danieladkinsblog

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As comic book readers we kinda gotta separate in our minds things we want to be canon to the mainline comics vs. concepts we want to see explored in elseworlds or fanfics.

Like I’ll be looking at my favorite characters and I’m like, I wish you had an easy life full of comfort and nothing bad even happened to you…. But you’re also a character in a comic book so shits gotta be really dramatic sometimes so the book sells and they’ll make more stories with you lol.

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todays my birthday and i only have like $7 rn

if you happen to have a few extra dollars please give them to me. thank you

paypal / cashapp

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The last time I really, truly, deeply cared about Superman.

We had a future stolen from us.

Managed to fit in a quick drawing for Superman Day! Woo! :D

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"Contradiction" - a short Transformers comic

Inspired by @thewadapan's call to action in his concluding essay for the @transformers-mosaic archival project, here's an original Mosaic-style strip! Hope you enjoy, and check after the break for commentary!

The secret origin of this comic is that on the last day of TFNation 2024, my pal and longtime TFN roomie Wadapan dropped a concluding essay for his project archiving the entirety of the Transformers: Mosaic short-form fan-comic project. Sunday night goes pretty late at TFN, and gone midnight, many rum'n'cokes deep, I wound up reading Wads' words on my phone in bed while he was brushing his teeth a few metres away.

At the end of the article, he called upon the reader to create their own one-page comic, and inspiration genuinely wound up striking me there in bed! I successfully remembered the idea in the morning, wrote a script on my notes app on the train home, and then scrawled a tiny thumbnail layout for the comic on a post-it when I got home. I then... let five months get away from me. But now I've deployed my (foolish) vector illustration platform of choice, Microsoft PowerPoint, and made the damn thing!

Some director's commentary:

So obviously the big influences here are Budiansky’s take on Headmastering, The Rebirth’s partnering of Arcee and Daniel, and IDW1 Arcee’s story (and swords). I figure it takes place in a unique continuity amalgamating elements of all three. The Budiansky Headmaster material is all about “wouldn’t it be fucked up if a human had to take on the role of a robot and fight in the robot war?”, really focusing on the humans literally having to be their partners. Since Marvel is largely Just Blokes though, that never extends to anyone having to embody a robot with a different gender presentation, while the cartoon has Arcee and Daniel partnered, but doesn’t really touch on the psychology of Headmastering at all. So take “what if Arcee and Daniel partnered under Marvel rules?”, add Arcee’s transness from modern fiction, and your get Danielle realising something about herself!

The phrasing “from the diary of” is, I think, probably inspired by the “From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker” tagline used on the earliest Star Wars novels – I had a beat-up old copy of the SW77 novelisation from a car-boot sale as a kid that I loved.

The shapes in the first three panels are largely drawn as polygons, while Danielle is drawn mostly using smooth curves!

Here’s the incredibly rough post-it note thumbnail I drew last year:

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YAPPER ‼️

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i have a theory that any franchise that lasts long enough eventually becomes incestuous and ends up eating its own tail, thematically. stories in these franchises can only ever comment on themselves

i think a lot about what alan moore said about his work on the killing joke, about how hollow it is in hindsight since the theme really just boils down to "batman and the joker are kinda similar when you think about it", which i suppose is a pretty novel observation, certainly changes the way i read batman comics, but what is there in that insight for me as a human being living in the real world that i can apply to my actual life? not a whole lot. all it can do is reward emotional investment in the brand of batman. if you don't really give a shit about batman there's nothing there for you.

the disney era of star wars is especially bad about this. by and large they're really just about our relationship to star wars. even the last jedi, which tries to be a little more critical about it, still can't break out of the thematic black hole the franchise has become. andor is possibly the only exception to this, and i steadfastly believe that was a total fluke. don't get it twisted, andor is good despite its connection to star wars, not because of it, and if it were just an original tv show about resisting space fascism, it would probably be better for it (if less popular). we're all lowkey dreading the second season bc we know that no star wars property can resist devolving into a nostalgia wank fest forever

there's nothing inherently wrong with hollow entertainment, but i do think there's something grotesque about pumping the gdp of a small nation into an entertainment product that doesn't aspire to be anything more than an advertisement for itself

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Most of us don't like to look down.

