#and same thing for comics like they could do a miniseries on his real childhood in order to retcon what happened in 2022

[bunisher]

i need all future comics writers of frank (and anyone on DDBA) to stop trying to write him as a guy who had a normal childhood and was always just kinda Like That. or that he was simply destined to become the punisher, but that’s kind of a separate topic.

people who go into the military at 18 rarely have normal childhoods, they are often raised in abusive environments that are normalized. the urge to go into the military typically does not come from people who aren’t used to some form of abuse, because why would you willingly want to go into that? unless you are susceptible to indoctrination toward having faith in a system from a young age and aren’t able to discern the red flags? the military system preys on poor young men in particular by scouting them and offering all these bells and whistles (free college, healthcare, community) and feelings of importance, but then just forgets about them afterward.

side note: it’s actually such a disservice to many veterans to forget about how the military is an abusive system. it literally strips you of everything with no help in reintegrating back into society (other than by members of the same community). i get TPS1 tried to do something with this but dropped the ball. it feels like many writers just use his marine background as some sort of fun fact that only comes into play with certain things, but it very much shapes who you are and changes your identity. it’s a very cult-like system.

many people who want to serve are related to others who have prior. many people (especially men) who want to serve at that age have an underlying need that they think can be met. many people are brainwashed by military propaganda and believe it is the right thing to do. especially when it comes to religion, there’s this idea of men using their bodies to protect the innocent that goes back hundreds of years, and this idea of serving god, which we see young francis try to do in two ways. (side note: why do they keep removing his religious background? i liked the nod to it in the nmcu but it seems modern comics writers (looking at you jason aaron) just forget this?) besides, the functions of religion for people are very similar to the functions of the military as far as members go, namely community and a sense of greater purpose.

to me, as a reader/watcher, threads of probable abuse history are present in frank’s character, and i wish we had a writer brave enough to write about it. why else would he care so much about innocents and victims? why else would he become suicidal and guilt stricken when he hurts an innocent? it makes you think: was there no one who protected him or someone else he knew?

and this may not mean anything but idk i think he’s so much more tragic and juicy if you look at him like someone who is not the perfect victim (and maybe doesn’t even recognize their abuse) but someone who instead of healing and becoming soft, becomes angry and violent afterward. trauma, especially repeated trauma, does not effect people all the same way and i really wish they would just be bold enough to work with that. i get trying to piss off the alt right but completely changing the character to fit the same stereotype of a ‘psychopath’ (which is an outdated term) as they do in horror movies about killer children is just poor writing. again, talking about punisher 2022, but this was kinda in nmcu too. and sure yeah they’ve retired his character (but not the punisher….? ok) in the comics, but for when he inevitably does come back, yeah.

[goldenagenonsense]

Action Comics #4 [September 1938]

Since I don’t have anything particularly witty to start off with, I’ll just dive right on into things. 

The cover, once again, is not superhero-related, but damn if that’s not the most sinister mountie I’ve ever seen, like what the fuck. What kind of horror movie nonsense is happening elsewhere in this issue that I won’t be seeing because I’m focusing only on the superhero related stories?

[Insert from friends:

[Solem] Funny thing is, that cover has absolutely nothing to do with the contents of the book. The RCMP did occasionally get action heroes in comics or radio (my father is a childhood fanboy of "Sargent Preston of the Yukon") but they didn't ever run one in Action Comics that I can find.

It wasn't uncommon in the Golden Age for covers to not match up with the contents of the book, it had to do with their production schedule. For Action Comics they'd go for communicating "manly action" to draw readers in with the vibe; pulp magazines and books did similar things.

Though my favorite example is one of the old Blue Beetle comics, where the cover proudly boasted the introduction of his new sidekick Sparky, only for the first page to sheepishly admit that they didn't get the story finished in time and actually Sparky (real name Sparkington J. Northrup, swear to god) would be introduced in the next issue.

(Fun fact -- Sparky's technically in the public domain, but DC recently brought a version of him back into continuity in the Stargirl and the Lost Children miniseries)]

Right, well, I can consider names for the theoretical mountie-themed supervillain later. For now, let’s see what Superman is up to.

Oh boy, this is a flashback to high school and those whole ‘drunk driving’ seminars. Our high school even staged an accident in the parking lot one year and made a whole big deal about it, police officers and everything. Wild.

A crowd gathers around the victim, sticking close while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. High overhead, Superman leaps into action, having witnessed the hit-and-run (called a hit-skip in the comic). Probably from the Daily Star office? And so he’s ducked out in order to help? Hard to say. 

Superman’s leap carries him all the way to a railroad track, where he just barely keeps himself from face-planting into a high-speed train. Coincidentally, this is the same track that the hit-skipper has stalled on, and the train is approaching fast. Which has me wondering if this is gonna be the first instance of the whole ‘Superman stopping a train to save a person on the tracks’ thing.

Inside the engine, one of the drivers is sneaking a bit of alcohol while his co-driver’s back is turned. Only, when he peers out the window, he is stunned on seeing a man outracing the train. The driver tries to tell his co-driver about it, but the man dismisses it as a drunken hallucination.

Meanwhile, Superman reaches the car and warns the man that they need to jump. The man tries to get away, but Superman is having none of it, since the train would kill them both. Which, what? Would a speeding train be enough to kill Superman? I mean, his introduction DID say that ‘nothing short of a bursting shell could break skin,’ and a train by dint of sheer mass probably has a lot more force behind it. If it did kill him, it’d probably be akin to seeing a bug smashed on a car windshield.

(I will do my best to resist the urge to put in too many Ant-Man jokes.)

But then again, he did take the force of a plane face-first without any issue, so… was that simply not enough mass+speed to affect him, or was he just being cautious because he wasn’t sure if he could take a train to the face or not? I imagine that, even if you are super-durable, you probably don’t want to test your luck on something that much bigger than yourself.

Eh, in any case, Superman leaps out of the car with the driver in hand, just in time to avoid the train hitting the car at full speed - which, yikes, I know cars were made with a lot more metal back then, that can’t have been good for the train even if it’s the bigger vehicle. Speaking of not good, Superman checks on the driver, only to find that he’s dead of a heart attack. Which is not exactly shocking considering he was drunk and already stressed from the hit-and-run PLUS the train PLUS the weirdo in spandex who outran and out-jumped a freaking train.

With not much else to do, Superman slips in through one of the train’s windows into a private room of the pull-man car - just as someone else is entering. He ducks behind a couch and listens in as the men comment on the train stopping because of the auto (figures, hitting that much metal can’t be good for the train) and then turn to more sinister discussions. Specifically, football.

Yes, sinister football. Apparently, one of the men - Randall - is the football coach at Dale, and is at risk of losing his job if he doesn’t win the upcoming game against Cordell. So no matter the cost, he has to win it. The men with him agree to help him out with his plot, calling themselves expensive but effective. He accepts their offer, and reminds them that they need to get several players out of the game immediately. The hired hands assure him that rough stuff is their specialty.

I would bet there’s at least a dozen jokes to be made here, mostly with regard to that one movie with the angel playing baseball. Like, I know the premise of that movie is supposedly the angel rigging the game, while Supes here is counter-rigging the game, but like, it’s the same kind of premise. And hey, Supes is even from the heavens, technically! Narrative parallels. 

Superman waits for the three to depart before mulling over what he heard - a crooked coach hiring thugs to play football - just the sort of set-up he likes to tear down! 

The next day, Clark Kent looks at Cordell’s football material, trying to find an in. He comes across a photo-clipping of Tommy Burke, who he looks similar enough to, in order to disguise himself. When he gets home, he dons a bit of grease paint, and comments on how even Tommy’s own mother wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

Speaking of Tommy, we switch over to where he’s talking to his girlfriend Mary. Or, well, ex-girlfriend - she’s decided to dump him, since despite sixish years as a substitute, he’s never once been in a game. She’s ashamed of him, wanted a proper football hero. He asks if she’s gonna look for a new boyfriend; turns out, she already has one - a tennis champ by the name of Wallace Dood, a real athlete. 

Tommy walks home, despondent, too caught up in his own frustration and dreams of making it big to notice the man trailing him. Eventually, the stalker calls to him, causing him to startle and turn, wondering if this is a hold-up - only to get the shock of his life at seeing another him.

Clark tells him he’s mistaken - he’s not looking at Tommy Burke, substitute, but Tommy Burke, the greatest football player of all time! For some unknown reason, this distresses Tommy further, pushing him to attack. However, his attack is interrupted with the sting of a hypodermic needle, which quickly knocks him out.

I have absolutely no words to describe the emotional journey I went through on this page. I felt bad for Tommy over being dumped and cheated on, then rolled my eyes at his minor (but I would say somewhat justified) venting, then surprise at Clark somehow managing to exactly match Tommy’s suit, and then a touch of horror at Clark actually stabbing Tommy with a knock-out drug with plans to outright kidnap and replace him. Like, what the FUCK, Superman???? What in the actual goddamn hell is wrong with you???? 

The next page doesn’t get much better, what with Tommy waking up to find himself a prisoner in his own apartment. The drug is still in his system, keeping him from getting up or doing more than moving his arms a bit (or so it seems). He’s scared and wants to know what was done to him and why; Superman tells him not to worry, that he’s just been rendered passive, and that Supes is borrowing his life for a few days, before cheerfully leaving Tommy to himself in his apartment.

