#Comics Creator Network

[noodler1]

Ramen Noodles #117 [OC]

[mrkapao]

Come and connect with your fellow TTRPG folks during San Diego Comic-Con 2024 at the 'Creators Assemble: Charisma Check' event on Saturday (July 27th) at 6PM to 8PM PST at Marina D in the Marriott Marquis.

I'll be there as one of the featured TTRPG Performers and Creators!

[jeremywhitley]

Here's a rundown of the first half of the stories and creators including details about the creators and images from each and every story!

Genre: Educational

Writer: Jeremy Whitley (My Little Pony, Unstoppable Wasp)

One of the Editors of Aces & Aros. Find full bio in "Creative Team" Section of the Kickstarter page.

Artist: Bailie Rosenlund

Bailie Rosenlund ; a graduate of Sheridan's Illustration program in Oakville, ON, Canada; is an award-winning illustrator located in Vancouver, Canada. She is currently working as a Comic Artist on Marvel Voices: Avengers Academy. She recently illustrated the comic Hero Outage: An Epic NPC Man Adventure. Previous clients include: Marvel, DC, Bad Egg, Dreamworks, Warner Bros, Cartoon Network, Apple, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Restoration Games.

Instagram | Website

Colorist: Kelly Fitzpatrick (Archie)

Kelly Fitzpatrick is a professional colorist who has been working full-time for over 10 years in the industry. Their client list includes Marvel, DC, Archie, Darkhorse, and Image Comics; as well as many other indie publishers.

Genre: Slice of Life

Writers: Phil Falco & Kat Calamia (Lifeline Comics)

Two of the Editors of Aces & Aros. See full bios in "Creative Team" Section of the Kickstarter page.

Artist: Valeria Peri

Valeria Peri (she/her) is a freelance comic book artist from Italy. She graduated from the Art Academy, A.C.M.E. of Milan with specialization in comics. Valeria has published two short stories with a local publisher and is now working as a freelance artist.

Genre: Fantasy

Writer: Derek V. Song

Derek V. Song is an Asian American writer known for his work on the WEBTOON adaptation of Dimension 20's Fantasy High. When not writing, he can be found anxiously staring at the wall, trying to decide what to write next.

Bluesky | Website

Artist: Alex Brennan-Dent

Alex Brennan-Dent is a prizewinning queer comic artist, illustrator and all-round nerd from the UK; who can either be found making videos over on his YouTube channel, or at his desk working on various (usually fruity) comic projects!

Genre: Poetry/Slasher

Writer: Sarah "Neila" Elkins

Sarah "Neila" Elkins is an asexual writer and artist who's worked in the comics industry since 2008. She loves scifi, fantasy, horror, and mystery. She has a from of chronic ossifying tennis elbow.

Bluesky | Mastodon

Artist: Feriowind

Feriowind is a Taiwanese-American illustrator and creature and comic artist who has previously worked on Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs Titanosaurus.

Genre: Spy

Writer: Cici Affini

Cici Affini (She/Her) is a demisexual comic book writer best known for “MythFall.” She was featured in the “Oxymoron: Killing Time” anthology and wrote the prose short “Thin Ice” for the Chimeranverse Tales collection. She is one fourth of creator-owned indie publisher Attic Door Media and a member of the ComixLaunch community.

Substack | Instagram | Bluesky | Facebook

Artist: Mauricio Mora (HAUNTING, Damsel from D.I.S.T.R.E.S.S.)

Mau Mora is a comic artist and illustrator from Costa Rica who loves fantasy, action and drama. After several years of working as an artist for indie video games projects, he started to make his way into his true passion, comics, and in particular, creator-owned projects. Some of his most recent projects include the sci-fi thriller "The Game, spy/fantasy "Damsel from D.I.S.T.R.E.S.S.", horror drama "HAUNTING", cyberpunk/superhero "Xolotl" and the Comixology Original sci-fi adventure, "Major Thomás". In the meantime, he's also started working on writing his own projects, soon to come! He lives in Costa Rica with his much more talented comic artist wife, and their two very dumb cats.

Genre: Slice of Life

Writer/Artist: Emily C. Martin

Emily C. Martin is a comic artist, illustrator, printmaker and teacher based in Sonoma County, California. On the internets, they are known as Megamoth, and found mostly through www.megamoth.net. 

Website

Genre: Video Game Comedy

Writer: Suzanne Wdowik

Suzanne Wdowik is a writer and aspiring math teacher from metro Detroit. She has previously been published in the Eisner-nominated anthology SENSORY: LIFE ON THE SPECTRUM (Andrews McMeel) and the horror anthology IN THE NECK OF THE WOODS (Greykin Press).

Instagram | Bluesky

Artist: Yonson Carbonell

Yonson Carbonell (he/him) is a  freelance comic artist and illustrator based in the Dominican Republic, has work with Plague Doctor press, Alpha eve, kofi, and more. He's currently working on his personal comic project Hooligans (free to read on his Kofi and webtoons). When not working you can find him watching anime, playing video games or with his pets.

Website | Instagram | Twitter

Genre: Slice of Life

Writer: CC Mooney

CC is a Canadian writer and editor. This is their first work in comics and they're super excited about the opportunity!

Bluesky

Artist: Gib Lewis

Gib Lewis (they/them) is an Iowa born and raised graphic novelist with a passion for telling interpersonal stories. They are primarily a YA creator and are currently working on their own graphic novel, an early 2000s paranormal mystery tale.

Twitter | Bluesky

Genre: Historical

Writer: Logan Noack

Logan Noack is a comic writer best known for his ongoing webcomic, The Witch's Thrall. This is his first published work and he hopes more will follow.

Bluesky

Artist: Ornella Greco

Ornella Greco is a cartoonist and freelance illustrator from Italy. She studied in Palermo, Sicily at the Grafimated Cartoon-School of Comics and finished her studies in 2019. After she graduated, she began working for various publishers in the American and French comics industry, on such works as the acclaimed Dragon Kingdom of Wrenly series from Little Simon, Star Trek: Picard’s Academy with IDW Publishing, and more.

