewrite a story I didn’t like; I just want it to go away and be replaced by someone else’s creative vision. More often, I’ll go into Editor Mode for stories I like but still see as flawed. For example, with ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ I’d take my red pen and cross out everything to do directly with Starkiller Base as a super-weapon, and tell the writers to replace it with something actually related to the search for Luke. They could keep the scenes built around the confrontations with Kylo Ren, and they could even still be set in the First Order’s base, but my red pen would be all over all the “We have to destroy Bigger Death Star!” stuff.

For ‘Smoke & Shadow,’ I can’t take the same approach because I don’t think there’s anything of value in the foundation to build on. About the only thing I actually like is the scene where Mai and Ty Lee meet again, and Mai does that fake over-the-top flirting with Whatever His Name Was to seduce him for terrorist-info while Ty Lee makes hilarious faces in the background. So my Editorial advice to Gene Yang would probably be, “Scrap it all and do a Buddy Comedy Spy Thriller with Mai and Ty Lee.” Written in red pen.

But I guess I could offer my own spin on each of the major plot elements, and see if that comes out to a story in the end...

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: Maiko

It’s been four years since there were any major plot advances for Maiko. My own urge is to just get the kids back together and stop dragging this out. If the plot thread had been followed immediately after the breakup, then I’d be more inclined to continue stringing it along to an epic conclusion, but this has just been ridiculous. So I’d get them back together, and to do that I’d need Zuko to have a mini-arc where he Gets Over Himself and stops only remembering that Mai exists when he can see her.

I’d start with a scene of Zuko pining for her while she’s not there. They’d meet up again at some point, and he would beg for her back again, but she’d refuse because she doesn’t know if he’ll actually communicate this time. To solve that, Zuko will need to achieve some kind of self-awareness of this problem, and figure out why he does this. Perhaps it could be because he still fears rejection from the people he loves, so he hides what he perceives as his own failures and the fallout? I think the cartoon left enough wiggle room for this to still be a problem for him without undermining any of his original arc. The solution is for Zuko to realize that this behavior is making him lose people anyway, so he finds the impetuous to start working on the problem. Mai observes this, sees that he has a new understanding of himself and the situation, and goes back to him. It’s a bit open-ended if Zuko will successfully change his behavior enough to keep Mai with him (Spoiler: Izumi), but they’re officially trying again by the end of the comic.

Okay, that’s good enough. A little trite, perhaps, but I think the end has enough nuance to get it to sail, and my main priority is being DONE with this plot. So, with that foundation (Zuko learns that fear of losing people is feeding behavior that drives said people away), we can build an action-adventure thriller to reflect that.

So, the story is about Zuko doing the same thing with the Fire Nation people. It’s established that his compromise about the former colonies isn’t 100% supported by his people. (Author’s Note: Research which classes/professions would be most burdened by this.) So Zuko’s latest policies and actions are about trying to please these people, but for every extreme action he takes (maybe honoring a grave of war criminal soldiers?) he finds opposition springing up elsewhere. It’s frustrating him, and the people perceive him as a weak, scattered ruler.

All right, so that’s Zuko’s trouble. Let’s do something similar with Ursa’s old subplot: she gave up her old identity for Zuko and Azula, and as a result Kiyi loathes and is terrified of her. Ursa’s reaction is characterized similarly to Zuko; she’s trying to hard to get Kiyi back, offering bribes and trying to force her presence on Kiyi without realizing that she’s pushing her daughter further away with the heavy-handedness. Kiyi’s perspective is that her mother has been replaced by someone (something?) else, and Ursa’s desperate behavior and simultaneous embracing of the lifestyle of being the Fire Lord’s mother isn’t helping. I’m thinking that in the end, Ursa either needs to step back from Zuko at least temporarily and try to fit back into the life and mother-role that Kiyi knew, or else she needs let Kiyi go and wait to see if her daughter ever wants her back.