While drugged, so he can’t even get up to feed himself, or use the bathroom, or any other number of things a person needs to do each day. Which, again, I understand this is a comic book, but also, WHAT THE FUCK. Superman is so fucking. I can’t even with him. Not to mention, Tommy is in university. What classes is he taking, who is he friends with outside of football, does he have any tests, SUPERMAN YOU CAN’T JUST DO THIS TO SOMEONE.

Supes reports to the locker room, wondering if he’ll be able to get away with it. He walks in as casually as possible, greeting the others, and in turn being mocked by the others for being a professional bench warmer and that they want to see what a ‘real football player’ looks like. Supes ignores the taunts and starts trying to guess which locker is Tommy’s, ultimately just guessing at random. Naturally, he’s wrong, and gets an annoyed football player in his face for it. The guy tries to throw a few punches in Supe’s face and gut, but Supes just takes them with a grin and a taunt of his own.

Alright, fantastic, time for the beginning of my ‘out of context panels’ collection, this time featuring some of the boys talking about how well ‘Burke’ is taking those hits. Or taking something, anyway.

The first man’s smirk is exactly my expression when I realized this panel was a gift. I should save it as a reaction image.

Despite Superman’s inhuman ability to take a pounding, he decides to end things with a love tap, one strong enough to throw Martin back into a wall, knocking him right out. Cordell’s coach, Oliver Stanley, comes in to check on the noise, only to be shocked by Martin’s state. Supes plays meek, but the coach is having none of it, telling him to get out of uniform and off the team.

As the rest of the team goes into their practice game, a benched player(?) laments how things just don’t feel the same without Burke on the bench. The coach is also concerned - Burke’s usually meek as a lamb, but today…

Back in the locker room, Supes groans about his fuck-ups so far, before shaking himself off and putting on the rest of the uniform. Orders or no orders, he’s going out there to show the coach a thing or two!

The other players notice him quickly, and prepare themselves for how mad the coach will be when he sees ‘Burke’ out on the field. A ball flies towards an open part of the field - only for Supes to dash out and manage to snag it. This, unsurprisingly, catches the coach’s attention, his temper already taking off as he snaps at the other players to grab him and throw him out of the field on his ear.

As for the other guy, I guess they’re a sub-coach? Student learner? I don’t know enough about sports, but the guy’s shirt says ‘coach’ and he defers to the guy in the trenchcoat, so like. I’ll just refer to him as the sub-coach from here on out.

Superman doesn’t let the other players converging upon him bother him, content to leisurely trot towards the opposite goal with a cocky attitude. The coach doesn’t buy it, eager to watch ‘Burke’ get taken down by the rest of the team. 

Martin’s the first to reach him, throwing more punches in revenge for the locker incident and the love tap. Supes quickly gets around him, much to the sub-coach’s shock, but the coach waves it off as an accident - he’d have to be an acrobat to get past the rest! …which Supes proceeds to pull off by leaping on the next player’s shoulders, and using that to spring over the head of two others. Sub-coach is shook, commenting on how ‘Burke’ is halfway down the field and probably going to make it. Again, the coach dismisses it as fool’s luck, and that there’s no way he’ll get past the ‘unbeatables,’ aka Stevens, Burns, and Lewiston.

The entire team piles onto Superman, which elates the coach… only for it to be a trick, since Supes is able to just keep dashing down the field with the rest of the team hanging onto him. Very normal and non-suspicious there, pal. He shakes off the players just before crossing the line, with sub-coach calling out the touchdown.

The entire team is impressed, with the coach demanding to know if ‘Burke’ has been holding out on him. And to think he’s left the guy on the bench for six entire seasons! Sub-coach replies that ‘Burke’ can be in their last game, the one that decides the championship.

Soon after, Coach Stanley calls in to the newspaper to brag about ‘Burke’ to the sports editor. Said editor, probably for a local paper already familiar with the players on the team, thinks it’s a gag call, since everyone knows Burke is the joke of the team. Despite that, an article does get printed - satirical, but still good publicity. At least according to Supes, who’s reading said article in Burke’s apartment, while Burke himself is drinking tea or coffee or something.

Again. What the fuck. Why is Burke not doing anything about this??? Comic books, man.

Over at Dale, coach Randall thinks that, even if the paper is playing up Burke as a clown, it’d still be better to make Cordell’s star player ‘disappear.’ The hired thugs reply that they’ll make sure he’s gone until the game is over.

Over the next few days, the Cordell team practices for the big game, while the coach and sub-coach wonder how ‘Burke’ got so good overnight. If the coach knew, he’d be the greatest in the world. As that game wraps up, the coach tells the players that the big game is the next day, so remember: early to bed, no drinking, no smoking!

That evening, the hired thugs from Dale approach Burke’s apartment, breaking in and tying Burke up. They only briefly wonder at his lack of struggle, not noticing Superman observing them from the molding overhead. Seems he had already drugged Burke with a sleep-inducer once again, like, what the FUCK Superman. Despite the seediness of this situation, it does leave him in a perfect position to chase after the kidnappers’ car, somehow without being noticed in his suit.

Burke wakes up in the abandoned house the thugs brought him to, and he’s nervous and confused as well. When he asks, the thugs tell him he’s been put somewhere he can’t get to tomorrow’s game. He tries to tell them he’s just a substitute, and that he’s not - the thugs cut him off, clarifying his name and that that’s all they need to know before gagging him. 

Damn, Tommy has had a really shit week, hasn’t he? Dumped by a girlfriend who was already cheating on him, drugged and kidnapped by a lookalike pretending to be him for the next week, and then kidnapped by thugs who are clearly after the lookalike and not him. Please, someone get this man a break and maybe a milkshake.

Superman, observing all this, just shrugs at this situation with a grin; Burke is off his hands, and they mean him no physical harm! I want to say this is a dick move, but considering that he’s also culpable of basically the same thing, I am not surprised that he’s like this. : V

The next morning, the crowds pack into the stadium, unaware they are about to witness the most amazing football game of all time. Coach Randall drops in on Coach Stanley to gloat about Burke being missing, only to be shocked when he sees ‘Burke’ sitting there, ready to be introduced by Stanley. Soon after, Supes manages to get Randall alone, and threatens to expose him and all his shady shit if he doesn’t fire the thugs and resign as coach. Randall plays dumb, but is furious; when he gets to the locker room, he chastises the thugs for letting ‘Burke’ escape and so risking their exposure. One of the thugs pull out a knife and reply that he won’t. When the Cordell team hits the field, the thugs prepare to attack Supes. The game starts, and Supes is already off like a shot, ball in hand.

Meanwhile, the real Burke has escaped his binds and managed to flag down a taxi, asking them to get him to the football field as fast as possible. I wish him luck in figuring out all this nonsense happening.

Down on the field, Supes is bowling through the opposition like bowling pins, scoring a goal - and then another goal right after the next kickoff. The commentator, much like all the rest of the crowds, apparently doesn’t think something is wildly suspicious about a man scoring two touchdowns in the space of a few seconds, which is like ??? Sure, okay. 

His teammates, at the least, are not too enthused about being sidelined while ‘Burke’ takes the spotlight. Even when Martin gets the next kick-off, all ‘Burke’ does is clear the way in such a way that makes the goal feel meaningless - even a two-year-old could have done it! 

The real Burke, denied admittance at the player’s gate, enters the bleachers instead, watching with astonishment as his counterpart scores goal after goal. He’s all but ready to call the cops on the guy - the one sensible man in this entire situation - only to stop when he hears his ex’s voice just in front of him. Turns out that she’s enamored with ‘Burke’ and so ignoring her fancy tennis boyfriend, calling him a lily. Burke gets caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd soon after (possibly in part because of spite) and enjoying the idolization that he’s technically getting because of his counterpart.

Dude. Like, I get why, but also, dude.

The two thugs finally make their move, only for Supes to quickly body them, forcing them to be removed from the field via medical staff. This is the last straw for Randall; he hands over a note with his resignation to the waterboy(?) and tells him to bring it to Dale University’s president.

At the end of the half, Superman meets with Burke and tells him they need to change clothes. Burke is now eager to go along with this, accepting Supe’s mission and getting himself out there on the field. It’s pretty obvious how much more awkward the real Burke is, missing the kick-off and chasing after it, only to get piled on the second he grabs it. 

Despite that ignoble takedown, he wakes up to his ex wanting to get back together, while also asking him to quit football, since the game’s just too brutal. Tommy agrees to it, probably in part because he knows he’s never gonna be able to live up to his counterpart, and in part because of still being shaken by the week he’s had.

And so the issue closes out - and hey, there’s that freaking exercise routine that was promised two issues ago! It’s pretty simple - start with small weights, gradually add more weight, and soon enough you’ll be lifting even heavy objects with ease!

…still have to admit this issue was a wild fucking ride. Like, what the fuck, Superman. At least I got a funny panel out of it?

Also, looking back, I realize that like, literally no further mention of the dude taken out in the hit-and-run ever happens, nor do we ever learn more about the dude Supes actually fucking killed when saving him from being hit by a train. Like, the fuck.

[ink-logging]

Detective Comics #1000, Chris Conroy & Dave Wielgosz, eds.: I bought this on impulse because it was on the new releases shelf and people were talking about Batman online. It’s a 100-page anthology tribute for the Batman character’s 80th year and the one thousandth issue of “Detective Comics”. I don’t think anyone is ever at their best in a tribute anthology, but that makes them kind of interesting to look at, you know? There are eleven stories, which I will now spoil in their entirety.