Instagram

Genre: Fantasy Romance

Writer: Bwillett

Bwillett, disabled biroace comics gremlin and Webcomics Old One. When not juggling multiple webcomics, she enjoys building models, being very Opinionated about toys, cross stitching and dealing with her screaming goblin of a dog, Duchess.

Bluesky | Mastodon | Website

Artist: Zuzanna Lewandowska (Bi Visibility: Still Bi, Hairology)

Zuza is an illustrator and comic enthusiast from Poland who is a huge fan of interesting stories, complicated characters and art in general. Their ambition is to one day publish their own comic.

Instagram

Genre: Slice of Life

Writer: C.K. Carpenter

C.K. Carpenter is a queer disabled writer who most recently co-edited (and contributed a story to) the unSEEN/unHEARD: Disability & Neurodivergence anthology, published by Unseen Alchemy Publishing. Other recent works include short comics in Transphoria by Lifeline Comics and Down Below by Limit Break Comics. They also edited, published, and contributed a story to Scott Snyder Presents Tales from the Cloakroom v1. Their stories tend to center on queer characters or characters with disabilities.

Twitter | Bluesky

Artist: Sam Alegre / Darkjellyfish

Sam (they/them) is an agender illustrator from the Dominican Republic. Their artwork usually shows experiences as a nonbinary individual, appealing to a young audience. In their artwork, they explore self-discovery, mental health, and self-expression. Sam currently works as a graphic designer and children’s book illustrator. They also enjoy playing with their pets and roller skating.

Instagram | Behance

Please jump in and support the anthology and help us tell comics stories by, for, and about ace and aro folks! And look out for the next post with the other half of the stories!

[pumpkinpuffgirls]

NOTE: THE ABOVE IMAGE IS AN EDIT BY ME, NOT A SCREENSHOT OF THE SCENE

Crisis on Infinite Mirths - PPG Creator, Craig McCracken asked development team if the original Bubbles could beat up the "New One"

At the recent San Diego Comic Con showing of the new Jellystone special, one of the writers spoke to fans. Saying that they often communicated with the original creators of the series they used for the crossover, including Powerpuff Girl Creator, Craig McCracken.

On stage he said that in a note given to them by Craig, "Can you please have the original Bubbles beating up the new Bubbles somewhere?" To which they cheerfully agreed. In a chaotic fight scene, in the background they hid a part where 1998 Bubbles whacks 2016 Bubbles on the head.

Since the CN Latin America commercial, this is the 2nd time the 2016 series has been depicted in a negative light by official CN content. This time specifically requested by the series creator himself. It's understandable, a large part of why 2016 was the way it was, was because Cartoon Network didn't want to wait for Craig's contract with Disney over Wander Over Yonder to end. Going ahead without him. Craig didn't make 2016, and it's reasonable to believe that he may harbor some sour feelings for how CN handled his brainchild.

Unfortunately no clip of the scene is available online at the moment, as the only clips we have right now come from the Comic Con showing. We will likely have to wait until Jellystone: Crisis on Infinite Mirths releases on tv and streaming services to get a clip of the scene.

Reminder, I am not a news source, but did my best to report on this and source what I could

No effects version of the image

Original screenshot

[emeraldcity1900]

the history of animation in a nutshell

Early 1900s: hey what if comic strips could like move?

Late 1910s early 1920s hey what if we mashed this up with live action people?

late 1920s: hey what if this thing had sound?

Early to mid 1930s: hey what if this had people actually talking and also color?

late 1930s: hey you know that super cool movie that one lady animated with paper cut out silhouettes? What if we did that with painted cells? Would people even pay to see that? Never mind it turns out the answer is yes.

1940s: ah shit most of our animators got drafted and/or hate us now cause we weren’t paying them. IT’S PROPAGANDA TIME BABY. Also haha hitler got hit with a mallet and also the most racist depictions of Japanese people ever.

1950s to 1960s : oh what’s this newfangled thing? Television? What if you could air cartoons on it? Oh fuck no I ain’t paying that much to get the charecters to have different backgrounds and for the charecters to like, move fluidly. Also manga and anime are steadily growing more popular.

1970s: (Ralph Bakshi walks into a comics store and finds a furry comic) X rated animated movie? *cue the screams of mothers and their unsuspecting children now being introduced to the revolutionary idea that cartoons don’t equal kids stuff? WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO?

1980s to 1990s: we can have full on animated Broadway musicals? Wait, what do you mean animated movies can count for the Oscar’s? What do you mean now they get their own catagory because the academy still thinks their for babies? Anime and manga are taking off in the west. SWEET JESUS WHAT DRUGS ARE THE JAPANESE ON SHOWING THIS SHIT TO KIDS. But also why is it so fucking good. Maybe some of these aren’t even meant for kids? Wait We can sell toys to kids with cartoons? Wait we can actually put effort into these cartoons on television? The fuck to you mean we can animate in 3D now? What do you mean we can have well animated, well written sitcom shows like the simpsons? What do you mean you can make cartoon charecters say fuck? What drugs are creators at Nickelodeon on? Do I even want to know?

2000s: oh my god, there is this one show that I really like cause it’s really well written and genuinely funny but I can’t talk about it because it’s animated and we all know cartoons are for babies right? Oh look it’s the transformers movie, look how far CGI has evolved so we can make the transformers in a movie.

2010s: holy shit I know these shows are for kids but they’re just well written and have so much meaningful things to say about the world. Wait, it’s cool to like cartoons now? They they have fandoms for this? Fuck yeah I’m in. (Enters one of the most notoriously toxic fandoms of all time) THEY HAVE GAY PEOPLE IN THESE SHOWS NOW? AND COMPLEX EMOTIONAL STORYTELLING? AND ADULT ANIMATED SHOWS CAN BE MORE THAN JUST SITCOMS WITH THE SAME JOKES AND STYLE? WHY IS IT THAT EVERY DISNEY CARTOON SINCE GRAVITY FALLS INCLUDE THINGS THAT GET MORE AND MORE FUCKED UP? WHY DO I FUCKING LOVE IT? WHY THE FUCK DID DISNEY DO THE OWL HOUSE DIRTY LIKE THAT?

