#There's a scene early on where she goes to a comic book store and buys some kind of high fantasy comic

[wedding-shemp]

In the 2014 Ms Marvel run they showed Kamala writing fanfic about superheroes presumably to make her relatable to the target audience of teen girls who also wrote fanfic about Marvel characters. But Kamala LIVES in the Marvel universe where those are just real people. So we have to imagine that Kamala got into some very tedious RPF discourse on the 616 equivalent of Tumblr

[arecomicsevengood]

QUARANTINE MOVIES PART FOUR

It’s wild to watch any movie knowing that none will be made for the foreseeable future, and that the whole collective experience of filmgoing might be dead. I tend to have a certain sad, scared lonely feeling when I contemplate the future at night, and while I attempt to put off by watching movies, it only partly works. Now, more than ever, movies are a larger part of my processing of the world than the ongoing conversations I have with friends.

Smithereens (1982) dir. Susan Seidelman

There is something particularly powerful about movies where people run around, socializing. These things are pretty resonant with my youth, but “youth” in this broad sense that just means “the before times,” because if there’s anything quarantine is bringing home it’s the importance of a form of adulthood based around domestic partnerships with someone you like and having “real jobs” that can translate to telecommuting. Of course, socializing of the sort no longer allowed is really useful, and shouldn’t be written off as youthful frivolity. Smithereens is not a particularly romantic movie: While it might be famous for being “punk” in a “cool” way, documenting young New York nightlife in a way where David Wojnarowicz’s band 3 Teens Kill 4 is on a club’s marquee, it’s really about young people as these sort of upwardly-mobile opportunists with no real talent trying to exploit one another for a mixture of sex and social clout, and ignoring those who are not actively useful to them. It’s a useful document of people being shitty where the appeal now is how cool they look, and it’s interesting to watch in this moment where I’m worried that the whole idea of community will be lost very soon, in a way we won’t even be able to articulate. We’ll all be scrambling for jobs and security but everything will be further hollowed out, and we’ll be left with an even more vicious and dog-eat-dog citizenry. So a movie like this has nostalgic appealing, but by depicting the seeds of what will only become more widespread problems, it avoids feeling dated or idealistic.

Gloria (1980) dir. John Cassavetes

Oh shit this movie rules! I was under the impression I disliked Cassavetes, based on the others I had seen, and watching the first twenty-odd minutes reminded me of why: Sort of circular conversations, involving a lot of people being upset with one another. But this ends up feeling more like a movie, and less like a play. Once Gena Rowlands kills a carful of people I was completely on board. She’s great in this, playing opposite a child, who is also amazing in it, tons of dialogue that should be quotable: “You’re not my mother, my mother was beautiful” being but one amazing bit of poetry. Both extremely cute and extremely badass from moment to moment, the parts of this movie are in tension with one another where it also feels like it’s going from strength to strength, and ever scene, every moment, is great. Incredible music, and also great documentation of a world that doesn’t exist anymore, of telephone booths, smoking sections, and places that’ll develop photos for you. Highest possible recommendation.

The Naked City (1948) dir. Jules Dassin

Seemingly the first movie to be shot on location throughout New York, rather than studio backlots, and it milks the city for all its worth, shifting frequently from one location to another, introducing to new characters. Initially guided by omniscient narration but quickly focusing to become a police procedural. I knew Dassin from Rififi but this feels more exciting, I would gladly watch movies bite the techniques from this every few decades, though Gloria does a good job of moving through the streets of New York in a less-contrived way. There was a Naked City TV show ten years later, shot on location and focusing on a police precinct.

Near Dark (1987) dir. Kathryn Bigelow

I consider this Kathryn Bigelow’s best movie, but circumstances have not led me to watch it as many times as I’ve seen Point Break, so the memories I’ve retained of it were kind of inaccurate: Specifically, the thing I thought of as the climax, the part at the hotel where light is getting shot through the blankets taped up to cover windows, happens like halfway through. Screenwriter Eric Red wrote this at the same time as he wrote The Hitcher, and that’s another one that just GOES, moving from one scene to another where they all have this climactic intensity constantly but the scale is shifting of what you’re invested in? The Hitcher is a nightmare and this is more of an action movie. People point out this movie has a bunch of the cast from Aliens but I didn’t realize there’s a shot where Aliens is actually on the marquee of a theater. I also wonder if this whole horror/action/western/but with vampires thing was an inspiration to Garth Ennis? I kinda feel like the pacing I find so powerful could not really be sustained over the length of an extended comic run.

Hero (1992) dir. Stephen Frears

Dustin Hoffman plays a criminal schlub, doing a weird voice. It’s almost like he was told that the role was written for Sylvester Stallone, but Stallone’s insistence on getting a writing credit on every movie he acts in complicated the premise in a weird way, so Hoffman just attempts a Stallone impression. One of his few redeeming characteristics is he’s a loving father, but that isn’t why he’ll remind you of your dad. Maybe most men are just Dustin Hoffman doing impersonations of Sylvester Stallone! From 1992, so Hoffman’s I guess in a post-Rain-Man mode, but the film also feels very early nineties in its commentary on television news turning stories into celebrities, and an analysis of the problems with professional cynicism that seem very much of their time. It’s not like a more sophisticated critique has found its way into any mainstream film I can think of, we’ve just stopped thinking about these issues, as they’ve become much worse. Joan Cusack’s good as his Hoffman’s ex-wife, and Susie Cusack’s good as his lawyer. I would like to see Susie Cusack in more things! Geena Davis plays a television reporter, Andy Garcia plays a decent guy who is a contrast to Hoffman, there’s also small roles for the likes of Stephen Tobolowsky and Tom Arnold, really placing this in a moment of time.

