#I was catching up on justice league 2018

[sisaloofafump]

Clark telling B that Black Mercy used to show his deepest desires as a wife and kids but now it just shows Bruce. What was up with that. I think we as a collective seem to have not dwelt on that long enough.

[harleiquina]

All TV series I've ever seen III

1940 - 1970

1980 -2000

2010 - now (this post)

2010 - Mike & Molly

Sitcom with some funny jokes... got lost at season 3 maybe... I don't know.

I know some people can't stand Melissa McCarthy but what I can't stand is the typical jokes of "well she's fat so she has to be eating in every scene or making a big deal about food" as it happens in Ghostbusters.

2011 -Once upon a time

At first I thought it was a silly premise (and maybe it is) but I do like fairytales twisted over and over again to create something new.

I stopped watching around season 5... because I was watching it through Sony (LatAm) and they started to play it dubbed and the voices were horrible.

I should pick it up someday.

2011 - 2 broke girls

Yet another sitcom that sometimes lands and others don't. Good enough to watch when there's nothing else available.

2011 - Person of Interest

A man creates a system (AI?) that can identify a criminals so hires someone to take care of them. I might've watched two seasons... then I lost track.

2013 - The Blacklist

James Spader has one of the best voices in the planet and when he plays a snarky a-hole he's at his best. The first two season were great... then I lost track and all the sudden they are ending the show after 10 seasons. I have a lot to catch up.

2013 - The Goldbergs

I might've been born in 1992 but thanks to mom and my aunts I grew up with in the '80s so this show was made for me... or so I thought. Some things are cringy, once Adam grows up the whole nerdy thing isn't as funny but it's ok... ish.

2013 - Father Brown

You can never be wrong with Chersterton's creation. Altough as all british TV shows it can be a little too slow for my taste.

2016 - Nafta Súper (Argentina)

The whole thing started with a simple question: what would've happened if Superman fell in a poor neighbourhood in Buenos Aires instead of the Kent's farm? This was the premise for Kriptonita a book that presented the DC heroes in their argentinean versions. But beware since they are outlaws and not always do good (but compared to our police they aren't as bad)... it is kinda hard to root for them. I mean Nafta Súper (is the name of a type of gasoline you get here) got his name because whenever he had to meet with other crime bosses he would carry gasoline with him and set them on fire if they didn't agree with his views 🤷🏻‍♀️

The movie was a good enough hit, so the TV show was meant to happen and expand the universe. Each episode focuses in one of the members of the Justice League (El Federico/Batman, Lady Di/Wonder Woman, El Faisán/Green Lantern, Ráfaga/Flash) while they all look for Nafta Súper/Superman that, after the end of the movie, is hiding.

As I said, it is hard to root for them but I have to give it to the creatives with all the clever ways to twist this heroes and villains so they fit in our culture. And I do like El Federico & Corona (Batman and The Joker) they are the highlight of the show for me.

2016 - Анна, детектив (Anna, detective -Russia)

Do you remember Medium? Have you ever thought how it could've been set in the early 1900s in a backwater town in Russia? Well now you don't have to!

Anna Mironova is a young woman that always had psychic abilities but they would come and go during childhood. Now this abilities are back around the same time the Officer Shtolman is assigned to her town.

Sometimes is very VERY telenovela (I am not entirely on board when it happens), each case lasts 2 episodes and I do think that is a bit of a strech. But I do have to recognize that Dimitri Frid (Shtolman) plays a man that is very smitten and deeply in love very well.

You can see it in Youtube in Star Media English (captioned in this language)

2018 - Killing Eve

We all know that the first 2 seasons were the best (we can add the 3rd in it too when we compare it to the 4th). This cat-and-mouse spy thriller started strong mixing dark humour and just darkness and left us all with a bad taste in the last episode. Still Eve and Villanelle will live forever in our hearts.

2019 - Good Omens

An Angel a Demon beeing close friends got 20K christians so angry that they started a pettition to cancel this show adressed to the wrong company. And people still ask me today why I am Agnostic?

The Antichrist was born, the Four Horsemen summoned so it is time to stop the Apocalypse.

Really funny, layered and worth a lot more than just a watch (mom and I watched it about 4 times in less than a year, so... is that good)

2019 - The Mandalorian

At home we were never huuuuuge Star Wars fans (we would watch for Harrison Ford and some creatures). Still, since the premise to this show was that you didn't needed to be a hardcore-fan we gave it a go and we loved it! It's very close to old shows, like Zorro, where you have the adventure-of-the-day kinda plot (that some people just can't dig, don't know why) and I do like good fights on TV/Cinema

Never underestimate the power of Baby Yoda!

2021 - Wandavision

Even if we never read a comic, we did watched most of Marvel movies and we wanted to know what all of this was about.

It's a lot more effective if you already know the shows they pay homage to.

Beware... it will break your heart.

2021 - Falcon & the Winter Soldier

Following the MCU, came the buddy-mov... erm, TV show, buddy-Tv show starred by Falcon and Bucky.

At a moment you might think that there are too many things on the plate (super soldiers, the new & bad Captain America, a black market dealer, Zemo) so some things do feel a little rushed. But well... at least was fun.

2021 - Loki

Don't kill me but I do not understand people's obsession with Loki.

I mean, the mythological god is a thing... but aside from Tom Hiddleston's fans I don't see the appeal of any nordic god in the MCU (as I said, I don't read comics).

The show is ok...

2021 - Hawkeye

Since I'm little I always liked archery and I was curious about this Avenger that is easily lost in the background of the movies.

It is not the greatest show ever made... but at least is less "the world will be destroyed" and that is a good change. Less is more.

2021 - The Book of Boba Fett

Of course after watching Mando I had to follow the story... and yes, he did took over in the last episodes. But still... it was nice seeing Boba Fett's arch that transformed him from a Bounty Hunter to a Leader (???).

Something could be a little bit more explored, but well... we'll see what the future holds for him.

2022 - Our Flag means Death

When I had a glimpse of the trailers (mostly focused on Steede's most feminine traits vs the tough life of a pirate) I was like "yay... another show making fun of a clearly gay character. Awesome. Are we in 1980 again?" But some gifsets in here spiked my curiosity... does the story really shows a romantic relationship between Blackbeard and Steede or this is the fandom beeing fandom once again?

Well... watch and find out!

2022 - Moonknight

I love the Ancient Egypt so this show was for me. I didn't know that there was a superhero based on those myths (nor that he had DID) and I really liked him.

Fingers crossed for a second season... or a movie (once the strike is over, of course).

2022 - Ms. Marvel

I was expecting something more teenage-based but anyone can see Ms. Marvel.

I don't understand why so many hated it... oh wait... Sor Juana said it better "foolish men that accuse the woman without reason..."

2022 - She-Hulk

And odd experiment, I do think that the last episode was kinda cheating but if she breaks the fourth wall... what can we do? 🤷🏻‍♀️

At least they aknowledged some narrative issues that have been dragging for a while.

2022 - The Sandman

Loving this show is an understatement.

Once again, I didn't read the graphic novel with the exceptions of a few panels here and there that I saw many years ago in Facebook (when Morpheus meets The Fates and the baby scene on The Sound of her Wings).

I love when all mythology and fairytales and other myths can be combined into something new. So this was my jam.

Waiting for season 2 (and getting a better paid job so I can buy the books).

2022 - Obi-Wan

Is there anybody in this world that hates Ewan McGregor? I don't think so.

The show was ok... some twists were predictable from the get-go (still some didn't see them coming and got angry at them 🤷🏻‍♀️). But well... everybody wanted Vader vs Obi-Wan and they sure had it!

2022 - Andor

I don't know if living in Argentina absolutely killed the idea of a heroic guerrilla, revolution and such (because we are the spoils of that and, trust me, thinks don't get better. But this is not about argebtinean politics so... moving on)... or it is because in USA is heavily romanticized but... Andor didn't clicked with me.

It was a task watching it and we only finished it because we started it... don't know if we will watch a second season.

2022 - Wednesday

A lot of people say that Tim Burton is overrated (I disagree, I think that he is tired of beeing ask to be Tim Burton, wacky director or weird films) but Wednesday is heavily overrated to me. Really? This has 12 Emmy nominations and The Sandman has zero? What the Bloody Hell?!

I like the Addams Family, I watched the TV show... the movies... this is not the Addams Family. I know, I know... this is about Wednesday blah, blah, blah. But this isn't Wednesday either... this is moody goth teenager with the biggest ego in the room.

Let's leave aside all the character and worldbuilding inconsistencies... Wednesday is a sharp and blunt person but she is never mean without a good point. This Wednesday is cruel even with people that loves her!

Did people forget that the weirdest thing about the Addams Family was that they are weird and they deeply love each other? That was what made them who they are! Instead of having the husband complaining about the wife, you have Gomez. Instead of having the wife trying to have the perfect house scolding her kids for their behaviour , you have Morticia with her own interests aside from beeing a housewife and assists her kids with their passions... I'll stop ranting now or I will never end.

Not a fan of the powers, the story is ok-ish...

2023 - The Last of Us

Never played videogames either and zombies (I'm sorry, infected) are not a big genre at home unless is Michael Jackson's Thriller video. Still we decided to give it a go because Pedro Pascal is latino and you have to support your people... even if they are chileans... or brazilians (argie joke. You wouldn't understand it).

We loved it!

I was ready for mom to complain with "is it necessary to always have gays?" in episode 3 but she didn't... and I dare to say that its one of her favourite episodes. (And no, readers, mom isn't conservative... but she's against tokenism -just like me-. If you want to have diversity in the world you've created, that's awesome... if you are doing it just to check some items off a list, it's annoying and feels like a desperate move)

2023 - The Muppets Mayhem

We love The Muppets but since Jim Henson's death they are kind of a hit-and-miss.

It does get better as it goes... wouldn't say is ✨️the best✨️ Muppets yet... but it is a lot better than the Haunted Mansion from last year (?)

2023 - FUBAR

Did you liked the movie True Lies with Arnold Schwartzenneger and Jaime Lee Curtis? Well... what if we do the same premise but this time his daughter is also a secret agent?

It is still good though... sometimes humor can be a little cringey, but Arnie knows his audience well enough and delivers.

2023 - Secret Inavsion (current)

It is still going so I cannot tell much just yet. Doesn't feel like a spy-thriller as I imagined but we'll see.

[orphancookie69]

DC Universe: In Order!

Have you ever watched an animated Constatine? He is way cooler in animation and comic books...Anyways. I stumbled upon that movie first with my partner, and he told me that there is an order to the DC Universe and this movie was like way on the bottom of the list. We decided to watch it in order, but the order is not self explanatory. 

This is for your reference (and source): https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/dc-animated-movies-in-order/

Order Up: 

1) Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013)

We know these characters all have their own stories, but this is the point that they come together into their own grouping in this universe. This movie resets all the rules you think you know. 

2) Justice League: War (2014)

This is an important point they get back to later in the storyline. It helps to bring and keep these guys together. 

3) Son of Batman (2014)

This gets more into Batman’s story, but remember everything connects and leads to other things. 

4) Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015)

This is a call to action from the team that shows the underwater world but also adds to the team. 

5) Batman vs Robin (2015)

This explores the conflict that creates the super hero icons true selves, but we all have daddy issues. 

6) Batman: Bad Blood (2016)

This is pretty neat for seeing how big the Bat Family actually gets. 

7) Justice League vs. Teen Titans (2016)

This introduces the Teen Titans into universe and helps to (eventually) establish a younger and older set of heroes. 

8) Justice League: Dark (2017)

This is where you get more in the mix, Constatine’s group is pretty cool and works well with a group of supers. 

9) Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)

A fun little installment from our youthful heroes. 

10) Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018)

This universe is a little interesting as even vilians get to switch sides and join the party. It’s not a party until they show up...right?

11) The Death of Superman (2018)

This is a pretty iconic point in comics and animation both, it has even been said that Superman is being compared to Jesus.

12) Constantine: City of Demons (2018)

Really any of these that have Constatine are awesome. 

13) Reign of the Supermen (2019)

With the death of one superman, you get many revivals. Not unlike Jesus right? Sorry not sorry. 

14) Batman: Hush (2019)

Between Batman’s day job, child, night time hobby, and his new friends...its not like he needs more to do does he? 

15) Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019)

Some people get no back story movies, some get a lot. This is Wonder Woman’s back story. 

16) Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020)

The year starts to catch up with us now. This name, if you watched the movies in order, is mentioned more in the beginning. Its the big bads name and his effect on earth. 

17) DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery (2022)

While I do think this is in two collections, one in this set of films and two in the DC showcase collection, this picks up where no16 left off. 

I loved the animation, the old school lore, the comic book origins. A proper mix of characters. No 16 was supposed to be the last but they are adding to it. Which is awesome. I personally prefer this to MCU but I wonder if this wasn’t inspired by DCU? Have you seen any of these? Did you watch them in order because of this post? 

[comicweek]

Whatever Happened to the Men of Tomorrow?

I just love Tyler Hoechlin on Superman & Lois. His Clark Kent rocks chunky cable-knit cardigans, pivots his Metropolitan family into farming, and pours a nightly glass of white wine for his badass wife. Dad goals aplenty — and when he suits up to catch a falling bridge in China, he waves to a rescued bystander. No big deal, his smile says, all in a day's work. It's a classic version of the most classic superhero, an ageless paternal hunk rendered puny behind glasses and the last tie any print journalist will ever wear.

But the hit CW drama already revealed another possible Man of Steel, a world-destroying alternate Superman introduced in a flashback eye-barbecuing an army. He wears black, just like Henry Cavill's resurrected Kal-El in Zack Snyder's Justice League. And that four-hour HBO Max event ends with a premonition of Superman gone mad, driven murderous by the death of Lois Lane (Amy Adams). These fallen gods have company. Amazon Prime Video's The Boys features Antony Starr as Homelander, an über-American sociopath. He shares a streaming service with Omni-Man (voiced by J.K. Simmons), the greatest defender of Invincible's Earth, who finishes up his series premiere ripping apart his fake Justice League one spinal cord at a time. Let's put a pin in calling the Utopian (Josh Duhamel) nefarious, but the patriarch of Netflix's upcoming Jupiter's Legacy has dark secrets. And his troubled son Brandon (Andrew Horton) wears a red-caped blue costume I would describe as "lawsuit-proof." (The Marvel Cinematic Universe is making its own moves in this direction, with the briefly bad resurrected Vision and a new Captain America covering his shield with fresh blood.)

An optimistic read would classify the Evil Superman glut as countercultural activism: a middle finger to the boomers from Generation Harley Quinn. The classic character offers easy signifiers to deconstruct. He is toxically masculine, supremely white, a whole surveillance state unto himself. Comparisons to certain monster presidents and canceled icons are welcome. "I know you want me to be like you," Homelander's son (Cameron Crovetti) tells the star-spangled pyscho. "But Dad, I'm not." That kid goes on to incinerate Homelander's Nazi girlfriend: Great job, youth! Meanwhile, Invincible's real star is Omni-Man's son, Mark (Steven Yeun), a sincere do-gooder. Their malicious elders stand in for larger societal decay. And even the WarnerMedia-approved Supermen withstand suspicion from paranoid worlds. Cavill's hero spent a whole movie proving to Batman (Ben Affleck) that he wasn't a bad guy; apparently, the next movie would have proved Batman right. Hoechlin's yearning sincerity sticks out like a sore thumb in modern-day Smallville, a depleted land of meth explosions and bank foreclosures. Recent events in our own world offer little hope for a brighter future. Everything has gone wrong with everything. Why should the Man of Tomorrow be any different?

There's a long history of Superman turning bad; there's a long history of Superman doing anything. Way back in 1964, he met Ultraman, a dastardly double from Earth-Three. The '90s brought a Terminator-ish super-doppelgänger, who pretended to be Superman before destroying fake Los Angeles. Hoechlin already played a different black-suited impostor in a 2018 CW crossover. There are multiverse scenarios where he's raised by Soviets, Nazis, or Darkseid. In the 2000s Justice League cartoon, another Superman executes his Lex Luthor, a defensible act that slippery-slopes into dystopic oppression.