2020s: I got this show I wanna pitch but it dosen’t fit into any box that the networks want and also I’m afraid that they’ll just randomly cancel it before I can finish the story I want to tell. Wait, I can just post the pilot on my YouTube channel, see if anybody actually likes this thing I made and just make the show independently? FUCK THE NETWORK! I AM THE NETWORK

[thatshadowcomic]

Metal sonic in my AU

idk why I did this I don't really plan on exploring metal much, but I have some HC ideas. I could see a nice comic about his slow decline and attempted escape from eggman.

Shadow and Omega want to save Metal:

I wonder if much of metal's thoughts would fall to "why bother" and a feeling of hopelessness and accepting his circumstances. Maybe he would have forgotten himself all together...He was a copy of Sonic's personalty, during sonic's younger years, so it's kinda disturbing to consider how his tween brain would have been altered.

I don't think he would understand Shadow and Omega's want to free him--It's weird to feel like someone is going out of their way to help you when you feel there's no point.

Eggman's relationship:

Over the 2000s eggman started warming up to his creations, so one line of thinking might be eggman's relationship with his creations becoming more complicated, given his advancement of AI/machine learning. He made machines that argued with him, and thats very telling.

What if metal is finally freed and forgives his creator, unlike omega? What if he willingly chooses to return to eggman? Imagine the impact that might have on the Doctoir--of course, he would never say that it warmed his heart, but that would be the moment he started veiwing his creations are his legacy: his children...

Do you think Eggman would have secretly allowed Metal to escape the network, but be in denial of it? I think metal would struggle a lot, trying to adjust to his sudden ability to control everything. Who knows maybe his code doesnt even have all that figured out and he needs the network AI to figure it out. Im sure tails could help him.

I think Omega and Metal would be friends. I think Shadow would be happy and fulfilled by either end (metal staying with GUN or returning to eggman).

[fandomtrumpshate]

By the Numbers: halfway through the signup window edition!

That's right, signups for FTH 2025 have been open for a week, and what a week it has been! In 7 days we've had MORE signups than we did when we closed signups in 2024 … but not quite as many as we had after we re-opened for 4 hours to see whether or not we could crack that 1000 signup barrier.

We expected a big year, and you're definitely delivering!

So, what are the actual numbers?

756 creators have signed up to offer 1020 auctions in 117 listed fandoms and 214 write-in fandoms. And there's a WEEK to go!

A couple of quick breakdowns on the offers we have so far:

Types of written fanwork:

660 fan fiction (new) 170 fan fiction (remix of an existing fic) 36 meta/analysis 32 fan poetry 23 other written fanwork

Types of fan art:

33 banner 53 book cover 29 comic 125 drawing/painting/etc 5 gifset 26 icon(s) 8 moodboard 8 photo manip

And over in our supported orgs, creators *overwhelmingly* are leaving the decision to their bidders. That said, the umbrella category heads up the list when creators weighed in on which orgs to support. The rest of the list shakes out like this:

Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights Middle East Children’s Alliance Freedom to Read Foundation Disability Law United Crips for eSims for Gaza Global Project Against Hate And Extremism Hope for Ukraine Environmental Integrity Project Never Again Action In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda National Network to End Domestic Violence Fight for the Future Education Fund Bellingcat Congo Leadership Initiative

So that's where we are at 7 days in to our 2-week-long signup window. Where will we be on Feb 2? We suspect it will be over our 2024 total and into new record territory. It's a terribly exciting journey — and there's still plenty of time to join us!

Signups are OPEN!

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The Radio Times magazine from the 29 July-04 August 2023 :)

THE SECOND COMING

How did Terry Pratchett and Neil gaiman overcome the small matter of Pratchett's death to make another series of their acclaimed divine comedy?

For all the dead authors in the world,” legendary comedy producer John Lloyd once said, “Terry Pratchett is the most alive.” And he’s right. Sir Terry is having an extremely busy 2023… for someone who died in 2015.

This week sees the release of Good Omens 2, the second series of Amazon’s fantasy comedy drama based on the cult novel Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman in the late 1980s. This will be followed in the autumn by a new spin-off book from Pratchett’s Discworld series, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, co-written by Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and children’s author Gabrielle Kent. The same month, we’ll also get A Stroke of the Pen, a collection of “lost” short stories written by Sir Terry for local newspapers in the 70s and 80s and recently rediscovered. Clearly, while there are no more books coming from Pratchett – a hard drive containing all drafts and unpublished work was crushed by a vintage steamroller shortly after the author’s death, as per his specific wishes – people still want to visit his vivid and addictive worlds in new ways.

Good Omens 2 will be the first test of how this can work. The original book started life as a 5,000-word short story by Gaiman, titled William the Antichrist and envisioned as a bit of a mashup of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books and the 70s horror classic The Omen. What would happen, Gaiman had mused, if the spawn of Satan had been raised, not by a powerful American diplomat, but by an extremely normal couple in an idyllic English village, far from the influence of hellish forces? He’d sent the first draft to bestselling fantasy author Pratchett, a friend of many years, and then forgotten about it as he busied himself with continuing to write his massively popular comic books, including Violent Cases, Black Orchid and The Sandman, which became a Netflix series last year.

Pratchett loved the idea, offering to either buy the concept from Gaiman or co-write it. It was, as Gaiman later said, “like Michelangelo phoning and asking if you want to paint a ceiling” The pair worked on the book together from that point on, rewriting each other as they went and communicating via long phone calls and mailed floppy discs. “The actual mechanics worked like this: I would do a bit, then Neil would take it away and do a bit more and give it back to me,” Pratchett told Locus magazine in 1991. “We’d mess about with each other’s bits and pieces.”

