#and im also just not a huge fan of wade . there are other characters who deserve the extra attention more i think

[sonknuxadow]

im actually really worried about the knuckles series im so scared wade being a main character is gonna ruin it somehow . if they were gonna have one of the human characters be a co protagonist with knuckles it should have been maddie im not sorry for saying it

[margle]

15 (ish) questions for 15 (ish) mutuals (but I didnt do that part sorry)

thanks @cowboycharmac , @translesbianvampire , @number-one-hog-hater , @23meteorstreet for the tags!

were you named after anyone?

sort of. I asked my mum and she listed a few people but the main one is a very hedonistic character from a book.so that’s a fun role to fill. the other people are a bit more daunting in their accomplishments.

do you have kids?

no and I dont want any.

do you use sarcasm a lot?

not very often, I guess. ive been told I am very difficult to read if im telling a joke or not. especially sarcasm. im mostly sarcastic when im being mean rather than funny. I guess im more likely to be dry?

what's the first thing you notice about people?

I honestly have no clue. definitely not their shoes. and probably not their face because I can never remember what people look like. I sat in a car with my driving instructor for months but could not tell you what he looked like. physically, I probably notice hair and clothes first? but otherwise if im meeting someone new I just notice whether they talk to me or not and how they hold a conversation.

what's your eye color?

blue/green.

scary movies or happy endings?

im a wimp and I dont like scary movies. so I guess I prefer happy endings, although I dont mind some tragedy. for tv I almost exclusively watch comedies. i dont watch a lot of films so i’ll mostly watch what other people want. im a fan of rewatching, so it is rare I will willingly watch something new on my own. as for books, ill read anything! but especially interesting gothic classics and translated books. I like slice of life and anything with great world building. not a huge fan of ya probably because it was all I read when I was younger so I got a bit bored of it.

any special talents?

I never know how to answer that. im decent at various things but nothing in particular. if you showed me a relatively common uk bug I think I would be able to id it.

what are your hobbies?

im into entymology. I like taking pictures of bugs and recording their species. there are other things I do, but im hesitant to call them hobbies because I dont do them that regularly. 

have any pets?

yes! a beautiful, wonderful cat.

what sports do you play/have you played?

I dont play sport regularly. did the usual sports at school. (I did some more interesting stuff but im trying to be humble. im big into baseball - Ive got a batting average of .328, have 118 home runs and batted in 1014 runs. im also in the baseball hall of fame. that’s right guys, im baseball superstar wade boggs. Im a true american - I love baseball and posting on tumblr and my family and beer)

how tall are you?

I honestly dont know. 5 foot something. that should narrow it down. 

favorite subject in school?

I liked english lit in later school. earlier on I liked all the arty stuff best. textiles was a lot of fun but the teacher was a prick. 

dream job?

games design but im shite at coding. :( conservation work would be cool. havent decided yet. when I was a kid I wanted to be a farmer and used to like planning my future farm layout. now I just play stardew valley.

im not sure who to tag because I think most of my mutuals have been tagged by other people already. or have already done it. ive spent too long deliberating over who to tag/not tag. and so this is an open invitation to whoever wants to do this. you dont have to be my mutual! I know this kinda defeats the point of these things but gah idk I never do these.

[robocops-a-christ-allegory]

@spectorcorp

shakes you like a little jar of beans for the plot

HUOH. Ok so basically the plot of berserk is that Guts, a guy with a massive slab of iron for a sword and a gun arm, is tracking down this guy Griffith for sacrificing him and all his friends to ascend to godhood. And Guts is hunting things called apostles along the way, which are basically huge fuck off big demons who were once humans who achieved demonhood by also sacrificing people. 

The story starts off with a arc set in the present explaining all of this and Guts’s current deal, and then after that goes into a very long flashback arc going into Guts’s entire life up to that point and explaining everything about what happened with him and Griffith. Then the story takes a tonal shift from bleak and grim story about Guts torture murdering demons to a found family type tale with Guts also struggling to choose between revenge and moving on with his life and caring for his girlfriend Casca, the only other survivor of Griffiths sacrifice.

Under this readmore im gonna explain all the stuff that needs to be content warned about in berserk, so warning for detailed discussion of CSA, pedophilia, and rape, as well as mentions of homophobia and racism. yeah.