Break one rule and you break them all: That's the implicit threat of Evil Superman, and the nasty thrill of Injustice, a videogame-comic saga where Lois Lane's death drives Superman superbad totalitarian. (Clark's son plays Injustice 2 on Superman & Lois.) In the classic 1986 tale "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" written by Alan Moore and drawn by Curt Swan, Kal-El retires from superheroism after taking a villain's life. "Nobody has the right to kill," he says, "Not Mxyzptlk, not you, not Superman... especially not Superman." Look past the outrageous impossibility of saying "Mxyzptlk" out loud, and it's one of the great quotes of comic book history. This Superman believes even a wholly justifiable homicide spoils his moral code. A generation later, that's where these stories begin.

[wrestlingisfake]

Mania Weekend: Thursday March 31

I'm trying to map out all the minor-league shows that will be running in Dallas over Wrestlemania weekend. There's a lot! This post will just cover Thursday, so check back later for the rest.

Since I won't be in Dallas, I'm just focusing on the ones that I know will be streaming live. I'll call out some of the matches that catch my eye, but for the full card I recommend googling each show or checking the promotion's Twitter feed.

Glory Pro Wrestling: Cemetery Gates [The Collective]

12pm EDT (11am CDT) - $12.99 on Fite or part of The Collective bundle (12 shows for $139.99)

Glory Pro is an indy promotion that mainly runs in the St. Louis/East St. Louis area. I mainly hear about them because of Davey Richards and WARHORSE, but they're also turning out a lot of up-and-coming Black wrestlers like Tootie Lynn and Mike Outlaw. I believe this is their first Mania weekend show so I hope they do well.

Josh Alexander vs. WARHORSE

Davey Richards & Rocky Romero vs. Davey Vega & Mat Fitchett

Jake Something vs. Max the Impaler

Tootie Lynn vs. Janai Kai

Mike Outlaw vs. Bryan Keith

and more!

GCW: Josh Barnett's Bloodsport 8

4pm EDT (3pm CDT) - $19.99 on Fite or part of The Collective bundle (12 shows for $139.99)

I've never actually checked out Bloodsport before. As I understand it, it's meant to be a hybrid of MMA and pro wrestling that emphasizes grappling and strikes without all the flips and dives. If you dig Jon Moxley and Minoru Suzuki matches, you'll probably love this shit.

Jon Moxley vs. Biff Busick (Oney Lorcan)

Minoru Suzuki vs. Chris Dickinson

Josh Barnett vs. JONAH (Bronson Reed)

Marina Shafir vs. Zeda Zhang

John Hennigan (John Morrison) vs. Simon Grimm (Simon Gotch)

Masha Slamovich vs. Janai Kai

and more!

AAA Invades WrestleCon

6pm EDT (5pm CDT) - $14.99 on Fite or part of the WrestleCon bundle ($74.99 for 5 shows)

The top promotions in Mexico are CMLL, which is entrenched in traditional lucha, and AAA, which goes all out with ridiculous overbooked clusterfucks. Do you enjoy heel referees, fucky finishes, scary dives, endless run-ins, false advertising, and unprofessional conduct? Well, even if you don't, AAA has a certain car-crash appeal.

Psycho Clown vs. Black Taurus

AAA cruiserweight title: Laredo Kid vs. Flamita vs. Bandido

NWA tag title: Bestia 666 & Mecha Wolf vs. Aero Star & Drago

and more!

GCW: Joey Janela's Spring Break 6, Part 1

9pm EDT (8pm CDT) - $19.99 on Fite or part of The Collective bundle (12 shows for $139.99)

This is the centerpiece of GCW's sprawling empire of Mania weekend shows. I've never watched a JJSB but I've always spent Mania weekend hearing all about it. I expect at least one deathmatch on this show, but for the most part this looks like it'll be more about big names than blood 'n' guts.

GCW world title: Jon Moxley vs. AJ Gray

Joey Janela vs. X-Pac

Mickie James vs. Allie Katch

GCW tag title: Nick Gage & Matt Tremont vs. Mark Briscoe & Jay Briscoe vs. Mance Warner & Matthew Justice

GCW ultraviolent title: Alex Colon vs. John Wayne Murdoch

and more!

WrestleCon: Mark Hitchcock Memorial Supershow

9pm EDT (8pm EDT) - $14.99 on Fite or part of the WrestleCon bundle ($74.99 for 5 shows)

WrestleCon has been a fan convention over Mania weekend since 2013, and the Supershow since 2014. The show was renamed in 2018 to honor Mark Hitchcock, a member of the con's team. This show is running head-to-head with JJSB, which should get more buzz, but this one's arguably got the biggest star power of the night. Incredibly, the Briscoes are booked for both events, which are three miles apart, so I guess somebody's going to give them a ride.

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Timothy Thatcher

Minoru Suzuki vs. Biff Busick (Oney Lorcan)

Athena (Ember Moon) vs. Mia Yim

Johnny WrestleCon (John Morrison) vs. Taya Valkyrie (Frankie Monet)

Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe vs. Homicide & Low Ki

Bandido vs. Mike Bailey

and more!

Control Your Narrative: The Awakening

9pm EDT (8pm CDT) - Free (with ads) on Pro Wrestling TV

After EC3 was released from WWE he turned "Control your narrative" into a catchphrase, a mantra, and now a wrestling promotion. This isn't CYN's first show, but it's gotten a lot of negative buzz, due to its weird rules and the booking of problematic wrestlers like Austin Aries. (There was also a crazy Reddit post claiming the whole thing is a right-wing operation backed by Donald Trump, which is absurd, but the upshot is that a lot of people are rooting for EC3 to fail.)

I've read this will be exclusive to a new streaming venture called Pro Wrestling TV, which tweeted that the show will be free. But PWTV's site is very short on details, which isn't very promising. We'll see what happens.

EC3 & Adam Scherr (Braun Strowman) vs. Damo (Killian Dain) & Erick Redbeard (Erick Rowan)

Westin Blake (Wesley Blake) vs. Austin Aries

Dirty Dango (Fandango) vs. Flip Gordon

Killer Kross (Karrion Kross) vs. Vincent Marseglia

and more (maybe?)

GCW: Planet Death

12:59am EDT (11:59 CDT) - $12.99 on Fite or part of The Collective bundle (12 shows for $139.99)

GCW loves doing these midnight shows. This looks to be the real deathmatch show, for anybody who thinks there isn't enough broken glass on the rest of the lineup. I'm not familiar with anybody announced for the card, so I take that to mean they're deathmatch specialists that make Nick Gage look tame.

Hoodfoot vs. Mad Man Pondo

Slade vs. Bam Sullivan

Shane Mercer vs. Neil Diamond Cutter

Sawyer Wreck vs. Brandon Kirk

and more!

[hotdadslade]

DC’s Failed Shared Continuity

This is a subject that I see touched on a lot but not really addressed, so I wanted to break it down.

DC’s core comics (That is, Batman, Superman, Justice League, etc, and not the elseworld style books like DCeased or White Knight) are generally understood to be happening in a shared continuity. That is, what happens in one book reflects in the other. The series cross over, because they take place in the same universe.

Only that isn’t true anymore.

There are a lot of plot holes that don’t really make sense, but that isn’t what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about the fact that DC has absolutely no timeline, the absolute glut of events happening in and out of main books, and the fact that each DC comic is effectively its own universe, rather than shared between it.

I’m going to address the following examples, just to give people an idea of what’s going on and exactly what I mean when I talk about a shared continuity:

The fact that Alfred Pennyworth’s funeral happened before he died.

The fact that Bruce Wayne was in at least three places at once at the start of Perpetua’s invasion.

DC’s insane event schedule through 2019.

The lack of impact events are having with the readers, such as the fact that fact that the entire of South America went to war, China engaged in mass orgies, and the entire of Britain stared at the sky for days on end and almost no reader has heard about it.

City of Bane’s complete lack of impact in the larger DC universe

And last but not least: Why does this matter, and where does DC go from here?

Alfred’s Funeral is before his Death:

Alfred Pennyworth dies during City of Bane. We see his funeral in Pennyworth: R.I.P., where we see the family come together and share stories before immediately getting into a slap fight over it.

This unquestionably happens after City of Bane, because City of Bane is when Alfred died. Despite this, Ric is still around:

That little note in the bottom left makes it clear that this happens before Nightwing Annual #2.

The majority of Annual #2 is a flashback, but it specifically ends with the Court of Owls telling Cobb (that is, Talon) that Dick will soon be his, and telling him to move in. This happens in Nightwing 63, when Cobb shows up (aided by Apex Lex’s gift), and starts screwing with Dick’s life. I’ll skip over the most of it: what matters is that Talon brainwashing Dick Grayson appears the same night Perpetua’s symbol appears over the city (in Nightwing 66 and a number of other issues), Dick attacks the Nightwings, fights Condor Red, and then is freed from the mind control all in one night.

Which is great. Except this can’t happen after Alfred’s death, because the symbol of Perpetua (which appears everywhere at once) appears over Gotham during City of Bane (in Batman 81):

So we have one event happening simultaneously in Nightwing and Batman, only one happens before/during Alfred’s death, and the other supposedly happens well after.

Which leads us into...

Batman apparently can be everywhere at once

So up above we have Batman 81. Bruce is, at this point, in the city rushing to beat Bane when the symbol pops up.

Here’s the symbol popping up in Detective Comics (1014) while fighting the Freezes (the city, I’ll note, is normal Gotham at this point, not controlled by Bane):

Bruce is in Paris (in theory, after his coma) in Outsiders #6, and then arrives back in Gotham just in time for the symbol to appear in the sky in issue 7:

Even just while researching this, I realized that it happened in other issues too. The symbol appears in the sky in Batman/Superman issue 3 while Bruce is being attacked by the infected:

It also happens in Justice League, but I can’t be bothered to get pages.

This is all taking place in a shared universe, so the fact that there’s three or four different Bruce’s in three or four different books who are all doing completely different things in different areas is... baffling. DC has always played a bit fast and lose with Detective Comics and Batman, rarely defining which is happening first or what their exact order of events is, but this takes it a step beyond that.

It also leads into...

DC has how many events? and What happened to the infected?

2019 was a year. Specifically, it was the year of the Villain, but it really should have been year of the event, because DC had so many events happening almost concurrently that it was impossible to figure out what was going on when.

You had Heroes in Crisis running from late September 2018 to May 2019 (acknowledged in Batman, Flash, Green Arrow, Red Hood, and Titans, but largely inconsequential and rarely referenced again).

Year of the Villain itself spanned the whole year, with two dedicated series (YoTV and YoTV: Hell Arisen), a huge Justice League arc (14 issues!), literally dozens of tie in issues in main books, and 8 oneshots focusing on specific villains and their upgrades. 

This also tied into The Infected storline, where the Batman who Laughs infected six heroes and sent them out into the universe to torment people. This, too, got a number of oneshots and tie-in issues.

You had Event Leviathan, a six issue series which then got a spinoff and soon a sequel through the second half of 2019, which promised to ‘stretch across the DC universe and touch every character’, which has been, outside of Action Comics (which spun it off), a complete non-entity.

You also had Doomsday Clock, which launched all the way back in 2017 and only finished in late 2019. This was intended to ‘impact the entire DC universe’, with the idea that when the series ended, the rest of the continuity would catch up to it and you’d see the repercussions. It’s effectively been rendered non-canon, taking place outside the universe in a single line in Justice League.

So many things were happening, and they were all stressed as extremely important, but when the chips were down...

Most of them weren’t.

Half the Villain upgrades went away with the blink of an eye (Black Mask hasn’t shown up since his oneshot, and Riddler threw his retirement out in favor of being cRaZy in Batman). Heroes in Crisis had almost no affect. Event Leviathan is waiting on its sequel, having meant almost nothing despite the fact that an entire country was taken over. Doomsday Clock is now effectively out of canon.

Many of these (mostly YOTV itself) lead into the Death Metal event happening now, but that’s the thing: they only lead into that. There’s minimal acknowledgement of those events happening in other books. Even when huge things that should be impossible to ignore happen, they have minimal to no effect on the wider continuity. When is Death Metal happening, in continuity? No idea. What about the infected arc? What about Justice League?

Who knows? DC doesn’t seem to.

Which leads into the finale, the great big ‘are you kidding me’ moment:

Remember that time hundreds of thousands of people died, the whole of South America went to war, and China descended into mass orgies?

No?

Neither does anyone else.

In Wonder Woman issue 50 (and some issues around it), a series of dark gods emerge from (you guessed it) the dark multiverse. Each takes control over a single country, enacting their dark bidding. 

(Brief Suicide CW in the description below)

The goddess of war causes the entire of South America to literally go to war, invading and murdering each other. The mob god causes the whole of Britain to walk outside and stare up at the sky, not eating or drinking until they started to drop dead. A god of indulgence causes the entire of China to engage in bacchanalia, which is effectively a frenzied orgy of celebration and dancing. The nameless god has taken over Saint Petersburg, causing those within to commit mass-suicide impulsively.

And of course this has been happening world wide. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands are dead. We see shots of other places - mass murder in the streets of Hong Kong, for example.

We actually see other heroes in this. The whole arc actually starts with Supergirl fighting Diana, and then while she's briefly out of commission, the Justice League (Bruce, Arthur, Barry, J’onn, Victor, and Kendra) show up to help only to get absorbed by the big bad. That’s when the above panel happens, and then even more heroes get thrown at the problem.

In the end, Diana ‘wins’ - by sacrificing her brother Jason to the Dark Gods. The gods return the Justice League, and undo the damage they’ve caused on Earth. Those dead aren’t actually dead, for example. Time gets rewound... partially. We see the Justice League who only partially remember what happened, but the damage around the area is still there.

This should be, by any metric, a huge fucking deal. Literal gods appeared from the multiverse and fucked over huge chunks of the planet. Hundreds of thousands died and then were, in theory, un-killed. The heroes are aware of this, and have at least partial memories.

And yet it’s never acknowledged. 

This is supposed to be a huge event. The stakes literally could not be higher, and yet I’ve never seen this arc even acknowledged in any other book. This isn’t even a unique thing, either: all of New York (and most of the world) flooded in Doctor Fate and no one noticed outside that book.

So what about City of Bane?

But by far the most significant example of this is City of Bane itself. City of Bane was a huge event. Some of the top selling issues of 2019 were the City of Bane issues. It received numerous ads in other books, as well as major attention. It was the culmination of Tom King’s entire run, and lasted for more than half a year. It involved Gotham taken over by the titular Bane, ruling it with an iron fist and using mind-controlled villains as his own personal police force. It was a huge, game-changing event.

And outside of the pages of Batman (and Gotham City Monsters), it might as well not have happened. Any time it is acknowledged, it’s in the most awkward and confusing manner possible.

Batman and the Outsiders, Issue 6, Bruce is in Paris, Alfred gets a callout from Ra’s, and calls Bruce home: 

Bruce immediately gets on a plane and flies home, landing at the end of issue 7 when the Perpetua symbol goes up.

In issue eight, taking place immediately after, we are lead to believe that the entire City of Bane arc happened in between Bruce flying home from Paris and arriving in time to help:

This is far from the only example. City of Bane tends to be acknowledged exclusively in terms of ‘this issue takes place before City of Bane’ editor notes. The only real thing that gets acknowledged is Alfred’s absence: Detective Comics skips over City of Bane entirely (The YOTV issues taking place before, and then going straight to ‘after), Red Hood and the Outlaws ignores it, and Batgirls acknowledgement is effectively skipping City of Bane itself to go right back to talking about ‘cleaning up the city’ with a one line mention of ‘what Bane did to Gotham’. Plenty of other books either don’t mention it at all, or the mention is so minor I completely missed it.

So why does this matter?