1. “Batman’s Longest Case”, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, Tom Napolitano: The first of two stories in which Batman is doing something that looks grim, but is actually happy and anniversary-ish - both with similar titles, and both from major Batman writers. This is the better one, because I think Capullo is an interesting artist. He’s comparable to Jae Lee, in that he’s someone who had some work in comics under his belt prior to being ushered into the second ‘generation’ of popular Image artists, and has continued to evolve quite vividly over the years. The Capullo of today dials up the use of shadows and silhouette that used to sort of decorate the folds of Spawn’s flowing cape and such - here, they’re used more to focus attention on storytelling fundamentals: geography; gesture; etc. I also generally like the colorist, FCO Plascencia, who’s done some Varleyesque color-as-mood work on earlier comics with this team, though the story here is subdued... very classy, dressed for the gala.   

Hints of ‘90s grotesquerie only pop up once Batman has solved a large number of flamboyantly abstruse riddles and discovered that the titular Longest Case is really an initiation test fronted by wrinkly old Slam Bradley, the original Siegel & Shuster-created star of “Detective Comics” back in 1937, who welcomes Batman to a Guild of Detection. This is clever of the writer, Scott Snyder, because Batman as a basic concept is hugely derivative of earlier pulp, detective and strip hero characters - and, if you’re being honest about paying homage to the character’s origins, you might as well play up lineage as your metaphor.

2. “Manufacture for Use”, Kevin Smith, Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair, Todd Klein: In contrast, this story shoots for the quintessential. Smith, of course, is the filmmaker and longtime geek culture celebrity who’s written comics off and on, so maybe it’s his distance from the continuum of superhero writing that has inspired a short story that could have run as a backup in any Batman comic since the 1970s, give or take few cultural references. Matches Malone (Batman, when he is being an undercover cop) descends into the secretive world of true crime memorabilia to buy the gun that killed Bruce Wayne’s parents, which he then melts down to form the metal bat-symbol plate Batman wears on his chest, verily steeling his heart with the memory of this tragedy to fortify him in his neverending battle against crime! NANANANANANANANA BATMAAAAAN! Jim Lee and his usual crew makes everything look like it’s ‘supposed’ to, provided you see this type of statuesque posing as the best sort of superhero art, which many DC comics readers presumably do, given how a lot of these things look.

3. “The Legend of Knute Brody”, Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs, John Kalisz, Steve Wands: Dini has written tons of comics, with not a few of those drawn by Nguyen, but this feels mostly like DC1k (acronym’s resemblance to “DICK” a purely innocuous reference to Nightwing, I assure you) acknowledging the extensive legacy of “Batman: The Animated Series”, on which Dini was a writer and producer. The story takes the form of a biography of an infamously clumsy hired thug for supervillains, whom even the most novice reader will have figured out is a Batman Family asset about halfway down page 4 of 8, leaving a whole lot of laborious and narration-heavy slapstick to wade through. Admittedly, this might work better as an animated cartoon, with voice acting leavening the pace of the gags, but I’m also not sure ‘this would be better in a different art form’ is the impression superhero comics should be giving right now.

4. “The Batman’s Design”, Warren Ellis, Becky Cloonan, Jordie Bellaire, Simon Bowland: 

Most of the drawing in DC1k is the kind of stuff you can easily trace to a few popular and fairly narrow traditions of ‘realistic’ superhero art. Becky Cloonan is the only woman to draw an entire comic in here -- Joëlle Jones co-pencils a story with Tony Daniel later on, and Amanda Conner does a pinup, mind -- and her work is the only place in this book where you catch glimpses of a global popular comics beyond the superhero provinces in the Hewlettian wild eyes of the hapless human opponents of her Batman, lunging through velvet layers of cape and smoke, lipless mouth parted on a shōnen ai jaw. It is really very impressive. 

The writer, Warren Ellis, does a pathos-of-the-hard-man story, in which Batman explains his combat strategies via narration while carrying them out, occasionally making reference to the medical bills his prey will incur and their timely motivations as terroristic white men who feel ignored by the world, and at the end Batman asks the last guy U WANT TO LIVE IN MY NIGHTMARE, LITTLE BOY and the guy is like n- no dr. batman sir, and gives up because Batman’s is too dangerous and scary a life model. It is made clear from the text that Batman has programmed himself into a system of reactionary violence that he inevitably reinforces, but this message is so heavily sugared with cool action and tough talk that the reader can easily disregard such commentary, if so inclined, which has been a trait of Ellis’ genre comics writing since at least as far back as “The Authority” in the late 1990s. It fits Batman as naturally as the goddamned cowl.  

 5. “Return to Crime Alley”, Dennis O’Neil, Steve Epting, Elizabeth Breitweiser, ‘Andworld Design’: I was surprised that there weren’t other writers from across the Atlantic in DC1k, given the extensive contributions of Alan Grant and Grant Morrison to the character. I was maybe not as surprised to see Dennis O’Neil as the lone credited writer to pre-date the blood and thunder revolution of Frank Miller et al. in the mid-1980s, as that commercial shadow is far too long to escape. Of course, O’Neil was one of the architects of superhero comics as a socially relevant proposition and Batman as a once-again ‘serious’ character in the 1970s, and it may be a reflection of his standing as a patriarch that this story contains no sugar whatsoever: on the anniversary of his parents’ death, Batman is confronted by a childhood caregiver who has figured out his dumb secret identity, and castigates him for doing stupid shit like dressing up as an animal and punching the underclass when he could actually do something as a wealthy man to improve the world. Then Batman starts beating the shit out of young masked teens who have stolen a gun, after which Batman, who is also a masked thug, is told that he is, at best, a figure of pity. The end! 

What emerges from this story, to my eye, is that Batman is a terrible fucking idea if examined with any sort of serious realism - and Steve Epting draws the story as close to photorealism as anything in this book gets. I also think it is not insignificant that O’Neil, the writer here most unplugged from superhero comics as a commercial vocation, is the one to make these observations; to believe in superhero comics is to understand that there is play at the heart of these paper dolls, and to make your living from these things is to contemplate new avenues for play. Maybe Batman is dark, obsessive! Should he... kill? Sure, Bill Finger made him kill. The Shadow killed lots of dudes. So did Dick Tracy. Ramp up the verisimilitude too much, though, and you’ve got a guy wearing a hood going out by the cover of night to scare the shit out of superstitious cowards who’ve been taking from the good people of society, which, in terms of motivational narratives, is the same origin as the Ku Klux Klan. To play nonetheless, is the craftsman’s burden.

6. “Heretic”, Christopher Priest, Neal Adams, Dave Stewart, Willie Schubert: Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, is veteran Batman artist and frequent Dennis O’Neil collaborator Neal Adams. And while Adams is not credited as the writer on this story, it bears all the hallmarks of his 21st century work at DC: whiplash pacing; uneasy expository dialogue; and eager callbacks to Adams’ earlier work. This is the Batman comic as a continuity-driven adventure, and I found it largely incomprehensible as a story, not unlike Adams’ recent “Deadman” miniseries. I still like his husky Batman, though. 

7. “I Know”, Brian Michael Bendis, Alex Maleev, Josh Reed: Hey, did you know Brian Michael Bendis, writer of approximately ten and one half zillion Marvel comics, is writing comics at DC these days? Here he teams with longtime collaborator Maleev for a story that brings to mind the old line from Grant Morrison’s & Dave McKean’s “Arkham Asylum” about Batman being the real person and the guy under the mask being the mask. The Penguin, of all villains, figures out Batman’s secret identity, but elects not to pursue Bruce Wayne in his private life, because destroying Bruce Wayne would create a pure Batman far too dark and twiztid for anyone to handle. Or, maybe that is all just an image the perfectly sane Batman has deliberately encouraged as part of his umpteenth contingency plan. I would argue that this is a gentle spoof of people taking Batman too seriously, which clicks with what I’ve read of Bendis’ idea of the character in those 100-page comics they sell at Walmart: a globetrotting detective-adventurer, appropriate for all ages. Bear in mind, I’ve read maybe 0.2% of all Brian Bendis comics.  

8. “The Last Crime in Gotham”, Geoff Johns, Kelley Jones, Michelle Madsen, Rob Leigh: Whoa, now we’re talking! Kelley Jones! Just look at this: 

Such totally weird stuff, coming from the artist who drew all those classic ‘90s covers with the huge bat-ears and wildly distorted musculature, the cape this absurd, unreal shroud. It looks like he’s working from photo reference with some of this comic, but also just tearing out these drawings of huge jawlines and shit, this total what-the-fuck-is-going-on haze, which perfectly matches Geoff Johns’ furiously ridiculous story about an elderly Batman and his wife, Catwoman, and their daughter, and Damian, and a dog, who all investigate a mass murder that turns out to be the Joker’s son committing suicide, and then Batman unplugs the Bat-Signal because crime is over in Gotham forever, and then we find out it’s all the birthday wish of Batman, who is blowing out the candles on his birthday cake, in costume, in the Batcave. Is “Doomsday Clock” like this? Should I pirate it??

9. “The Precedent”, James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez-Bueno, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson, Sal Cipriano: Inevitably, we come to the story that argues that Batman is actually a great guy, and his pressing of children into action as vigilantes under the cover of night is an amazingly positive thing. This is what I mean by “play” - it doesn’t literally make sense, we all know that, but if you buy into the superhero idea, you can buy into this universe of metaphor where the Batman Family is a vivification of finding your company of people, and belonging, and being loved. Lots of talk in here about snatching young people out of the darkness and forging them in light, and helping them find a better path - it sounds like Batman is signing these kids up for the Marine Corps, which is one of several organizations that recognizes the power of these arch-romantic impulses.