The Age Of Innocence (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese

I didn’t like this one, for all the obvious reasons: I don’t like costume dramas about rich people, and I don’t like Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s an Edith Wharton adaptation, all about a world of well-mannered old money with very rigidly defined rules of behavior. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the true love Day-Lewis is kept from by the mores of the day, and part of her romantic appeal is she’s able to see through the rituals and make fun of them, while Winona Ryder fully buys into them, and thus reaps the benefits. Everything is repressed, all behavior is affect, this is of course the point but very much not my thing. There’s also a lot of a narrator reading the text of the book while the camerawork fades between lavishly composed image, while the cinematography probably looked great on a big screen I would still be very anxious about getting to the storytelling.

Experiment In Terror (1962) dir. Blake Edwards

This one starts off super-intensely, with a home invasion scene, the sense of horror in this is palpable but the fear is just used as this blackmail structure for some noir stuff? It straggles the genre line pretty well, feeling weird because of this horror energy of sheer creeping malevolence defines it. This is also considerably longer than most of the other film noir I’ve watched recently, because those moments extend and take away from the sense of a building plot, to instead feel like they might derail it. Lee Remick is the lead, and she is this terrified victim, which makes the film more interesting than if it were focused on the cop played by Glenn Ford. The main character’s younger sister gets kidnapped at one point, it gets creepy. The climax occurs at a end of a crowded baseball game, and there’s shots that I assume were done via helicopter, which seems like it would’ve upped the budget considerably.

The Harder They Fall (1956) dir. Mark Robson

Humphrey Bogart stars as a former sports writer, working to drum up publicity for a fresh-off-the-boat boxer who does not know how to fight, but is naively participating in fixed matches, for the economic benefit of the mob. While the boxer is being exploited and making no money, despite his celebrity; Bogart is being well-compensated to sell out his conscience and he is very good at playing a dude in moral conflict with himself, struggling to do the decent thing. While this isn’t the best boxing movie, or the best Bogart, it’s still pretty good.

The Devil And Miss Jones (1941) dir. Sam Wood

Heard about this one in the context of it having good politics. It’s about a rich guy who goes undercover at a department store hoping to bust the union only to realize that the guy organizing the union is supremely decent and the middle manager should get fired. It has some scenes that feel like they might play for “cringe comedy” but also are just so fucked up? One where the rich dude is forcing shoes onto the feet of little girl who is crying saying “I don’t like it! I don’t like it!” feels way too much like a pervert’s fetish for me to be comfortable with. The female lead is played by Jean Arthur, who is very good at playing a genuine, kind, and idealistic person. I am very grateful she dates the union organizer and the old rich dude’s love interest is someone age-appropriate. Interesting to see a pro-union movie from a time when unions were popular, so it functions as populist entertainment while Sorry To Bother You gestures at being radical propaganda for self-congratulation’s sake.

Human Desire (1954) dir. Fritz Lang

Another noir from Lang, with the same leads as The Big Heat. This one made me worried about age-inappropriate relationships too, as it begins with a dude being back from war, moving in with his friends, and their daughter having “become a woman” while he was away. Luckily the title refers  to a desire he ends up feeling for a married woman who as an accomplice to a murder committed by her abusive husband. Glenn Ford stars in this one, and he has this very boring morally upstanding male lead quality that makes these well-made movies feel generic. This thing is happening to me watching movies where I get kind of hung up on how no one ever explains themselves or their feelings: I don’t think they should, I think the whole thing of watching a movie where you watch it thinking like “Why don’t you just tell her you love her??” is interesting because… a writer doesn’t need the characters to explain their feelings to each other if the viewers understand them, these feelings are the most obvious things and so can go unspoken, and so you would really only have them say these things if they were lying or being manipulative? But maybe in more modern movies people really do state their motivations because screenwriters are dumber now? I don’t know.

Fail Safe (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet

I have talked about this movie a lot since watching it, and in a way that doesn’t even mention that the opening is amazing, and the title and credits sequence are all-time greats. Instead I mention that Henry Fonda’s performance seems to have inspired David Lynch’s performance of Gordon Cole, and how the weird, fucked up nightmarish ending doesn’t really change the fact that watching it in 2020 it feels like a sort of pornography of competence when contrasted against our own reality. The whole movie is about an accident that leads to a U.S. military plane flying to Moscow to drop a nuke, and everyone (except for the pilots) realizing this is a mistake and trying to avert global nuclear war. The ending is pretty astounding in its darkness. Walter Matthau plays a guy whose role is to argue for the pragmatic value of mass death, but the moral calculus that ends up being embraced is far beyond the nihilistic death drive he advocates for. Mutually assured destruction is such a motherfucker of a concept. I am really hung up on the idea that unilateral nuclear disarmament never became a thing really set a precedent for how political parties in this country will never unilaterally dismantle their propaganda machines. 24-hour news is a nightmare, not really on a par with nuclear weapons, but similarly something that should be illegal, but for the calculations made. We would be a different country if we were willing to make these kinds of sacrifices but we really are not.

The Deadly Affair (1967) dir. Sidney Lumet

James Mason stars in this John Le Carre adaptation. He plays a spy whose wife is cheating on him, with another spy. None of the twists in this are unforeseen, in fact, the title alone explains a bunch, but the title is also so generic you might forget what the movie is called while you’re watching it. James Mason is good in it, although it’s weird that he’s playing a likable guy who sort of doesn’t seem to understand why everyone can’t get along or be honest adults with one another considering his work in the intelligence community. Another solid Sidney Lumet movie.