Early on in my time in this fandom, I noted that the more a fan is into DC comics (not the fandom, but specifically the comics), the more they’d hate the comics themselves. This extends beyond what most people on tumblr would consider the ‘fandom space’ - I’m talking reddit, league of comic geeks, comic review sites, etc. The fact is that DC has created a scenario where the more you read their work, the worse it gets. Any individual comic from the examples above reads just fine on its own, but when you read multiple comics you start getting confused about why nothing makes sense. There’s no order to things, no continuity. Things are said in one issue and ignored in the next. Major events are trumpeted as changing the status quo but don’t change a thing. DC is actively pushing away their most dedicated readers, the ones who are going out and buying 5+ issues a week.

So what comes next?

The original reason this all came up was the news that DC’s upper editorial staff had been hit with major layoffs. While nothing yet has been confirmed (this happened only three days ago), the general rumors is that DC is going to be majorly cutting back the number of titles. With Death Metal almost certainly heralding a continuity reboot ala Flashpoint, now is the perfect time for DC to figure out what it’s doing with its continuity, and realistically, they have two options.

Option One: Forsake Shared Continuity.

I’m sure a lot of people would hate this idea, because shared continuity is such an intrinsic part of DC’s history, but looking realistically at sales numbers, there’s some major appeal. There’s far less work to it (important with the loss of their editors), and this isn’t to say all the books will be separate, just that they won’t all be inherently linked. Maybe they keep TEC and JL in the same canon. Maybe Nightwing, Batman, and Batgirl share too. The point is, though, that the fact that Gotham is burning to the ground will no longer reflect on Clark, who is apparently just out of earshot with his thumb up his ass doing nothing.

There’s precedent for this as well. Injustice, DCeased, Criminal Sanity, and White Knight are all stories in their own world that are selling (or have sold) extremely well. DC’s top fifteen issues sold for January to March of this year include seven issues of Batman, one issue of Wonder Woman, one issue of Flash, and then two issues of Unkillables, the Robin 80th oneshot, Strange Adventures (its own continuity), and an issue of Batman: Curse of the White Knight. If you go farther down, it’s more of the same - you have to go through every issue of Curse of the White Knight released, as well as Criminal Sanity, to get to Batman/Superman, Detective Comics, Justice League, and Superman.

I’m not sure this is the best choice, but I can’t imagine it’s not an appealing choice just the same.

Option Two: Fix Shared Continuity.

Without question, DC’s going to be (at least temporarily) paring down the number of books they have, and there’s never been a better time for figuring out what’s going on with their continuity. Less books means less to organize. A reboot and one very determined editor could help establish a baseline to work from, but that would require DC to focus on it as a priority.

I’m sure this is the choice most people will lean for, but it’s definitely the more intensive option, and we can only hope DC decides it’s worth it.

[the-necessary-unnecessary]

Mapi Leon's coming out story: the impact of words.

Being the first professional Spanish women’s footballer playing in Spain to publicly come out she caused waves amongst the media and general public (Laura del Rio had previously given interviews about her sexuality but that only when she had moved to the US to play). I have translated the article in which she came out on this day two years ago below because google translate won’t do it justice, but I also wanted to give a bit of backstory about the impact that her coming out had. Now Mapi isn’t just any Spanish player, although obviously not that well-known, she made headlines for being the first female Spanish player to have a transfer fee attached to her when she moved from Atletico to Barça. The fact that she had a higher profile than most other players makes her coming out so publicly even more of a big deal, because her larger platform meant she had more to lose but also meant she understood the power of her words in influencing her audience. Although people just living their lives on social media and casually mentioning their same-sex partners in interviews without a coming out moment is very important, her doing an interview for the national press openly talking about coming out as well as discussing her footballing career is essential too.

Six months after coming out she did another interview talking about the reception that she got on social media after coming out. She said that ‘she didn’t stop receiving messages: “Thank You”, “I saw you and you gave me strength”, “I’m not alone”. Women and Men from all over Spain recognised her gesture and saw themselves reflected in it. “I read them all, but I wasn’t able to reply. I didn’t think that it would turn into something so important for so many people.”’ Her coming out resulted in her being invited to be part of the opening events of Madrid Pride 2018. “When I came out publicly, I became aware of the significance of the action, and that it was much bigger than a single moment or my private life.” She also recognised how different parts of Spain reacted dissimilarly to her coming out and being a public figurehead: “In Barcelona they said ‘well okay great,’ but maybe in less urban areas like Zaragoza [where she is originally from] it wasn’t all like that”, even if bigger cities are more accepting there are places that needed to hear her words more.

Not only was it an influential moment in many supporters’ lives, she also had an impact within the women’s football community itself. She said that as a result of her coming out she saw “more photos, more nods towards players being in relationships with women on social media… as if now one’s sexuality matters even less [in women’s football]. Before you shied away a bit, at the end of the day we’re footballers, not just people, we represent a club, a country, a supporters base… and maybe that was why there was a bit of shyness online. Now I see that everything is done more naturally, without shouting about it on rooftops, but indirectly doing just that.” Even though she didn’t know how much of an impact her words would have at the time, her coming out story helped so many people and continues to be a beacon in Spanish LGBTQ+ visibility – which isn’t always as holistic as it’s sometimes portrayed to be on here.

I have left the translated version of her initial coming out news article below the cut.

Woso Pride Month 2020 [Day 23/30]

FC Barcelona’s defender is left-footed like Messi, she’s just one the Copa de la Reina and in August she will be called up to the national team. She thinks that it is important to “stand up for everyone’s rights”

“I was never very into dolls. I preferred to play ball with my brother and his friends.” And did you beat them? “Well, if I had been bad at it the boys would have kicked me out.” Maria Pilar León is tenacious and tough, perhaps that’s why she’s a centre-back. This blonde 23 year old woman kicks a ball with her left foot like Messi, has a tattoo sleeve on her arm that reminds one of Sergio Ramos’ and they compare her with Piqué due to the ease she has with playing the ball out of the penalty box… although at first sight she looks more like Shakira. Like them, she steps onto the pitch with the fierceness of a warrior. Only a few weeks ago she won the Copa de la Reina with Barça, a goal in the last 10 seconds of the final gave them the victory over Atletico de Madrid. There’s another trait that makes her similar to those footballing icons: she openly and naturally lives with her sexuality, for she also likes women. “And there’s no issue with that. This is who I am and there’s nothing wrong about it”.

Mapi, like they call her on the pitch, doesn’t want life to catch her offside. In a sporting environment with notoriety of being sexist and chauvinist, she wants to score a goal against homophobia. “When you’re a public figure, you have some sort of responsibility. I think that it’s important to stand up for everyone’s rights, there is no need to hide. We often hear pretty disgusting things in football stadiums, not only homophobic slurs but also racist ones, and I believe that we – as the people in sport – need to send a clear message about tolerance and against hatred.” Fair play was about this.

Here we can return to the first paragraph. Mapi is tenacious and tough, she’s also brave and not only on the pitch. You need a lot of courage to talk publicly about something that male footballers are silent about. “I can understand their silence given how chauvinistic football can be. There are a lot of closed-minded people who would insult them, although that kind of insults tell you more about who says them… There’s a lot of pressure in a match, you have to be extremely concentrated and to stand up to that kind of thing is tough. So, in that sense, I understand why they don’t come out. But, on the other hand, it’s something so natural that it escapes me for as to why they don’t do it, I think if they were open the mentality would change bit by bit. In this sense, we have to move forward and progress.”

Chants such as “Michel, Guti (or whoever else), faggot” are common place in stadiums, but Mapi rests assure that she has never suffered from any homophobia on the pitch. “It’s true that there are players whose parents think that this is an illness, but I’ve been lucky in this respect. My parents told me that they would love whoever I loved. And never have I been insulted by anyone nor nothing like that. Maybe it’s because football is, above everything, chauvinistic and sexist. So the bottom line is that a lot of people aren’t thrilled that we women play. I guess those that come and see our matches a more in favour of equality. They are more open minded. They like seeing us play, they enjoy it.

And it’s true, every year more and more people enjoy women’s football. In other countries, like the US, the sport is clearly booming. 1,500 universities have their own teams and there are stars, like Alex Morgan, who take photos alongside Messi. In Spain the situation is a lot more modest, although it is beginning to change. Mapi, for example, has almost 45,000 followers on Instagram. A lot more than well-known actors like Bárbara Lennie or Emma Suárez. “Yes, one could say that I have fans. There are three girls who always come and see me play. It’s pretty cool when you see them with your shirt on. Thanks to her speed and her tactical intelligence she is one of the leading figures in the Liga [now Primera] Iberdrola. In fact, she was the first female Spanish player to be a paid transfer in women’s football. Barça paid 50,000 euros for her transfer from Atletico de Madrid. A big milestone for women’s sport, and something that felt impossible to this woman who collected Ronaldinho stickers when she was younger.

“I wouldn’t be able to explain to you what I felt when they signed me, I felt complete joy. It meant that I hadn’t be mistaken in choosing football as a career. To be honest I wasn’t a great student, I scraped through. In the 4th year of ESO [Year 11/Grade 10] one of my teachers always said: ‘be careful because next time you might not pass…’ He basically told me that I wasted too much time by playing sports and I should stop playing football. Now I think about him a lot. He didn’t see me having a future, but I stuck with my passion and it ended up being the right decision.”

Mapi has played since she was a young girl, but her career started when she was 17, when Real Club Deportivo Español made her an offer. She was forced to leave her parents, Javier the mechanic and Pilar, a caregiver, in Zaragoza and jump into this adventure head first. “They were sad that I left home, but they always supported me.” The next season she received an offer from Atletico de Madrid. With them she won the league. And from there came the famous signing with Barcelona. Now, having finished the season, the centre-back will meet up with the national team to train for two matches in preparation for the 2019 World Cup in France. They have already qualified and are ready to bring the cup home. “Hopefully the men will also win in Russia”.

QUESTION.- Don’t you fear your club’s or the Federation’s reaction after talking about you being homosexual? You are the first professional player in the league to talk about it publicly…

ANSWER.- I don’t think it will be a problem. My personal life is my own and shouldn’t bother anyone else. I hope that they will support it because football needs to start opening itself up. If there are now people who are openly homosexual even in government, how could there not be homosexual people on football pitches?

Q.- And in the changing rooms? Could that not be weird? Prejudices still exist…

A.- I once talked to a [male] friend about this. He got quite caught up about it, but it’s stupid. Your teammates are like family, like sisters. With the tension you have about a match you aren’t focusing on whether they’re looking at you or that kind of thing. There’s a lot of familiarity between us.

In some ways, Mapi has cracked a glass roof, but the financial figures that women’s football deal with, compared to the ones the men deal with, are still ridiculous. A mediocre player in La Liga can win around a million euros per season, whilst most female players earn around a thousand euros per month. There are agencies, such as Carlos Rodríguez’s UPro, who manages Mapi, that try to improve the situation, but the gap here remains an abyss. “There’s always a lot of talk about the difference in salaries between women’s and men’s football. I understand that they earn a lot of money because they generate that kind of money and I’m not against that. Although it’s also true that the figures are exorbitant, everything has got exponentially higher… In the end, we do the same that they do. We dedicate the same amount of time to the game but few follow us, it may be the case that people like us but what’s missing is more promotion.

Q.- For example Doña Letizia didn’t go to the Copa de la Reina final [this means the Queen’s Cup. Leticia is the Queen of Spain and the men’s tournament called Copa del Rey after the King is always attended by him]

A.- I don’t know why she didn’t attend it. Maybe she wasn’t made aware of it, but if the King goes to the guy’s cup final she should come to ours as it carriers her name. It would really help up as it would attract a lot of attention in the press. Hopefully she’ll go next year [Spoiler: she did!]

Q.- Your male counterparts are currently playing in the World Cup hosted in Russia, a country that has a legislation which contains a crackdown on LGBT rights. What do you think about a competition like this one being played in a country like that?

A.- It’s a mistake. In some way it seems like they’re backing the homophobic legislation. In Chechnya there have been concentration camps for homosexuals and that’s something that Putin tolerates. We shouldn’t look away when presented face to face with such issues. This isn’t only about LGBT rights; these are human rights. That’s not the message of tolerance and respect that sport, and specifically football, should affiliate itself with.

Mapi is very certain about this. The match against homophobia in football can be won. She has scored the first goal. Now what’s left to do is for a lot of other athletes to join the team.

[toughguywithbossygirlfriend]

Dark Nights :Death Metal #1

After DC Comics Amazing event “Dark Nights : Metal” centered on Batman, we get a sequel called “Dark Nights : Death Metal” centered on Wonder Woman (with even more Batmen everywhere...).

Written by Scott Snyder and Penciled by Capullo the new event looks even more nuts then the first one and I have to say .. I love it ... one of the first pages presents what is left of the DCU after the fight against the evil all powerful Perpetua and the Dark Universe’s “Batman Who Laughs” ... Obviously our Heroes lost the fight and survive as best they can in what’s left of the DC Multiverse

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

What’s left of their Universe’s Earth is a world looking like a Bat, with a head, a body, and two wings. Is it even useful to add that the main Lands are related to :

-The “Head” of the Bat... the Brain ... Batman (at least the one who laughs)

-The “Body” of the Bat... Themiscyra ... Wonder Woman..

For the first time for as long as I remember a Crisis level Event seems centered around Wonder Woman, and of course Batman. Usually it would have been about Superman and Batman or eventually about the Trinity... but since the start of Rebirth I have the feeling the wheels are turning for Diana, slowly but surely she climbs up to and mabe one day will take over Superman’s position ... and unlike Clark Kent she has the potential and the history to be paired up with the real undisputed King of DC Comics : Batman.

 (Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

While the “Batman who laughs” is the King of this World ... Diana exchanged her tiara for a crown and is the “Queen of the Underworld” ... giving us a little taste of the DCAU where her “father” wasn’t Zeus but Hades (Lord of the Underworld) ... She rules over Themyscira and Guards the gate to Tartarus ... Obviously she agreed to that role because the Batman Who Laughs uses others lives as leverage (including her Amazon sisters).. In this first Issue She is summoned by her Evil Master to his Castle-Bat ... One thing is very clear she doesn’t consider any of those numerous “Dark Universes Batmen” as “Batman” ... there is only one she calls “Batman”, her Bruce ... the others are just “monsters”, “demons”,...

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

Once she arrived at Castle Bat and faces the Batman Who Laughs and his countless Batmen variants (some are really weird but its really a lot of fun)... in the middle of the meeting, she suddenly gets a telepathic message !?!.. from the one and only Batman, her Batman. Of course she is stunned there is no J’onn J’ozz to establish such a Link ... it reminded me of Diana’s statement in DC Comics “Superman : Heroes #1″ when she told Bruce that he can do everything Superman does, some even better then him...

Obviously he can copy the Martian Manhunter as well.

Once the shock is over, Diana’s first reaction is to worry for his safety ... “Just PLEASE tell me you’re far from here.”. Yes ! Diana can panic ! we’ll get proof of that later ;)...The answer he gives her is of course meant to reassure her : “Across the Universe”... Little test, who believes that ? ... Yeah, figured as much XD... Then we learn that he knows that she started to melt down her Invisible jet but he couldn’t detect its magic moving !?!! ... copying Zatanna or Constantine here ? ...

Who needs a Justice League if you have a Batman ! XD... Diana, my Dear, catch that guy then you can start a full Justice League with just the two of you  ;)

Batman and Magic ??  This may seem surprising but in reality it has already been addressed in Liam Sharp’s “The Brave and the Bold : Batman and Wonder Woman” Issue #2. In it you can see Bruce suggesting Alfred they should build something able to detect magic... (second picture below - we’ll talk about the first later)

(Edit from “The Brave and the Bold : Batman and Wonder Woman” Issue #2)

Lets not forget Batman was the one who searched, hired and befriended Madame Xanadu (the Sorceress Nimue from the Arthurian mythology) recently in “Justice League” and already knows a bunch of Magic users that he can gather knowledge from. He knows, if Wondy is involved, most of the time it is about magic and if he cares for her (quite obvious in Justice League Dark(2018) #12)... he’s got to get a better knowledge of Magic.. plus If you wanted to make a longer series of comics based on Wonder Woman and Batman (a sibling to Batman-Superman) you would need the Dark Knight to understand better what he would have to face ... Maybe that’s what DC wants to do in the near future... Superman’s power are useless against Magic, but Intelligence is always accurate no matter if its about Science, Magic or anything else. And Batman’s main power is his genius level IQ... 