10. “Batman’s Greatest Case.”, Tom King, Tony S. Daniel, Joëlle Jones, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles: This is just unbearable. Oh god, what absolute treacle. It’s the second story in this book about Batman being serious and mysterious, but it turns out something nice is going on - he really just wants a photo of the whole Batman Family, because he lost his family when his parents got shot, but then he cracked his greatest case by finding a new family, which is the Batman Family!

All of this is communicated via clipped dialogue in which various Batman Family superheroes trade faux-awkward quips and cutesy ‘moments’ that are supposed to embody the endearing traits of the characters, but read as the blunt machinations of art that is absolutely desperate to be liked. This is art that is weeping on my shoulder and insisting I am its friend, and I want to get away from it, immediately. Tom King is the most acclaimed superhero writer of this generation, and I can only presume his better work is elsewhere.

11. “Medieval”, Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Jaime Mendoza, David Baron, Rob Leigh:

Finally, we have the obligatory story-that-leads-into-next-issue’s-serial, thereby demonstrating that Batman endures. It’s done as a series of 12 splash pages, depicting Batman in battle with his greatest foes, and it benefits immeasurably from the presence of artist Doug Mahnke (some inks by Jaime Mendoza), whose been a favorite of mine since those early, blood-splattered issues of “The Mask” at Dark Horse decades ago. Broadly speaking, Mahnke is working in a similarly muscular vein as many contributors to DC1k, but his sense of composition, of spectacle -- that boot-in-the-face energy the British call thrill-power -- adds an important extra crackle, and an element of humor; his Batman looks like a hulking maniac dressed in garbage bags, beating the shit out of monster after leering monster. What we are seeing is the fevered imagining of a new villain, the Arkham Knight (a variant of a character introduced in a video game), whom writer Peter J. Tomasi characterizes via the old trick of having the villain narrate to us a bunch of familiar criticisms of the hero, which the hero will presumably react to and overcome, or acknowledge in an interesting way, or something, in future installments. This probably would have worked better if other stories in this book hadn’t already made a lot of the same points in a manner that is not an advertisement for the rebuttal of those points... or if I were even capable of reading a story like this without imagining a final dialogue bubble coming in from off-panel going “SIR, THIS IS A BURGER KING DRIVE-THRU.” But something’s gotta go in issue #1001.

-Jog

[recentanimenews]

Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 4 Transcript

  Hi, you may have noticed that this week's Anime in America podcast is all about the 18+ topic of Hentai. *Takes a long drag of a Virginia Slim*. Well, buckle up, because this is the full transcript! 

  The Anime in America series is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

    EPISODE 4: YES I DO, HENTAI TOO

Guest: Jacob Grady

  Disclaimer: The following program contains graphic material and language not suitable for audience members under the age of 18. Discretion is advised.

  [Lofi music]

  Just like with most things in anime in america, hentai got its start with Osamu Tezuka. In the twilight of Mushi Production’s years, having already sold the anime that would be localized as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion to NBC, Mushi produced a series of three animated films called “Animerama,” A Thousand and One Nights, Cleopatra, and Belladonna of Sadness which were commercial failures that likely contributed to the studio shuttering its doors in 1973. All the same, they were revolutionary for their time as “adult” animation, riding on the heels of Japan’s wave of live action “pink” sexploitatoin films gaining popularity during the same period.

  While there are surviving animated hentai from as early as 1932 such as “Suzumifune” the content was illegal in Japan during that period. Imagine their surprise, seeing Japan now. The Animerama films were legally produced for theatrical release and popular consumption containing nudity, erotic themes, and even rape during a period where anime was in its infancy, with Mushi and Toei competing to produce almost exclusively child appropriate programming.

  I’m Yedoye Travis, and this is hentai in America.

  [Lofi music]

  So, back to America. Animerama’s second film Cleopatra was licensed by the American Studio Xanadu and released for limited theatrical screenings. While the movie itself contains erotic themes and a LOT of topless women, Xanadu promoted the film as “porno,” localizing the title as Cleopatra: Queen of Sex. Very creative. It hit theaters April 24th 1972, missing the being “The first X rated animated film to be released in America” by just six days to the American film Fritz the Cat… or that would be the case if Xanadu had actually submitted their film to the MCAA for an official rating. They’d self-assigned the film an X rating, which I don’t think is allowed. I don’t think that’s… I don’t think that’s legal. But they did it to push the pornogapraphy angle.

  This ended up backfiring as many customers demanded their money back when they realized they were watching a serious film. An actual movie.

  Speaking of which, this seems like a good opportunity to talk a little bit about umm… why? Why hentai? Why- why is it a thing? Anime originally crossed the Pacific out of a need for cheap animation to fill air time on America’s growing menu of TV channels. The demand for porn will always exist but, if you’ll excuse the turn of phrase, we didn’t exactly have any holes that needed filling. Especially after America’s sexual revolution, our proud nation has become one of the biggest porn producers in the world. Unsurprisingly...

  Grady: For me, Western pornography it’s like, almost like corney, in a way. What I don’t like about Western pornography is it’s very rarely a realistic scenario. You know, it’s always like “pizza delivery guy comes over and you know ‘Oh! It’s my dick in the box!’” or something like that, and then- as opposed to like a relationship developing and some sort of scenario happening based on that. So the appeal of hentai for me is that I get to invest myself in the story and take part in the story and feel for the characters more than I would in a Western pornography. And it’s very rare for any Western adult material to take that route, where they’re actually creating a plot or a story, and I wish more did because I think that that would be very appealing to a lot of people. 

  That was Jacob Grady. He’ll become important later.

  To add to his, um, his point. Just as anime has found a popular appeal for its unique aesthetic and storytelling, the case is also true for the um… for the not safe for work stuff. Where the U.S. has more of a clear cut separation between what is porngrpahic and what is not, Japan is more of a sliding scale. What would normally be considered pornographic material to an American audience can exist within the context of a greater narrative. I’ll give you an example. So Yasuomi Umetsu’s Kite and Mezzo Forte [trailer for Mezzo Forte plays] were both originally released in the U.S. as grim, high production OVAs [Original Video Animations] featuring battles between assassins, an evil drug ring, and a protagonist overcoming intense childhood trauma. And they all became cult classics in the anime community. [trailer ends]

  Later on, both got new Director’s Cut releases that included sex scenes you might find under the “hardcore” tab on certain websites that SHALL NOT be named. PornHub. They were hentai the whole time, but made a name for themselves purely on the production and the story. Whi[laughing]- Which is crazy. Imagine that in American… uh, well, anything. The safe for work cut of Kite is on Crunchyroll right now, actually. So you can check it out and tell me it’s not incredible. And this is just the stuff that involves actual sex. There’s a whole genre of “ecchi” and “eros” content that has sexual themes without including actual sex or even nudity. So while Kite may be an outlier based on the raw quality of its production alongside the, umm, intensity of its adult content, it is not exactly an outlier for the amount of story surrounding the sex. Many hentai have very involved plots spanning from comedy to tragedy, featuring scenarios and characters much more sophisticated than a pizza delivery or a plumbing problem.

  When people are telling you they watch hentai for the plot, they… might not be lying. As much as it pains me to say. They might be- I mean they still could be, I don’t know. But the plot definitely exists.

  It’s also a much more respected art form in Japan, even outside of contextless black and white photography. Studio SHAFT, one of the most respected and stylistic studios with one of the most ridiculous names in this context, built their reputation entirely on their immediately recognizable visual style. This was an intentional move by founder Hiroshi Wakao who built the studio’s trademark on the work of director Akiyuki Shinbo, who SHAFT hired almost directly out of making hentai under the pseudonym Jyuhachi Minamizawa. SHAFT has Shinbo’s touch all of its work to make sure they keep with his avante garde style. Shinbo himself was also the impetus behind the creation of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

  [Clip from a Puella Magi Madoka Magica commercial plays]

  Many hentai have found considerable acclaim for their artist’s merit alone or as genre pieces within the genres of romance, science fiction, and even horror. And we will be touching on a few titles as we go.

  [Lofi music]

  It wouldn’t be for another 14 years that the first real hentai would make its way to American shores in 1986. Although hentai manga had already been around for a while at this point, no American publishers had bitten quite yet. Localization was still the realm of major studios and broadcast networks, although the proliferation of VHS would allow smaller companies to get into the game with direct video release. The first American license of a manga, First Comic’s release of Lone Wolf and Cub wouldn’t be ‘til the next year. 

  Instead, the first hentai release in America would be a direct-to-video VHS release of the second ever erotic OVA made in Japan, Cream Lemon. Why the second? I dunno. The first was called Lolita Anime and I’ll leave it at that. Excalibur Films dubbed and localized 3 episodes of the 16-part miniseries and released them into the area behind that black curtain that says “18+” in comic shops and video stores across America under the bizarrely chosen title “The Brothers Grime,” hopefully not to be confused with the children’s anime “Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics” that came out the next year. The literal next year.

  In 1990 the first hentai comic would make its way to comic store shelves in the extremely questionable publication “Anime Shower Special” which was basically a magazine that cut shower scenes out of hundreds of different manga that I am pretty sure it did not have the license or permission to use. It’s Canadian publisher, IANVS, would later become part of Protoculture Inc., which produced one of the earliest anime magazines, Protoculture Addicts. Protoculture would then be acquired by Anime News Network in 2005 so I guess you could say they technically got into hentai. Technically. 