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – to give it its full title –was published in 1990 to huge acclaim. It was one of, astonishingly, five Terry Pratchett novels to be published that year (he averaged two a year, including 41 Discworld novels and many other standalone works and collaborations).

It was also, clearly, extremely filmable, and studios came knocking — though getting it made took a while. rnvo decades on from its writing, four years after Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's disease aged 66, and after several doomed attempts to get a movie version off the ground, Good Omens finally made it to TV screens in 2019, scripted and show-run by Gaiman himself. "Terry was egging me on to make it into television. He knew he was dying, and he knew that I wouldn't start it without him," Gaiman revealed in a 2019 Radio Times interview. Amazon and the BBC co-produced with Pratchett's company Narrativia and Gaiman's Blank Corporation production studios, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant cast in the central roles of Aziraphale the angel and Crowley the demon. The show was a hit, not just with fans of its two creators, but with a whole new young audience, many of whom had no interest in Discworld or Sandman. Social media networks like Tumblr and TikTok were soon awash with cosplay, artwork and fan fiction. The original novel became, for the first time, a New York Times bestseller.

A follow up was, on one level, a no-brainer. The world Pratchett and Gaiman had created was vivid, funny and accessible, and Tennant and Sheen had found an intriguing romantic spark in their chemistry not present in the novel.

There was, however, a huge problem. There wasn't a second Good Omens book to base it on. But there was the ghost of an idea.

In 1989, after the book had been sold but before it had come out, the two authors had laid on fivin beds in a hotel room at a convention in Seattle and, jet-lagged and unable to sleep, plotted out, in some detail, what would happen in a sequel, provisionally titled 668, The II Neighbour of the Beast.

"It was a good one, too" Gaiman wrote in a 2021 blog. "We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published, Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD(TM) and there wasn't a good time."

Back in 1991, Pratchett elaborated, "We even know some of the main characters in it. But there's a huge difference between sitting there chatting away, saying, 'Hey, we could do this, we could do that,' and actually physically getting down and doing it all again." In 2019, Gaiman pillaged some of those ideas for Good Omens series one (for example, its final episode wasn't in the book at all), and had left enough threads dangling to give him an opening for a sequel. This is the well he's returned to for Good Omens 2, co-writing with comic John Finnemore - drafted in, presumably, to plug the gap left Pratchett's unparalleled comedic mind. No small task.

Projects like Good Omens 2 are an important proving ground for Pratchett's legacy: can the universes he conjured endure without their creator? And can they stay true to his spirit? Sir Terry was famously protective of his creations, and there have been remarkably few adaptations of his work considering how prolific he was. "What would be in it for me?" he asked in 2003. "Money? I've got money."

He wanted his work treated reverently and not butchered for the screen. It's why Good Omens and projects like Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch are made with trusted members of the inner circle like Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett at the helm. It's also why the author's estate, run by Pratchett's former assistant and business manager Rob Wilkins, keeps a tight rein on any licensed Pratchett material — it's a multi-million dollar media empire still run like a cottage industry.

And that's heartening. Anyone who saw BBC America's panned 2021 Pratchett adaptation The Watch will know how badly these things can go when a studio is allowed to run amok with the material without oversight. These stories deserve to be told, and these worlds deserve to be explored — properly. And there are, apparently, many plans afoot for more Pratchett on the screen. You can only hope that, somewhere, he'll be proud of the results.

After all, as he wrote himself, "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."

While those ripples continue to spread, Sir Terry Pratchett remains very much alive. MARC BURROWS

DIVINE DUO

An angel and a demon walk into a pub... Michael Sheen and David Tennant on family, friendship and Morecambe & Wise

Outside it's cold winter's day and we're in a Scottish studio, somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But inside it's lunchtime in The Dirty Donkey pub in the heart of London, with both Michael Sheen and David Tennant surveying the scene appreciatively. "This is a great pub," says Sheen eagerly, while Tennant calls it "the best Soho there can be. A slightly heightened, immaculate, perfect, dreamy Soho."

Here, a painting of the absent landlord — the late Terry Pratchett, co-creator, with Neil Gaiman, of the series' source novel — looms over punters. Around the corner is AZ Fell and Co Antiquarian and Unusual Books. It's the bookshop owned by Sheen's character, the angel Aziraphale, and the place to where Tennant's demon Crowley is inevitably drawn.

It's day 74 of an 80-day shoot for a series that no one, least of all the leading actors, ever thought would happen, due to the fact that Pratchett and Gaiman hadn't ever published any sequel to their 1990 fantasy satire. Tennant explains, "What we didn't know was that Neil and Terry had had plots and plans..."

Still, lots of good things are in Good Omens 2, which expands on the millennia-spanning multiverse of the first series. These include a surprisingly naked side of John Hamm, and roles for both Tennant's father-in-law (Peter Davison) and 21-year-old son Ty. At its heart, though, remains the brilliant banter between the two leading men — as Sheen puts it, "very Eric and Ernie !" — whose chemistry on the first series led to one of the more surprising saviours of lockdown telly.

Good Omens is back — but you've worked together a lot in the meantime. Was there a connective tissue between series one of Good Omens and Staged, your lockdown sitcom?

David: Only in as much as the first series went out, then a few months later, we were all locked in our houses. And because of the work we'd done on Good Omens, it occurred that we might do something else. I mean, Neil Gaiman takes full responsibility for Staged. Which, to some extent, he's probably right to do!

Michael: We've got to know each other through doing this. Our lives have gotten more entwined in all kinds of ways — we have children who've now become friends, and our families know each other.

There have been hints of a romantic storyline between the two characters. How much of an undercurrent is that in this series.

David: Nothing's explicit.

Michael: I felt from the very beginning that part of what would be interesting to explore is that Aziraphale is a character, a being, who just loves. How does that manifest itself in a very specific relationship with another being? Inevitably, as there is with everything in this story, there's a grey area. The fact that people see potentially a "romantic relationship", I thought that was interesting and something to explore.

There was a petition to have the first series banned because of its irreverent take on Christian tropes. Series two digs even more deeply into the Bible with the story of Job. How much of a badge of honour is it that the show riles the people who like to ban things?