But lets return to our comic.

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

After mentioning it in “Dark Nights : Metal #5″, the “Batman Who Laughs” can’t help but to tell Diana again that there are Worlds where the “Dianas and the Bruces” are Lovers and Parents, ... Just in case she forgot ...XD ... (considering what Scott Snyder said about the sales of this comics, as well as his previous Event, we may assume that most of the comic readers are now used to the fact that those too can be a committed pair).

The “Batman who laughs” knows Diana really well and understood that she was hiding something from him. No doubt he hunts his alter-ego with the greatest attention ... he knows how dangerous he can be. So he threatens Diana to kill whats left of he parliament of Trees, leaving her with no choice... and threatening Diana is something the real “Batman” obviously can’t allow ... Bruce shoots a non-lethal crossbow bolt on the BMWL, revealing himself, to distract the BMWL from Diana ... it worked.

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

"BRUCE... NO.” ... Like I said Diana can panic if it is about Him ... XD

I Wonder if the BMWL threatened Diana on purpose knowing very well this would be enough for his Alter-ego to reveal himself if he was near enough. The “Batman who laughs” explored enough worlds to know how much those two care for each other... Lovers ... Parents ... you get the drift...

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

While Diana was a rather obedient servant to her “Master” because she knew her sisters lives as well as her friends lives where at stakes, she gives up every care and opposes the evil Batmen to give Bruce the opportunity to flee. Much like in the “Blackest Night : WW”, Diana puts Bruce over everything else, Bruce’s safety trumps the safety of every one that the BMWL keeps as leverage against her ... she has to know there’s gonna be a cost.

But Bruce/Batman doesn’t flee, ... not immediately ... because if he did she would be punished for her action ... instead he stays, awaiting the Horde of Evil Batmen to kill him... something that distracts the “Batman Who Laughs” from Diana enough to forget or excuse what she did. But Bruce is always prepared, and this isn’t different ...  God knows how but he found a Black Lantern Ring and uses it to raise a little army of undead warriors in the mood to rip some evil Batmen into pieces.

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

While Diana has been easily “frozen” by the Bat-Mage, and once the Fight between Bruce’s undead soldiers and the evils Batmen is started, Batman knows his Enemy is distracted enough to forget about Diana’s rebellion., .. plus the BMWL would keep her alive just because she is the best way to lure Batman out of his hiding as just proven ... She will be safe, so he leaves.

This Event is fantastic and I can’t wait to see how it unfolds.

I guess Scott Snyder loves the Idea of Bruce as some sort of “God of Death” even if he is mortal. see my previous post :

https://toughguywithbossygirlfriend.tumblr.com/post/190316770026/diana-goddess-of-war-bruce-god-of

A mortal “God of Death” ? It is a concept already explored by Fritz Lieber in his Collection “Sword and Sorcery” about the Heroes “Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser”. Basically if the “God of Death” gets killed (a hard feat) he re-incarnates a little later in another body because without a “God of death” nothing dies.

(Edited from DC Comics Wonder Woman (1942) Issue 202 back in 1972)

Who would have thought that Diana (with Selina) already had an encounter with the Heroes of that World ... so the concept of the “God of Death” being a “mortal” shouldn't be new to her ... ;) ...

In "Death Metal”, Diana is the leading Character and she obviously has not the same goal as Bruce: Diana wants to kill the BMWL and restore a Rich and Infinite Multiverse while Bruce wants to play it small, very small.

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

Bruce’s behavior seems a bit OOC but we will surely get some explanations later in the event as to why. Diana seems to take over the “Dreamy Positiveness” of Superman while Batman holds his “Pragmatic Strategic” line of thinking.

Of course Diana is fiercely independent, and even if she highly values Bruce’s POV she follows her own ... I guess the “Batman Who Laughs” knew her better than she thought, because he first repeated her Bruce’s plan ...

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

Then teases her about her own  ... and I am sure everyone reading the comic was ecstatic the moment Diana ripped the BMWL into pieces with her Chainsaw of truth ...

A move, we will learn later, that her own Bruce tried to avoid with reason ... a move the BMWL planed and expected, if not provoked, because it enabled him to ... upgrade to something infinitely more Powerful... Bruce was right ... again...

Even if Diana leads she will still need Bruce if she wants to win because it is true, ... it seems she can’t out plan the BMWL... only her Batman could do that ...

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

I think these re-incarnation in new Bodies is a way for DC Comics to make Bruce Wayne Immortal while keeping him a weak and mortal human (or not as for the BMWL). This has been explored for quite some time : starting with the “Dyonesium” and the “Final Invention”, Batman Last Knight on Earth, and now the BMWL’s death and return as ... “Final Bruce Wayne” ;)

With this there would be no need to reboot the universes to keep Bruce “Batman” Wayne young ... “every generation will have its Batman” ... If Bruce gets Killed ... you just re-incarnate him in a new younger Body ...

(Edited from DC Comics “Batman : Last Knight on Earth” Issue 1)

Diana is already immortal, Bruce would be as well but “re-incarnation” based, and if needed you just give Superman one more power to his already very long list (lets say “Solar re-rejuvenation” or something) ... For Bruce and Diana this would provide more reason to pair them up ... Without the need for more reboots their usual partners (Steve Trevor, Selina Kyle, ...) will now grow older and pass away... Public persona “Bruce Wayne” being with the Amazon could help cover up his weird immortality as gifts from her Gods... All the kids could grow older and new kids could be added more and more without loosing the 3 Big players.

But that’s speculation and we will have to wait and see what DC Comics is going to do and there are still open questions, but I would enjoy something like that.

(Edited from DC Comics “Dark Nights: Death Metal” Issue 1)

The complementarity of both Heroes is expressed here again : Bruce is the “shield” while Diana is the “Sword”... so basically Bruce is the “defensive” while Diana is the “offensive” ... over writers use the reverse : “Wonder Woman was made to protect the innocent while Batman was made to punish the guilty” .. Wonder Woman is the “defensive” and Batman the “offensive” ... Depending on who writes them they will be one or the other but they are just naturally always the Yin and the Yang to each other.

[popculturebuffet]

New X-Men Xtrospective Part 1: E is For Extinction “They Will Need Us”

I am SO fucking excited for this one. As might not be obvious to ALL of my readers but should be obvious to some, I fucking love the X-Men. They are one of my favorite superhero teams period as are several of their spinoffs such as X-Factor (All versions), New Mutants, and Marauders. I love the wide cast, the hugely vast universe within the already vast and wonderful marvel universe, and the sheer amount of GREAT stories. I own all 11 movies, have several action figures, and two posters from Jonathan Hickman’s current and utterly dynamite run right above me right now as I work, as well as a marvel 80′s themed poster behind me that’s at least half x-men for good reason. I love this gang of mutants and I have not talked about them enough. 

I”ve done some X-Men stuff sure: I’ve talked about hickman’s time as head writer of the books a year in earlier this year, I did a few scattered reviews back when I did single issues of comics, and then we get to the one I beefed big time: covering ALL of X-Men evolution. While it’s a noble endeavor I freely admit to overexerting myself: I recapped the episodes way too closely, gave myself no real schedule and did so while I was already covering two shows a week at the time. My point is it was a good idea, but the timing was REALLY fucking bad and if I do it again, I intend to do it right and iwth a proper place in my now properly paced schedule. I also planned to do the movies which, unlike evolution, I have solid plans to do once I clear out some of my projects. Point is I burned bright and then exploded and took a whole projecet with me phoenix style. 

I had until this moment yet to do a really big x-men project, something digging into the comics, something that could help fans both of the comics and not get familiar with something really good, and help me dig into both the good and bad of something. I jsut needed the right start. 

Then Christmas gave me that spark, that project that gave me the idea for a butload more x-men content on here and was the perfect starting point for some. See my friend Marco lives in Honduras, and so since i couldn’t afford to send him anything for christmas in the mail, as i’m not exactly rich, I instead offered him three reviews of anything.l He still hasn’t taken up two of them, nor one I gave him for graduating college, but the first one was a doozy, something he hadn’t read due to not liking the art, which is fine as I have some art in comics I don’t like everyone has diffrent tastes, at least for the first arc, and something VITALLY important to x-men as a whole and that’s the backbone of hickman’s current run: the first arc of new x-men, e is for extinction. And given New X-Men is one of my faviorite comics of all time I not only lept on it.. but decided fuck it I’m covering the whole thing. So every so often on here from now until I finish, i’m going to be covering Grant Morrisons ground breaking, mind shattering, status quo destroying run on the children of the atom. This.. is going to be fucking awesome. Buckle up. 

New X-Men came about in 2001. Stop me if you heard this one: The X-Men, once marvel’s best selling title and one of i’ts most beloved, had been set adrift in a seal of editorial bullshit, bad writing, bad storylines and a stale continuity where not much could change or grow and things always reset to about the same place it was last week. If this sounds familiar it’s because it somehow happened AGAIN thanks to Ike Perlmutter’s bullshit, hence the current hickman run, but we’ll get into all of tha tsome other time. Point is as it was in 2018, so it was in 2001: The x-men were in bad straits and marvel reached out to a host of various creators to swing for the fences and find a new direction, something to bring sales and life back to the book. To my shock they actually took a LOT of diffrent pitches in before Morrisons won and from huge names: Geoff Johns, who had not yet returned to DC never to leave, Alex Ross, Keith Giffen.. all huge creative types. but in the end the best man won.

For those unfamiliar with him, Grant Morrison is a gloriously batshit scotsman with a long, storied and delightfully insane history in comics, mostly at DC before and after this comic. This is for good reason: DC scouted Morrison specifically because of his early work at 2000ad. See at the time Alan Moore had hit it really big with Swamp Thing, taking a d list, so so book and making it into an utter masterpiece and giving it thoroughly interesting mythology. Given it was a blockbuster hit that’s still widely loved and discussed, as it should be today, DC decided to repeat the strategy of asking British indie comics creators to come do the same to another property. This same experiment is why Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman exists, so.. yeah it was actually a great strategy and naturally Grant had their first big hit with Animal Man, a metafictional take on a b-list hero that made him a loveable family man, while also putting him through hell and playing with the medium and dc’s vast history, the last two being Morrison’s trademark from then on out.

 They’d next go on to reinvent one of my other faviorite teams: THE DOOM PATROL!  The patrol are a bunch of victims of strange accidents who got powers out of them that are basically curses... and Morrison solidified that concept, taking over after a weak run that ironically enough was trying to imitate the x-men’s success at the time. Instead Morrison just went all out with his weird shit for the first time and made them a team of broken but likeable people with weird powers fighting just the weirdest most incomprehensible shit, a run i’ll likely be digging into eventually along with the team as a whole. It’s also, along with Gerard Way’s recent run, the bedroock for the current and utterly masterful doom patrol series I need to catch up on. They also apparently once wrote a satrical comic starring and lik mocking hitler... a fact I somehow JUST learned but naturally doesn’t surprise me at all. 

Morrison’s career at dc, after doing some creator owned stuff there when Vertigo opened up, hit it’s peak in the late 90′s as they were given the go ahead to reinvent the Justice League, with the wildly successful and awesome JLA, another book I probably need to take a look at that put the big 7 back into the team.  And by now your probably getting the point of me covering his career pattern.. besides giving morrison the praise they deserve, and they’d have some really great runs after this.. and some terrible ones but no one’s perfect. My point is that at this point in their career Morrison’s greatest skill was taking something that had grown stagnant or been forgotten, blowing it up and reworking it into something glorious and new. Taking what worked, scraping away what didn’t and on the whole making something fucking glorious out of it. So here we are. The X-Men needed a new coat of paint and uncle grant had their lcd laced psycadelic paint bucket and brush shaped like a pidgeon at the ready. And for better, way better and admitely sometimes here and there worse,they changed the x-men for good. Some changes were rolled back out of spite, others finally got their chance after said rollback recently, and some were just outright thrown on the grown and smashed with a hammer. But for the most part Grant left a huge impact on the x-men and i’m here to show you why, warts and all. To me my x-men, this is new x-men.  Now naturally there’s even more exposition but i’ts more in what COULD’VE been. Originally while Wolverine, Cyclops, Jean Grey and Professor X were all part of the team the other two members of the slim roster for this run, Beast and Emma Frost.. weren’t. Originally Morrison was going to have Colossus and Moira Mactaggert, long time team ally, token human until very recently, and now thanks to hickman one of the most important x characters peirod and long before that a fan favorite of mine, on the team, with Moira taking over for beast. 

This.. didn’t pan out since Marvel apparently either didn’t give a shit about their plans or already had things in motion as the climax of the longtime legacy virus storyline killed both off. Colossus until Joss Whedon, bastard he may be, brought him back for his terrific Astonishing X-Men, and Moira SOMEHOW stayed dead until House/Powers of X. See this speaks to one of the big roadblocks morrison faced: Jonathan HIckman currently has absolute power and all his writers working in concert, a new way of doing things comic companies shold honestly copy en masse as it’s really working wonders. Grant.. was just one of many writers and one of three main x books the others being Chris Claremont’s XTREME X-MEN, basically “let the legend do what he wants since he can’t get freedom on the main book” and another writer on uncanny... before eventually chuck austen took over and I will tackle that horrible mess some other time. Point is while Morrison was setting the tone, costume style and making the big waves, they still didn’t have full power and thus had to play nice with eveyrone else.  So their next idea was Rogue, making mer more like her x-men evolution version.. except Chris wanted her, so that was out, though being a decent enough guy he willingly gave up Beast since the moira thing meant Morrison needed a science person. As for Colossus replacement, as it turned out a fan had suggested Grant do something with Emma Frost since Gen X was canceled and while Morrison had zero intention for it clearly Emma clicked with hthem and she was soon both a main part of the cast and one of their biggest contributions to X-Men as a whole.

As for what I think of the needed changes.. they ended up being for the best. I do like Moira... but Hank ended up being a much better fit for the team dynamic wise and power set wise, while Emma was the same. While Colossus, Rogue and Moira are all fantastic characters, I think what we ended up with was just a better mix overall. I DO think the team is incredibly white, but that’s a general x-men problem, even with having an assload of diverse and intresting characters, so it’s not entirely his fault. All in all it’s a fantastic roster: four of the x-men’s best, their leader in the field for the first time in forever, and a new and intresting wild card. IT’s a nice ballance of characters and we’ll get more into it as we go. Now all the expositions done, we can finally dive head first into new x-men. I hope you survivie the experince under the cut. 

After an utterly gorgeous and striking cover, the one used up top, we get one solid page to introduce us to Morrison’s mission statment, how  they feel and how good Frank Quitely’s art looks

I cropped it best i could for tumblr but this one image immidetly says a lot. Our heroes are just.. easily taking down this sentinel, an old model... the same one we’ve seen a dozen times. What were once the grim, possible destroyers of an entire race of beings in days of future past and devistating killing machines in the present.. had become stale easily defeated murder bots There had been noble attempts to really make the sentiinels work again like the horrifying omega sentinels, humans forcibly converted into sleeper agent killing machines, during operation: zero tolerance, but otherwise they were mostly just a prop for the x-men to knock down. And that.. really is morrison’s whole point. Lampshading and mocking the fact the x-men had grown stale, things hadn’t really progressed.. and that it was time to move on. But to Uncle Grant’s credit, they not only uses this as a mission statment but it’s plot relevant: this mission will both be explained soon and explains why Logan and Scott are out and about enough to end up where the plot will soon need them. It also helps, via the sight of the syndey opera house establish something Morrison made a staple of their run: the X-Men going global. While the x-men were never really NOT global post claremont, Morrisons run has them handling rescue missions and what not worldwide far more often than most runs before it sans Claremont, and really made it feel like they weren’t just another super team but a global force of good with a specific goal and mission. More on the global aspect next time, as that’s where it really comes in but I felt it was important to show it was there for minute one. 