  And that’s not me shaming them or anything like that, just about every company in anime has touched hentai at some point. Central Park Media had Anime 18, Manga 18, and Be Beautiful Manga labels to print hentai anime, manga, and yaoi manga respectively. Media Blasters got their start with hentai, their first title being Rei-Lan: Orchid Emblem and later created Kitty Media to manage their 18+ products. Then there was ADV’s SoftCel Pictures and RightStuf’s hentai label Critical Mass which is just a visual that… that the imagination takes care of, I’d say.

  Legitimate companies dealing in hentai was a big risk, both when it came to American promiscuity laws and the popular misconception that all anime is cartoon pornography. So, there’s that. America’s uh, kinda fucked up. Here’s an example: In 1999, Jesus Castillo, a clerk at Keith's Comics in Dallas, was accused of promoting obscenity for selling an issue of the Demon Beast Invasion manga to an undercover officer. He was fined $4,000 and sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation after the original six-month prison sentence was suspended, which is insane. First of all, the heft of that sentence; but second of all, the levity we have with what we perceive as sexual crimes. It’s a very confusing balance of things. But, you know, it’s 1999 I guess. 

  So why risk their reputation? I mean, the obvious answer why everyone risks their reputation in America: uh, because it’s profitable. Kitty Media’s president John Sirabella claimed that, by 1998, 30-40% of anime’s total revenue in the U.S. came from hentai. 40%! And it was cheap. It was, it was super cheap. You know, you don’t exactly market pornography with billboards or commercials or expensive activations. So they were spending almost nothing on advertising, but hentai VHS and DVD were among their first products to sell out on the dealers floor at anime conventions every time. 

  So moving on, in 1993 hentai finally made history in the U.S. Central Park Media’s Anime 18 division [Legend of the Overfiend trailer begins] dubbed and released the now infamous Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend in limited theaters on March 11th, [Tailer ends] making it the first animated film to receive the MPAA’s NC-17 rating which had just replaced their old X rating three years earlier in 1990. The film would reach a legendary cult status among porn, science fiction, and horror fans alike. It was also umm, a lot of Americans’ first introduction to umm… [whispered] tentacles. You know- you know tentacles. You’re familiar. The squid? [Whispering ends]

  Okay. 

  [Lofi music]

  This is unfortunately the part where we talk about tentacles...

  To understand tentacles I gotta tell you a little bit about um, about censorship law. This is a, yeah, this is a legal matter. I don’t know what else to tell you, I don’t know how else to prepare you for this. It’s a, it’s a legal matter, so bear with me. I will start by saying tentacles have a long history in Japanese pornography. You may be familiar with the famous “The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife” woodblock print featuring a lady and an octopus doing the thing. It was created around 1814 by none other than legendary Japanese artist Hokusai… you know, the guy who drew that wave that you see everywhere, on all the Uniqlo tee shirts? You know the one. Hokusai’s Wave. If you Google those words, you’ll find it. Anyway, they were far from mainstream but let’s just say they existed in the popular subconscious.

  So, when it comes to porn, Japan had and has some pretty specific guidelines requiring what is off-limits. They put a lot less emphasis on scenario and the content of scenes, and instead they focus on the appearance of genitalia. I’m sure you’re familiar, you know they got the whole pixelated mosaic over the, over the junk and the jingles and the jangles, and pretty much anything else goes. This is in stark contrast to America where seeing those parts is basically the point of adult material, but scenario and content of scenes can sometimes get you in trouble. The one where we run into problems most is portrayal of minors. Obviously. That’s uh, obviously it’s fucked up. Japan, on the other hand, has the same age of consent as us but umm… [sigh], man, oo boy, they do not follow that in hentai. I will say no more than that. This has of course led to a very unique relationship between hentai publishers and their American licensors. Some weird conversations, it gets weird.

  Often American versions of hentai are LESS censored than those in Japan, with the American distributor receiving the cut before the mosaics are added so you see the original art in all its glory. But then they might have to go in and uh, change some other things, like umm… you know, age. Obviously. A character’s age in anime can be kinda ambiguous sometimes, so they usually get away with changing a reference to class to a reference to like a “college” course, but you know, sometimes scenes would have to be cut out if it didn’t convincingly look like two adults. Which it unfortunately does. Frequently. 

  Okay, so back to tentacles. The whole censorship thing is a problem in the hentai industry that many young innovators have tried to work around, often using objects reminiscent of uh… of- of the pe- the penis as substitutes. Along came an enterprising creator named Toshio Maeda. His solution to the uh, to the censorship problem was of course, as we have set up for the past couple paragraphs: tentacles. They were alive, they moved around, but they were not dicks. It feels weird to talk about porn this much and not say the word “dick.” I don’t- why am I using so many euphemisms? I’m just gonna say dick, wherever it feels appropriate. 

  I’m gonna paraphrase from an interview with Maeda in 2002. [Music play throughout] Quote: “At that time pre-Urotsukidoji, it was illegal to create a sensual scene in bed. I thought I should do something to avoid drawing such a sensual scene. So, I just created a creature. His tentacle is not a penis as a pretext. I could say, as an excuse, ‘this is not a penis; this is just a part of the creature.’ You know, the creatures, they don’t have a gender. A creature is a creature. So it is not obscene – not illegal.” 

  Umm… some points were made. The gender thing I feel like is probably… actually, y’know, y’know, that probably, that probably lines up, actually. Depends on how sentient you believe animals are. I guess PETA would disagree. There is- they have a sex, not necessarily a gender, I guess. Huh. Well, look at me learning.

  [Lofi music]

  Okay, as far as I can tell, the first manga to actually get an official license and distribution in the U.S. was, much like Overfiend, a hell of an introduction. Prepare yourselves as I speak this next sentence. Bondage Fairies was released by Antarctic Press under their Venus Press imprint in 1994, following the adventures of Pfil and Pamela, a lesbian fairy couple who act as sort of, uh forest police making sure animals don’t… break the forest law? Where Urotsukidoji introduced many Americans to a multitude of new uses for tentacles, Bondage Fairies was a first introduction for many as well, and I hate having to say these two words next to each other, insect beastiality. Also obviously bondage. I don’t know if that was clear in the title.

  The ‘90s also saw the first eroge making their way to the U.S., a very popular genre of video games in Japan featuring sexually explicit images, often featuring “visual novel” style gameplay where you navigate through different dialogue choices to reach a number of different branching narrative paths, often to pursue a uh, “happy ending” with one of a number of different female characters, usually with a larger overall narrative. If this is news to you, then you might be surprised to learn you’re already a fan of some of them. Eroge are a pretty common source material for mainstream anime actually, usually with the sexually explicit content removed, obviously. Popular examples are YU-NO, Doukyuusei, Rumbling Hearts, and ummm, yes, the entire Fate franchise. Although that shouldn’t have been hard to guess after the uh, mana transfer scene...

  Anyway, the hentai industry was going pretty strong in the ‘90s although that fact was not, it was, you know- it was kept under wraps. A lot of legitimate anime publishers had their hentai labels happily printing, but didn’t exactly want to brag about what proportion of their profits came from porn. Nothing good can last forever, though, because in the mid 2000s when the bubble burst, anime companies started going bankrupt and their hentai licenses along with them.

  SoftCel Pictures, which was spun off from ADV, then closed down in 2005 with many of their titles being acquired by RightStuf’s Critical Mass. Central Park Media followed in 2009, many of its licenses getting split between Critical Mass and Kitty Media. The manga side was even worse. Most hentai publishers were about as small an operation as you can imagine. One example, Icarus Publishing, was responsible for the longest running manga anthology in the U.S., called AG. And he did that all by himself. When he fell ill in 2010 he just couldn’t keep it going anymore and he closed down.

  The field was narrowing, which was really bad for anyone looking to support the industry because piracy is a lot worse in hentai and all other varieties of porn, because it’s hard to get popular advocacy or any sort of regulatory agency on your side when you’re working with stuff that people pretend doesn’t exist. You know, like what do you look like in a courtroom, just arguing for porn? You know? In the ‘90’s, of course. We’re… [exasperated] moderately more sex-positive these days. I guess. 

  [Lofi music]

  Now all this was until one man changed everything...

  Grady: My name is Jacob. I created Fakku while I was in college, it was originally like a fan website, sort of like [how] Crunchyroll originated. And from that we were able to build an audience and prove that there was a market for this type of content outside of Japan. Because before we started doing it officially, there’d been only a few poor attempts to publish hentai legally outside of Japan. I know of all of them, but almost no one does. Because you know, they, that’s how under the radar it was. So with Fakku, we were able to show our partners in Japan and the publishers and the artists most importantly, “hey, you know there’s people willing to support the stuff you’re creating. Manga, anime, comics, games now, we have, but you’re ignoring the market outside of Japan.” And you may have seen scenarios where like a Japanese publisher might block all foreign IP addresses from viewing their website, because they’re like “oh, foreigners are pirates! They’re scum of the Earth, they’re awful.” That was, that was something that we had to deal with early on, to convince these publishers “hey, no. It’s because you forced the market to this- we just want to read your comics, we just want to watch your anime. We just want to fap to this and fap to that; but because you weren’t providing it, you know, people had to find it any way they could. And if you were to provide a means for them to support officially, we think that people would be willing to do that.” So that’s the argument that we made to the publishers when we first signed our first partners, and it’s been going great ever since [Laughs]. 