Three Days Of The Condor (1975) dir. Sydney Pollack

This movie does a very good job of not explaining things up front, and then portioning out understanding as it goes on. The movie begins with Robert Redford getting his office getting shot up, and we eventually learn he works for the CIA, but he cannot rely on them for his protection. It doesn’t introduce the female lead, played by Faye Dunaway, until like halfway through the movie, when our hero takes her hostage. Redford can’t really explain the situation to her, and just sort of acts like a psychopath, but they are able to have a quasi-romantic relationship where she trusts him because he’s played by Robert Redford, who is in some ways the seventies’ answer to Glenn Ford. The movie star aspect allows him to sell his agreeability, although he’s also supposed to be something of a nerd, a guy whose job is just to read books and analyze the information. Max Von Sydow plays the villain.

The Third Shadow Warrior (1963) dir. Umetsugu Inoue

Watched this because it’s made by the dude who made Black Lizard, it’s a samurai thing about a warrior who employs body doubles. It follows one such body double, overshadowed by the man whose existence he supports, at the expense of his own individuality or happiness. Interesting enough, feels like it occupies the solid middle of samurai movies- Something sort of common to stuff on Criterion is something that doesn’t blow you away but it is definitely a “real movie” at the very least.

La Cienaga, (2001) dir. Lucrecia Martel

That said, you kind of do need to be careful with newer Criterion channel stuff, because some things feel more like they’re just trying to engage with an art house history in order to earn their place in the canon. This movie isn’t bad, but I do feel like the reason it’s interesting stems from a context the film itself has nothing to do with: After Martel made Zama (2017), there was talk of her being asked by Marvel to do a Black Widow movie, which is insane. The studio also volunteered to handle the action for her, which she said she would actually be interested in learning how to do herself, but she had no interest in working with Marvel. Let Lucrecia Martel make a big-budget action movie without corporate properties you cowards! This movie is pretty difficult to follow, with no clear narrative thread, a lot of characters, weird pacing, etc. There’s moments of poetry or tension but this is one of those things that’s just beyond my preferences enough to remind me of a certain aesthetic conservatism I possess. I didn’t finish Zama, though I had read the book. It’s honestly tough to imagine Martel making a movie with straightforward plot that can easily be followed, it doesn’t seem to be what she’s interested in, even in terms of editing a movie so that you have a sense of where scenes stand in relation to one another in time. Many scenes still maintain a sense of beauty or mystery but at there’s no velocity. She’s closer to Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Carlos Reygadas or Bi Gan, to name three people whose names I absolutely had to Google because I couldn’t think of them off the top of my head.

All these movies are streaming on The Criterion Channel, if you want me to recommend things on other streaming services, please DM me your login information.

[justgotham]

We always knew they meant New York," novelist, Lawrence Block, wrote in his intro to the first trade paperback of the DC Comics series, Gotham Central. Block was writing both about the inherent New-Yorkness to Bob Kane's initial vision of Batman's Gotham City and of Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka's incarnation in Gotham Central.

Gotham Central, which debuted in single issues beginning in 2004, is maybe the most quintessentially New York comic book imagining of the city of bats and cats, robins and riddlers. It's a story not about how a boy billionaire with a grudge and an endless arsenal of super-weaponry handles someone like Mister Freeze, but about how the boys in blue of the Gotham City Police Department deal with them. There's something endemically and irrevocably New York about people running around in strange costumes while often-flawed cops do their best to keep a tight hold on a city that never sleeps.  

Ten years after Gotham Central first appeared in comic stores, Gotham, the Fox TV series very loosely based on Brubaker and Rucka's stories, found an even better way to make their Gotham City feel like New York: they filmed there.

And while having the literal New York City skyline to draw inspiration from helped, there was another part of Manhattan specifically that helped give each of Gotham's residents that undeniable New York feel: Broadway.

"I worked on Broadway," says Gotham's current costume designer, John Glaser. "Josh, my assistant, worked on Broadway. ... The painters and the sketch artists have all worked on Broadway. We actually approached each episode like a little Broadway show."

And what advanced techniques were brought from the Great White Way to the Dark Knight?

"Paint and tape," says Glaser. "I hate to say it, but paint and tape make things look the way that they should."

As it turns out, that's a very Broadway approach to costuming. Glaser learned from the best, having assisted under the late, great Patricia Zipprodt, who was the original costume designer for iconic Broadway shows like Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Pippin, and the second longest running show in Broadway history, Chicago.

"Everything was painted, painted, painted, painted. I was a costume painter, so that's instilled in me," says Glaser. "The painting part, some people wouldn't do. Once we actually started to paint things in the first season that we were there and went, 'Oh, this stuff looks much better with the lighting, the dark scenery and the shafts of light.' We always made everything light at the top and dark at the bottom, ombré it down."

There are lots of little fun facts to be learned about the basic costumes and how they echo back to Batman comics, too. It's the little things. "On men's suits, we only used black buttons, no matter what suit it is," he explains. "Black buttons because in the comics all the buttons are black."

For Gotham's fifth and final season, there were creative alterations made to the costumes overall that informed the style of the show, each with specific purpose. "Because they are at war, we got rid of all jewelry," explains Glaser. "It's being melted down to make bullets. Without any jewelry, it kind of changes the look of the show. There are no earrings, there are no necklaces. We didn't want a lot of extraneous costume stuff, just what was really interesting in front of you."