Berserk has a shitton of rape scenes and its often handled really insensitively. Specifically rape is often depicted happening on screen, theres alot of throwaway scenes of women about to be raped because “grimdark medieval setting”, some throwaway scenes of it outright actually happening, and in the flashback arc specifically there is onscreen CSA. it is not at all romanticized and is depicted as a incredibly awful and traumatic event but yeah, it pretty much shows it happening. And at the end of the flashback arc Casca is brutally raped on screen for several pages, this is something that gets alot of criticism from the fans and again, its not at all romanticized and the point is how horrific it is but. its a questionable choice to include that at best. Im somebody who gets super bothered by stuff like this and was able to get through it but i did end up having to take breaks from reading. 

it also important to note though that berserk is also weirdly incredibly sympathetic towards suvivors, Guts is a CSA survivor and his trauma and how it effects him is depicted so well and realistically. Casca’s situation is a little less great, she goes catatonic and is kinda reduced to a non character for over 100 chapters, but she has recently recovered and her situation is treated with respect for the most part (aside from her kinda being reduced to comic relief, but her trauma is never diminished and she’s never looked down on for reacting to it like this in universe)

Also i think i should bring up that berserk seems like it has a racism problem. Theres like three named black characters and one was a rapist, one was kind of a ‘big silent stoic who is also nice though’ stereotype, and the others Casca. Similarly almost every gay or gay coded man in this story is either a pedophile or a rapist or both (and im being generous with that almost. i see Guts as bi-coded but theres not really any irrefutable canon evidence of this)

Im so sorry for the essay Sundown but Berserk is kinda important to me but it also has a ton of problems and i feel like i gotta warn people as clearly as possible but also like, not make it sound like its just unambiguously shit. 100% ok if you think its shit after hearing all that though. It did start in 1989 and seems to have gotten way better with EVERYTHING in the most recent chapters but again, yeah, understandable if you dont wanna wade through all of that

[detectivehole]

Go comic feral, i followed this blog for a rEASOn and it's bc i like to hear your random vents and rants and also you reblog cool stuff. But i digress, go comic feral i am hERE for it

fine

PETER PARKER BEING RICH IS STUPID  he didnt even ern what he has himself it was nt even himn he wasnt in his body maybe if i had got to see him start fron nothing to being a cool ceo or whatever id be able to stand it but nooooooo he just GOT is for nothing so it feels stupid like “ha ha what if like tony stark haha” its DUMB and i haven’t read a spider man comic for a long time

deadpool/spiderman crossover comic bad. feels out of character a lot. funny concept and full of funny jokes but as far as characterization its bad in my opinion- was made to capitalize off the hype of the ship and we all know it

don cates should be banned from writing comics bc he fucking sucks and ill never forgive him for what he did/tried to do to venom

deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good deadpool good dea

the venom movie was a lot of fun but it was very ooc a lot HOWEVER seeing some of the cut scenes and scripts you can see that it used to be actually fairly in character for the comics but a lot of scenes with eddie establishing himself as not actually the most nicest of guys (not that eddie isnt a nice guy deep down but he is a good amount fucked up with a big ol hero complex and a problem with ‘i can do no wrong” mentality sometimes) were cut and considering how the fandom for the movie treats him i can see why the cut those bits out bc i dont think movie goers would have liked him as much wich is a shame bc he is a good guy at the end of the day just fucked up

straight white male comic fans are the worst people in the world and breaking their fingers is a daydream i indulge in 

matt murdock is a himbo

foggy nelson is a good man who deserves better friends

i can tell what deadpool comics someone has read based on how they characterize wade in their fan works and i have a 80% success rate with it. the most common was the daniel way run but now its the spider-man/deadpool crossover series

soulda used miles for the mcu spidey instead of cannibalizing his story for parts like they did. dick move, Disney

mcu bad

i think just the idea of dc’s Red Tool is fucking hilarious but i dont like his character at all

batman and superman should fuck but they wont :/

matt and foggy should to but the comic industry is afraid of making long running characters lgbt bc theyre WEAK

deadpool need a canon bf they cant keep telling us hes pan and not showing us for reals- hell he could just go on one date or be shown having a one night stand or something- something beyond a damn joke

cable gay. no i will not listen to any other opinions.