David: It's not an irreligious show at all. It's actually very respectful of the structure of that sort of religious belief. The idea that it promotes Satanism [is nonsense]. None of the characters from hell are to be aspired to at all! They're a dreadful bunch of non-entities. People are very keen to be offended, aren't they? They're often looking for something to glom on to without possibly really examining what they think they're complaining about.

Michael, you're known as an activist, and you're in the middle of Making BBC drama The Way, which "taps into the social and political chaos of today's world". Is it important for you to use your plaform to discuss causes you believe in?

Michael: The Way is not a political tract, it's just set in the area that I come from. But it has to matter to you, doesn't it? More and more as I get older, [I find] it can be a real slog doing this stuff. You've got to enjoy it. And if it doesn't matter to you, then it's just going to be depressing.

David, Michael has declared himself a "not-for-profit" actor. Has he tried to persuade you to give up all your money too?

David: What an extraordinary question! One is always aware that one has a certain responsibility if one is fortunate and gets to do a job that often doesn't feel like a job. You want to do your bit whenever you can. But at the same time, I'm an actor. I'm not about to give that up to go into politics or anything. But I'll do what I can from where I live.

Well, your son and your father-in-law are also starring in this series. How about that, jobs for the boys!

David: I know! It was a delight to get to be on set with them. And certainly an unexpected one for me. Neil, on two occasions, got to bowl up to me and say, "Guess who we've cast?!"

How do you feel about your US peers going on strike?

David: It's happening because there are issues that need to be addressed. Nobody's doing this lightly. These are important issues, and they've got to be sorted out for the future of our industry. There's this idea that writers and actors are all living high on the hog. For huge swathes of our industry, that's just not the case. These people have got to be protected.

Michael: We have to be really careful that things don't slide back to the way they were pre the 1950s, when the stories that we told were all coming from one point of view and the stories of certain people, or communities within our society, weren't represented. There's a sense that now that's changed for ever and it'll never go back. But you worry when people can't afford to have the opportunities that other people have. We don't want the story that we tell about ourselves to be myopic. You want it to be as inclusive as possible

Staged series 3 recently broadcast. It felt like the show's last hurrah — or is there more mileage? Sheen and Tennant go on holiday?

David: That's the Christmas special! One Foot in the Algarve! On the Buses Go to Spain!

Michael: I don't think we were thinking beyond three, were we?

So is it time for a conscious uncoupling for you two — Eric and Ernie say goodbye?

David: Oh, never say never, will we?

Michael: And it's more Hinge and Bracket.

David: Maybe that's what we do next — The Hinge and Bracket Story. CRAIG McLEAN

[an-ectoplasmic-energy-blast]

Danny Phantom is the only fandom I’m really invested in, so I’m a little ignorant, but are there any other fandoms like this?

In my mind the Danny Phantom fandom is unique for a few reasons:

1) Fans thoroughly reject parts of the canon and the creator but still love the core material. They don’t just criticize the later seasons like Game of Thrones fans do, it’s common to literally reject pieces of canon completely. The rejection of canon actually fuels creativity.

2) Danny Phantom is a three season children’s cartoon from 2004. But the fandom is still active. There wasn’t a reboot besides the comic, so the fandom survives purely through fan led reinterpretation. Not marketing. Literally I think some fans have never even watched the show. Danny Phantom is one of the most popular categories on FanFiction.net, ahead of mainstream IPs with bigger budgets like Avatar and Harry Potter

3) The reboot, A Glitch in Time, is written by a fan. Not the creator, and not even one of the original writers. I don’t know of any other IPs where this happened and the fandom actively cheered for it. Like, begged for the creator to not be involved. I know some fans for other shows might want that, but I’ve never seen the network actually greenlight it.

4) The fandom itself is very self aware and tight knit. They have their own recurring jokes, fan made episodes, collaborative projects, events. Maybe other fandoms like Firefly or Homestuck are similar. But Danny Phantom again is based on a mainstream children’s show. The fandom itself is pretty subcultural

5) the fandom survived through various platforms. Usually a fandom dies with a platform but this fandom existed on livejournal and fan fiction in the early 2000s, tumblr in the 2010s, and now TikTok and Ao3

Is there any other fandom like this? I think it’s unique, but again, I’m a Danny Phantom girlie, so maybe there’s some underground Jimmy Neutron or My life as a teenage robot fandom that I’m not aware of lol. Even shows like Teen Titans, She-Ra, Clone Wars don’t seem to match it.

[gossamerufansubs]

Why do I fansub these movies?

After watching the hazel video on indie tokusatsu fighting girls, I did what I’m sure everyone else also felt compelled to do: immediately started fansubbing the videos she referenced. In the process of doing so, I continually asked myself - who were these people making these low-budget, impassioned, and extremely otaku films? My usual areas of Japanese media knowledge - self-published comics/doujinshi and anime production - weren’t a lot of help in this Japanese indie film world, although given the otaku overlap in consumers I did make some useful connections between creators, conventions, and genres.

The deeper I dove into research on these indie production companies and watched their behind-the-scenes footage, the more I got a vision of what the network surrounding the very specific snapshot of time in this particular industry. For example, early Eiyu Club was a group of passionate people self-funding to make movies until they began to earn that money back to go onto bigger productions. The founder of Center Island, Hironobu Nakajima, self-funded many of the projects, even with the knowledge that they’d not make a profit. This sort of do-it-yourself, passion-fueled, community-minded mentality taps into my own roots in self-published comics, fanfic writing, and various other non-professional artistic pursuits.

After doing all of these fansubs and research, I feel something of a kinship with Eiyu Club, Center Island, and the other very indie production companies. Seeing a masked heroine do kick flips above an ugly demon man wearing tights while homemade midi music blasts over their fight scene has started to feel… well, like seeing a friend. Watching the behind-the-scenes footage where the actors are sprinting around moving props and carrying pieces of a tokusatsu costume reminds me that every film, no matter how cheesy or poorly edited they can get, is a miracle. It reminds me of beta reading a friend’s fanfic for a fandom I don’t even know, or sitting in a recording studio while my friend belts out songs that I’ll later clumsily mix with karaoke backing instrumentals. Throw some passionate amateurs together and hey, magic happens.