Probably what most separates Gotham from Arrowverse shows or the Marvel Cinematic Universe is how the wardrobe team treats the supervillain costumes and suits. Those, too, get the Broadway treatment. Not at first, though. First, suits for characters like Firefly and Mister Freeze are crafted in Los Angeles. "It's like buying a car," according to Glaser. "They know the body's measured, they make an extra layer of the body for them to give them the right shape, they have the right fabrics, they have the right sculptors, the right fabricators."

But Glaser wasn't a fan of the exactness of these initial designs. "What I didn't like about that was that it looked like a movie costume. We actually took Firefly's costume and Mr. Freeze's costume, after they first wore them, and we started to paint them and age them, just because they didn't look like they were from Gotham. They looked like they were from a different world. We took them back, kept painting them and aging them, putting things on them and making them look more like they were from the city of Gotham."

Sometimes the newness of a costume could even be a problem, especially in Gotham's final season, where everyone is living even more rough than usual. "On Ivy's costume," Glaser uses as an example, "the top of it is flesh and it goes into fabric around her breast and we couldn't figure out how to make that transition without it looking like a skating costume."

So how do you solve that problem beyond paint and tape? "We took it to Izquierdo Studios and I was explaining to Martin Izquierdo what the problem was. He said, 'Alright, just go away for an hour.' We went away for an hour, and then when we came back he had cut, hacked, aged, and torn it, and it looked perfect. It was a dress that melted into her body — so it went from flesh, to fabric, back to skin and flesh, so you couldn't pinpoint whether it was a dress, whether it was her skin, or whether it was vines growing on her. It was vague, misty, and painted with lots of sparkle, so you could never pinpoint what it was. That was a very successful costume."

Beyond the desire to make Gotham feel like New York through the lens of a Broadway show, there was one other consistent challenge: working within the confines of the DC Universe. All live-action TV series that exist within the worlds of DC Comics have to accept that they are second banana in the DC hierarchy. The creators of Arrow had to scrub their Suicide Squad plotline when the film of the same name starring Margot Robbie and Will Smith was greenlit, for example. And so, too, Gotham had to contend with these challenges from a stylistic standpoint.

"There's a thing that Josh and I used to say," admits Glaser. "'If you can't tell what it is, then it's great.' If you can't know where it came from or if you can't pinpoint it, then there was never a problem."

Probably the most infamous struggle Gotham faced in the Batman canon relates to the Joker, in that Gotham simply could not have a character named "the Joker." That is why the twins, Jeremiah and Jerome, were created. And, even then, there was some conflict. "We sent a sketch and he [Jeremiah] had some purple in his suit," Glaser explains. "Warner Bros. said, 'No, you can't use purple.' The producers from Gotham talked with them and they let it pass. I think that was an area or a time when they started to loosen up a little bit, with us. We never got too close to the iconic look of anybody. We always danced around it."

One character from whom there was, surprisingly, no pushback at all was Harley Quinn. "The diamond shapes are painted on so that they kind of fade in and out, kind of ghost-like," reveals Glaser of the initial Harley design. "Every time that we saw her it would get a little more refined. When it started out it was like a dull red and a dull blue. By the time we finished, this is on different clothing, but, still, again, painting, it had become red and white, but because of what she does, we made it look like red blood and white."

You may also have heard that Gotham's final season involves a time jump allowing its audience to see something they've wanted since day one: Batman. And while it's too early yet to reveal everything about the first time we see actor David Mazouz in full Bat-regalia, Glaser did reveal one aspect to the costume that was mandated: "They insisted that the Batman logo be on the belt."

There's so much that goes into costuming a show, there could be a whole series just on the topic. Glaser talked with SYFY WIRE about so much: the muscle suits under the character's clothes, the way each character was built up to be taller and longer, and small details — like the custom made ties for all the men's suits, and how they changed from season to season. Even the background actors got their own story. "For every episode, we would pick a color," says Glaser. "Let's say there's a party scene, we would pick a color and we would pick a vague period and focus on that."

Most of these skills are ones that Glaser and his team learned, not from television, but from their time assisting with, designing, dressing, teching down, and rigging costumes on Broadway, all which helped make the Gotham City of Fox's Gotham the most quintessentially New York incarnation of the DC Universe yet.

[douxreviews]

Cloak and Dagger - ‘Blue Note’ Review

"Make them ride the highs and lows with us until we all come out the other side, changed."

Dangit show, please don't make me feel bad for Lia. I refuse to feel bad for Lia.

OK, I feel a little bad for Lia.

This is a story about ascension.

They may have mentioned it a time or two. 'Power up.' 'Get to the next level.' 'Run the scale until you get to the top.' You know, the occasional subtle hint.

In which case, it's probably germane to start the discussion with the title. Forgive me in advance if you're a proper student of Jazz as a form. I'm personally not, as you'll see in just a moment. I apologize for the grotesque oversimplification that follows.

A blue note, in jazz, is 'a minor interval where a major is expected. A note played at a slightly different pitch.' The upshot is that after running a musical scale, instead of playing the expected major finish to the scale you play a different note. A 'blue' note. Typically a variant of the expected major off by somewhere between a semitone and a quartertone.

That feels like an accurate and specific description of Andre's ascension into becoming a Loa, almost certainly intentionally. He's ascending and it's going to end up slightly darker and 'off.'  It helps that Andre himself is specifically underlining the metaphor right from the very first scene of the episode. Ninety-six months before the current events, Andre and his band were about to play a show that was intended to make their name in the music world. Andre specifically refers to the LPs of the jazz greats in the bin at the record studio as 'the gods.'  Further, he clearly states that it's his intention to become one of them through playing his performance. Through running the scale up to the blue note, he intends to become one of the gods. You just cannot state a thematic metaphor more directly than that.