And of course into this mess Azula and Ukano (Mai’s Father) are causing trouble. Here’s where the story really becomes a Thriller. I’m guessing we should also try to keep this a mystery, similar to what ‘Smoke & Shadow’ was. Because I’m a tricksy little hobbitses, I’m going to use readers’ expectations against them. Instead of showing ghosts and then going all Scooby-Doo with the revelation that they’re actually PEOPLE IN MASKS (DUN DUN DUN), I’m going to put Azula front and center in the story and on the covers and the solicitations. She’s back, and she’s coming to Zuko with a plan to help him win over the extreme holdouts while keeping the love of the moderates. Azula will become his secret delegate, doing a Nixon Goes To China deal where she goes to the extremists’ leaders and gets them on Zuko’s side.

The twist is that Azula is being completely honest. The story would portray her as dark enough - perhaps through violence, keeping secrets from Zuko, antagonizing Ursa and Kiyi, getting into a brawl with Mai and Ty Lee at some point, etc - that the audience would expect a betrayal, but it never happens. Azula really is trying to find a place in the new world by exploiting her past and Zuko’s trusting nature, but by trying to play too hard and too fast, she loses what she really wants.

Oh, hey, there’s the theme I established with Zuko and Ursa! Score! This is almost like I planned it.

(You think I’m joking. This is seriously how I plot my fanfics, complete with discovering parallels and connections after I only already typed them.)

Anyway, into that comes Ukano with his rebels, who are the REAL threat. Those punks who went down to Mai in her FCBD one-shot were actually just the local chapter of a big movement. They’re the real threat, agitating things all this time, trying to thwart Azula (while making it look like she’s betraying Zuko). After they’re discovered, they launch a big thing against Zuko, action and adventure is had, Zuko and Mai fight together at a crucial moment, Aang arrives as reinforcements when things are most desperate, Azula does something horrible that makes Zuko forsake her (for now), and the good guys win. (Author’s Note: research how to script comic books so that I can put more detail into this.) On to the final act!

Zuko sets forward knowing that he can’t please everyone, and resolves to have a more open leadership policy than any other Fire Lord in history. He’ll communicate his plans and policies and the reasons behind them, and he’ll meet with various representatives to hear what his people think and what their situations are. (That should also help with the stuff from The Promise, where he had no idea what was going on and his people petitioned him by sending assassins to his bedroom.) Similarly, he and Mai start a new romance based on honesty and mutual respect. I went over how Ursa ends up. For now, I’m leaning towards Zuko losing her as she devotes herself to really meeting Kiyi’s needs. However, there’s a bright spot, in that Kiyi promises to write him letters. Or something. I dunno.

Azula flees. She doesn’t want to be a hunted criminal, she wants a place in this new world, but she hasn’t figured out yet how to become a person who can live in this world. She knows the principles without understanding them. She disappears again, either to come back in a future storyline or get her own graphic novel illustrated by Livio Ramondelli.

Okay, there we go. I guess that’s how I’d rewrite it. My working title is “Let it go, Indiana.” I’ll let my editor come up with something more marketable based on the finished script.

#smoke and shadows #gene yang #zumai #Anonymous

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douglassmiith · 5 years ago

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Former MGM President Yoram Globuss $50 Million Plan to Disrupt Hollywood

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

If you’re going to be a rebel, do it with a purpose. That’s Yoram Globus’s motto. The legendary Hollywood producer and former President of MGM and The Cannon Group has partnered with his son, Ori Globus, to relaunch the renowned Globus film empire with Rebel Way Entertainment. (Yoram is Chairman and Ori is CEO.) Entering its West Hollywood headquarters, I Immediately I noticed a framed poster for one of my favorite movies, Thelma & Louise, which Yoram fondly remembers green lighting during his tenure at MGM.

Yoram is most widely known for elevating Cannon’s production slate and making it, at the time during the 1980s, the largest independent producer and distributor in the world. His strategy of leveraging home video as the next big thing helped propel the careers of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris, among others. He’s also long been known for inventive pre-sales methods, so it’s no surprise that his vision has remained consistent with Rebel Way, which aims to feature familiar faces in offerings across the action and horror genres. The ultimate goal is to ensure that his movies already have a built-in fan base before distributors are even approached.