So that’s why I focus on this genre, and have a soft spot for behind-the-scenes footage in particular. For a few minutes, I get to watch someone be absolutely exhausted and enormously excited about something they’re making, even if it won’t make a huge profit, or even be seen by a ton of people. I watch it and think, damn, you guys made a movie, and you’re still so excited to make another after.

[silverkittenx9]

How A Cartoon About Superpowered Kindergarteners Changed Everything Forever 💗💙💚

It is Women's History Month, so I thought it'd be relevant to tackle The Powerpuff Girls and how it had a huge impact on not only Cartoon Network, but society as a whole. It may seem like a "Barbie-type" show at first glance.... it's really anything but.

The Powerpuff Girls centers around a trio of kindergarten girls named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup; together, they use their powers to defend The City Of Townsville from crime and harm. By day, they are making crafts and playing make-believe.... but by night, they are karate-bound superheroes who could make even the most hardened criminal run for their mommy. If you don't know how old the girls are supposed to be, the general consensus among people is that they're aged between 5 and 6-years old.... so yeah, they're 5 (though you could say they're 6 at the most since they once celebrated a birthday). Just think about this for a second: a 5-6 year old girl twisting the wrists of a mafia boss 😮 Most kids that age would probably piss themselves out of fear or run off crying.... not these kids. If anything, they scare the monsters under their bed.

Other characters include their father/creator, Professor Utonium; their teacher Ms. Keane; the goofy Mayor of Townsville and his far smarter assistant, Ms. Bellum; the comic relief pet Talking Dog; and the class rebel Mitch Mitchelson (and their other classmates).

As for the villains, we have Mojo Jojo, who is the Professor's former lab assistant/pet turned supervillain chimpanzee. His goal is to take over the world and destroy The Powerpuff Girls. There's also flamboyant devil HIM; spoiled brat Princess Morbucks; the incompetent Amoeba Boys; ill-tempered hillbilly Fuzzy Lumpkins; a group of delinquent teenagers called The Gangreen Gang; beautiful b-word Sedusa; and the girls' bad male counterparts The Rowdyruff Boys.... think of them being like the Wario to the PPG's Mario.

Created by Craig McCracken (who also made Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, Wander Over Yonder, and Kid Cosmic), the show is often brought up in conversations concerning the idea of "girl power" in animation. Well, he wasn't concerned about that; he just wanted to make a funny cartoon about little girls with superpowers. Still, the show continues to be brought up in discussions about female empowerment, nonetheless. The episode, "Equal Fights" further supported the idea of female empowerment.

The episode focuses on an angry blonde woman named Femme Fatale, who tries to push her idea of feminism among the citizens of Townsville. She manages to successfully fool The Powerpuff Girls (they bully their male classmates at school and refuse to do anything about The Professor and Mayor). Being naïve children, they manage to temporarily believe "all men are bad". This is reversed when Ms. Keane and Ms. Bellum sit them down for a talk and knock some sense into their heads.

The girls proceed to recite facts about Susan B. Anthony (rather impressive for kindergarteners) and ultimately give Femme Fatale a taste of her own medicine. And so once again the day is saved, thanks to The Powerpuff Girls.

The reason why The Powerpuff Girls is often brought up in discussions concerning girls/women in animation as a whole is simply due to the fact it was probably one of the earliest cartoons where girls played the role of the hero rather than the damsel in distress or love interest. I'm sure there were other shows from before that had capable girls as protagonists.... but still, girls (especially preschool and elementary-aged girls) loved seeing little girls like them be able to defend themselves and kick serious butt; they'd wish they'd do the same to their own bullies. And it wasn't just girls either; even boys loved The Powerpuff Girls, which was what Craig McCracken intended for his audience to be all along: everyone of all ages and genders. There were reports of boys being scared to have admitted to watching the show though (likely because the merchandising, not the actual show, was girly as hell). No kidding, pretty much all merchandise was aimed exclusively toward girls. And despite the show not being anywhere close to "girly", it still had very adorable, tiny little girls as protagonists. For outsiders, The Powerpuff Girls is a "Barbie or My Little Pony-type" show about little girls doing normal little girl things (which isn't true at all). Yes, it does happen sometimes, but a greater emphasis is placed on their crime-fighting and wild adventures. They're only shown doing normal kid things to remind us that while they're superheroes, they're still little girls. That's why they were shown at kindergarten even from the first pilot episode; it's like they really wanted to hammer it down your throat that they're superhero kids. Nonetheless, it was rather revolutionary for not only Cartoon Network, but animation as a whole.... it proved that even girls can make for engaging, capable protagonists without alienating boys. It was witty, charming, and had a unique premise to boot.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk 😌

[fawnduubackup]

do you have any advice for a newly public creator dealing with the lingering psychic damage of a mean spirited bad faith interpretation of their work?

I know it's silly to get hung up on, but that doesn't keep the negative thoughts and hypothetical arguments from bubbling up once in a while

asking because you seem like the sort of creator who gets an exciting and unpredictable mix of adoration and bile, and yet you still seem pretty chill and extremely (admirably, inspirationally, deservedly) confident in the work you do

...or maybe the question is more like: you make good art; how do you know that you make good art? how do you keep knowing?

This is something I've had to deal with a lot recently and I'd be lying if I said it hasn't ever bothered me. In my early 20s especially I agonized over every bad faith reading someone could take on what I was making.

Eventually I realized there is no possible way to tell a story that appeals to every person on earth. Someone is going to absolutely despise what you are making no matter how hard you try but that doesn't mean it's not worth making. For every person who hates your comics and everything you do there is someone who cherishes them.