Sadly for Andre, that's the night of his first migraine, which brings the show, and his career, crashing down around him. That's right, a good chunk of this week's episode is devoted to Andre's secret origin.

The timing for this background information isn't terrible, although it does feel a little bit like we're turning our wheels waiting for the big final confrontation. Fortunately they get away with it for a few different reasons. The primary one being the performance of Brooklyn McLinn as Andre. Despite the truly terrible things that we've seen Andre do, and the terrible things he continues to do in this episode, it's impossible not to feel for him during the scenes of his attempted suicide. That's not easy to do, as the scenes are solo and completely without dialogue. The only thing that doesn't really work about the flashback sequences, and it's a minor thing, is the way his migraines are timed to onset with his attempt to hit the blue note. There's an unpleasant aspect of 'you flew too close to the sun' about it that seems to almost be blaming Andre for his own migraines, as if they were caused by his own hubris. That struck an unpleasant note for me, no pun intended.

Another aspect of the structure that made the flashbacks not feel like they were just wasting time is that by devoting a little time to telling Andre's backstory they could simultaneously use that time to clear up a few extraneous plot threads before next week's finale. So Tandy and Mayhem track down Lia's body, while Ty goes to resolve that 'gangs want him dead' issue that's still lingering on the periphery.

I have to say, Ty's 'negotiation' techniques with the gang leaders were just wonderful. I honestly thought he'd let the one die when he threw him off the roof. Good on Ty for knowing how to use his powers to the best effect by this point, and for knowing that he can't really do anything about people buying drugs for themselves. So he focused on what he could, and now the gangs of New Orleans know better than to try to sell drugs which will be used in human trafficking. That was a good resolution to that thread. Obviously in a comic book show you can't have your characters magically 'fix' something as genuinely awful as human trafficking without coming across as crass. This was a good way to show Ty making a difference without crossing a line into something distasteful. Well judged.

Meanwhile, Tandy and Mayhem hash out whether extra-judicial murder is ever justified by the expedience of Tandy believing it is, then looking into the soul of someone who seems truly irredeemable and learning to see their humanity. Mayhem was a good foil for that particular character journey, and neither the character nor the journey outstayed its welcome.

Which brings me neatly back to the last reason that the structure of Andre's flashbacks didn't feel like a waste of time. They used our assumptions about how flashbacks work to pull an impressive rug-pull and have Andre of today's plot suddenly dovetail and interact with the Andre of seven-ish years ago's plot. Apparently, Andre of today sensed Lia being given back her hope and reached out into her despair space of seven years ago and stopped Tandy from giving her hope back to her.

Notice that the above paragraph, when written down starkly like that, sounds absolutely 100% bat-sh*t crazy and does not make a lick of logical sense. But in the episode it makes perfect aesthetic sense, and I've never seen a flashback structure used in that way before, which makes me love it. Who needs logic when you have visual poetry.

So, after giving us some backstory and cleaning up some side plots, the episode arrives at the only tangible thing that you can point to and say really 'happened' this week, if you're just looking at it in terms of pure plot progress. Andre has summoned all the girls he's 'infected' with despair to the sight of that fatal jazz performance and played the blue note, successfully 'leveling up' and getting through the locked door in his despair dimension. Cue next week's climactic battle.

It shouldn't all hang together and feel like one complete piece, but it does without question, and it's all down to the expert application of that ascension theme we started this discussion with. If I was going to compare the plot structure to music, I would call it jazz. Really, good jazz.

Bits and Pieces:

-- Very cool combination trick of Tandy throwing the light knife into Ty who teleported to where it needed to be released. Too bad it was just a little too late.

-- Andre's veve lines lighting up looked a lot like he was finding cell reception.

-- Nice little seed early on of showing Melissa Bowen's records in Andre's record store of despair.

-- I actually believed that Tandy was trying to protect Loa from waking up in an ambulance with strange men after what she'd been through. That was a clever ruse.

-- I feel like we were denied a very interesting conversation of Ty finding out that Evita got god-married.

-- Ty teleporting does not interrupt his cell reception or drop any call he happens to be on at the time. That's suspiciously dependable cell service.

-- I suspect that they showed Adina burning the bloody newspapers both as a way for Ty to understand that she'd murdered Connors and to tell the viewers, 'No, we're not faking you out, she totally killed him for real.'

-- Will Brigid get a turn at being in control of her hybrid body after the crisis is over?

-- It was a little awkward having people suddenly vanishing as a plot point what with the snap still being theoretically a thing. I'm not sure where exactly this season of Cloak & Dagger fits in relation to Infinity War, but it definitely made me second guess if that was related to what happened.

-- Tandy's plan of borrowing younger-Lia's hope in the form of sheet music and giving it to older Lia in order to give her hope back was a really elegant plan. On most shows that would have worked.

-- “Luke Cage in Harlem rumble” by Karen Page. That entire scene with Solomon is why representation is so important. Luke Cage is a hero that looks like him and because of that he inspires him to try to be better. That. That's why representation matters. Every kid deserves to see themselves in their heroes.

-- When Ty or Tandy touch someone they go into that person's 'realm' for lack of a better world. When Andre touches someone he pulls them into his. That feels like an important distinction.

Quotes:

Tandy: "Tyrone, if you ask me about my feelings one more time I’m seriously gonna kill you."

Tandy: "Brigid was a better liar." Mayhem: "Yeah, well that’s about all she was better at."