im excited to read moon knight i have a book waiting i just have to finish my current one

SCUD the disposable assassin is the most underrated comic EVER and i LOVE IT however i think it ended stupid and bad however it went on fucking hiatus for like a decade and then was rapped up really fast so any ending is a godsend

i desperately want a long-form stand alone series abt wanda wilson bc shes the perfect foil for a good Feral Dumbass Woman comic. think abt it; shell sell immediately bc of recognizable brand, and then she can just go on violent stupid adventures without any of the other dp corps. it doenst have to line up with any canon i just want insane lady dp adventure comic. this is an unreasonable dream but mine none the less

i though that agent venom was stupid

tank girl is fucking amazing and i love it i never understand whats going on and i enjoy the confusion

reading early hulk comics feels like watching a weird, poorly produced old black and white sci-fi soap

there needs to be better, more easily accessed, official reading-order guides published and posted on the walls of comic shops everywhere

the 80s and 90s were the best time for marvel comics and no one can tell me otherwise. that was peak comic time

the worst time for comics was the 2000s and early 2010s

sometimes i am shocked by the art that gets the editors pass in comics. some of it is so bad and im not even talking about the disproportionate ladies

the lego marvel and dc movies are way better than the live action movies and im not even being sarcastic

seriously the 2000s made some horrible comics

i feel like committing acts of mass violence every time someone says comics arnt real reading/stories/implies theyre worth less of any value than a novel

i read the first deadpool comic i got so much that the art itself is so ingrained in my mind that people have shown my just the corners of panels and ive identified them correctly

i distinctly remember the first time the woman at the book store stopped asking me for parental permission to buy the comics i was getting (12yos) because i went there so often that she just remembered who i was and that the adult would say its fine

i refuse to talk about comics with people at cons because i am gatekept or flirted with every single time no matter what and there is no in between. and yea its because i have tits. youd think that eventually theyd learn but gross comic men never do and all the others have adopted the same policy as me so the closest i come to positive comic interaction at cons is standing in the same vicinity as another chick, looking at the same section, and the kinda smiling at each other

i think the avengers are boring. really really boring. the x-men are way better

i related to gwenpool too much when she first started and it scared/offended me so i stopped reading for a while until her character developed more and we stooped being so similar

i have spider-man bedding. i picked it out only a few months ago. its good it makes me feel cool in a very uncool way

watching spider-man as a kid made me wanna be a scientist. watching batman as a kid made me want to do martial arts. i ended up failing chemistry and falling on my face a lot instead.

i had a huge venom toy and a huge spiderman toy as a kid and while i did make them fight a lot i also made them hug just as much. i wanted them to be friends

on that note PETER IS MEAN TO THE SYMBIOTE NOW AND HE DONT EVEN HAVE A REASON NO MORE hes just such a dick about criminal reform eddie and the symbiote aint special with this- he says he believes people can be better but he really doesnt show it. he tends to think people are set in their ways and while this makes sense forthe most part considering how much hewas bullied as a kid/adult (that also contributes to his mild “i protect my own” mentality  tho at least he consciously fights that one) it stil pisses me off

i can think way more but i need to sleep i think

[renaroo]

Wednesday Roundup 15/6/2017

So this is a day late but in my defense I had a ridiculous amount of comics to get through with no one to blame but myself here. And you know what? I genuinely enjoyed almost everything. But does that mean every comic was good this week? And even so what did I think was the best? 

Honestly I don’t know how to write these intros for people who wouldn’t be here to read my opinion anyway so let’s just jump into it. 

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine, Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows, DC’s Detective Comics, DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester, DC’s Justice League of America, Image’s Motor Crush, DC’s Superwoman, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: Salvation, DC’s Wonder Woman

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine (2015-present) #21 Tom Taylor, Leonard Kirk, Cory Hamscher, Terry Pallot, Michael Garland

Okay I need this issue to reread a million times over because there are just so many things I love all at once. Like, oh my gosh. I was almost in tears multiple times because relationships! Healing! Supporting each other!