  The same year Crunchyroll made the switch to a legitimate anime streaming service, Jacob started up his pirate hentai streaming site Fakku, just one of many pirate pages of the era. He’d spend his days going to school and working at a grocery store stocking vegetables thinking about what he’d like the site to look like, and he would spend long nights coding. Just coding. Think about how much coding that goes into all the porn you watch these days. The site kept growing and traffic increased until Jacob started using his student loans to pay for their server cost. It actually got so bad he almost had to shut the site down, but when he relayed this to his followers the community stepped up and donated until he was able to keep the operation running.

  Using Crunchyroll as a model, Jacob made early attempts to go legitimate. After building up a large user base, he started reaching out to the license holders of his sites’ content to see if he could buy legitimate rights, but they never replied. Eventually he would leave college to start working at Bioware and step away from Fakku, handing the operations down to his team. It’s hard to say where his relationship with the site may have gone from there, but everything changed when Jacob received a cease and desist letter from the oldest hentai publisher in Japan, Wanimagazine.

  Grady: So originally they reached out to us. So when I first went to Japan and started talking to publishers, you know obviously we were completely upfront with the history of Fakku, what we were doing, and where we came from. And they were all on board with it, which was cool. Because at first, you know the first meeting I had I think we, I was invited out there by this big Japanese publisher, and I was just like “man, are they just going to like, arrest me?” But you know, I went out there and I explained my thoughts and they were like “okay, let’s do it.” And I’m like “umm, really?” And they’re like “yeah, let’s do it.” And they signed us our first licenses, and one of the first things I said was “okay, but you gotta understand. America like, we don’t do that censorship stuff, so like all those black bars and mosaics and giant glowing penises and stuff that they have in Japan, like we’ve gotta get rid of that. Is that possible? Can you get us uncensored stuff?” And they’re like “yeah. We can get you uncensored stuff.” And I was like “REALLY?!” And they’re like “yeah.” And it turns out that with the censorship, it’s actually all produced completely uncensored originally, and the publishers will then go and add varying levels of censorship, those black bars, those mosaics, depending on the medium that the comic or anime is being distributed from, because there’s different laws in Japan. So if it’s sold online it will have some level of censorship, if it’s sold in paper it’ll have a different level, and then if it’s sold internationally it’ll have no censorship at all. So they were on board with no censorship, and I was like “okay, awesome,” but like I hate DRM, right? Like I want to be able to download the comics, read them on my iPad, read them on my phone, read them on whatever, I was like “can we get a deal with no DRM requirements at all?” And they were like “okay,” and I was like “what the fuck? Really?!”

  Interviewer: Damn!

  Grady: Yeah, so like I ended up leaving Japan with honestly the best publishing deal probably any company has ever gotten.”

  After they had seen the size of the Fakku community, Wanimagazine surprised Jacob with how receptive they were to the idea of working with him, even allowing a slow transition from pirate site to legitimacy rather than cutting out all his pirated content immediately. In 2014, Jacob made the announcement Fakku was going legit.

  Grady: They were totally on board with it, obviously. Because it was like the both of best worlds. When we started removing fan content there were people who were upset, because, you know, it’s hard to convince someone to pay for something that they’ve never paid for before. Like hentai? Like, no one had ever been saying “that thing you’ve been fapping to, those thousands of things you downloaded on to your computer, those are actually like worth money. Like that’s, like some artist created that and he’s like trying to get by in Japan, he’s trying to make a living, he’s trying to survive, and like that thing is his livelihood. So you should pay for that.” So that was an early difficulty for us, to convince people to pay for this stuff.

  It was a predictably rocky transition, but Jacob was right on the mark. Once fans knew they had a way to officially source hentai, they were willing to pay up to support the creators… and that was what Jacob really wanted.  

Grady: I think that one of the most powerful things about Fakku is our brand. Like I’ve always tried to position it as not a porn company, which sounds weird, but it’s always been important to me to not you know be running a porn company for a few reasons, but like really we wanted to create a brand that was more of a lifestyle brand, where it’s like people want to support you know whatever Fakku’s doing, and right now it happens to be a lot of hentai manga. But you know we also recently as of just a year ago started publishing our first games. And then we got into anime. And then we’re getting into original Western comics. So we’re publishing a few artists from outside of Japan, and having them create original chapters for Fakku, and adult chapters. And then we’re bringing those to Japan and saying “hey, we work with this artist. They want to have their book published in Japan, is that something we can do?” So we’re like almost reverse publishing, you know Western artists in Japan, which is cool. So we’re doing a lot of crazy things. 

  Jacob did something no one in the industry had done before, pulling hentai out of the dark shadows to build a real community. Fakku isn’t the 18+ print of an official brand, Fakku is the brand. Jacob didn’t treat being a fan of hentai as anything to be ashamed of, but something to celebrate as a community, and the fandom responded. There is a fandom. Need I remind you, there is a fandom. For hentai. And all things anime. Fakku has active social media, hosts convention panels with special guests, industry parties with DJs like Anamanaguchi, art shows, and even custom skateboards. Fakku’s kinda a lifestyle brand that, it turns out, many people are proud to represent… even if it’s in the form of a- of an ahegao t-shirt.

  He also never stopped branching out. Since going official, Jacob set up a streaming agreement with Kitty Media, the lone survivor of hentai publishers after the bubble burst and the final resting place of many licenses acquired from its fallen brethren. He also worked to acquire licenses to older visual novel ero games and Fakku even published the first ero guro manga in the west… and that, if you don’t know is like umm… it’s like a portmanteau of erotic and grotesque and umm… my description of the matter ends there. You got Google for that.

  Jacob even launched a sub-label for non-pornographic manga called Denpa Books, which I guess is a huge departure from every other company that’s ever done this, and he used that to print niche licenses like the acclaimed Kaiji and ero adjacent works such as Inside Mari, Super Dimensional Love Gun, and even Maeda’s Legend of the Overfiend manga. 

  Since going legit, Fakku has become massive. 

  Grady: Like we’ve published ourselves over 1,000 manga artists. We now work with I think seven or eight hentai manga publishers in Japan. Pretty much everyone, we work with in some manner. 

  So despite all my hesitance to engage in uh, in hentai consumption in general, and across the board, I will say that there is a legitimate audience for it, and you know, whatever is your thing is your thing. And if that’s your thing, there’s a place to consume it, and there’s a rich history behind it. Surprisingly. It’s not just tentacles for tentacles’ sake. It’s a thing that makes sense, unfortunately. You almost wish it didn’t. But it does. It does. 

  So with that, in conclusion, I leave you… with this: just you know, just like the things you like, and umm maybe, I dunno, for whatever reason do some research and look into why you like those things and why they exist. 

  This has been Anime in America. I’m your host, Yedoye Travis. Tune into the next one. 

  Goodbye!

  [Lofi music]

  Thank you for listening to Anime in America presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please go to Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica to watch literally NONE of the things we just mentioned! 

  Special thanks to Jacob Grady from Fakku for joining us. And you’ve heard it before, but please leave us a review and rate the show so more people can discover it, or just share it with a friend.

  This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye, or Twitter @YedoyeOT. Researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian, and Jesse Gouldsbury. Additional research and writing by Mamoudou N’Diaye. 

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[tossertozier]

the film / movie / miniseries have created multiple versions of canon. i think there are lots of ways to write these characters that can be considered “canonically correct”

This is a post about the relationship between the book and the movie focused on Stan and Richie and then Eddie and Richie and the differences between the two:

what I’m really talking about here is foucault’s theory of the net of power. within it, basically it is to imagine the relationship between two people as if they are standing on a net that is stretched out. if they are relatively evenly sized, then they can maintain a balance. if someone begins to over-reach their place and amass more space on the net than they are allotted, it seems as if they have more power than the other person. in reality, they are still on the same net, and the same playing field. the other person has to allow themselves to believe that their opposite actually has more power than they do. they don’t, but if you believe they do there is very hard to recover from it. within this theory, there is equal power in relationships, because if someone is manipulating a relationship, you have to allow them to.

there are big, overlooked differences between book and movie richie but that’s another post so I’m just gonna talk about similar things for him. richie requires, outright demands, attention. almost constantly. he gets very uncomfortable if he is not in direct attention. it, comically, reminds me of a bo burnham song about the same idea. “have you ever been to a birthday party for children, and one of the children won’t stop screaming. because he’s just a little attention attractor, when he grows up to be comic or actor he’ll be rewarded for never maturing, for never understanding or learning that every day can’t be about him there’s other people, you selfish asshole.” (Now, let me say: richie in the books <and we’ll see in the 2019 film> does in fact grow up. he just, like everyone else upon returning to Derry, begins to revert into his childhood self. he, in particular, finds it horrifying. he admits after making a particularly irritating joke about eddie that he has no idea why he said that and hadn’t thought about it all before it came out of his mouth.) anyway, this need for attention causes his loud mouth & is a hallmark in all of his relationships. but it is most noticeable in his relationship with stan and eddie.