So yeah before we move onto the first full scene of the run, let’s talk about the costumes. 

We’ll talk about Emma’s later since she’s not introduced to the story for a while but yeah. There’s a sharp, obvious and immediate change just in the outfits, which take after the movie’s more military look, having the x-men not only look more like a unit but more like a professional orginization. Someone to come and help when needed. While this would take on more siginifigance in a bit, we’ll get to it, it also fits Morrisions own views that the x-men were less of a traditional superhero team and more something different on the edges that fought things out there, sorta what like he did with doom patrol. And it’s honestly a valid interpretation as the x-men are often seen as outlaws and misfits by society for beingn well.. mutants. Not as trusted as the avengers. So having them adopt this look played into that: Having them look more professional and focused as The X-Men have a less blanket mission statement than the avenger.. but also mildly threatning. Something to alarm the humans. It’s an utterly brilliant look thrown best together by the big yellow x’s, still giving it a nice flash of color to show off and show this is still a comic and this is still damn colorful.. this just isn’t your AVERAGE supherhero comic or the x-men your used to. IT’s a real shame the only fox x-men movie to use it was fucking dark phoenix.. a film where it didn’t even fit as xavier was getting flashier and more reckless so why wouldn’t he have more garish and colorful and more traditional superhero outfits. They did look good in their variants in first class though. Props there. Point is this is a classic, utterly stunning look, and tha’ts coming from someone whose fine with goofy superhero outfits and perpetually bitter hawkeye is almost never allowed to wear his actual comic outift and is instead stuck with shades instead of you know.. a mask. Or anything resembling an actual good looking costume. This though this is how you do a less superheroy costume: practical and realistic, but still cool looking and comic book friendly. 

We cut to a mysterious lady, we’ll come to know her as Cassandra Nova and while I know her origin... i’m saving it for later as the comics themselves explain it eventually, and a simpering dolt she brought with her, Donald Trask, a distant relative of the creators of the sentinels who, via holograms she’s showing cro magnons slaughtring the neanderthal. Her point is that Mutants are going to do this and she’s clearly fearmongering him and trying to talk him into genocide: to wipe them out before they wipe out humanity. And it’s here we get one of hte most important plot points of Morrisons run and one of the most intresting: according to cassandra’s research Humanity will be no more in 4 generations. Mutankind is on it’s way to overtaking them at last.. i’ts still a few decades off.. but it’s coming. It’s sometihing that the whole decimation nonsense sadly snuffed.. and John Hickman has thankfully brought back. I’ll get to his run once i’ts complete in a few years, but point is it’s an utterly marvelous plot hook: Humanity, whose already attempted genocide a few times, is now in real danger of what their petty, racist, fearful attacks have been about: being replaced. It’s one of the central themes of the work the other two being “Just what IS mutantkind and what will it be”. WHat are they as a people? We’ll dig into these as we go but the threat of exctincion is the backbone of this arc... and will lead to something truly ghastly. 

It’s then we get our title page.. which nothing really to add it just looks really good and helps show off who are cast is and what they can do with striking simple art. 

And since we’re already talking the art of the book, let’s take a moment to discuss an intresting detail of this run: despite it’s short length there’s quite a few diffrent artist, who we’ll talk about of course as we get to each one. The most common and notable though is Frank Quitely. Frank Quitely is one of Morrison’s closest and best creative partners, having a unique, squishy art style.. i.e. the one my friend didn’t like which is why i’m covering this. And while I like the art style quite a bit, I do get why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea: His art is squashed, weird, and admitely some faces can be good god no incaranate. But it’s also why I like it: his characters feel unique, each body and figure feels like it was custom made and thus feels.. real. Like this is a person before you. And given comics can often surrender to having everybody look the damn same, this is nice. His faces may sometimes look similar but his bodies are where the action is. But while having a realistic feel his work also has a weird alien quality that perfectly fits Morrison, and thus his run on x-men. I will say while I love All-Star Superman, his art fits less there in the more hopeful silver agey story, so he’s not an artist for EVERY STORY OF EVERY TYPE.. but when it comes to sci fi weridness, he fits it like a glove so i’ts unsuprising he and morrison are practicaley soul mates, nor that his art sets the tone perfectly for the run: this is something new, diffrent and strange.. and what says x-men at it’s best more than that?

So after our opening titles we cut to the mansion where Hank is showing off his latest and greatest invention: Cerebra. Cerbebra is a massively upgraded version of Cerebro, aka Professor Xavier’s iconic helmet that allows him to track mutants to help them out.. and covertly backup their conconousness for his long game plan, but shhhh, don’t tell anyone yet that’s not going to be retconned in for a few decades. Though i’m damn certain if Morrison has heard about the current era of x-men and how it both builds on what he built, shatters the status quo and is incredibly weird, he’d be damn proud. As for how it’s diffrent Cerebra not only has a large dome around it but said dome allows the machine to amply Charles powers to a global reach. He can now see mutants all over the world anywhere in the world, something I didn’t realize wasn’t ALWAYS a thing because it seems so simple. It’s also likely to bring it more in line with the movies. And while marvel has done TERRIBLE with bringing things in from the movies or in line with them in recent years, i.e. making star lord more like his movie self while forgetting that’s how he already used to be in canon before later writers thankfully did hte better step of merging the two, Hawkeye’s outfit, Cap’s outfit or Nick Fury Jr.  But for every mistep there’s also been tons of times it’s worked out really well such as here, as well as bringing hulk into the avengers for the first time since the founding, making tony stark more like the mcu version and less like a nightmarish self righetous dicktator who rightfully gets beat up and called out a lot, making Scott Lang prominent since he became prominent in the MCU, Wakanda being a major force in the marvel universe as it always should have been and various titles that have popped up to tie into movies, often bringing back a team or property that hadn’t had a book in some time like Ant-Man, Black Panther, and Shang Chi just to name a few. It’s not always hawkeye looking all jeremy renner is what i’m saying.. though thankfully comics clint isn’t that uninteresting. Hopefully the series will change that. 

So yeah along with a bigger shinier cerebro we’re also introduced to a big change in Hank whose taken on his lion form rather than his classic gorilla with a weird haircut or his return to that except bald. Here he’s more like aslan in a human body and I.. love it. It looks great, helps sell hanks delima of being brilliant while looking like a beast and makes sense: he kickstarted what was likely his own secondary evolution by drinking the potion that made him bestial, so it only makes sense his body wouldn’t be all that stable even if it took years to change again. And even that makes sense as hank was breifly turned back to his original hairless ape mutation during x-factor, easily one of the books.. worse decisions honestly and one that louise simonson thankfully later undid. That probably bought him some time hence why it’s only mutating further now.  It also adds an intresting wrinkle which the run will explore further: how far does this go? Will he regress? and how much hank will be left? And how will society treat his new form? 

For now he’s actually extatic. While he’s going through hormonal changes, and giving out some excellent banter with Jean

Which also includes one of the greatest lines in comic book history, one that’s been in my head for decades and made me absolutely love henry mccoy. 

He’s just great is what i’m saying. As you can tell it’s stuff like this why i’m glad Moira fell through. While I love her.. Morrison’s hank is just a delight and one really questionable subplot aside, we’ll get to that, he’s one of the highlights of this run with an intresting internal struggle, and great chemistry with EVERYONE. And that is the main reason i’m glad Moira fell through as his history with everyone but Emma, who he still has a great raport with, means each interaction has weight. He’s close friends with both scott and jean and thus serves as their needed confidant, while still being able to buddy and banter iwth good old weapon x, and speak with his mentor charles as an equal. While I love moira... Beast just fits into the cast too perfectly and I 100% suspect Morrison was only using her because, while she’s awesome, Claremont wanted her and thus gladly snapped her up when he no longer had a science person. I’ll get into his Jean soon enough but she’s likewise fantastic and easily my faviorite version of the character.. not that until very recently there was much honest competition. 

So Cerebra fires up showing a massive cloud of mutants, showing just how much of a huge spike theirs been with Xavier wondering what it all means.. and Hank seeing a weird flare on the mointor for just a second with his special eyes. But since Xavier isn’t stupid and isn’t the kind of idiot who just dismisses it as a fulke, and since Scott and Logan are in the field, he decides to confrence call them in to see if they can go take a look. 

And naturally we get to see what their up to and get context for what the hell happened in the first page. Our heroes were on a rescue mission to save Ugly John, tha’ts what people called him, a three faced mutant who ends up passing out as they head out of the atmosphere for a second. Wolverine is regenerating and smoking out of his neck becaue he could still smoke back then before marvel decided “he’s setting a bad example”.. in a comic meant for teens and adults. 

I mean I get it on some level as the x-men cartoon was a huge thing in the 90′s and Ben Grimm is basically a giant children’s toy with the mind of a surly 40 year old jewish man from yancy street, but stilll it’s just.. why. I may not like smoking but it’s not like it was SPIDER-MAN saying

It’s a grown man.. whose not a sterling roll model and who Claremont went out of his way to have Logan point out his healing factor means it really dosen’t hurt him in the long run and when Kitty, an actual teenager, tried one of his cigars she choked. I know it’s a weird thing to get hung up on but while i’m all for keeping kids from smoking, this was a really clumsy way to try and hehlp that that made no sense and will never make any sense. 

One tangent later we find out that Cassandra was showing Trask a simulation on a flight to, unsuprisingly, south america, to a sentinel blacksite. Between covertly funding civil wars as they do, the US Goverment naturally founded an experimental sentinal project, and a second master mold during the production of the first line... when larry trask asks where it could possibly be well...

Subtly was not the trasks strong point.. or common sense... or.. not realizing their creations would dominate humanity too or not dying. 

Anyways we then cut back to the x-men, as their having a psychic zoom meeting with Charlie giving one of his patnted big speeches.. and like a lot of this comic it’s too damn good not to use 

The reason I couldn’t should be obvious: This one speech sums up the x-men, why their great and why their necessary in a nutshell: in a world full of prejucided morons.. there’s plenty of scared kids who NEED the x-men to protect and guide them, and with a surge in the mutant population, their needed now more than ever. We also get a good explanation in universe for the uniform change: Charles had them in the superhero outfits hoping humanity would accept them if they were packaged as something they know. Since that clearly hasn’t worked he’s trying new ways to reach out and thus going with a diffrent more rescue team approach to the uniforms. He assigns Wolvie and Cyke to go check out the flair as you’d expect and the meetings over. On the blackbird we get our first hint at a subplot as Logan noticed Cyclops couldn’t wait to get out of there, and is being a tad distant to his wife. He actually has reasons for being kind of cold for once instead of just bad writing as he just came back from being possed by apocalypse. Yeah that happened. So the experience has rattled our boy some what. More on that as we go. But Jean ducks the subject with hank but does breach the fact that Charles has been going kind of crazy with the spending, new uniforms and ambition lately. Hank explains it perfectly: After all the death, suffering and misery the x-men have endured lately, the aforementioned deaths I talked about that took Colossus and Moira off the roster, have lionzed Charles to make sure it was all worth something and look towards the future. 

But enough hope time for horror as Cassandra makes her first direct move, trying to take over Charles brain , make his body her own and use cerebra to kill lots and lots of mutants. We then get one of the best moments of Morrisons run with Charles response to a horrifying monster trying to take his brain

While it is shocking to find out Charles has a gun..it’s a grim but kind of understandable precaution. The guy once got fully taken over by a brood, assembling the New Mutants in part because the brood wanted to create more of i’ts kind with more super powers. You’d be paranoid too if some of your beloved students were brought together partly due to your good intentions and partly because a space monster wanted to make more space montsters out of helpless teens, and even horribly gaslighted one of them. We’ll get to that some day. Point is Charles brain is one of the greatest weapons on earth and if the wrong person got a hold of it, it’d be the end of said earth. Thankfully Charles does not need plan gun, as Jean yanks Cerebra off him but the sheer HATE Charles felt from Cassandra, the sheer power has rattled him.. and also told him she’s in Ecuador and his X-Men need to be warned NOW. It’s a great way to set up just HOW powerful Cassandra is.  Speaking of which as our first issue of the arc ends, we find out two things: Cass faked being int he government but really just used dead soldiers as prop.. and just what kind of sentinels are out there.. wild sentinels. Easily my faviorite variant of the old killing machines and one that’s barely used despite being really damn awesome. Their adaptive killing machines, designed to mutated just like their pray and take tech from around them, as a result they look like a jumble of guns and parts.. but not only does it give them a unique, cool look.. but it makes them ten times deadlier as instead of being big bricks of robots that while intimidating, the x-men know how to kill... their unpredictable variable killing machines. You can figure out how to kill one sure.. btu the next might be entirely diffrent. They are one of morrisons best creations and I hope someone uses the idea again.. aka hickman. Please use it jonathan I know your focused on nimrod but come on. 

And we end on one of the best lines of the entiire run as we close out the issue

Yeah it goes without saying but i’ll say it anyway; Morrison is really damn good with dialouge and being damn quotable. 

So we open with another great quote “When I got up today I didn’t expect to kill 20 million people”... and Cassandra being aware Wolverine and Cyclops are on their way and sending the Wild Sentinels to dispatch them. Also our heroes brought Ugly John along while while a dumb move, Wolvie does point out how dumb it was to divert to Ecuador with a civlian in tow.. after the plane crash of course. As for “wait what plane crash’, the sentinels attack and start picking it apart... and since letting them have such good tech is a terrible idea, Scotty blows up the damn plane. So to recap our heroes are stuck in ecuador, surrounded by murder machines, and oh look their there and knock off cyclops viser. Fantastic. So yeah our heroes are fucked. And naturally captured by the enemy.

The rest of the x-men are doing SLIGHTLY better. While beast makes a note for his girlfriend, more on that later on, Charles is in bed, half alive, explaning the rationale I gave for why he has the gun with Jean refusing to let him get back out of bed and you know.. put on the device that just nearly killed him. But when beast announces they lost contact with our boys.. yeah that ceased being an option. 

Back in the Ecuadorian Genocide Factory, Cassandra does the obvious and kills donald trask as his real purpose..was to stick around and be stupid for a bit while she copied his dna so she could have full control of her new murder toys.She soon uses them, having a horrifying death chamber slaughter john.. or at least flash fry him. Wolverine takes it how you’d expect and since the sentinels need to “perserve trask dna”.. they can’t fire on him without killing her. Scott escapes.. and in a heart wrenching scene mercy kills john.. before getting badass. 

To anyone who says Scott Summers is boring, unintersting, or a stupid asshole idiot head I present exhbit shut the fuck up. Morrison gets scott just right, deconstructing his emotional suppression, while showing him off as a dedicated, companionate man who gets the job done and who seconds after tearfully having to mercy kill an innocent mutant whose death was partially his fault, wastes no time making it painfully clear to the person responsible she WILL die if she tries that again. Logan however realizes she’s already won in some fashion as she’s grinning.. and yeah never a good sign when a genocidal madwoman is grinning like a loon.. and when we find out why.. it’s even less good>  We cut to Genosha. A lot of you probably know what happned to Genosha but in case you don’t know what it is it was once a horribly racist country that genetically enslaved mutants and used them for slave labor. It was freed, but still struggled to truly move on.. till Magneto showed up, took the country for himself and made it a home for all mutants. When we last saw him he once again tried to take over the world leading to Logan seemingly killing him. Right now though Emma Frost finally enters the scene teaching some mutants.. when a young one named Negasonic Teenage Warhead.. yes that one and yes she was entirely chosen for deadpool for her name, reveals, via precognition, that their all going to die.. right as the sentinels attack. 

