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ooohhhh

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as someone who likes both Watchmen and One Piece… the simple but boring answer is that the Watchmenverse’s One Piece either wouldn’t exist at all or would be so different that it’d be unrecognizable. for a quick and relatively small example: no western superhero comics probably means no Super Sentai, which means that the Vinsmokes probably don’t exist.

but personally, in my headcanon? here’s what I think happens:

One Piece remains a relatively family-friendly shonen manga, and it’s about as big as My Hero Academia is in our world. (fitting, since MHA is clearly inspired by One Piece in a lot of ways, especially power systems). after all, pirate fans in the Watchmenverse have way more options for media than pirate fans in our world.

now, assuming that this timeline’s pirate comics follow a similar history to our world’s superhero comics, then the “Dark Age” should mostly be on its way out by the time One Piece debuts in 1997. (for reference, in our world Astro City began in ‘95, Kingdom Come was published in ‘96, and Morrison started writing JLA in ‘97). Watchmenverse One Piece is coming into a world where pirates have already been deconstructed and are now starting to be built back up again (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). so, it’s got the same overall tone but probably a radically different plot. maybe Gecko Moria is a bigger antagonist, depending on how influential Black Freighter was outside the States? I dunno

So this is minor, but if pirate comics are the dominant genre in American comics in the world of Watchmen, how do you think One Piece is recieved?

I can't begin to model it simply because of the anime-shaped hole in my awareness of the real-life pop-culture landscape. It's big in our world, and it isn't doing so as part of a larger wave of pirate media going gangbusters. I'm not totally sure how that translates.

Here's a hypothesis, though- maybe in the Watchmen universe the concept of superpowers could, between the debut of the Minutemen and prior to the debut of Doctor Manhattan, have been largely fictionally divested from the idea of superheroes, because unpowered, gadget-using badass normals are what captured the conceptual space before the fictional versions really got off the runway. You can then imagine that all the "mid-band" powers of the silver-age that otherwise might have been assigned to superheroes instead manifest within pirate comics via different yet familiar introductory tropes- potions, cursed treasures, magic fountains and the like.

Following this chain of logic, One Piece- with it's unified power systems and its setting engineered from the ground up to enable and facilitate pirate shenanigans- could possibly be filling a deconstructive niche in the Pirate-story ecosystem similar to that of Watchmen. Or, even more accurately, honing in on both the absurd length and the diegetic approach to the ubiquity of genre tropes, it could be the Watchmen setting's analogue to Worm.

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Hulk leaves the Avengers IN THE SECOND ISSUE OF THE ENTIRE SERIES, and he doesn’t really become a core member again until Hickman’s run in 2012 (the timing there when it comes to movie-synergy is def not a coincidence). even that status-quo doesn’t last super long what with Time Runs Out, and then after all that nonsense ends, he’s never on the team again.

he is apparently part of the New Avengers in Sam Humphries’ upcoming run, but you know who else is in the book? known serial-killer Carnage (yes, they’re currently doing a Dexter antihero thing, but in-universe Carnage is still wanted by the law). so even now, I don’t think that fully counts.

if anything, Hulk in the comics is more associated with everyone’s favorite non-team the Defenders, where he’s somehow NOT the most morally-problematic of the founders. after all, both Silver Surfer and Namor have, directly or indirectly, killed at minimum billions of people. meanwhile, gamma radiation in Marvel technically doesn’t kill you permanently… sometimes. so, really, what’s the harm?

Y’know, it’s kind of odd that Stark and Richards are the Marvel geniuses who the fans are always taking to task, given that Banner is right there. I mean maybe he’s just too obvious a target; but with all the discussions of “do we really want to raise up a tech billionaire as a hero?” it seems strange that there’s less discourse on how one of the foundational superheroes is an undisguised Robert Oppenheimer-alike.

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Comics This Week: Wed, June 18, 2025

SPOILERS for most comics discussed here

Aliens vs. Avengers #4: my biggest complaint for the miniseries as a whole is that it feels a bit rushed, but hey, there’s a lot of fun ideas and the art is great. I hope the sequel-hook gets followed up on eventually, hopefully with Hickman still writing it (Aliens vs. Marvel Zombies anybody?)

Avengers #27: this is fight-scene comics, pure and simple, executed to perfection. and the Mad Thinker’s plan is actually really clever; I like it a lot.