The company secured a $50 million finance deal with Black Tulip Management, a Miami-based alternative asset-management firm founded by Benoit P. Pous Bertran de Balanda and Oliver Gilly, to produce a slate of 10-15 films. And Ori has already cast everyone from NFL star Rob Gronkowski to established comic actor Nick Swardson in Rebel Way flicks, all part of their effort to cast the net.

Essentially, they approach every film like a startup that has to be taken from concept to launch, but in a fraction of the time. And they have several of these in process at any given time. (One of Rebel Way’s first releases, Deported — directed by Adam Sandler’s nephew, Tyler Spindel nephew of Adam Sandler — has already won the Best Genre Film Feature Award at Mammoth Film Festival.)

After mutually admiring the memorabilia lining Rebel Way’s walls, Yoram, Ori and I sat down and discussed the ways in which filmmaking and distribution have and haven’t changed, and what puts a person and comapny on the path to success.

Why don’t big studios make movies like Thelma & Louise anymore?

Yoram: It comes down to costs.

Ori: When an executive in a studio needs to make a decision on which movie is next, he prefers to make Superman 2 rather than the Thelma and Louise, because he knows if it’s not going to work, no one can blame him.

How has business of distributing films fundamentally changed over the decades?

Yoram: When film first emerged, studios relied on people to go to the box office to buy a ticket. If a ton of people went to see the movie, it was successful. If not, it was a failure and the studio lost money. Then came the television, which helped studios a lot, because there was another channel for studios to distribute their films. Then came video and steaming, which has created massive opportunity.

Ori: The subscription-based model with companies like Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming platforms really changed the game. [But] the fact is that theatrical movies are still making a lot of money — usually horror and superhero films.

Related: What Hollywood Taught Me About Business and Reputation

What differentiates Rebel Way from other studios?

Ori: We believe that we should give directors the freedom to make their own decisions. That’s been [Yoram’s] approach for many years, and that’s the approach of the company. Not many producers in this town will give the director that kind of freedom. At many studios, you have 30 decision-makers for every movie. Everything has to be approved by so many people. That’s not the process here.

How do you develop scripts and attach the right talent to them?

Ori: It takes time to attach a director, so while we’re [doing that], we’re working on making sure the script is in a good place. The writers are coming up with the outline, showing you what the movie’s going to look like. Once we approve the outline, the treatment and synopsis, we give them the OK to move forward. We have a team of about 50 readers that act as a focus group of sorts who will also weigh in on the script.

What’s the most important advice you could give to aspiring producers, directors and actors?

Ori: Not to fear, stick to their vision and be consistent with it. Never give up. Most importantly, keep creating and executing their dreams. There is no better school than in real life.

Yoram: A talented director needs freedom. We did a film [at Cannon], Love Streams, with John Cassavetes that won the [Golden Bear] first prize at the Berlin Film Festival. He came in with the movie, and it was like two hours, and we told him it’s really good, but it can also be good commercially if he cut 10 minutes. So he said OK, came in for the next screening, and the movie was two hours and 20 minutes. He punished us for asking him to cut the film. [Laughs] It ended up being a very good movie, and it’s made money also.

Related: The First Woman to Head a Hollywood Studio Shares the 1 Thing You Need to Succeed (Video)

What about any impactful advice you could give to other studio heads and owners?

Ori: Movies are art, and when it comes to art, you can’t compromise on the creative. Movies should definitely have commercial appeal, but it’s important to make sure it doesn’t hurt the integrity of the movies.

Can you tell me about a challenge you overcame and what you learned from it?

Ori: The movie business is full of daily challenges. However, if you look at it as a challenge instead of looking at it as an additional task or another step in the process, you won’t be able to last long in the business. Every challenge and solution helps you achieve the final product that you’re aiming for.

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