Soloman: "Sometimes you can’t fix things. Some things are just broke."

Ty: "Which one is she?" Tandy: "Both of them."

Tandy: "When all hope is gone, this is what’s left."

Tandy: "You can’t kill her. An hour ago you practically begged me not to hurt her." Mayhem: "An hour ago she had something I wanted."

A solid penultimate episode that got all of the necessary setup in place for what looks like to be an explosive finale.

Three out of four abandoned trumpets

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

[lumikinetic]

It's me, back with another DC Headcanon

This time, imagine an AU where, when all the heroes and villains are old, they retire and go legit but in their respective fields. If people aren’t on here, I either couldn’t think of something for them or I don’t like them.

Batman: Bruce uses Wayne Enterprises to open a whole bunch of stuff he used to become Batman. Opens a gym, yoga and meditation classes, funds criminology, psychology and chemistry courses at Gotham U, everything.

Nightwing: With funding from Bruce, he opens an acrobatics class and all the new students flip their shit at this like 70 year old man swinging from a trapeze 50 feet up with the grace of a swan and balance of a flamingo.

Oracle: I’m not really sure what Barbara would do once she’s retired to be honest, there’s so much. I quite like the idea of her being a college professor who teaches Sociology, but I think she might also teach martial arts for girls of all ages, perhaps co-run with Dinah. Or maybe join the GCPD where she eventually works her way up to Commissioner. One of those, I like college professor the most.

Red Hood: Jason, on his own, opens a gun store but with Bruce Funding, also purchases and renovates Ma Gunn’s Home For Wayward Boys. He’s also a part-time public speaker who goes around elementary schools giving lectures on gun violence.

Red Robin: Franchises with Starbucks then uses the money to open his own coffee shop and also a mattress store. DC, I’m begging you, let my trash son sleep, he needs it.

Spoiler: Stephanie starts her own fashion line called Purple Rain (yes, like the Prince song). It sells a bit of everything but the main focus is fitness clothing.

Robin: Obviously Damian opens a zoo. Did you expect anything less?

Black Bat: So I’m imagining all the Batkids are in their late 50s to early 70s so I think by this point Cassandra would have learned a few languages and she teaches kids all over the world how to speak as well as opening ballet classes in Gotham.

Signal: I don’t know a whole lot about Duke but I think he would have become a stand-up comedian, I could see him on a bar stage, telling just absolute brilliant jokes. And like, he'd reveal his identity to the public and just tell hilarious stories about working with the Batfamily

Catwoman: She'd sell all the jewellery she's stolen over the years and use the money to buy a beachfront mansion, and live out the rest of her days under the sun. Imagine John Mulaney pointing at Selina's retired life and going "this is the height of luxury!"

Alfred: I should like to think Alfred bought a plot of land and turned it into a park. It's got a big hill and he put a bench on top of it and he sat there twice a day - once to watch the sunrise and once to watch the sunset. Poison Ivy visited him sometimes and they talked about tending to plants. Alfred managed to live to 102 before passing away peacefully in his sleep.

Batwoman: Kate and Bruce were one of the last ones to retire from hero work before passing their mantles to younger generations. When she settled down, similar to Bruce, she used her wealth to open various chains and stuff, but instead of things people could use to become the next Batwoman, her franchises were more leisure focused. A string of gay nightclubs, restaurants, clothing stores where she sells Stephanie’s fashion line, things like that.

Huntress: I don’t know what Helena would do. Something religious based would be an obvious choice but I feel like she could do more. Open a restaurant maybe?

Julia: Julia moves back to London and opens a bat-themed bar.

Joker: The realisation kind of dawns on him that the end is fast approaching as he sees Batman and his kids get older and older, and it offers him just a touch of clarity. He lives the rest of his years killing Nazis as a sort of atonement and he dies in his 90s alone, but not quite as unloved as he would have been 60 years ago.

Scarecrow: Jonathan changes his identity and gets plastic surgery, taking up a professor position teaching psychology.

Bane: Bane opens up a gym and you bet he is absolutely a White Goodman type character. “Motivating” all his patrons through yelling at them via video on TVs all over the place.

Poison Ivy: Well of course she opens a flower shop! She builds a reputation as “nice old plant lady down the street” and everyone knows she’s the BEST for wedding flower arrangements. Occasionally she’ll give a tulip or a bluebell to a little girl who came into the shop that day.

Harley Quinn: Harley opens a kids’ party store right across the street from Ivy’s flower shop, and she’s just an absolute joy with the children, if a little inappropriate at times. They smile at each other through their shop windows from time to time.

Deathstroke and Deadshot: Open a military store together where all new recruits can buy basic supplies such as apparel, equipment, sewing kits (for the badges) and stuff. Deathstroke also runs a support group for vets and a advice group for rookies.

Ravager: Rose gets a job as a bartender at one of Kate’s nightclubs, eventually ending up running the place.

Riddler: Opens a store that sells all kinds on brain trivia stuff. Scrabble, Sudoku notepads, math books and equipment for school, puzzle based videogames, just everything.

Mr. Freeze, Captain Cold and Killer Frost: They buy Ace Chemicals, clean it out, clear everything, renovate it, get new equipment and turn it into an ice cream factory.

Superman and Lois: I think it’d be nice if they open a bookstore/coffee shop together.

Supergirl: I’m super into the idea that Kara is a fucking amazing cook and she comes onto the culinary scene and she does n o t stop. She’s always coming up with these crazy dishes and she actually has two houses, one where she lives and one that is basically just a kitchen where she experiments with food.

Superboy: Comic artist. You can’t change my mind.