Bring On The Bad Guys: Doom #1: well, this sucked.

okay, that’s a bit unfair. as the first chapter of a boring ole regular storyline, it’s… competent. it sets up the premise well enough, and the art is kinda nice. but as a Doctor Doom story, released during a big Doom-centric crossover event… there’s nothing identifiable here. this could be about almost any magical villain (or hero for that matter, bc Doom doesn’t even do anything that morally-questionable here).

there’s no exploration of Doom’s backstory, his ideology, or his history with other characters! he’s not even wearing his One World Under Doom outfit, implying that this story is set BEFORE Blood Hunt (a weird choice that will 100% be contradicted by a later issue in this series, I guarantee it).

Hell, you’d think that, in a story where Doom faces off with Mephisto’s henchwoman, he’d reference his own traumatic history with Mephisto? something like “that demon trapped my mother in Hell for decades; I’ll make sure he can’t do the same to anyone else”? but that backstory isn’t mentioned at all. instead, we get character-shilling for Sister Sorrow, who feels like a Poochie if I’ve ever seen one.

anyway, I’ll keep up with the series, but only bc all but one of the other issues are being handled by much more interesting writers.

Emma Frost: The White Queen #1: it’s fine. nothing to write home about, and I can’t imagine it being very influential in the future. and that’s OK. not every comic needs to be great; you’re allowed to just be decent… even though there’s decent odds I’ll drop this series by complete accident.

Exquisite Corpses #2: I think one major problem with this series’ format is that all the killers are so cool that I get kinda disappointed when they die. it just feels like wasted potential to me.

anyway, as of this issue, I hope Lady Carolina wins, just because she’s got the most fleshed-out backstory. but ultimately, I hope the townsfolk win, bc they’re surprisingly well-characterized considering that they’re all almost certainly cannon-fodder.

The Great British Bump-Off: Kill or Be Quilt #3: this series is my first John Allison comic, and so far I’m liking it a lot. the characters are fun (especially Mabel, who gets introduced in this issue), and the art by Max Sarin is spectacular. if you like cozy mysteries, with an emphasis on the “cozy” over the “mystery”, then I highly recommend it.

the funniest panel in the series so far comes from this issue, btw:

Gwenpool #2: I haven’t read much of Cavan Scott’s work before, and the first issue of this new Gwenpool mini didn’t make a good impression on me. but, reading the second issue, I was reminded of a review I once read of his contribution to a 2018 Doctor Who anthology titled The Missy Chronicles. said review highlighted some of Scott’s *interesting* metaphors, including “a look that would wither Krynoids” and “I’ll gut you like a gumblejack”.

luckily, it’s been eight years since then, and surely Scott’s skills have improved in that time. surely.

…oh. oh no.

like in the first issue of this mini, all the character voices are off (especially Gwen Poole’s), the premise is boring and stupid, and, perhaps most damningly of all, there’s no hook yet besides that awful premise. why on Earth should we be invested in this awful story?

but then we get to the end, which had already been spoiled by the cover, but was still completely infuriating to read.

y’know, I’ve said some rude things about Scott so far, but I’ll give him this: he is clearly a clever writer — which is not the same as a smart writer.

see, a clever writer thinks, “ah, having Gwen Stacy kill someone else in an homage to a different famous fridging shows off my expert knowledge of genre tropes, especially combined with Gwen Poole’s meta-commentary narration.”

meanwhile, an actually smart writer thinks, “wait, is it a good idea to kill off Marvel’s most prominent asexual character DURING PRIDE MONTH, all to service the storylines of three straight characters? bc I don’t think that’s a good idea, even if Gwen Poole does end up being quickly resurrected. and also, being cute and meta with a problematic trope does not, in fact, mean it’s no longer a problematic trope.”

tl;dr Scott should’ve known better, but more than that editorial should’ve known better. this is the rare comic that I don’t just dislike, but outright despise.

Jeff the Land Shark #1: this works surprisingly well, considering the concept is being ported from an Infinite Canvas wordless webcomic to a physical floppy that needs to be made with page limits in mind. it’s cute, but I’m certain I’ll forget about it soon.

Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton #1: this is great. there’s a bit of decent social commentary on climate change (Krypton as a society is well-suited for that). I especially love how the lettering differentiates between what Krypto is actively hearing and what he isn’t. and we’ve got a nice solid hook for the next issue.