Wade and Gabby alone could just about make this issue perfect, but then you have Laura and Daken hugging and worried about each other, and Old Man Logan being likable for the first time in any of my readings of him. There’s so much I enjoy, though I find the cover rather deceiving. This is much more of a Howlett family reunion than anything else, though I did enjoy Riri’s parts in it.

I just eriously adore these characters and it meant a lot to see them all come together like they have here and that cliffhanger HURT so much more for it. 

I will nitpick the art a bit because we’ve been doing so good about keeping Laura in the Wolverine costume which is much preferred to her X-23 wardrobes, for sure, but this issue it pretty much looked exactly like one of her old costumes without the midriffs and it was kinda weird. I know she took off a lot of her armor for skin contact but it’s... idk. It was weird. 

The main thing I’m happy about though is that as we go on, I realize that literally all of the Marvel books I’ve kept are going out of their way to not involve themselves in Secret Wars and it’s kind of beautiful. Laura and Gabby are stuck on an island that’s quarantined (and I can pretend Wade’s there with them instead of whatever’s going on since I dropped Deadpool for the summer crossovers, thanks Tom Taylor!), Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are literally off world, and the rest are non-616. So yay me!

Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows (2016-present) #8 Gerry Conway, Ryan Stegman, Jesus Aburtov

For those who don’t know, Mary Jane Watson is genuinely one of my favorite Marvel characters and is easily one of the reasons I ever stuck with the Spider-Man comics for as long as I did was because of my interest in her and wanting to see her and Peter.

I can also thank her for my genuine attraction to redheads probably.

But one of the main reasons that I’ve loved this book so much is because, as written by Gerry Conway, this is the Peter and MJ of my dreams. I love them so much, and the complications that comes from their relationship and from growing older, raising a daughter, and MJ’s desire to continuously be the glue to keep both Peter and Annie together logically causes her to seek out a way to continue being Spinerette without syphoning off Peter’s powers. 

It’s almost like growing old, having a stable relationship, trying to keep things fresh while raising a kid, are all dramatic and worthy of good storytelling in their own right or something HMM.

Anyway, yes it’s completely on the nose where this is going and it’s a little curious how MJ’s not immediately aware of the connection between what’s going on with her right now and the horrible, arguably traumatizing experience she and Peter had, but who knows what’s canon anymore lol

Basically, I sideye a bit from a story point of view, but this series continues to make up for it with the real thing that matters to me: these characters and their development.

DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #958 James Tynion IV, Aluaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson 

Honestly I really love the slower issues where Tynion takes more time to make moments for the relationships between the characters and give us interractions we didn’t know we wanted -- Kate going with Luke and Jean Paul to a basketball game, Cass and Clayface being adorable by reciting a play, Bruce at a poker game with a bunch of assholes in homage to Almost Got ‘im!? It was a lot of fun honestly. 

...

Okay I take issue with Cass’ dialogue. I know she was repeating lines from a tape and such but it’s weird to see her make so much progress when just two issues ago she was almost monosyllabic. Like... I want to see Cass gradually learning, I want to feel her frustration with hitting walls, I want to see her struggle and achieve despite the struggle because that gradual progression was honestly something we weren’t delivered in the former canon. We have a great opportunity for it here. 

But y’know. I’m particular with Cass and it’s hard to say where her baseline for reading and speech even is in this canon because her dyslexia may be in tact but her circumstances growing up are completely different. So I don’t know. 

Now. I’m a sucker for Bruce and Zatanna team-ups because I’m a schmuck but I’m really excited for next issue. Had a lot of fun with this one. This feels like a decent pace for Tynion -- at least in my opinion. 

DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester (2016-2017) #10 Brenden Fletcher, Becky Cloonan, Karl Kerschl, Adam Archer, Massyk, Sandra Hope

This comic is speeding toward an end and I’m not sure if I’m ready! 

From the beginning, for me at least, the selling point for Gotham Academy has been just how much these kids felt like real teenagers and real friends with all their various relationships and connections, platonic or romantic or something in between. And it’s powerful to see that coming to play as an advantage to completing Olive’s arc, but also as a disadvantage since the consequences of many of her actions hurt that much more.