Over the years I've had a lot of really kind people reach out to tell me how much the stories meant to them or made them finally realize they were gay or trans. You have to let those messages shine brighter than the few bad ones even though the bad feel incredibly loud. Part of that comes from protecting your peace and just not engaging with bad faith messages. I also just in general have a rule of if I'm feeling really charged about something rather than post about it, I go talk to my friends instead. The people who know me best and can give me contextual advice and comfort. I don't want to encourage a space for people to pick fights and argue with each other or me.

As for confidence, I am confident in the stories because I cater the stories entirely to my particular taste. If I'm loving making it and having a good time it's going to exude confidence. If I'm holding myself back it's going to feel toothless. Characters have mess, no story is ever going to be perfect but if you have fun telling it and making it that's where the magic happens!!! I find peace in stories that are campy and messy and just someone having fun with it. If you set the bar too high for media you are 'allowed' to think is good, how will you ever clear that bar yourself???

Ultimately the answer to "how do you keep making art despite it all" is a good network of friends, cutting yourself off from negative feedback loops, touching grass, and just making your stories/art so utterly catered to you that you wake up with a burning desire to create despite it all.

[superectojazzmage]

There's been a number of posts observing the "isn't this superhero stuff so dumb?" syndrome that a lot of modern superhero media has. Where the creators are basically weirdly insecure about the fact that they're making something based on comic books and either refuse to take it seriously or strip out anything even slightly fantastical in favor gritty "realism" so nobody will think they're not serious filmmakers. And I just wanted to observe the patient zero of this phenomena, the case study that is Batman.

Because, for decades now, live-action adaptations of Batman have been so utterly terrified of being seen as remotely similar to the Adam West or Joel Schumacher versions - or really, most of the original Batman comics in general - that they obsessively try to scrub out (in a very superficial way) anything about the series that could be seen as fantastical, strange, or even just lighthearted. Every single Batman live-action adaptation after Batman And Robin has absolutely no hook beyond "it's Batman but TOTALLY GRITTY AND DARK AND REALISTIC AND NOT LIKE THOSE DUMB COMICS".

All of Batman's family and friends except Alfred will be thrown away, with the creators proudly boasting about how they'll never do Robin or Ace because sidekicks ruin the grounded maturity of a rich guy dressing up as a bat. All of Batman's less "mundane" enemies will be ignored or reimagined as mundane criminals; no Killer Croc, no Hugo Strange, no Maxie Zeus, just movie after movie of Joker but he shoots people instead of telling jokes or Riddler but he shoots people instead of telling riddles or Penguin but he shoots people instead of liking birds. All the decades of lore and worldbuilding around Gotham will be disregarded in favor or depicting it as just a vaguely defined crappy city that looks and feels no different from whatever city the film was shot in. Any stories that are even mildly "weird" will go unadapted or have all it's fantasy elements removed, so seminal arcs like Strange Apparitions or Knightfall or Night Of The Owls will be discarded or neutered in favor of endless repeats of the mob subplots in Year One and Long Halloween, nobody caring that they're locking themselves out of something like 90% of the Batcanon.

And, as alluded to previously, it's all done in a very shallow way that often ends up making things LESS realistic. Batman will always just be some asshole alone in his manor with nobody but Alfred for company, even though realistically he would absolutely NEED that huge family/support network of sidekicks and techies to achieve anything at all beyond dressing up in a costume and getting shot by the first guy he fights. There can be no "silly" characters but the creators desperately want to pretend that a furry beating up a clown is like The Wire. And even the more comic book elements are adapted, they'll be either altered in ways that make them unrecognizable for that precious faux-realism or have their unusual nature downplayed severely.

Just look at the Nolan movies; in his desperation to seem "serious", Nolan did stuff like having Bane not use a super-steroid or wear a luchador outfit, not caring that he was usually replacing the supervillain gimmicks with ideas that were even stupider and less real, like Bane wearing a mask to constantly huff painkillers yet somehow not being a crippled addict like such a thing would render him in real life. And Nolan likewise used the League of Assassins Shadows but was simultaneously crazed to avoid or downplay the supernatural aspects of that group in the comics, so Ra's is just some guy who presumably inherited his title and this secret ninja organization totally doesn't have magic or anything, shut up, and also them being an ancient cult will be remanded to, like, a single brief conversation than never mentioned again.

The consequences of this kind of thinking are becoming especially apparent with Matt Reeves' take. Reeves was a subscriber to that ideology of Batman having to be a bleak street crime drama instead of a colorful superhero, but also tried to pay lip-service to the Twitter discourse about Batman beating up poor people instead of being a symbol of hope. And now he's left himself trapped in this catch-22 where he can't adapt the vast majority of stories from the comics because they're too goofy and fantastical in the eyes of Hollywood but also has to keep playing into this idea of Batman as not just being a scowling brooder who goes out at night to beat endless waves of criminals into comas without making a meaningful change. The best he could manage is a mini-series about Penguin that, while not bad, has basically nothing to do with Batman as a series whatsoever and indeed has to bend over backwards to not acknowledge Batman's existence outside of a five-second shot in the final episode. The proper sequel to Reeves' Batman is stuck in pre-production hell, very probably straining to come up with something that hasn't been done before, isn't weird, and doesn't have Batman being overly dark. Good fucking luck with that.

It's especially bad because the animated and video game adaptations DON'T do this shit and embrace the crazier aspects of Batman as a series, and it works out great and produces works just as good or even better than the live action stuff. Batman The Animated Series wasn't afraid of adapting stuff like The Laughing Fish or Moon Of The Wolf alongside grittier arcs. The Arkham games had Batman punching sharks and dollotrons unironically and those are fantastic. Shows like The Brave And The Bold or Beware or Caped Crusader gleefully embrace stuff from all ages of Batman history and are better for it.

Something has to give on the live-action front. We need a Batman movie that dares to go beyond maybe three miniseries from the 80s, otherwise we're just wasting time and the potential of Batman as a character, whose success is partially owed to his ability to slot into all kinds of adventures.