Genosha.. is gone. In an eyeblink 16 million mutants are dead, a possible future gone, and one of their greatest leaders is no more. Yeah Magneto WAS alive.. but paralyzed so he could do nothing when his island was utterly slaughtered. Only a handful of mutants will be revealed to survive. Humanity had done a lot to mutants before .. but for once.. they’d succeeded in wiping a massive chunk out. What was an x-men location for DECADES at this point.. was now a smoldering crater. A what could of been that would hant the x-men ever after, even now into utopia it remains the darkest day in mutant history outside of hte decimation. It is a truly horrific moment.. and if the changes already hadn’t made it clear this is morrison saying “NO character is safe, nothing is safe, and nothing will be the same and I damn well mean that”. In one act of hate the world has changed. And it hasn’t finished changing yet. 

Issue Three opens hammering in things, as Jean and Beast are in the ruins of genosha, with Xavier having found ONE surivor among the rubble, and our heroes sturggling to find even them, though Jean eventually picks them up and uses her TK to sift through the rubble. 

They find Emma who emerges from a bunker in shock, clutching NTW... and not realizing she’s dead until later and revealing she now has diamond skin, her own secondary mutation. Secondary Mutation was a birlliant idea, new powers sprouting up within established mutants.. it’s just morrison barely used this great idea as did hardly anyone else. Only X-Men Blue ever really dug into it and those were artifical at that. IT’s a great idea..it’s just barely used and at most heavily implied to explain changes in powers like Jamie Madrox Multiple Personalities later on or Doug Ramsey’s vast increase in power. Disapointing. 

While Charles takes in the tragedy and the fact his old frienmie is dead, the x-men wonder what the fuck Cassandra is and what to do with her.. why did she kill 16 million people, and what the fuck is she. I mean I know, but as I said i’ll explain that when the story does.  IN the other room Beast tends to Emma who wants none of not fucking killing Cassandra.. and is utterly right. Bitchy, because i’ts Emma, but right: she killed 16 million people. Say what you want but while it may not be up to the x-men to kill her.. she shoudln’t be living much longer. She commited genocide. Emma decides fuck that and prepares to leave summoning a cab and making peace with being a glorious living fabrige egg. Emma did apparelty change in generation x.. but Morrison is responsible for returning her not only to being a bitch, but a gloriously delightful one And really I don’t think they reset her character entirely: she’s not the heartless monster she started out as: she has empathy, grace, and caring.. she just buries it under a lair of absolute bitch and after you know, surviving a fucking genocide who can blame her? And honestly.. I love their verison of her. She provides a nice contrast to the more idealistic, even logan, x-men and a nice contrarian voice in the room without being obnoxious and her style and sacrastic swagger makes her endlessly entertaning. Thanks to morrison she’s stuck around to this day and went from a pretty good character.. to a great one. And what makes her this way, or as jean puts it “such a bitch?”

With that settled, Hank explains what Cassandra is: a competing species. As he puts it sometimes evolution takes a quantum leap forward.. and Cassandra is the result. Thus she wants to wipe out the compettition and is so far above humanity, she dosen’t need them... especially since she knows what Hank now knows: humanity is at an end. As hank puts it we have an E Gene, one that basically shuts off a race.. and thus the x-men now know what we learned earlier and that cassandra wasn’t lying: in 4 generations there are no more humans and something has to repalce htem. And Cassandra wants it to be her. 

Before Logan can do what he does best, and asks why she looks like charles, Cassandra escapes, and Scott briliantly urges them to fight only on instict as she’s a telepath. A damn awesome fight insues including Cassandra donning Charles Psoonic battle armor, Scott being put in his black bug room and the general good looking chaos you’d expect from a superhero fight. While this goes on Emma has an ephinany and realizes she likes to teach, the x-men have a school.. and she shoudln’t give up on helping kids just because of what happened and turns around. 

Cassandra is near victory, slipping her way to Cerebra.. and planning to kill only one mind before getting to the millions she wnats, a horrifying slug manifesting around her.. only...

So the x-men accept this and cassandra rises.. seemingly saying “I am charles” Huh... and then charles uncaracteristiacally shoots her saying things must change

We’ll get to what all of that means next time as we close on Jean and Scott in bed. Scott explains why he’s been so distant as what I said earlier: fighting off apocalypse stripped away a lot of illusions about himself and he’s having a hard time walking back from that but Jean is willing to help.. but before they can resolve their  issues.. charles has an annoucnment to make and grant has one last whopper of a suprise to end his opening arc on, and just like genosha...it’s a game changer of titanic proportions

No longer is Xavier’s School hidden. Their walking into the light now and so is charles. Hope they surivive the experince. Obviously this move is brilliant: while it removes the veil of saftey the x-men had it also brings on tons of new possiblities and unlike secondary mutation, this one not only stuck but would impact the x-men for good: no longer would they hide and cower.. their mutant and proud.. and their here to stay.  E For Extinction is one of the best x-men stories period. Blisteringly paced, full of great character, great concepts and utterly terrifying and terrific moments that would impact the x-men all the way to present day. It’s beautifully drawn, well paced, and a masterwork. I highly recommend it and it’s a great kickoff to a great run. Shame the run couldn’t of ended on this kind of high but.. we’ll get to that. For now this is a masterclass in how to start a run and if you haven’t read it do so NEXT TIME ON NEW X-MEN: A bunch of weirdos try to harvest mutant organs, the x-men get a brain in a jar and a new teamate, and Scott maybe cheats on his wife. Until then, goodbye goodbye goodbye. 

[bluestar22x]

Master Post

Lost looking for something on this blog? This post is for you!

Months listed next to each show/movie/etc. below are those in which they can be found and usually were reblogged a lot.

I don’t regularly reblog all the shows I watch. I usually do “catch-up” reblogs for many of my shows, so expect occasional mass reblogs (especially at the beginning of a new month).

This post is here to give you an idea of where to search for gifs and photos, etc. of a particular subject on my blog. I’m usually pretty good with tagging everything, but in some cases it may be easier to go through the posts by month instead of by the tags.

It’s also my personal guide to what to reblog in the future, so this post will be updated or reposted whenever I’ve had a lot of activity or it’s a new month.

xxx

Currently Covered Shows x 12 Monkeys – August 2015, April - July 2016, May - June 2017, June - Nov. 2018, April 2019, Oct. 2019

13 Reasons Why - April 2017

911 (Fox) - Dec. 2018, Nov. 2019 - Dec. 2019, March - Aug. 2020, Jan. - June 2021

911 Lone Star - Jan. - Aug. 2020, Dec. 2020, Jan. - June 2021

After Life (Netflix) - August 2020

Agents Of SHIELD – March 2016, April - May 2016, March - May 2018, May - August 2019, May 2020 - August 2020

Almost Human – January 2016, Feb. 2018

Arrow - February 2017, June 2017, August 2017, Nov. - Dec. 2017, Dec. 2018, May 2019, Dec. 2019, Jan. - Feb. 2020

Awake (2012) - Oct. 2018

Baby Daddy - October 2017

Beauty And The Beast (CW), BATB - April 2018

Being Human (US) - November 2016

Believe - August 2016

Bones (Fox Bones Show) - March 2016, Sept. 2016

Boy Meets World – March 2016, July 2016, Jan. 2017

Buffy The Vampire Slayer - Sept. 2016

Burn Notice - Sept. 2016, March 2020

Camp Cretaceous - October 2020, April 2021

Charmed – February 2016, June 2016, Aug. - Sept. 2017, Dec. 2017

Charmed (CW) - July 2019, Oct. 2019 - Dec. 2019

Chasing Life - March 2018

Chicago Fire – March 2016, Aug. 2016, Nov. 2016, March 2017, Aug. 2017, Oct. 2017, March 2018, Oct. - Dec. 2018, Jan. - May 2019, Sept. - Nov. 2019, Jan. - April 2020, Nov. - Dec. 2020, Jan. - May 2021

Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina - June 2019, Sept. 2020

Constantine – Dec. 2015, Feb. 2016

Daredevil (Netflix) - January 2018

Dark Angel - March 2017, Sept. 2018

Dark Matter - January 2018

DC Crossovers (CW Crossover) - Nov. - Dec. 2016, Feb. 2017, Nov. 2017, Dec. 2018, Dec. 2019, Jan. 2020

Dominion – August 2015, November 2015

Elementary - January 2018

Forever - July 2016

Fresh Prince Of Bel Air - August 2018

Frequency - Oct. 2016, Oct. 2017

Fringe - June 2016

Full House - August 2018

Galavant - September 2018

Game Of Thrones - Feb. 2018 (Some gifs in months before)

Ghost Whisperer - October 2018, November 2018

Gilligans Island - August 2018

Girl Meets World – March 2016, July 2016, Jan. 2017

Grimm (early seasons) - March 2018  

Happy Days - August 2018

Hawaii Five 0 - Oct. 2017

Heartland – February - April 2016, June - July 2016, Sept. - Dec. 2016, Jan. - Dec. 2017, Jan. - Dec. 2018, Jan. 2019 - Dec. 2019, Jan. - Dec. 2020, Jan. - July 2021

Humans - August 2017

Impractical Jokers - April 2019, Feb. 2020

Into The Badlands – Nov. - Dec. 2015, Jan. 2017, March - June 2017, March - May 2018, April - May 2019

iZombie - Feb. 2018

Jane The Virgin - January 2018

Jericho - December 2018, August 2020

Killjoys - November 2018

Kyle XY - June 2016

Legends Of Tomorrow - February 2017, Aug. 2017, Nov. - Dec. 2017, Feb. 2018 - June 2018, Sept. 2018, Nov. - Dec. 2018, April - May 2019, Jan. 2020, March 2020, May 2020

Lethal Weapon - Sept. – Dec. 2016, Jan. - April 2017, June 2017, Sept. - Oct. 2017, Dec. 2017, Jan. 2018 - May 2018

Limitless - January 2018

Lost In Space - June 2018

Lucifer (Fox), Lucifer (Netflix) - December 2017, April - June 2018, April - May 2019, Sept. 2019, Dec. 2019, Jan. - Feb. 2020, April - May 2020, July - Dec. 2020, Jan. 2021, May - July 2021

Melissa & Joey - October 2017

Moonlight - November 2016, October 2018

Nashville - March - April 2017, September 2018

NCIS - September 2020

Nikita – Nov. 2015, Jan. 2016, Aug. 2016, Aug. 2017

Once Upon A Time – January 2016

One Tree Hill – March 2016, July 2016, Jan. 2017, April 2017, Aug. 2017

Person of Interest – March 2016, June 2016

Prehistoric Park - May 2017

Prison Break - Oct. 2017

Proof - August 2016

Psych - Sept. 2017

Resurrection - Oct. 2018

Sabrina The Teenage Witch - June 2017

Saved By The Bell - August 2018

Saving Hope - November 2018

Shadowhunters - Feb. 2018

Sherlock BBC - Feb. 2018

Shooter - August 2017

Sleepy Hollow (4 Horsemen & Ichabod) - August 2016, August 2020

Smallville - Feb. 2018

Stitchers - Aug. 2016, March 2017, April 2018

Supergirl - March 2016, Sept. - Dec. 2016, Jan. - May 2017, Aug. 2017, Nov. - Dec. 2017, Feb. 2018, April - June 2018, Dec. 2018, Dec. 2019

Superman & Lois - Feb. - March 2021, May 2021 - July 2021

Supernatural – Nov. 2015, March 2016, May 2016, July – Sept. 2016, Oct. 2016 (Huge post), Nov. - Dec. 2016, Jan. - Aug. 2017,  Oct. - Dec. 2017, January - Dec. 2018, Jan. - Dec. 2019, Jan. - Dec. 2020

Teen Wolf – Nov. 2015, Feb. 2016, March - April 2016, Nov. - Dec. 2016, Jan. - Feb. 2017, April 2017, Aug. - Sept. 2017

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - June 2019, November 2019

Terra Nova - Oct. 2018

The Dead Zone - August 2020

The Flash – December 2015, February 2017, Aug. 2017, Nov. 2017, Oct. - Dec. 2018, Jan. 2019 - March - May 2019, Nov. - Dec. 2019, Feb. 2020

The Following - July 2017

The Librarians – Oct. - Nov. 2015, July 2016, Nov. - Dec. 2016, Jan. - Feb. 2017, April 2017, July - Oct. 2017, Dec. 2017, Jan. 2018, June 2018

The Mentalist - Nov. 2017  

The Originals – Dec. 2015, April 2016, Dec. 2016, Sept. - Oct. 2017, Dec. 2017, Jan. 2018, April - Sept. 2018

The Passage - Jan. 2019 - March 2019

The Saddle Club - Oct. 2017

The Vampire Diaries - Jan. - March 2017, Sept. 2017, April 2018

The Walking Dead – March 2016

The Witcher - January 2020

This Is Us - January 2018

Transformers Prime - May 2017

Walker - Dec. 2020, Jan. - March 2021, May - July 2021

Warehouse 13 - May 2018

Whose Line Is It Anyway? - March 2017

Wildfire (ABC Family) - June 2016

Veronica Mars/Veronica Mars Movie - Sept. 2016, Aug. 2017

Young & Hungry - October 2017, September 2018

You Vs. Wild - May 2019

X-Files - January 2018 xxx Movies x

101 Dalmatians - July 2017

101 Dalmatians (1996) - July 2017

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood - October 2020

A Cinderella Story - February 2018

After (2019) - October 2020

Age Of Adaline - June 2017

Aladdin (2019) - February 2020

Alice (2009) - April 2017

All Dogs Go To Heaven/ADGTH 2 - July 2017

Alpha Movie - December 2018

American Assassin - December 2017

An Extremely Goofy Movie - September 2020

A Puppy For Christmas - December 2016

Aquaman (2018) - Feb. 2019

A Star Is Born - September 2019

August Rush - November 2017

Avatar - February 2017

A Walk To Remember – May 2016

A Wrinkle In Time - June 2018

Back To The Future - June 2017

Balto - July 2017

Bambi - June 2016

Batman V. Superman - April 2016, May 2016, July 2016, Sept. 2016

Beastly - May 2018

Beauty And The Beast (Animated) - June 2016, Dec. 2016, Aug. 2017

Beauty And The Beast 2017 - Dec. 2016, Aug. 2017

Beethoven - October 2020

Before I Fall - October 2020

Bicentennial Man - October 2020

Black Beauty - September 2016

Blade - October 2020

Blade Runner 2049 - February 2018

Blood And Chocolate - September 2017

Bring It On - July 2018, October 2020

Brother Bear – May 2016

Can You Keep A Secret - December 2020

Casper - November 2019

Charlie St. Cloud - November 2017

City Of Angels - October 2020

Clash Of The Titans/Wrath Of The Titans - Sept. 2017

Constantine Movie - November 2020

Coyote Ugly - October 2020

Creed Movies - April 2016, Oct. 2018, May 2019

Criminal - December 2016

Cruel Intentions - September 2017

Daredevil (2003) - January 2018

Dawn Patrol - March 2018

Deadpool - September 2016

Descendants Series - Oct. 2017, Sept. 2019

Dirty Dancing - July 2017

Disturbia - October 2020

Doctor Dolittle (1998) - October 2020

Eight Below - September 2016

Ella Enchanted - Sept. 2017, Jan. 2019

Enemy Mine - January 2017

Eragon - September 2017

Everything Everything - August 2018

Fallen TV Movie - Jan. 2017

Fantastic Four (2005) - October 2020

Fast And Furious Movies - April 2016, April 2017, Feb. 2018, August 2019

Fighting With My Family - October 2020

Flicka (w/Tim McGraw) - September 2016

Flipper - October 2020

Footloose (1984) - July 2017

Footloose (2011) - Oct. 2017

Forever My Girl - March 2019

Free Willy - October 2020

Frozen - June 2016

Galaxy Quest - December 2017

Gemini Man - October 2020

George Of The Jungle - January 2017

Ghost (1990) - October 2020

Ghost Rider Movies - October 2020

Grease/Grease Movies - June 2017, October 2020

Gifted - Feb. 2018, June 2018

Hachi - September 2016

Hellboy Movies - May 2017, April 2019

Hercules (Animated) – May - June 2016

Hidalgo - September 2016

Homeward Bound - September 2016

Horse Sense - October 2017

Hours - June 2017

How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days - June 2017

I Am Legend - October 2020

I Am Number Four - May 2018

Ice Age Movies – May 2016

If I Stay – May 2016

If Only - January 2017, October 2020

I Frankenstein - April 2018

Instant Family - October 2020

Interstellar - September 2019

Iron Will - September 2016

Jack Frost (1998) - January 2017

John Wick Movies - July 2019

Jumanji Welcome To The Jungle - July 2018

Jumper - October 2020

Jurassic Park/Jurassic World Movies – May 2016, Dec. 2017, Oct. 2018, April 2020

Justice League - Sept. 2016, Aug. 2017, Nov. 2017, Jan. - Feb. 2018

Just Like Heaven - January 2017

Keith (2008) - October 2020

Kong Skull Island - December 2017

Lady And The Tramp - June 2016

Lassie (1994) - September 2016

Last Christmas - November 2019

Legally Blonde – May 2016

Legion (2010) - May 2017

Letters To Juliet - August 2018

Lone Survivor - December 2020

Love And Monsters - December 2020

Man Of Steel - April 2016, August 2017

Man On Fire - October 2020

Men In Black Movies - October 2020

Marley And Me - September 2016

Marvel Universe (Avengers, Spiderman, etc.) - April 2016, June - July 2016, Sept. 2016, Aug. 2017, Nov. 2017, Jan. 2018, March - April 2018, Sept. 2018, April 2019, Sept. 2019