I’ll save a lot of my thoughts for a complete wrap up of the series but overall, very happy and very grateful for the continuously good read that is GA

DC’s Justice League of America (2016-present) Volume 1: Road to Rebirth Steve Orlando, Jody Houser, Ivan Reis, Andy MacDonald, Stephen Byrne, Jamal Campbell, Mirk Andolfo

WE GOTTA GET THE BAND BACK TOGETHER. WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GAD. 

In all seriousness, I’m a huge fan of Vixen and Ryan Choi as well as a big fan of Justice League International, as it was in its 80s glory. So my interests with this particular lineup were piqued from the beginning and I made myself wait for the first volume to dive in. 

For the most part, this is a team gathering exercise. Characters that have lacked the spotlight in the last few years -- Vixen, Ray, Killer Frost, and the Atom -- were given whole issues to reintroduce them to this continuity. And honestly those issues were great. I really, really love the updated origins for them and feel that they’re a good blend of honoring the past of the characters as well as adapting them for a new world. 

Lobo, Batman, and Black Canary took back seat, but considering that there were already tensions showing within the group, I think it’s safe to assume that giving the spotlight to the rest of the team won’t always last this long. Things are nothing if not explosive among these members.

I really did mean it when I said this is a team gathering exercise, because there’s no first case to unite everyone. There’s not any real antagonists or team-ups we see to speakof. It was just getting hte jLA together. 

And for me it’s enough to get me intrigued, though I’d completely understand if people told me it was far from enough for them. 

Now they just need to add Big Barda, Booster Gold, and Ted Kord and I’ll be satisfied. 

Image’s Motor Crush (2016-present) Vol. 1 Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart, Babs Tarr

I was not the biggest fan of this team’s Batgirl team though I appreciated the aesthetics and what not. There just never seemed to be a storyline that really interested me and I couldn’t be sold on the characterization for Barbara. So I kept hearing about Motor Crush for the last year and was really itnerested in it so I wanted until this volume came out and. 

Well, quite simply, I’m in love.

Tell you what, those biker gangs that kept coming up really confusingly out of place in Batgirl make a hell of a lot more sense now that I can see this team’s actual passion project. 

So I love Motor Crush a lot, I’m really invested in Domino, the mystery that is her origins and the powers of Crush itself. I love her relationship with her ex, Lola, I love her father -- I love just about everything and the cliffhanger really surprised me. 

I will say that while I love having a world that speaks for itself rather than constant narration, it’s a little hard to follow this world entirely, I’d like a bit more explained than what has been, but at the end of the day I’m very excited to see more. 

DC’s Superwoman (2016-present) #11 K. Perkins, José Luís, Ray McCarthy, HI-FI

You know, I have made it clear that I’ve been worried about this title for a while now, really just hoping it was going to find its direction and wow us with the great potential that is the Super Family outside of the main Kent triad. And I feel like that’s for good reason -- the end of Jimenez’s run let a lot of people feeling justifiably scorned, there was a mishandling of a lot of heavy and important subjects that were raised, and at least the initial stuff with Perkins taking over kind of left one wondering if they had a fully formed direction to go toward next. 

But I am really glad that I stuck it out for this long because the family of John, Lana, Nat, and everyone else is so important and so fundamentally different from the dynamics found elsewhere in the new familial renaissance of the DCU that I needed it. And I hope it continues to emphasize these relationships and how important they are to each other.

I’m still unhappy with how anxiety and mental illness is being handled in the title and find it lacking since it was brought up to begin with and now being ignored. That subject alone is making me rethink my disinterest in Green Lantern books as a whole because I have loved and felt inspired so far by what I’ve seen of Jessica Cruz and their handling of anxiety, and it’s why I picked up Silk at the high recommendations of a close friend. 

So I’d like for mental illness to be treated better in this title -- the least it can do after bringing it up and treating it the way it did at the end of Jimenez’s run, but there’s so much value in the non-nuclear family dynamic of the Irons household and of the uniqueness of Lana’s powers and her approach to fighting crime that it’s worth it. For me anyway.

IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2011-present) #70 Kevin Eastman, Tom Waltz, Mateus Santolouco, Ronda Pattison

I knew the end of this storyline was going to be, at the very least, explosive but wow, WOW I had no idea how many twists and turns it was going to take in that time. That was a phenomenal ending to the Mutanimals storyline for the time being, and I just feel so bad for Slash, down to my core. I’m so worried about him, and whenever he will be allowed to recover.

At least I hope he’ll recover.

This series is seventy issues strong and i’m just so blown away by the way they still manage to keep me on the edge of my feet while so many different storylines and character developments are happening at the same time.

I mean, I even feel for Old Hobb here!

I do suppose a complaint I could hold here is that the titular turtles themselves have ultimately not been very front and center throughout this storyline, and that really showed in the conclusion, where for the most part they were lost to the colorfulness of the huge, colorful supporting cast that has been developed over the years. 

For me, personally, I think that’s honestly okay. We can’t have the same story over and over again with only the main four characters driving the narrative, and it’s been a long standing tradition in TMNT for a good 30 years now to sort of embody the concept that our main guys don’t really look for situations to get involved with but sort of fall into them naturally. 

Not to mention it’s probably a strength that 70 issues in, we haven’t once repeated plots or stories or put any of the characters on a loop of development to end up right back where they started. I don’t think the achievement of that can be understated, especially as we near that landmark #75!

DC’s Titans (2016-present) #12 Dan Abnett, Kenneth Rocafort, Dan Brown

Bleh. BLEH. I was holding out judgment on the twist of Wally and Donna and Roy ending up in some kind of love triangle because I wanted the context but honestly the context is kinda... bleh. It would be awesome if we lived in some world and time where Donna’s origins were not constantly retconned and thus the source of her characterization in every run of every thing she showed up in. Which is by no means a new problem but still.

And my opinion is... Wally and Donna are both going through a hard time and Wally is having to accept that his life is fundamentally different from the previous world he knew, that he can’t just badger people into returning things to the way they were -- especially Linda, who he loves but it’s a very one-sided relationship as a result of the parallel universe paradox and stuff. It makes sense to me that in a ploy to gain some sense of control over that, he and Donna both would try to take fate in an unexpected direction, into their own hands. 

But making it a love triangle with Roy just kinda keeps my eyes firmly rolled into the back of my skull. 

I overall like Lilith, Dick, Garth, and Karen’s development and characterization in this issue. I think they’re taking Lilith in interesting directions and I’m really curious about what her omen means for the future, since apparently there’s a traitor among them. And they set up plenty of reasons for various members to be that traitor in this issue but I can’t help but assume already that it’s going to end up being a twist. Good twist or not remains to be seen. 

IDW’s Transformers: Salvation (2017) John Barber, Livid Ramondelli

I’m going to be completely “original” here and say that I’m not a fan of Ramondelli’s at for the various Transformers comics. i know! I know. Shocking, never said before, completely going against the general fandom consensus. I’m such a brave soul. I know. 

Okay, joking aside though... I didn’t think the art was bad in this one-shot. Actually! I’d argue a lot of it was even good. He may not be my favorite artist and I’ll think that his colo gradients are butt ugly most of the time, but there was better handled action sequences than usual, the characters looked like they had weight, and we even got a range of expressiveness in the characters that is... well, frankly, not usual for Ramondelli. 

So other than that shocking revelation, I thought Barber performed good once more on tying the TF universe together again, answering some prior plot points and nicely knotting off loose ends. Trypticon being a Titan is not the biggest revelation in the world, but the development of Sandstorm and the Dinobots was great, and I loved just how devious Starscream truly is under Barber’s pen even though I’ve fully been enjoying the characterization for him in Till All Are One. 

But the most important thing of all: SPARKLINGS. SPARKLINGS. All I’ve wanted for years is baby transformers so I am HAPPY BEYOND BELIEF. THEY’RE NO LONGER A DYING SPECIES AND THESE PRECIOUS BABIES COULD BE BORN WITHOUT EVER KNOWING THE CIVIL WAR AHHHHHHHH

DC’s Wonder Woman (2016-present) #24 Greg Rucka, Bilquis Evely, Romulo Fajardo Jr. 

WOW! I mean, just wow! What a resolution to everything. I have so many emotions for Diana, for Barbara Ann, for even Veronica Cale of all people. Etta and Steve were great, the art was amazing.