Moon Knight: Fist of Khonshu #9: “why does it always have to be you that takes the hit?” “because that’s what I’m for.” I’M FINE OKAY I’M FINE YOU’RE THE ONE THAT’S CRYING ACTUALLY 

Jed MacKay’s Moon Knight run continues to be uniformly excellent, and this issue is no exception. (and look, Devmalya Pramanik may not be as good a penciller as Alessandro Cappuchio, but really, who is? and Pramanik is quite good, for the record).

in the long run, if Marc really is addicted to pain (god, that could easily sound like such edgelord nonsense if it wasn’t done this well), I imagine his character arc in the long term is gonna pan out as either “Marc is now sober, but he understands that this is a struggle he’ll continue to face” OR “Marc pushes everyone away again in a Batman Incorporated-style downer-ending”. luckily, the former seems more likely to me.

Spider-Verse vs Venomverse #2: this is probably about as good as any comic with this title ever could be, and that’s the highest praise ever. everybody feels like themselves, the limited cast means more opportunities for character-development, there’s interesting conflict where everyone makes understandable choices, and the art is spectacular.

Ultimates #13: great issue. we get to check in on basically everyone on the team, the Red Skulls storyline gets a bit of development without being concluded, there’s a big reveal for Tony, and Janet is being a sneaky double-agent in the background. (I do think it’s interesting that the CEO of Roxxon is a completely original name, as opposed to Dario Agger or somebody, but I don’t expect anything to necessarily come of that).

the big question is “what exactly happened to Jim?” and I’m fairly confident that he’s going to be the Ultimate Vision. after all, we know that Wanda and Pietro will debut next month.

Vanishing Point #2: eh. maybe I’ve just gotten tired of Russell’s shtick after his mediocre X-Factor run, but this struck me as kinda average as far as Jetsons parodies go. there’s a hint of an interesting idea by having the two worlds overlapping at the end, but they’re don’t go far enough with it for my taste. the whole “it was all a dream” twist doesn’t quite work for me bc of the multiple scenes without the protagonist present, and the fact that it’s presented in the style of a Jetsons episode means that its status as a comic feels hamstrung.

I will say it’s damn impressive that both halves of the story were drawn by the same person; that’s versatility right there. I’ll keep an eye on Ryan Alexander-Tanner as an artist… but I think I’m done with Russell as a writer for now.

West Coast Avengers #8: I was curious how the series had been progressing, but instead I have more or less the same complaints that I’ve had since the first couple issues. Tony’s over-narration annoys me! Ultron and Stevil are used in extremely boring ways, and their voices just feel completely off! those are the main two, but they’re pretty big ones, so I don’t think I need a third example!

for more issue-specific problems… well, the horror of the Ultronized civilians doesn’t really come across well. this should be scary, but instead they feel like random hordes who could have come from anywhere. we’re told that there was a death-toll in the hundreds, but nothing ever comes across as particularly scary, especially not when Scorched-Ultron is cracking zingers about Wonder Man’s acting career.

I don’t care whether the joke is funny; I care about whether it fits the story at this particular moment. and this moment should theoretically be deadly serious.

(also, wasn’t the initial pitch of this series a supervillain work-release thing? like, “Suicide Squad but we treat it like it’s a good thing”? what happened? the only ex-villains on this team so far are Ultron and a completely new character. was Duggan not able to get the characters he wanted, so he decided to completely abandon the original premise?)

X-Men #18: good issue. I am more convinced than ever that the Chairman is Beast Prime, but I get that you might need to save that reveal for the biggest possible moment.

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so, it was just announced that Knull’s coming back for Venom #250, and I’m actually really excited.

first of all, it means that Ewing is going to get to further expand on the mythology of the King in Black and its connection to the Anti-All. bc ever since Venom War ended, I have wondered, “who exactly is the King in Black now? is Eddie not the King, or is he no longer able to tap into those powers despite still technically being the King?” and I’m guessing the answer is that Knull has retaken the role in the wake of Eddie being deposed. maybe the Celestials resurrected him, since the Eventuality claims that Knull was originally being recruited for the job?

secondly, Knull really is a cool visual… but he’s not yet a great character. like, the design’s great, he has an interesting place in the wider Marvel cosmology (in large part thanks to Ewing), and he’s definitely intimidating… but you can’t just have him take over the Earth and forcibly bond everyone to symbiotes AGAIN. it’s a good trick, but it’s just the one trick. so, if I had to guess, Knull will now be a fair bit weaker and more of an in-your-face threat.