in the book, stan and richie are friends, and teased each other, to the point it would worry their other friends. (Eddie specifically scolds richie for making fun of stans Judaism.) their net of power, so to speak, thrives on the back and forth. Their net operates like a trampoline. They jump in and out of each other’s territories, overstepping and laughing as they do so because the other will just bounce to the other side. richie irritates stan on occasion, but it’s never an issue that can’t be “bounced” back from . stan has some weird hobbies, but he’s clearly someone richie considers to have an equal amount of power to himself & their relationship operates accordingly. it’s similar to how richie sees bill. (an entire other post lol) richie doesn’t regard any of the rest of the losers, except Beverly but in a different way , again, another post) in this way until adulthood.

in the book, eddie believes he is weak. he is fighting the urge to do so as an adult who has moved out of Derry. he believes his body is incapable of fighting disease. when richie oversteps in his relationship with Eddie, eddie lets him. he never fights back in ways that would actually knock richie back into his own side of the net, and instead goes for whining that doesn’t have a lot of weight “stop, richie, I hate it when you do that.” he is much weaker in his relationship with richie, he feels like he doesn’t understand richie, but he tells the reader that regardless, he is glad to have richie around. i (me, reddie trash, about to surprise y'all) don’t necessarily consider the dynamic as children to be inherently romantically-coded. I think eddie (who I consider to be gay) behaves the way he does as a child not because of his own attraction to men, but moreso because he deeply feels the loss of a paternal figure in his life. he craves the attention and approval of the guys in his life he considers to be strong, (specifically bill) and he, while in denial about how he feels about it, will endure a lot to get the attention from richie. their relationship as kids can be read as “richie showing peacock feathers off by picking on the little one and the little one let’s him because he feels special when he does.” I think their thoughts and actions as adults truly bring context into the situation and settle it into classic “pulling on pigtails” actual flirtation. while in Derry, the losers club is perpetually immature. They question their own actions often, and have a very difficult time being honest with themselves. Without eddies death scene and events after, you miss what makes their interactions as children so relevant. which is one of the reasons I prefer the book in a lot of ways. Intermingling the storyline as adults and kids is extremely effective in IT. I genuinely believe that richie did not know his actions were in fact text book flirting until eddie grabs his face and tells him “don’t call me eds” and that that is when the dread of oh god I fucked this up, really set in. Which quickly turns to anger, at IT, yes but at the entire situation, his own immaturity, his own lack of perception. Which leads us To my favorite line of the book, where richie acts overtly violent to an already dead it because he has to leave eddies body in the sewer, and bill asks him “why did you do that” and richie responds “I don’t know,” and the narration tells us “but he knew well enough.” & naysayers will say: one line cannot make an entire relationship romantically coded. And I will say: fuck you, because richie knew well enough & so should you.

and I remain adamant that if Eddie were a girl and no other text changed, the validity of their relationship would not be questioned.

What the film has done, in the sake of time and for clear narrative, is make stan seem as if he feels powerless constantly. stan, in the book, clearly doesn’t. in fact: that’s why he doesn’t return. he was not so much terrified of IT, but terrified of returning to a place where he doesn’t feel as if he has control over the situation. what he really couldn’t handle was being filthy and not knowing where he was. however, that can be really difficult to show in a film. I’d wager that the average audience member could not pick that up unless it was spelled out for them in a narration, which I’m sure they did not want to do. To compromise, they made stan a character who is soft-spoken, and true-cut follower. he is really intolerant of antics, and as such: richie.

in the film, rather than banter back with Richie as he would in the book, he’s really rather avoidant of the relationship, or when richie oversteps. To say they are not friends, or that Stan secretly hates him, I think is a genuinely terrible generalization. However, rather than treat this net of power like something akin to a trampoline, with the two bouncing back and forth, it’s more treated like a basketball court, with a clear line down the center. Stan just does not tolerate any attempt of richies to bounce into his side. It is the sign of an insecure character. stan shuts him down, because if richie made any real attempt that was a grab at stan’s power in their relationship, stan doesn’t know if he’d be able to defend it. 

however, this “bouncing” element is really essential for balancing richie out in a clear dynamic, so i believe the relationship was really handed to Eddie. eddie in the film has less so internalized the teachings of his mother, screaming at the barrens about “my MOM,” and it only takes a preteen daughter of a pharmacist to persuade him about his medication. whereas, in the book, a doctor sits him down to explain and he still relentlessly believes in his mother. he leaves, and attempts to rationalize it himself & so weakly comes to terms with the idea of placebos that he keeps taking the medication in a deal with his mother that allows him to see his friends. eddie, in the film, simply tells her they’re bullshit and leaves to see them whether she likes it or not. eddie in the film, SO MUCH more so than the book, recognizes his own power in relationships. this is with both his mother and richie. he very rarely lets richie put the last card out, but unlike movie!stan, he lets richie play the game.

while it is a common complaint that stans character traits were given to eddie, i think it can also be said that eddies character traits were given to stan. a lot of eddies character in the book is built around the idea of fragility, & disbelief in himself. it is monumentous in the book when eddie goes after the eye with his own inhaler and proceeds to stomp on it, because it was the first time eddie really had any belief in his own power. in the film, I’d say eddie already has a better relationship with himself. he willingly goes into the neibolt house, he is the first to follow bill down the well, and he seems to consider himself responsible for keeping the group together. he is the one who notices and runs to find stan, and when bill goes missing as well. in the book, it is said that eddie knows, is the only one to, how to navigate the sewers. he merely gives these directions to bill, and follows closely behind him. in fact, in the book, the role of “keeping the group together” was overwhelmingly richie. (one of the few times richie truly panics in the sewers is when they are crawling through a tunnel and eddie can only do it so quickly with a broken arm and bill crawls too far ahead, away from the group.) eddie in the film is small and asthmatic, but he believes himself to be a powerful person, in his relationships and in himself, so he is. stan is insecure in his relationships, “you left me here, you’re not my friends” is the most adamantly avoidant of the entire situation, “this isn’t fun, this is scary and disgusting” “no! no next time, bill,” and is very pessimistic. i think this was all done so that when he kills himself it doesn’t feel entirely out of left field. it makes his movie self, and eddie as well, i think, less complex, but it also makes them more comprehensible in a 2 hour film. For context to how little time that really is, there will be four hours of IT film altogether. If you listen to IT the audiobook aloud, it is 44 hours long.

[aion-rsa]

What Star Wars: Dark Empire Tells us About The Rise of Skywalker

http://bit.ly/2GnpBj1

Dark Empire was one of the early Star Wars expanded universe efforts, and it may have an influence on The Rise of Skywalker.

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Books

Ryan Britt

Star Wars

Apr 15, 2019

The Rise of Skywalker

With a single cackle, the childhood memories of countless Star Wars fans have been reignited. Though he isn't actually seen in the first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Emperor Palpatine’s laugh at the end means the darkest of dark side dudes is totally back. And if bringing back the famous Sith Lord feels like the oldest trick in the book, you’re not wrong. But, in this case, the book in question was a 1991-1992 comic book miniseries called Dark Empire, published by Dark Horse Comics back when new Star Wars stories were far more rare than they are today. 

For those who might not remember, Dark Empire focused on the resurrection of Emperor Palpatine after his “death” in Return of the Jedi. Published as a six-issue mini-series from December 1991 to October 1992, it was the first major Star Wars comic book release after the Marvel run concluded in 1986. Written by Tom Veitch with art by Cam Kennedy, Dark Empire was also the first comic book entry into the ‘90s “expanded universe,” which, at the time was brand new. As Dark Empire was coming out, the only other post-Return of the Jedi EU material was the Timothy Zahn Thrawn Trilogy, which began, famously with the novel Heir to the Empire in June 1991, and concluded in April 1993 with The Last Command. Published in the middle of this was the Dark Empire comic series, which, was — in universe — set 6ABY, one year after the events of Zahn’s 5ABY trilogy, despite finishing its run a year earlier in real life.

These days, savvy fans are probably aware that the Thrawn Trilogy has partially been retconned thanks to Rebels and some new in-canon novels. But Dark Empire gets less public love, despite its incalculable influence on canon. While the Clone Wars are mentioned in A New Hope and are central to Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, it was Dark Empire that introduced the idea of cloning a major character, well before the mad Luuke Skywalker (not a typo) clone showed up in Timothy Zahn's The Last Command in 1993. Dark Empire also brought Boba Fett back from the dead, introduced the Smugglers’ Moon of Nar Shaddaa, and created the concept of Jedi Holocrons (really, Holocrons were created by Tom Veitch!). Bad guys also use some creepy attack dogs calle Neks in the opening pages of Dark Empire, which seemed to inspire those scary dogs on Corellia in the first big chase scene of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

And, just like The Rise of Skywalker seems poised to do, Dark Empire brought the Emperor back to life, and tempted Luke Skywalker to turn evil in the process.

The central plot conceit of Dark Empire was that the Emperor had been moving his consciousnesses into a variety of clone bodies for a long time, but because he was such a Dark Side baddass, his evil energy meant he burned through these bodies quickly, making each clone-body age rapidly. This fact made the Dark Side of the Force seem like a drug addiction that ruins your body, predating Mark Hamill’s 2018 comments which likened Luke’s death in The Last Jedi to an overdose. This explanation for bringing back the Emperor — in the flesh — is so good that if The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t copy it — at least a little bit — it will be a shame.  