It’s just such a relief and such... honestly just an amazing feat that Greg Rucka is beginning to wrap up this just phenomenal run of Wonder Woman 

I really enjoyed how everything turned out and it was so remarkable to see Diana’s resolution to save Veronica but also to not turn her back on her friends and loved ones as well as the torment it is for Barbara to not be able to get into Themyscira after all her life’s work.

And I liked Diana’s assessment of Veronica at the end, it was true and also blunt to the point of cruelty. But fitting also. 

It’s amazing what a turn around I’ve personally felt when it comes to Veronica’s character because in all honesty I was not a fan of her most of the time in the preboot, but Rucka really has fleshed her out and done something unique with her perspective now. There is tragedy but there’s also less deniability for her fault in all of it. 

I’m sad to be coming toward Rucka’s end on the run, but I’m also so happy to see the love and passion he’s put into everything culminating to what it is now.

This is a genuinely hard choice but I think if I go by what tugged on my heartstrings the most, what gave me the most joy overall and just feelings unrelenting from start to finish, I would have to say that my pick of the week is All-New Wolverine. I adore this series and I couldn’t be happier with this issue and how they’re keeping my precious Marvel girls faaaaaar away from Secret Empire. A close second would be Wonder Woman but really I would happily recommend my entire pull this week. It was a geat week for comics.

But that’s just my opinion! I’d love to know your thoughts. Agree? Disagree? Think I missed something I should’ve picked up this week? I’d love to hear from you!

[gamethyme]