Green Arrow: Archery store.

Black Canary: Record store.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl: They’d open a store that sells flight supplies. Parachutes, paragliders, hang gliders, hot air balloon rentals, stuff like that.

Aquaman: Water park

Aqualad: Kaldur would open a recreation centre for LGBT youths who are treated poorly in their home, so they have a place to stay for a little while at least. He’s joined with Jason’s orphanage so that he can call the police on the kids’ parents and give them a place to stay.

Starfire: Beach resort hotel

Condiment King: Diner

Wonder Woman: It’s always been a favourite headcanon of mine that Diana is secretly a MASSIVE nerd, and she opens a Forbidden Planet/D&D/LARPing store, and she takes it sooooo seriously. She crafts all the cosplay weapons herself and recommends good starter campaign books for tabletop games and she makes custom dice, gives GM tips, and holds and participates in various D&D nights for all the new heroes who are fighting crime these days (she is absolutely a gnome druid, fight me) and it’s the best.

Artemis: She also opens a bookstore, but it is specifically aimed at Egyptian and Greek mythology. Her usual patrons are college kids with their History and Ancient Civilisations papers, and when parents come in with their little kids, she tells stories about the gods and she absolutely relishes that little twinkle in their eyes.

Maggie Sawyer: After retiring as Commissioner, she trains the new police recruits. Every time new recruits come in at least 3 go, “heyyyyy, aren’t you married to that Kane lady?”

Every time.

That’s the best I can do. Tack on any more you can think of.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #339

Top Ten Things to Remember About TF Nation 2018

It’s been a fortnight, by the time you’re both reading this, since I was at TF Nation. In that time a lot has happened. Well, not a lot a lot. I’ve zipped about the country a little bit. It’s nearly time for school to start. I’ve made about six different promos. So some stuff has happened.

Anyway, I'm finally ready to talk about it. I’ll be posting pictures this weekend too (hopefully they’ll be up by now). It was a strange TFN for me in a number of ways, and I'm going to self-indulgently reflect on that.

Normally I drive from My Home in The North, down the M6 to Brum, and get to the Hilton Metropole around late-afternoonish on the Friday. Dump my stuff in my room, head out for a mooch, check out the Friday night festivities, hopefully catch up with friends in the bar, and try to get a relatively early night to feel rested not just for the first full day of the con but also for the inevitable Long One on Saturday night. But a couple of things were different this year. For one, I was working in London, so I caught the train from Euston instead, and go to the hotel quite early. For another, I had what we in the trade refer to as a Minging Cold and felt Proper Rotten. So apologies to anyone who I gave my lurgy to. Anyway, an upshot of this is that I didn’t feel too much like hanging out in the bar or really being all that sociable. I think if D.C. Douglas hadn't been doing his excellent Erotic Fan-Fiction Show on Friday night I'd probably have just hidden in my room to play Civilization VI on my own. But I really didn’t want to miss Chase from Rescue Bots delivering a bit of late night smut, and I’m glad I stuck it out, because it was fantastic.

Although I always love TFN the holy-cow-wow factor from my first con visit a few years ago waxes and wanes. This year I knew I wasn’t looking for any toys so I didn’t engage quite as strongly with the vendors. And I still felt crap for most of Saturday, popping back to my room a couple of times for a rest, and taking a long walk back into the NEC to try to find some drugs. Fortunately, the addition of concentrated Lemsip to my system gave me sufficient strength to power through the afternoon, and by the evening’s festivities I was feeling much, much better. The Stan Bush concert was incredible, and I spent the rest of my time in the bar, chatting to friends old and new.

Sunday, by contrast, was a hardscrabble day of running around and trying to get everything signed by the guests, as I’d squandered Saturday on feeling poorly and taking it easy. But I spoke to everyone and got all the signatures I wished, even if I was trying To Be Good and not spend several hundred pounds on artwork. But I did, at least, get a beautiful Spiderling picture from Nick Roche, which will eventually hang on my daughter’s wall.

So anyway, it was a really cool convention, but it felt slightly disjointed and I left with a melancholy feeling. I think a lot of that was due to me being away from home, and spending the weekend I'd have ordinarily used to go back and see my family at TFN instead. Plus, as is always the case with these things, I like chatting to people more than mooching and purchasing, and there just isn’t enough time, especially when you’re friends with the creators themselves. But it was great. I love TFN, it’s one of the highlights of my year. I hope I can go again next year; obviously it’s an expense, but more than that it’s time out during the summer holidays and time away from my kids. It's always going to be a tough decision, at least til they’re old enough to want to come with me (I don’t think they’ll be staying up till 2am discussing celebrity sex abusers for quite some time, however).

Here, then, are my favourite bits. Or at least the bits that have hung around my memory most powerfully. Cheers, TFN, and thanks loads to everyone involved in the organising.

Stan Bush: “I would have waited an eternity for this,” said Nick Roche when introducing him, and I think he meant it (although it does sound suspiciously like a line from a film. Lord of the Rings, maybe?). Mr Bush did not disappoint. Quintessential 80s rocking, with lots of implied slow-motion montages. Music to drive motorbikes to as the sun goes down over the naval base. It was amazing.

Saturday Night: Like I said, I spent the rest of Saturday night with friends in the bar. It was great fun, and really affirmed my love of the convention, and of Transformers fans in general. Everyone just seems so chill, and all on the same page, just sharing in their love of the franchise and its associated art. I’ve been very lucky to get on friendly terms with various Transformers creators over the years; I hope by calling them my friends I'm not overstepping any boundaries and coming across like some weird stalker. I really like these guys, and chatting to them is an annual highlight. Wish it could happen more often.