there’s even some hints of this in the press release, between Knull directly holding VenoMJ down to the ground and the phrase “Knull rules over nothing”. yes, obviously that wording is ironic, because Knull is god of the void… but really think about it. the symbiote god-king is now without subjects for the first time in his life. what is that like for him? what is Knull’s psychology?

and finally, I’m excited because, on the off chance that Ewing does write Knull as just a generic cosmic baddie who wants to destroy the universe and will corrupt everyone else around him as he does it… Ewing has proven himself to be very good at writing in that mode before. so either way, there’s stuff to look forward to.

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hey, so have you guys read the Marvel Pride special from last week? because I did, and I have OPINIONS. (mostly positive ones, to be clear).

I’m mainly a Marvel reader, so that’s definitely part of why I liked this a lot more than I liked DC’s Pride special the previous week. but even besides that, I think actually having it as a strict anthology, as opposed to a weird quasi-anthology where the framing device keeps interrupting the individual stories, just works a lot better. I also appreciated having fewer, longer stories, as opposed to more extremely-short stories.

Al Ewing and Kei Zama’s story was definitely my favorite of the four (not a surprise considering Ewing’s my favorite comics writer). the characterization for Aaron and Shela feels very on-point, and it’s always good to know that Charlene McGowan’s doing OK. also, I loved Loki referencing the time Escapade met them as a child in Oliveira’s Avengers Academy. it was really sweet — especially since that story reframed a lot of Ewing’s Loki work for me (in a good way).

and the ending, where Escapade swaps with the Queen of Nevers? oh, that was brilliant. as the kind of nerd who noticed how the Fourth Cosmos was originally referred to as male before being revealed as the Queen of Nevers, seeing that subtext explicitly laid out there was wonderful. especially the bit about how the Journey Into Mystery is a journey into discovering who one truly is and has always been. (it was also very satisfying for her to kill Hitler’s ghost).

the Mystique story by Wyatt Kennedy and Bayleigh Underwood was very cute, but I don’t have much to say about it. one compliment I’ll give, though, is that it did a very good job bridging the gap between “sympathetic wife-guy who loves her kids Mystique” and “cold-hearted assassin Mystique”. not an easy task

the Sera/Black Cat story, written by Zoe Tunnell with art by Federica Mancin, was very good. in theory, I have no problem with Sera and Angela being broken up in the name of character-development, but in practice it’s essentially meant that one of Marvel’s few trans characters was completely absent for six years of publication (and it’s not like Angela even got that much to do in that time either). so seeing her back and set-up to reunite with Angela? fuck yeah! (at the very least, it’s nice that Marvel is still fine with using Angela, despite who her technical co-creator is). and Black Cat is also there, I guess!

and finally, Anthony Oliveira and Pablo Collar’s story about Arnie Roth… basically felt like a retread of what the same writer is already doing with that character in their (very excellent) Avengers Academy run. it’s fine, but it’s definitely the weakest story in the anthology.

all in all, I liked it a lot more than the wedding special last year. when it comes to Pride anthology, unless the whole thing is being done by one singular auteur, I prefer loose (potentially unintentional) overlapping themes between stories to explicit plot stuff. because there are points of overlap! the first story begins with the Queen of Nevers declaring that “dreams are binding”, which ties into Mystique’s dream in Story #2 and the D’Spayre-created visions in Story #3. both the first and last stories are about a Captain America fighting literal Nazis. etc.

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I am profoundly confused by DC deciding to adapt Tom King and Mitch Gerads’s Mister Miracle, of all things. I’m not mad, I like the comic, but I am… confused.

like, one of the supporting characters is Funky Flashman. if you’re an average person who just knows Stan Lee as “the cameo guy”, and you’re unaware of the let’s-be-nice-and-say-“complicated” history between him and Jack Kirby, a blatant Stan Lee parody being such an important character probably strikes you as kinda weird. why are Scott and Barda hanging out with a normal human who is profoundly sketchy?

and yes, ultimately Funky isn’t that important to the plot, but he’s a symptom of a larger issue. part of the whole joke of the 2017 mini (and it IS a joke, albeit a very dark one) is the juxtaposition between the big serious divine space war and the mundane down-to-Earth family drama, and how these two things are actually the same thing. the most obvious (and funniest) example of this is Darkseid eating from the veggie tray.