<i>Star Trek Adventures</i>

It hasn't come up much, here, but I am a huge fan of Star Trek.  When I was younger, I was very much the stereotypical Trekkie. I was rarely found without at least one Star Trek novel in my backpack, I could ID a dozen or so classes of starship (both Federation and hostile), and I could rattle off numbers and statistics and trivia like nobody's business.  I was obsessed. So it's appropriate that the first RPG book I ever owned was for FASA's old Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game. The book was the Star Trek: The Next Generation Officer's Manual, and I owned it long before I owned a copy of the game. I didn't even know it was a game book (and neither did my parents, or I would never have acquired it ...). One of my first gaming experiences was with FASA's game. I won't say it was a good game, but it wasn't bad. We were handed pregens by the GM, and we went from there into a more-or-less typical D&D-style hack-and-slash adventure with phasers instead of crossbows and Klingons instead of orcs and so on.  It was oddly dissatisfying even at the time, because this isn't what Star Trek was about. A few years later, I acquired a copy of the game, and I even ran a few brief campaigns. I tended to base the campaign premises off of some of the novels (which still, I think, was not a bad idea - depending on the novel). One of my favorite games was set on the USS Excalibur (before the M-5 insident as seen in "The Ultimate Computer"), and I based it on the novel The Abode of Life (which I need to re-read to see if it's held up as well as I remember). I loved character generation in the game. The guided lifepath was a great way to handle it, and it allowed for a great deal of diversity in characters (and skill levels). I read somewhere that Gene Roddenberry also really liked the lifepath process, and made it a condition of the license for future Star Trek roleplaying games. Fast forward a decade or so, and Last Unicorn released Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game. Mechanically, it was very different from the old FASA game. Its production values were very different. Instead of three little blue books, it was one glossy hardcover book that was quite a bit thicker than the three blue books combined. And it still had a lifepath for character generation. They also published a Deep Space Nine game, and a classic 'Trek version. I never actually got to play LUG's version of the game. The friend who was going to run a campaign dropped off the face of the earth before the campaign started. And then the license expired and someone else picked up the ball and ran with it. Decipher, who I knew from the TNG collectible card game, had snagged the license after LUG was bought by WotC and lost it. Decipher's Trek was similar to LUG's in presentation, but it was two hardcovers (at first), one for players and one for the GM. It still had a lifepath, but the system was almost d20, only with multiple d6s instead of a single d20. I bought it. I read it. I ... wasn't interested in playing it. It just ... didn't feel right. Last year, Modiphius announced that they had acquired the license. They did a huge open playtest (that I did not participate in), and early reviews were ... pretty good.  So I did a bit of research, and I discovered that they'd be using their house system - the 2d20 system. I grabbed Mutant Chronicles (another universe that I have a deep fondness for), and started to learn the system. And I was ... nervous. The 2d20 system has a lot of moving pieces, with multiple player currencies in play.  I didn't understand how this system was getting such rave reviews for Star Trek. I backed Conan on Kickstarter, and it's that same system. And Conan was ... okay. Not amazing, not game-breaking. Still a bit clunky with all those currencies to keep track of. My fear for Star Trek grew. But I resolved to pre-order anyhow. When the pre-order went lived, we bought in that first day. GM Screen + limited-edition core book.  A short time later, we had the PDF (because Modiphius is really good at getting the PDF out there). And I read the PDF. Devoured the PDF. It's still recognizably the 2d20 system, but it's both streamlined and altered. Where Mutant Chronicles has a sizable skill list, Star Trek Adventures has six skills, and they related to the various departments found on a starship - Command, Conn, Medical, Science, Security, and Engineering. Want your character's stats to be more detailed than that? Use a Focus to narrow it down. This change streamlines the system quite a bit, and, at the same time, results in the sort of hypercompetent characters you tend to see in Star Trek. Star Trek Adventures also added character values. They're almost like Aspects in Fate - they define your character, and you can pull a couple of mechanical tricks with them, too. This increases the feel of Star Trek. It means that the game is about your characters' beliefs and goals and - yes - values, just like the TV series and movies have been. The more I drilled into the PDF, the more excited I got. Your ship is treated like another character, with its own separate character generation process. You're not limited to the eight PC species included in the core book, and they give a few guidelines for creating your own species. It's simple enough to homebrew ship classes that you find elsewhere. There are still a few currencies for players to keep track of - they can spend Momentum or add Threat to the GM's pool or spend Determination on a roll, and some of these things go to party pools and some go to the GM's pool and some are just ... spent. It's not a completely intuitive system (like I'd prefer), but it's solid and seems functional without a huge number of "Gotcha" bits. My good friend Wade went to GenCon this year, and he texted me on Thursday morning. Modiphius' first sale of the day was a copy of the core book. For me. "But Eric," I can hear you saying, "Didn't you already buy the limited edition book?"  Yes. I did. But I am a player who likes having multiple copies of the core rules at the table. That way, the GM has one to reference, and so do the players. If there's a rules question in the game, there are two sets looking for it. With PDFs, I can hand both physical copies to my players and search the PDF, resulting in three sets of eyes looking to answer questions. The only real bad thing about Star Trek Adventures is that it's sucked me back into Star Trek fandom. And not a little bit, either. I am all the way back in. I went out to the garage and I dug out Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, and my Star Trek Technical Manual and my Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and half a dozen other "in universe" books with varying levels of canon compliance. I filled my Kindle with novels and novellas. And I started playing Star Trek Online (which - for the record - could do with a decent help guide for the PS4 version). And I've decided to run a campaign again. But, looking at advancement in Star Trek Adventures, I think it'll work really well for a new-to-me structure of game. What I'm doing right now is assembling a player pool. A large one. More players than any GM ever wants around their table.  When I have an episode idea, I'll figure out when I have time to run it, and I'll send a message to my players. That message will read something like this:

Season 1, Episode 1: "Pilot, Pilot, Who's Got The Pilot?"

The Tethys' new helmsman has disappeared in transit to the ship. It's up to an away team in a runabout to follow his path and figure out what happened to him. 

This episode is for four to six players, and will be played on Date at Time.

 Then I wait.  The first six players who let me know they're available at that date and time will be the featured characters for that episode. If I don't get at least four players for that time, I go back to my calendar, figure out a different date and time, and try again. Most of the advancement in this game is small. "Lower one number to raise another." That means that if Player A makes it to 15 sessions and Player B only makes it to two or three sessions, there won't be an overwhelming experience advantage for Player A. And it feels "in universe" accurate to have different characters featured periodically. It also means that grown-up players with busy lives who can't make a regularly-scheduled game very often should have no problem still fitting around my table occasionally. So thanks, Modiphius. I look forward to exploring the galaxy with you. from Blogger http://ift.tt/2goSa52 via IFTTT