Sunday Afternoon: I normally leave fairly sharpish, to be honest, once the con winds down, but with no real hurry to get home (no excited children waiting for me, alas) I hung about a bit longer, and sampled some of the famous Sunday night vibe. I was chatting with a different set of friends, people I see at the Travelling Man store in Manchester, and it was a really nice come down after the highs of Saturday night. I can see why people like staying Sunday night, and not just out of a desire to make TFN last as long as possible.

The Lost Light Love-In: I love Lost Light, and the final (?) TFN panel dedicated to the book was a delight. Revelations, discarded plots, behind-the-scenes info, some subtle teases; it was everything a fan could desire. But the real takeaway was the display of friendship between writer James Roberts and artist Jack Lawrence. It was so, so cool that these two old buds got to make a comic together based on one of their favourite things in the world, and that we all got to read it. It was the perfect, bittersweet end to a long and lovely ride.

An Annie for Annie: my kids might not have read a lot of comics but at the end of the day, most kids still love Spider-Man. My youngest is called Annie; Spider-Man's daughter is called Annie in Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows; the artist of Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows is Nick Roche; Nick was at TFN. It's not hard to get from one thing to the other, and now I have a really great Spiderling picture. I'm hoping it’s something Annie (my Annie, the IRL Annie) will cherish as she gets older. And don’t worry about my eldest, she’s already got three Nick Transformers headshots.

Filth: I’d heard of, but didn’t really know much about, D.C. Douglas’s “Erotic (Zombie-Related) Fan-Fiction" show. I’m not a big Resident Evil fan so I’m almost entirely unfamiliar with his work as Albert Wesker; as far as I’m concerned he’s Chase from Transformers: Rescue Bots. But he’s funny on Twitter so I thought this would be funny too, and quite frankly who wouldn’t want to go see something about erotic fiction at a Transformers convention? Anyway, it didn’t disappoint; it was hilarious and proper mucky. Kudos to the organisers for putting it on, because it’s not the sort of thing I've seen at TFN before. The icing on the cake was the fact that I got to go up on stage and take part, although I reckon my bits could have been dirtier. So to speak.

Blimey!: there was a period of my life when I was probably just as excited for the Combat Colin strip in Transformers as I was by the ongoing story of those robots in disguise themselves. So to finally meet Colin’s creator, Lew Stringer, and get an original Semi-Automatic Steve sketch, was marvellous. I really wish I'd had more time to chat to him, though; he’s a font of knowledge about British comics and their history, and more than that, he was a massive influence on me, my artwork, and my writing. It’s funny sometimes, when you think back, the things that shaped you creatively. Combat Colin is, I think even Lew would admit, fairly niche in terms of popular culture, but the books I’m writing at the moment owe just as much to the adventures of Colin, Steve, the Giggly Sisters, Megabrain, Madprof, Combat Kate and the rest, as they do to the various superhero writers and great novelists that I've cribbed from disgracefully over the years.

Where it All Began: I started collecting Transformers with issue 11 of the UK comic. The lead story in that issue – “Man of Iron” – was illustrated by Mike Collins. Mike was at the convention, and he signed my VERY FIRST ISSUE OF TRANSFORMERS EVER. I mean, how cool is that? Like with Lew, though, I didn’t have much chance to speak to him unfortunately, and I never managed to get an original sketch either. Hopefully he’ll be back!

Those Wonderful Toys: I didn’t really buy anything this year. Most years I either get myself something or at least pick up a couple of small things for the girls. But I knew I was spending more on artwork than usual, plus in general I just wanted to be more frugal, so I didn’t want to go flinging money on “Plastic Crack”. The only thing I really, really wanted was a Power of the Primes Rodimus Prime, which comes with a little Hot Rod that you can combine with his “trailer”, Powermaster Optimus Prime style, to turn into Rodimus. Rodimus, of course, is my favourite character, and this was a gimmick I came up with myself when I was a little kid, so of course I was super excited at the prospect. I think I saw one, briefly, on Saturday morning, but that was it: one. And it was gone so quickly I began to doubt myself. Anyway, with my One True Love not being present, buying toys was kind of an afterthought, but all the same: I love looking at them. Especially the third-party/custom jobs they have in the Forge. The huge Optimus was terrific, but I especially loved the life-size (well, human-sized, I guess) Optimus rifle. They should sell that thing at Toys R Us! Oh...

Geoffrey and Helpers: speaking of TRU (RIP), cosplay. Cosplay is Gold at TFN. This year was no exception. Utterly fantastic Vortex, Functionist Council, humanised Rodimus and Magnus, and loads more besides... it was great, really great. The sheer scale of the undertaking, the finesse, the performances: hats off to you, one and all. But the icing on the cake, for me at least, was the guy who dressed up as Geoffrey from the Toys R Us adverts, except wearing an Infinity Gauntlet. I mean, come on. That’s just incredible.

So there you have it: TF Nation 2018. It was a very emotional experience for me this year. Really, really cool. I do love it. I hope I can go to one of the meet-ups, especially if they have one in the north. And I hope I get to see people in between now and next year, too. Having said that, for a variety of reasons I’m thinking I might give next year a miss, or maybe just go for one day or something.

Unless they get Judd Nelson as a guest. Or anyone else from Rescue Bots. Or Peter Cullen. Or if they have a Weird Al Yankovic concert. Or if they do a huge “End of IDW (version 1.0)” retrospective. Or if they have all the new creators. Or...

Jesus, it never ends.