Aesthetically, The Rise of Skywalker will be nothing like Dark Empire. How could it? The interior art from Cam Kennedy is moody and often monochromatic. In fact, when Luke has a lightsaber duel with a clone of Emperor Palpatine, everything for several panels is nothing but green (other panels are totally purple, and all of it is, in a word, weird). In fact, in terms of a color palette, Dark Empire has more in common with the striking, almost minimalist art direction of The Last Jedi, than the lush organic feeling in the teaser for The Rise of Skywalker. Like bringing an inky, ruminative comic book out into the bright light of desert heat, the tiniest taste of the next Star Wars film feels like the franchise is blending a dark, bittersweet narrative with an Oz-like aesthetic. The Rise of Skywalker looks more like the art of Ralph McQuarrie and Chesley Bonestell than Cam Kennedy. This is likely because J.J. Abrams — at least visually — is less adventurous than someone like Rian Johnson. Still, one aesthetic from Dark Empire has survived, in a roundabout way, to the sequel trilogy: everything about Kylo Ren.

Back in 1991, the Luke Skywalker of Dark Empire dressed somewhere between a half-assed Darth Vader cosplayer and a vampire who goes to techno clubs. So in the sequel trilogy, a cipher for Dark Empire Luke clearly exists in Kylo Ren. In Dark Empire, much of the plot centers on the idea that Luke “pretends” to turn to the Dark Side of the Force in order to take it down from within. Since Kylo Ren’s shocking betrayal at the end of The Force Awakens, fans have floated the idea that he too, is a cynical double agent. Now, I’m not saying this theory is literally true, but the parallels between Dark Empire Luke and Kylo Ren are clearly there.

In Dark Empire, Luke feels like the only way he’ll truly understand his father is to turn the Dark Side and serve Palpatine. Ditto for Kylo Ren’s feelings about his grandfather and serving Snoke. In Dark Empire, Luke is initially confident about his plan, but then, gets a little lost in it, these leads to him getting busted by Imperial Officers who know he’s lying. Kylo Ren has similar power struggles within the First Order. And finally, the only way Luke can be pulled away from the grip of the Emperor is with outside help, which, in the climax of Dark Empire comes in the form of a fully-realized Jedi Knight version of Leia Organa.

For The Rise of Skywalker, all of this feels like a ready-made set-up for the existing characters. Instead of Luke and Leia, you can just swap out Kylo Ren and Rey. The evil Clone emperor can remain the same, mostly because it allows for Ian McDiarmid to return as the cackling old Emperor we all know and love, but then, when the time comes, jump into a younger clone body. This is what Dark Empire did so well, and honestly, if you go back and look at those old panels of the young clone Emperor, you’ll find yourself wondering if Richard E.Grant’s secret character in Episode IX isn’t just the young cloned Emperor.

read more: Complete Schedule of Upcoming Star Wars Movies and TV Shows

So, what does this mean for the plot? How will Kylo Ren react to all of this? It seems like the short answer is: poorly.

Throughout both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi it’s clear that Kylo Ren thinks the only way to fix the universe is to work from the inside of the Dark Side. This is just like Luke in Dark Empire (and Anakin, obviously)  but it also means that there’s no way Kylo Ren will be happy about the return of Palpatine. In The Last Jedi, Kylo clearly is done with “old things.” If anything, Palpatine represents everything Kylo Ren claims he hates: an obsession with nostalgia and the past. Even so, it feels unlikely that Kylo can take the Emperor on his own. Which means that a team-up between Rey, Kylo Ren, and literally everyone in the galaxy might be the only way to get rid of the Emperor forever.

read more: Why Emperor Palpatine is the Most Entertaining Star Wars Character

J.J. Abrams has said that the new film will feature the “new generation” of characters facing the “ultimate evil.” But, since The Phantom Menace, what’s made the evil of the Emperor so interesting is that we aren’t really even sure what his motivations are. Mostly, characters in Star Wars make deals with Palpatine because he has something they want. Amidala goes along with Palpatine in The Phantom Menace because she needs him politically. Anakin goes to the Dark Side because Palpatine promises him the secret to immortality (pssst...it’s just clone bodies). And finally, in Dark Empire, Luke decided the Emperor had emotional knowledge about the Force that he also wanted. In all of these ways, the Emperor is scary because the good guys tend to really need him.

So, if The Rise of Skywalker takes any one page from Dark Empire, beyond the obvious return of the Emperor, it should be connected to what the protagonists need from the Emperor. Having a villian who is super-destructive is one thing. But having a seductive bad guy who offers good people things they can’t turn away from is much more interesting. Which means the central question about Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker isn’t really about how the good guys will take him down. Instead, it’s all about what he’ll offer them to join him.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is out everywhere on December 20, 2019. We have everything you need to know about Episode IX here.

from Books http://bit.ly/2V40CsQ

[ghezalplusmovies]

[Credit: Warner Bros.]

[63]

Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, IT tells the story of a group of children who must overcome their fears in order to take on the clown straight from Wal-Mart during Black Friday, Pennywise. IT stars Jaeden Lieberher, Jack Dylan Grazer, Finn Wolfhard, Sophia Lillis, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Wyatt Olef and Bill Skarsgard and is directed by Andrés “Andy” Muschietti (Mama).

My Thoughts On The Characters And Story

Let me preface this by saying the original Tim Curry-led IT miniseries from 1990 single handedly made me as terrified of clowns as I am today. I’m sure there are plenty of happy clowns floating about that demand to be taken seriously and to them I say, Godspeed.

This iteration of IT features a group of young friends that I absolutely adored watching. I honestly expected to be tired of them as the film progressed because kids in movies can certainly become an annoying nuisance, however each kid had their own distinctive characteristics that made them feel like an actual person and not a boring stereotype. Lead Jaeden Lieberher who plays Bill, brother to Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), does a fantastic job in portraying a heartbroken older brother determined to figure out what happened to his adorable brother. 

While every respective kid actor did a great job, the standout for me was Mr. Eddie Hypochondriac Kaspbrak fantastically portrayed by Jack Dylan Grazer. While every kid served their role well, Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard particularly as the constant comic relief, Grazer’s dialogue and the way he delivers these lines – whether it be humourous (and he is hilarious when the script calls for it) or absolutely terrified, Grazer is incredible. I honestly didn’t expect to laugh as much as I did, it was quite the pleasant surprise. 

Credit: WB

Credit: WB

The overall camaraderie between each member of the Loser Club was incredibly enjoyable to watch as well. The backstory for lone female Loser Beverly (Sophia Lillis) enthralled me because of how well Lillis interacted with her on-screen father despite the fact that they only had a few scenes together. 

The 1990 adaptation featured a group of adults coming together to fight off IT and their respective childhoods are depicted through flashbacks. This adaptation is told in real time during the 1980s and I quite enjoyed seeing that change. It allowed for the audience to grow attached to the characters while remaining unsure of who may succumb to IT’s it-ness. 

I was intrigued with the horror aspect of the film mostly because of how it affected the kids in the group. Pennywise himself (Bill Skarsgard) did have his moments where he got me, however his overall frightfulness kind of depleted as the film progressed. The sequences which called for a child to be face-to-face with the Clown were easily the most terrifying moments. One particular scene featuring Bill in the cellar was the highlight of the film because of the intimate feeling of it, you could feel Pennywise’s presence however not being able to see him or looking around the screen for him was why I enjoyed that scene as much as I did. When you’re faced with an evil entity, the less you see them the more terrified you become. 

The other bombastic horror scenes resorted to the quiet music… thencomesthe WHUPPAH! that plagues many horror films although I will say there were one or two moments that didn’t utilize the cheap scare and even a few that utilized it well. The opening Georgie scene was brilliant and definitely made me feel a bit unnerved, SPOILER I did not expect that thing with the arm at all. I don’t know how I feel about the unexpected silliness of it because on one arm hand, a little kid getting his arm torn off by a crazy clown’s teeth is horrifying yet I think leaving it up to the viewer’s imagination would’ve been a better idea. END SPOILER.

Credit: Warner Bros. Television

Credit: WB

I don’t know how many audiences are expecting the graphic visual imagery of it but I was relishing in all that gory goodness. When disturbing and (somewhat) gross elements are introduced in a film and it’s executed correctly, not solely relying on gore porn, it enhances the flick immensely since you don’t want to watch what’s on screen because of the terrifying imagery, not because you’re grossed out that someone’s limb is torn off. There was one specific moment, however, involving stabs to the stomach that were seemingly played off like it was nothing.

How Were The Other Aspects Of IT?

It’s astounding to me that this is only director Andy Muschietti’s second theatrical release. Certain sequences were shot as if it were a hardened veteran behind the lens and I appreciated his interest in occasionally thinking outside the box. The brief opening title card got a whoa out of me.

IT is a gorgeous looking film, all the vibrant colours featured in the lived-in environment and the fearful moments were stunning to look at. I do think the final battle was a bit muddled and the quick cuts made it a bit difficult to know what was going on in certain points. With how visually pleasing virtually all of the film was, something should’ve been done about the occasional bursts of loudness heard in certain sequences… Can’t hate on the audio too much though. The New Kids On The Block love featured in IT was a-mazing. You know you’re a cover girl when you can insert random NKOTB songs in whatever sentences happen to arise… 🙂

[Credit: Warner Bros.]

If you’re looking for a wildly enjoyable horror flick to watch with a bunch of friends who suffer from coulrophobia, check out IT.

IT receives 3.5/5 Matt Damon heads.

featured image credit: warner bros.

  IT (2017): An Entertaining Thriller Featuring A Fantastic Band Of Merry Losers (Review) Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, IT tells the story of a group of children who must overcome their fears in order to take on the clown straight from Wal-Mart during Black Friday, Pennywise.