the comic generally expects that the reader is at least vaguely familiar with who most of these characters are, which allows King and Gerads to play off that foreknowledge. that’s why Darkseid eating from the veggie tray is funny, and it’s why Barda brutally killing Granny Goodness is scary.

but the average viewer of this adaptation probably doesn’t have that foreknowledge. so how is this going to play for them, when this is their first introduction to the characters?

anyway, it’ll probably be good enough. at bare minimum, I’ll be very happy if Orion’s less of a jackass and the Forever People get literally anything to do, but I’m not holding my breath for that.

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Beavis and Butt-Head go to Silent Hill

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the Sandman influence is definitely there, especially since a lot of the Dreaming supporting cast (Lucien, Cain & Abel, Eve) all started out as horror hosts before being brought back as part of Sandman.

I’ll add that there’s a bit of Grant Morrison in there too, which is kinda expected with any metatextual superhero comic written after Animal Man. the Oubor and the Gentry from Multiversity are very similar-feeling villains, though given the timing it might just be a coincidence. Morrison also has a mild fixation on music in their DC work, most obviously with Superman killing Darkseid in Final Crisis by singing. (and this may be a stretch, but: Morrison’s longtime rival Alan Moore semi-ironically worships the snake god Glycon. and the Broken Man fights a snake cult.)

so, I think he’s sort of meant to be a representation of the British Invasion of the 1990s and their “story is magic” deal as a whole, as opposed to just referencing Sandman. and he’s the personification of music specifically because it’s something that can never be fully embodied in the world of a superhero comic.

The Astro City issue with the guy talking about the 'Ourobor' and the alien doors ... but actually he's locked up in an insane asylum. What's that about? What cape trope is that in conversation with? I'm not very tapped into the history of comics.

My speculation was that it's about the 'secret world conspiracy' trope, especially since the next issue gives off massive Cauldron vibes.

At the time you sent this ask, I hadn't actually read that part of the revival run, so I had no clue what you were talking about. Sorry for the delay! I think the Broken Man is Astro City's loose spin on Morpheus from The Sandman- an anthropomorphic personification of a particular element of the zeitgeist, subject to a process of cyclical reincarnation, who, as the inciting element of the current story, was waylaid, crippled and imprisoned in an attempt to prevent him from fulfilling his intended role; he's also aware of, and capable of exploiting his own status as a metatextual, narrative-powered being in order to act as a host-slash-framing device in the vein of some of the older EC comics narrators.

More broadly he's a metatextual explanation for the entire premise of the comic- the reason Astro City almost exclusively focuses on weird edge-cases and underexamined corners of the superhero setting, while only giving periodic focus issues to the characters who would normally be the headliners in a normal superhero comic, is that when those headliners reach a certain level of prominence the Ourobor starts actively monitoring and subverting them, making it dangerous to spend too much time in their vicinity.

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I fucking hate that the general response to RFK Jr's eugenist take on autistic people is "autistic people do pay taxes, autistic people do work, autistic people do date!"

Some autistic people don't and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life. Some autistic people do need constant help and support and that shouldn't make them less worthy of life.

Once again we're falling in the right wing trap of :

They make a hateful, fascist statement

Instead of focusing on the fact that it is hateful and fascist we try to show them that they are factually wrong

We throw our own allies and the most vulnerable of us under the bus in the process

We legitimise an only slightly less hateful, fascist view as we go

They have completed their goal of making us accept the still hateful, fascist second version, hurrah. What a victory.

Right now what we're getting to with that is that autistic people who can work and pay taxes are okay, and the others aren't. Fuck this shit.

Same thing happens with the people who are being deported ("they have a visa!", "they didn't even have a criminal record!" -> even if they didn't have a visa, even if they did have a criminal record, deporting them and detaining them in what's essentially a concentration camp wouldn't be okay, you absolute tools of fascism.)

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I had this dream recently, where it’s the Last Supper, and Jesus says, “one of you will betray me”, and then he suddenly gets blasted into atoms from out of nowhere. and I hear the words “OH, NO! JESUS IS DEAD! WHICH MEANS THAT I, STARSCREAM, AM THE NEW SON OF GOD!”