Max (Dog Movie) - September 2016

Midnight Sun (2018) - October 2020

Moana - July 2017

Motocrossed - November 2017

Mulan (Animated) – May 2016

Mulan 2020 - December 2019

My Fake Fiance - October 2017

Narnia Series - September 2017

National Treasure (2004) - October 2020

Need For Speed - October 2020

Netflix Movies - May 2019

Night At The Museum (NATM Series) - March 2018

Oliver And Company - June 2016

Percy Jackson - October 2020

Planet Of The Apes Movies - October 2020

Pocahontas - June 2016

Priest - May 2017

Prince Of Persia (2010) - June 2017, October 2020

P.S. I Love You - October 2020

Raise Your Voice - January 2016

Real Steel - October 2020

Red Dog - September 2016

Remember Sunday – May 2016

Riddick Movies - October 2020

RoboCop/Robocop 2014 - February 2018

Rocky (1-6) - April 2016, May 2019

Safe Haven - October 2020

Save The Last Dance - October 2020

Seabiscuit - September 2016

Secretariat - September 2016

She’s Having A Baby - July 2017, October 2020

She’s The Man – May 2016

Shrek - June 2016, October 2020

Snow Dogs - September 2016

Snow White And The Huntsman - September 2017

Spiderman (2002) - August 2017, October 2020

Spirit: Stallion Of The Cimarron – May 2016

Spy Kids - April 2019

Star Trek (2009 Verse) - April 2016, July - Sept. 2016

Star Wars - April 2016, Sept 2016, Aug. 2017

Step Up Movies - October 2020

Suicide Squad - September 2016

Sweet Home Alabama - June 2017

Taken Movies - October 2020

Tangled - June 2016, May 2017

Tarzan (Animated) – May 2016

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) - July 2017

Terminator Movies – May 2016

The Addams Family - February 2018, November 2019

The Art Of Racing In The Rain - October 2020

The Blue Lagoon (1980) - October 2020

The Crow (Original) – May 2016, October 2018

The Dark Knight/The Dark Knight Trilogy - June 2017, Aug. 2017

The Duff - February 2018

The Expendables Movies - October 2020

The Flintstones - October 2020

The Fox And The Hound - July 2017

The Game Plan - May 2018

The Greatest Showman - January 2018, May 2018

The Hitman’s Bodyguard - February 2020

The Horse Whisperer - September 2016

The Host - November 2017

The Hunger Games - May 2017, Aug. 2017

The Indian In The Cupboard - March 2018

The Jungle Book - August 2017

The Land Before Time - July 2017

The Last Witch Hunter - October 2020

The Legend Of Tarzan - June 2017

The Lion King Movies (Animated) – May - June 2016, May 2017

The Little Mermaid - June 2016

The Longest Ride - March 2018

The Lucky One - November 2017

The Magnificent Seven (2016) - Jan. 2017

The Mandalorian - Feb. 2020

The Maze Runner - May 2017, January 2018, May 2018

The Mummy (1999) - January 2017

The Mummy Returns - January 2017

The Notebook - July 2021

The Pacifier - May 2018

The Parent Trap - October 2020

The Patriot - October 2020

The Pirates Of The Caribbean (TPOTC Movies) - January 2020

The Prince & Me - October 2020

The Princess Bride - October 2020

The Princess Diaries/The Princess Diaries 2 - February 2018

The Proposal – May 2016

The Santa Clause/The Santa Clause Movies - January 2020

The Secret Life Of Pets - December 2016

The Sound Of Music - October 2020

The Ultimate Gift - December 2016

Titanic - October 2020

Togo - March 2020

Tomorrowland - October 2020

Toy Story - June 2016

Transformers Movies/Bumblebee 2018 - May 2017, April 2019

Tremors - July 2017

Tuck Everlasting - October 2020

Twilight Movies - May 2017

Twitches - July 2021

Unconditional - December 2016

Underworld Movies - October 2018

Walking Tall - January 2017

Walk The Line - October 2020

War Horse - Sept. 2016, Nov. 2016

Warm Bodies - November 2017

We Bought A Zoo - June 2017

While You Were Sleeping - October 2020

Winter’s Tale - October 2020

Wonder Woman (2017)/Wonder Woman 1984 - April 2016, July 2016, Nov. 2016, Sept. 2017, Dec. 2017, Dec. 2019

X-Men/Wolverine/Logan Movie - Oct. - Nov. 2016, Aug. 2017 xxx Animals/Nature (Horses, Dogs, etc.) - July 2016, Nov. 2016, April 2017, Aug. 2017, Nov. 2017, Nov. 2019 xxx

Jurassic World Evolution (XBox/PC Game) - Dec. 2018

The Isle (PC Game) - July 2020

The Walking Dead Game - Nov. 2016

xxx

The Hillywood Show/Hillywood - Nov. 2017, Aug. 2018

xxx

Youtubers

Buzzfeed Unsolved - April 2019

The Try Guys - April 2019

xxx

Other Actors - Under “Actors” Tag

Zac Efron - August 2017

Chris Pine - Sept. 2017

Chris Hemsworth - Sept. 2017

Michael B. Jordan - Dec. 2018

The tags for many actors are “Actors” or rarely, “Actor” xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Shows, Movies, And Others To Come (By Priority)

x

Jurassic World 3

News Of The World (Tom Hanks)

Godzilla vs. Kong

x

The Good Doctor (ABC)

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

To Make A Hero – Maria Brink and Andy Biersack ‘Dark Nights: Death Metal’ Interview

Countless iterations of Batman have been created since the character’s DC Comics debut in 1939. He’s been a detective, a Dark Knight and a key member of The Justice League. Of course, the crime-fighting anti-hero also leapt off the page and onto the screen for TV shows and movies such as the 1960s Batman live action TV show, the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series, and even a 2018 Batman Ninja animated film. Now, fans can see — and hear — their favorite action hero in a completely new way with Dark Nights: Death Metal motion-comic series and soundtrack.

The multi-medium endeavor is based on the comic book mini series of the same name written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Greg Capullo. The official soundtrack was produced by Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, Watchmen), who recruited over a dozen musical artists to contribute to the songs. Two such artists are Andy Biersack (Black Veil Brides) and Maria Brink (In This Moment), who came together for the song “Meet Me In The Fire.” Both Biersack and Brink also have speaking roles in the motion-comic.

“I got a call saying that they were doing this series,” Biersack recalls, “and asked if I wanted to do the voice of Batman. For me, not only was it a dream come true, but it was huge to have a creative outlet in a time where there was nothing that could be done.”

Biersack is, of course, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic that kept non-essential workers home for months on end.

“It was this weird period where we couldn’t do anything creative. So to be able to, in some cases, record the audio here in my home studio and pretend to be Batman for a few hours a day was awesome.”

Biersack’s undying love for the anti-hero is well-established, but In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink also professes to adore comic books.

“I’ve always loved them and been fascinated by them,” she says. “I actually got into them more when I was older ⁠— I like all fantasy stuff. I got to have the voice of The Hand, which was so cool. In the middle of COVID, all of us were looking for creative outlets to keep our minds occupied, so it felt like a blessing for sure. To me what was so exciting was to bring in all the musicians and have all of their voices taking on this new storyline. I really loved the creativeness of converging both of these worlds.”

The storyline of the mini series is based on the concept of a dark multiverse, which sees multiple alternate realities and alternative versions of Batman. Told through visuals, dialogue, and music, this project is complex in both content and form.

“What I really liked about this project,” Biersack continues, “is that you have an opportunity to see those iterations individually and how they play into the same storyline. To have every version that you love in the same story is a pretty exciting thing. Especially if you watch the series that they made, you get to see the whole history of this character.”

For the Black Veil Brides frontman, it speaks to the greatness, versatility and longevity of Batman as a whole.

“As someone who enjoys comic book character creating and world-building, I love the idea of having a character that can stand the test of 80 years and have all of these variations, and the validity of one is the same as the other. You can have the Adam West chummy, joke-y Batman and you can have the Frank Miller angry, grumpy, murderous Batman — and they’re both valid versions of the character.”

For Brink, collaborating with Biersack and producer Tyler Bates on their cinematic track “Meet Me In The Fire” was about much more than Batman.

“When I was writing it,” she explains, “I wasn’t just thinking about it in terms of the comic book,  but the world in general. That give and take, the struggle, the fight and the power; people wanting to stand with each other and having to go through hard times together — especially where we were all kind of at [with COVID] when we were writing this song. There’s gonna be hard times and you might have to walk through some flames and get your feet burnt.”

Biersack adds, “The idea of Batman, or any character, is there’s some initial injustice that causes them to become the hero that they ultimately become. In those ways, there’s so many parallels to the idea of those moments of absolute darkness or sadness that we all face. And in a year where not only was the world changing on a literal level — a virus that’s traveling everywhere and putting people in danger — but also socially, there were so many changes and important things that occurred last year. The best value that you can have in life is to not just have something difficult to occur, but to learn from it and grow from it.”

So in a time when lives are literally on the line every day, how do these two prominent rock musicians define what it truly means to be a hero?

“I guess a hero to me is someone who really stands up for others,” Brink says. “Someone who really cares about other people and who will risk themselves and whatever it takes to empower other people. It’s selfless. The doctors risking their lives to help these sick people — they’re heroes. They could die.”

“Also just on a more personal level,” Biersack adds, “anybody in your life who inspires you to be a better version of yourself is tremendously heroic. I think if you can find it in yourself to be a hero for yourself and for everyone around you, that is the most important virtue possible. If you aren’t trying your best to be better than you were yesterday, ultimately I don’t know that you’re spending your time that wisely.

“I think at the end of the day,” he continues, “the message that rock n’ roll has always been about is to not put everyone else up on that pedestal. Rise to the challenge yourself and be the hero that you want to see.”

You can catch Black Veil Brides and In This Moment on tour with Ded and Raven Black on their North American The In Between Tour starting Sept. 17.

[knights-past]

My Tale of Times Past

The year is 2011. 

I’m on thatguywiththeglasses.com watching the latest episode of Lewis “Linkara" Lovhaug’s (@atopfourthwall) comic book review series Atop the Fourth Wall, a review of the 2009 DC Comics miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice by James Robinson and Mauro Cascioli. At 2 minutes and 35 seconds into the video, I hear the name that would one day become one of my greatest loves - "Starman."

“It’s a glorious tale of superheroes, romance, complex characters, and even quite a few tragic moments…” That was how Lewis described James Robinson’s and Tony Harris’s Starman.

The year is 2014.

Over the past year, I’ve been getting more and more into the New 52 incarnation of Billy Batson, aka Shazam! Running a fan Tumblr (@fyeahshazam) eventually leads me to discover the work of SEN (@sen1227), a Shazam! fan artist from Japan. Among her work were renderings of Billy Batson with Courtney Whitmore, aka Stargirl. Now, sure, I knew about Stargirl and her legacy connections from internet research, but I hadn’t actually read much with her, which included the JSA series where Billy and Courtney had their brief romance. As I start to dig more and more into this, I become even more interested in the Justice Society of America than I already was. And I begin to learn more about Courtney’s predecessor: Jack Knight, aka Starman. Remembering what Lewis said in his Cry for Justice review and seeing other people online talk about it, I decided I would finally read the series. I end up getting the first two volumes of the Starman Omnibus for Christmas that year. I crack open the first volume and begin reading.

And I fall in love.

I’ve been regularly reading comics for over a decade, and very few comics have inspired such sheer love and admiration from me as James Robinson’s Starman. This a series that resonates so well with me, starring a character who reflects my own personality (in ways both good and bad), and telling a superhero story in a way I hadn’t quite seen before. The tragedy of David Knight’s first night on the town. The radicalization of Nash. The elegant ruthlessness of The Shade. The horrific history of Rag Doll. The frustrated pride of Ted Knight. The hesitant, yet innate heroism of Jack. The beauty and character of Opal City. I knew that what I was reading was unique and special and that there wasn’t anything quite like it.

I finish the first volume immediately and voraciously devour the second. Sadly, that’s when I faced my own tragedy: the third volume. Everywhere online, it was priced ridiculously, sometimes $200. Any comic shops or bookstores I visited never had it, even if they had every other volume. As I later discovered, for some reason the third volume of the Starman Omnibus was printed in much lower quantities compared to the rest of the series. I decided to wait until I found a more affordable copy. So I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And eventually, I stopped waiting. Stopped looking. And I accepted that I would never see the rest of Jack Knight’s journey. Cut to 2018. 

I’m sitting in my apartment, trying to play catch up on the latest comics, reading through the first arc of Scott Snyder’s Justice League. And lo, there, on the last page, a familiar golden rod clutched in the hands of a long-forgotten superhero dressed in black and red with an inverted white star on his chest, and whose speech balloon contains a familiar word in a familiar font.

And thus, I returned to that series that was so beloved to me. I pull my old Omnibus off the shelf and open the first page to see the Opal once again. And I resolve, right then and there, that I will finish what I started, and that I will complete the story of Jack Knight. And I did.

Now, I’m going to go back and read through the entirety of the saga that is James Robinson’s Starman. And I want you to come along with me. In this series of articles, we will be examining and discussing every issue of Starman, alongside all the extra materials that were collected across the Starman Omnibus, as well as a number of side stories that also feature Jack Knight. Not only that, but we’ll also be taking a look at the comics featuring the various other members of the Starman legacy, from Ted Knight’s first Golden Age adventures to Courtney Whitmore’s latest endeavors and everything in between. Plus character profiles, reactions to Starman/Stargirl appearances in new comics, the Stargirl TV show, and reviews of other relevant works in the Starman sphere. The point is, if the stars shine on it, we will talk about it.

So please, my friends, come join me as we journey together through the stars and reflect on the tales of times past.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars!"

[docgold13]

Yeah, his modern can be a bit confusing. I didn’t even mention that Zero Hour redid it so his 1940’s adventures were made canon again. And then the New 52 happened, where he got a new origin which was his only appearance IN that whole era (except for a cameo before,) and then Metal/Terrifics acted like he’d been a hero for a long time with a 17 year old son, and gobildy goop my eyes have crossed.

(Not to mention the mini he got in 2018 by Gail Simone, which redid his origin again but made him seem like a new hero, in the modern DCU, and all I’ll just say on that is that it’s not good and I’d stay away.)

The Terrifics was a great fun book, and I personally think it got even better when Gene Luen Yang came along to write it, but sadly it didn’t last. Last September it ended (with the last three issues not even being physically released until they were in trade,) and with Mr. Terrific in that Strange Adventures book it feels like DC’s almost trying to forget it. Still, Plas has made a few cameos here and there, and it looks like he’s going to be in BMB’s Justice League so, so there’s that!