[lauralot89]

Public Figures on the Autism Spectrum Who Have Accomplished More than RFK Jr Ever Will

An Incomplete List

Celebrities

Sir Anthony Hopkins (actor)

Satoshi Tajiri (video game creator)

Tom Wiggins (musician)

Clay Marzo (athlete)

Daryl Hannah (actor)

Iqra Babar (comic creator)

Helen Hoang (author)

Breanna Clark (athlete)

Dan Aykroyd (actor)

Armani Williams (athlete)

Kenshi Yonezu (musician)

Naoki Higashida (author)

Bella Ramsey (actor)

Hannah Gadsby (comedian)

David Campion (athlete)

Eminem (musician)

Lamar Hardwick (author)

Kodi Lee (musician)

Chloe Hayden (actor)

Stephen Wiltshire (artist)

Holly Smalle (author)

Anthony Ianni (athlete)

Tim Burton (director)

Eric Garcia (journalist)

Kayla Cromer (actor)

Jen Wilde (author)

Jim Eisenreich (athlete)

Susan Boyle (musician)

Coby Bird (actor)

Madison Bandy (voice actor)

Jessica-Jane Applegate (athlete)

Heather Kuzmich (model)

Kevin Valdez (actor)

John Elder Robison (author)

Matt Savage (musician)

Joe Barksdale (athlete)

Israel Thomas-Bruce (voice actor)

Alexis Wineman (Miss America contestant)

Kambel Smith (artist)

Kay Kerr (author)

Ethel Cain (musician)

Mickey Rowe (actor)

Oliver Kettleborough (athlete)

Chris Fischer (chef)

Marty Balin (musician)

Lizzy Clark (actor)

Christine McGuinness (model)

Tal Anderson (actor)

Craig Nicholls (musician)

Wentworth Miller (actor)

Fern Brady (comedian)

Ada Hoffman (author)

Brad Riches (actor)

Tom Malone (dancer)

Talia Hibbert (author)

Lucy Bronze (athlete)

Tylan Grant (actor)

Madeleine Ryan (author)

Nat Puff (musician)

Sam Holness (athlete)

Josh Thomas (comedian)

Corinne Duyvis (author)

Tony DeBlois (musician)

Tommy Des Brisay (athlete)

Karyl Frankiewicz (Miss Native American USA)

Elise Nicole Brown (musician)

Rachael Lucas (author)

Alex Reid (athlete)

Sara Gibbs (screenwriter)

Ronaldo Byrd (artist)

Chris Morgan (athlete)

Other Public Figures

Temple Grandin (academic)

Ari Ne'eman (cofounder of Autistic Self Advocacy Network [ASAN])

Scott Michael Robertson (cofounder of ASAN)

Julia Bascom (former executive director of ASAN)

Avery Outlaw (fomer interim executive director of ASAN)

Colin Killick (current executive director of ASAN)

Greta Thunberg (climate activist)

Jules Edwards (disability advocate)

Anita Cameron (disability advocate)

Morénike Giwa Onaiwu (public speaker)

Sarai Pahla (medical translator)

Lauren-Rochelle Fernandez (neurodiversity advocate)

Jeanna Fridman (activist)

Kayla Smith (creator of #AutisticBlackPride)

Kris McElroy (advocate)

Donald Triplett (banker)

Feel free to add names. Basically, anyone on the spectrum who is not Musk or Sia has done more for the world, themselves, and their communities than RFK Jr. could dream of.

[fantastic-nonsense]

I see you're both fangirling abiut Young Justice in general but also supremely disappointed with how they've handled Halo and Cass Cain? Would you still recommend it as a show or does the bad outweigh the good?

This ask is so old Young Justice finished the season being asked about, came out with a whole other season, and then was re-cancelled in the time it took me to answer it.

Despite watching Teen Titans (2003) first, Young Justice is the show that was actually airing when I was properly getting into the DCU on more than a casual reader level, and I hold a lot of fondness in my heart for it for nostalgia reasons. But setting aside that history, in general I also think it's a good show with a lot of heart. It's on my recs list for a reason, after all.

The short version is that YJ, for better or for worse, was always focused on two basic premises: "young hero spec ops team" and "adapting the DCU as a whole through the lens of young heroes." The creators have explicitly stated on multiple occasions that they had no particular allegiance to or desire to be faithful to any single comic run or team lineup so much as they wanted to tell a story and picked the characters they thought would be the best ones to tell it with.

Sometimes, that's handled very well; the first two seasons, despite my issues with certain character, lineup, and narrative choices they made, are wonderful and tightly-written television and I absolutely recommend them. Sometimes, that's not handled well at all; I would say that Season 3 falls under that category, for a wide variety of reasons. I still have not watched the 4th and final season, so I can't comment on the quality of that one.

By the time Season 3 came out, it was pretty clear to me that Young Justice clearly wanted to be ~4-5 separate cartoons in a shared universe but got smushed into one show because of DC and Cartoon Network's nonsense, and that desire (along with several other choices) was to the detriment of the show's quality. They also clearly had a lot less desire to be relatively faithful to any given character's comic backstory by the time S3 came around, which hurts my ability to call it a "good" adaptation of several characters.

While the show certainly has its issues all the way through, I honestly think if it hadn't been cancelled and had stayed on CN, it would have run for 4-5 seasons, gotten a couple of spin-off shows, and been hailed as one of the best comic book shows of all time (instead of the mess that S3 turned out to be because it got soft-rebooted half a decade later and given a rating upgrade). There are absolutely things I don't like about the first two seasons, especially with the hindsight of knowing a lot more about the DCU than I did watching it at 15-16, but it's a genuinely impressive achievement of a show.

All that said: Comics!Cheshire had been utterly destroyed by racist and sexist writing, mostly at the hands of Chuck Dixon and Gail Simone, when Young Justice aired in 2010 and made her a major secondary antagonist with her own significant subplot. It is potentially one of the most significant turnarounds for a historically morally ambiguous WOC I've ever seen. That show literally saved her and I'm forever grateful to it solely for that reason.

P.S. YJA!Artemis Crock my dearly beloved, come home to me. I want you back.