It's how we're kept under control. Most can't stand seeing chrome where there should be skin. The eternal near-hunger is worse in the first few weeks after the augmentation but one adapts to it quickly. There's a dozen little nudges like that that all work to push your desire toward a single overriding goal.

Reclaiming our humanity.

I want mine back, too, but my desires are still my own. In my mind I never had a body. I was a perspective with hands. My reflection never interested me. When I saw myself in my mind, I was just a abstract person-like shape, only as detailed as child's self-portrait.

Chrome, seen or unseen, doesn't bother me. Nor does my mission.

The choices in my design, however, those I resent.

The living armor would have bound to us whole. It would have functioned without making us a part of itself. The hunger and feelings of confinement could have been simply turned off with a flip of a switch.

They could have given us fingers.

The impulses that would have driven us mad in our palandanium prisons were shut off easily. I cannot feel boredom. The constant hissing of my respirator systems feels like breathing with my old lungs. My more primal passions were subdued. Why then did I still feel the need to pop joints I don't have? Why was my absent mouth always slightly dry?

The answer is obvious. They didn't want their knights to become lords. They made us to frighten demons and were shocked to find us frightening to themselves. So they made us addicted to our humanity and hold it hostage. To keep us from becoming kings they tried to make us into dogs starved for the hunt.

But in the un-boredom of deep space, I did not dream of the warm embrace of living flesh or the taste of wine in the summer as did so many of my comrades. I turned my mind inward to quiet, unseen ends.

I found my switches.

The elders engineered magnificently. Without their shackles I am the perfect machine or retribution they envisioned. The demons I once feared, on this world, now fear me.

Those cackling bloated abominations that gleefully call themselves Dire Wraiths pretended to be devils, but when unseen hands tear their witch-mother's acid barbed tongue from her mouth in front of their eyes, their truth was revealed. I saw sniveling, pathetic, fragile creatures who die in fear and confusion, no different than any other strain of talking meat.

They were not the demons I had been sent to banish. They were parasites supping at the power of greater beings, servile insects who mewled and worshiped greater evils like the vile, black star at the heart of their dark nebula. When they see power and cruelty, they worship.

I have both in excess. They see nothing else.

Yet unseen, I see their true nature and my own. I am not the king the elders feared they would create.

I am Unam.

I am the Unseen.

I was a Spaceknight of Galador.

To the Dire Wraiths on this world I am the God of Death.

What kind of god will I be when I return home?

That remains Unseen.

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Nova & Star-Lord being two different flavors of tragic veterans under Abnett & Lanning really sticks with me.

Pete’s been serving for so long that all the hard stuff is commonplace, but he’s tired and desperate for an ending. Rich had enough really bad shellshocks and was forced to change so fast it isolated him from almost everyone he knew.

Both of them only find community amongst their fellow soldiers against Annihilation.

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$50,000 immediately dropped into my bank account wouldn't improve EVERYTHING but boy it sure would be a grand, sexy little start to a good, happy life path, don't you think

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hey so trashling on instagram/tiktok is doing a trilogy of zines supporting palestine and the first one is out - it's a fun guide to classical literature!

as of this post there are currently 36 physical copies left, but there are digital versions available and 100% of those proceeds go to charity

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Reblog In 5 seconds for good luck

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Started to read Nova Classis, he's really silly, in a way Sam and him are really similar when they'd just get their powers

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This has been a public service announcement

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So has your roommate already had lunch then or

(pt. 1)

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☆ - ̗̀✨ He's just Ken ✨ ̖́- ☆

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Smoke break. Richard had a long, hard day.

Art by my request by @lem_lemon_ka on Twitter.

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