Drafting up the various biographies for the heroes of the day has really hammered home to me that DC’s continuity is more mixed up and mercurial than a Jackson Pollack. It seems the policy these days is that writers are free to pick and choose which parts of a character’s backstory are cannon to whatever extent it fits the story at hand. Which I suppose is fine by me in that good storytelling should trump continuity… (though what constitutes good stories is a subjective matter).

In any case, I’m looking forward to catching up with The Terrifics in trade. Sounds like a very fun read.

[bamboozledchickadee]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Young Justice (Cartoon) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Characters, Wally West, Dick Grayson, M'gann M'orzz, Artemis Crock, Kon-El | Conner Kent, Aqualad Additional Tags: Major Original Character(s), First Fic on A03, No romantic relationships for OC, Background Superboy/Miss Martian, Before Zatanna, Original Team, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Before S1E9 Bereft, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Child Neglect, Child Abuse, Referenced Child Abuse, Human Trafficking, Human Experimentation, Manipulation, Found Family, Wally West is a Good Friend Summary:

It was supposed to be a training mission the day they found it. Just a look around after some suspicious activity in the area. Then it was supposed to be a simple “catch the baddies and go home” sort of thing. Then it wasn’t. Or, why a simple training mission for the Team turned into a full League investigation in less than thirty minutes.

__________

So this was written in 2018 but I’ve taken it apart and started revamping it. Everything past the first two original chapters was cut because it won’t work anymore, but a lot of what was in the first and second chapter was copy and pasted into the new first chapter along with some cuts and additions. I’m still debating on if I should share this on my rec blog or if that’s showing favoritism. I don’t even think this is that good but I worked on it and I just hope people enjoy it.

[moescreencaps]

moe's mega-sync content list : 2022 !

Credit is appreciated but not necessary ✨

book / media links : one |

[ LIVE ACTION ]

SOLO FILMS : blood the last vampire (2009) | la riffa (1991) | suspiria (1977/2018) | The Caller (2011) | Benedetta (2021) | Camille Claudel | Carole Matthieu | Ganja and Hess | Gothika | High Life | Midsommar | Passing 2021 | The Untouchables | The Green Knight | The Story of Adele (1957) | Secret Beyond The Door | Hellboy II : The Golden Army | Let The Right One In | The Autopsy Of Jane Doe | The Handmaiden

TV SHOWS : game of thrones | hannibal | the fall | legend of the blue sea | magnificent century S04 | starz' power | secret forest | sleepless society : insomnia | spartacus | the nanny | wonder woman (1975) | scenes from a marriage | juvenile justice | house of the dragon | rings of power | devil in ohio

FILM SERIES: lady snowblood (1 and 2) | female prisoner (1-4) |

[ ANIMATED ]

SOLO FILMS : stan lee's mosaic | swan princess | Tangled | Mulan I and II | The Little Mermaid | blood the last vampire (2000) | frozen I and II |

ANIME : bloodplus | castlevania | ghost in the shell : sac | kakegurui (S01 / S02) | michiko e hatchin |

CARTOONS : justice league unlimited | teen titans (spanish) | the hollow | w.i.t.c.h | gargoyles | sym bionic titan | samurai jack

ADULT ANIMATION : seis manos | trese (2021) | spawn | american dad (season 1 - 19) | little demon | rick and morty |

[ SORTED BY ACTORS ]

AISHWARYA RAI : Aa Ab Laut Chalen | Aur Pyar Ho Gaya | Bride and Prejudice | Devdas | Dhaai Akshar Prem Ke | Guru | Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam | Provoked

AUBREY HEPBURN : Roman Holiday | Funny Face | Sabrina

AVA GARDNER : 55 days at Peking | At The Beach | Pandora and The Flying Dutchman | Priest Of Love | Seven Days In May | The Barefoot Countessa | The Killers

BAE DOONA : secret forest | the silent sea

ELIZABETH OLSEN : captain america : winter soldier | avengers : age of ultron | captain america : civil war | avengers : infinity war | avengers : endgame | wandavision | doctor strange : multiverse of madness | Sorry For Your Loss (S1-2)

EMILY BROWNING : The Uninvited | Sucker Punch

FAN BINGBING: empress of china | lady of the dynasty

GAL GADOT : Batman V Superman | Justice League Snyder Cut | Wonder Woman | Wonder Woman 1984 | Keeping Up With The Joneses

GENE TIERNEY : Leave Her To Heaven | Laura | On The Riviera | The Ghost Of Mrs. Muir |

GIANNA JUN : blood: the last vampire | legend of the blue sea

GILLIAN ANDERSON : the fall | hannibal

GRACE KELLY : Dial M for Murder | Mogambo | The Country Girl | To Catch A Thief | High Society | Rear Window

HEDY LAMARR : Her Highness and The Bellboy | Ziegfeld Girl | Come Live With Me |

ISABELLE ADJANI : le reine margot | possession | nosferatu

ISABELLE FURHMAN : Orphan / Orphan : First Kill

JESSICA CHASTAIN : ava | the forgiven | scenes from a marriage | the 355

JULIE DELPY : Before (Midnight, Sunrise, Sunset)

MEGAN FOX : Jennifer's body | till death

MERVE BOLUGAR : Magnificent Century ( Season 4 )

MAGGIE CHEUNG : In The Mood For Love | Hero | Irma Vep

MONICA BELLUCCI : La Riffa

MARILYN MONROE : bus stop | don't bother to knock | gentlemen prefer blondes | how to marry a millionaire | let's make love | river of no return | the misfits | there's no business like show business | Niagara | The Seven Year Itch | some like it hot | ladies of the chorus | the prince and the showgirl

MICHIEL HUISMAN : The Age Of Adaline | A Boy Named Christmas

NADINE NASSIB NJEIM : Al Hayba | Cello | Nos Youm

NAOMI WATTS : (coming soon) the ring | the ring two | king kong | luce | the watcher | shut in | boss level | birdman | eastern promises | funny games | mulholland drive | the desperate hour |

REBECCA FERGUSON : the white queen | the girl on the train

REKHA GANESAN : Aastha | Bahurani | Baseraa | Daasi | Mother | Silsila | Suhaag | Umrao Jaan | Vladyka

VIVIAN LEIGH : Anna Karenina | Waterloo Bridge | Gone With The Wind | Heaven Can Wait |

[ranger-report]

Opinion: DC and Marvel’s Multiverses Are Crucial To The Future of Superhero Film

Alright, buckle up kids, this is going to be a long one. Get some soda and some popcorn, or some green tea and avocado toast.

Back in the long-distant year of 1989, a little film called Batman released into theaters and became the film of the Summer. Directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson as Batman and the Joker respectively, it was a cinematic triumph that heralded a new wave of superhero films taking their source material seriously. Followed up in 1992 by Batman Returns, a sequel which increased the fantastic elements but was criticized for its darker tones, Batman’s role in movies was cemented in place by continued success. Of course, Keaton and Burton would leave to be replaced by Val Kilmer as Batman with Joel Schumacher directing for 1995′s Batman Forever, with George Clooney stepping into the cape and cowl for 1997′s Batman and Robin, a wild disaster of a film which nearly destroyed Batman’s chances in movies. But then, in 2005, Christopher Nolan brought a gritty realism to the caped crusader in Batman Begins, and continued this successful experiment with 2008′s Best Film Of The Year, The Dark Knight, and 2012′s The Dark Knight Rises (which was....fine). By this time the DCEU was beginning to get started, so a new Batman was cast for Zack Synder’s 2016 Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and this role went to Ben Affleck. He reprised the role in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad and Joss Whedon’s Justice League, but bowed out of the opportunity to write and direct his own solo Bat-flick. So director Matt Reeves was tapped to direct a new Batman film starring a controversial choice of Robert Pattinson as Batman. With all of this, the question of the past 30-odd years is: which is your favorite Batman? Which one was the best? And how do these films fit into an increasingly convoluted canon in which a film series is rebooted every ten years or so?

What if the answer is: they’re all great and they all fit into canon?

Now, before we think too hard about that, let’s take a look at Spider-Man’s cinematic installments, which is almost more convoluted and in a more compressed amount of time. Beginning with 2002′s Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, the amazing wall-crawler enjoyed a fantastic amount of success on the big screen, followed up by one of the best superhero films of all time, 2004′s Spider-Man 2. But Spider-Man 3 in 2007 took all of that goodwill and smashed it into the ground with a failure almost as bad as Batman and Robin a decade earlier. Plans for a Spider-Man 4 were scrapped, and eventually in 2012 director Mark Webb and star Andrew Garfield would bring a brand new Spidey to life with The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in 2014. Both films were lively and energetic, but criticized for trying to stuff too much into their films -- especially the second one. Sony Pictures was attempting to ramp up a cinematic universe much like Marvel Films was doing at the time, but it was too much too fast. 2017 brought another reboot of the moviefilm version of Spidey, this time directed by Jon Watts and starring Tom Holland, with Spider-Man: Homecoming, this time under Marvel Film’s banner (thanks to backdoor dealing), and another cinematic triumph in 2019′s Spider-Man: Far From Home. But, unlike Batman, Spider-Man’s dealings behind the scenes are nearly as convoluted as his series. Sony Pictures owned the rights to make Spider-Man flicks for years, until Marvel managed to make a ludicrous offer after Amazing 2 failed to catch on the way producers hoped. So Spidey came to the MCU under a joint production, which is how we got Homecoming and Far From Home, but also maintained a different universe with the Amazing films, and then 2018′s Venom, and a little animated motion picture also in 2018 by the name of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.

Class, this is where I would like to direct your attention to the origin of the extraordinary events we are discussing today. Or is it the origin?

Into The Spider-Verse successfully proved that not only is the idea of multiple universes all connecting on screen a good idea, it’s an Oscar winning idea. Spider-Verse is hands down the best animated superhero film ever, and one of the best superhero films period. But here we must take note of certain ideas. The film provided much setup for a world where young Miles Morales begins to emerge with spider powers, but then Spider-Man is killed right in front of him before he can learn how to use them. Enter a Spider-Man from a slightly different parallel dimension, who not only turns Miles around, but find himself inspired to realign his own life. Spider-people abound through the film, all of them having equal weight and the possibility of spawning their own franchise without having to worry about impacting the canon of other universes. This is something comic books have done for literal decades, but Spider-Verse did it with such care and devotion that it won Best Animated Picture and became a mainstream smash hit. Marvel and Sony both sit up at attention; could this work with the major mainstream films they’ve been producing? So the experiment begins: we have a teaser trailer for Morbius, based on a vampiric Spider-Man villain, which features a cameo from the Vulture character first seen in Homecoming. And after dropping hints that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man could cross over with Tom Hardy’s Venom, Jamie Foxx recently posted about being cast as Electro -- a role he played in Amazing Spider-Man 2 -- for the third Tom Holland Spidey flick. Pictures went up on his Instragram seeming to confirm that not only was this the same Electro, but that all three previous Spider-Men -- Maguire, Garfield, and Holland -- would team up for the film. Multiple universes collide, a live action Spider-Verse, where everyone is crossing over with each other. Now, this lines up perfectly with Marvel’s MCU plans, as Doctor Strange has established in his film that multiple universes exist, and his announced sequel is even titled Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s here. It’s happening. Every Spider-Man film is canon, they’ve all happened, and we don’t need to worry about which of them make sense or belong. They all make sense.

But just before this announcement, a month or so ago DC let slip that their plans for an upcoming Flash movie are taking cues from the Flashpoint comic books, in which Barry Allen goes back in time and accidentally creates a brand new timeline that he has to correct. Michael Keaton has even been cast as Bruce Wayne, the same Bruce Wayne that he played 30-odd years ago, a casting choice many fans have been clamoring for for years. On top of that, once word was put out that Keaton’s role would be similar to Samuel L. Jackson’s role as Nick Fury in the MCU, Ben Affleck was reported to be joining the picture as Batman also, a team-up no one saw coming. Even Christian Bale is being courted to join the universe-spanning flick, but reportedly only if director Christopher Nolan gives his blessing. Multiple Batmen teaming up together in a Flash movie to combat crime? Of course I’ve already bought tickets. Batman is the biggest box-office draw outside of The Avengers. And this concept opens up plenty of opportunities for DC, who’ve done Elseworlds stories in the comic for years. Joker with Joaquin Phoenix proved that DC films not directly tied to the DCEU can and will do well on their own; The Batman with Pattinson will no doubt further confirm that. But now Batman Returns is once again a viable film mixed into a comic book cocktail of wonder and excitement? And what’s wonderful is that this isn’t DC’s first big attempt at this. Slowly and surely, The CW’s Arrowverse TV shows -- Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow -- have been doing multiverse crossovers for years, building up to 2019′s mega-event Crisis on Infinite Earths, which saw Brandon Routh reprise his role as Superman from 2006′s Superman Returns, which itself is a sequel to Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Superman II. And for one wonderful scene, TV’s Flash, Grant Gustin, got to interact with the DCEU’s Flash, Ezra Miller, confirming that these TV and film universes are indeed one big cocktail of parallel lives and dimensions that all interconnect while still being separate. Hell, we even saw Burt Ward, Robin from the 1966 Batman show, alive and well an in his own little world. Batman ‘66 is part of the wider DC Multiverse! How crazy is that? And we even got a small tease that Batman ‘89 is part of all of this as well, when we got to see reporter Alexander Knox look up to the Batsignal in the sky as Danny Elfman’s iconic score played. In one fell swoop, in as few as a casual couple of cameos, DC made all of their live-action properties canon in the multiverse, meaning no matter which version you like the best, they all work together and work from a franchising and audience standpoint. The 1978 Superman and the 1989 Batman both existed in worlds that ran sidecar to 2019′s Joker and 2011′s Green Lantern. It’s wild, unprecedented in cinematic history, and wonderful for fans of all ages.

Why is this the future of superhero flicks, though? It ought to be simple: no matter what movies come out, no matter how wild or crazy or outside “canon” they seem to be, they all can work and they all can coexist without having to confuse fans. Many people were feeling the reboot fatigue as early as 2012′s Amazing Spider-Man, and while there was a huge tone shift between Batman Returns and Batman Forever, the Bat-films were considered all part of the same line until Batman Begins started all the way over. Now we have Batman 89 and Returns in one world, Forever and Batman and Robin in another (which was already a fan theory, mind you). Sequels that don’t line up with their predecessors can just be shunted into a hidden multiverse timeline and left alone without the convoluted explanation of having to “ignore” certain sequels. Superman III & IV were ignored when Superman Returns chose to connect only to the first and second films, but now we can say that they definitely happened....just somewhere else. There is now a freedom of ideas and creation that can once again occur when making big-budget films based on superheroes. No longer do creative minds need to be restrained to the canon and timeline and overarching plots defined by studios years in advance; “creative differences” don’t need to drive frustrated directors away from characters or stories they truly love. Possibly -- just possibly -- good ideas can become the gold standard once again for comic book films, not just ten-year plans for how to get Captain America from scrawny Marine to Mjolnir-wielding badass. Remember when filmmakers decided to make Joker the same person who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents? Or when they decided to give Spider-Man the ability to shoot webs from his body instead of technology? That certainly wouldn’t fly these days; studio mandates would require adherence to previously established guidelines, or at least what has been seen in the comic. What if now we could get a three-episode limited series on HBO Max of Gotham By Gaslight? Or a big-budget adaptation of Marvel’s 1602? Simply trying to wedge old comic book storylines into existing Cinematic Universes no longer need be a thing! We could get some of the wildest interpretations of superheroes this side of Superman: Red Son. At least, that’s the hope, anyway.

When comic books can step away from canon for just a few minutes, worlds open up and expand. An entire multiverse of ideas can become a feast of entertainment for many. And when there’s already so many beautiful, well-told stories set in alternate universes as comic book precedent, so too can there be beautiful, well-told stories set in alternate universes for film. And the best part? Now they all matter. And I think that’s the future.