#but also in general dc give more cass content

[fanaticalthings]

Hey, boss! Quick thought: Jason and Cass are basically Irish twins and Jason is totally that little brother who acts like her older brother/dad and she only lets him do it because its endearing.

Like he consistently shows up at all of her ballet recitals with a bouquet of flowers.

And he takes her out for ice cream when she comes back from a particularly long mission and he knows that the batgirls are unavailable.

And he can tell when she's feeling down about something so he takes her out on his motorbike for wordless drives.

But she's also not afraid of calling little brother just to remind him every now and then.

And he's learnt not to invite her to play video games, unless she's feeling particularly out of touch/having worries about her self-worth, because she will destroy him every time. He doesn't even need to pretend (not that he ever would obviously)

Ahhh I actually really love the idea of Cass and Jason being really close (although it probably wouldn't work out if you still hc Jason as a crimelord/killer) but just the thought that they both understand each other in ways that the others might not is a really nice thought I think.

I also LOVE to hc Cass as the older one, especially since Jason seems like he'd be the older one considering he looks like a fucking 6'4" linebacker that could take you out with one slap

Also also, just based on their canon interpretations as of right now, I actually would LOVE to see an exploration of their characters when put together.

Cass was raised and abused by her father to be a ruthless killing machine since birth, and yet she still turned out to be an incredibly empathetic person who believes anyone can change for the better.

Jason, when he was young also had a rough childhood (grew up in the slums of Gotham, had a father with a criminal background and a mother who succumbed to drug abuse) he'd basically witnessed the worst of Gotham and still believed in the good of people when he was Robin.

In the current comics, Jason heavily wants to turn his lifestyle around, going non-lethal and trying to get away from the more questionable actions of his past. I think it would be super interesting to have Cass empathize with wanting to escape the dark parts of yourself with Jason and also have Jason see his younger self in Cass with how she vehemently strives to save everyone like how he did long ago.

I would so be down for a lil duo run of these two. Maybe have them relate to each other with the roughness of their childhoods or have them explore/share the struggles of trying to better yourself when it feels like everything is against you.

[necrotic-nephilim]

Give me your most controversial dc opinions!!!

HA YES GLADLY I WOULD LOVE TO (added a read more because i had a lot of words oopsie)

The Titans Tower Incident was in character for Jason Todd. at worst, it's a *bit* over-dramatic and a little cringey, but if you consider his actions, his motivations, and what he *actually* does, i honestly don't think it's OOC for him. he's just kind of a dramatic asshole in that era and i stand by that comic. the issue isn't the comic itself, it's how people interpret it.

i think the DC fandom, specifically the Batfamily fandom, really likes to claim to be progressive for brownie points, but then will have the one token woman that everyone decides is acceptable to hate. like, it's one thing if you dislike Carrie Kelley, i get it. Frank Miller isn't a great writer of women and she can be a lack of a character in the original Dark Knight Returns. but if you go out of your way making constant edits and posts shitting on her, it's *weird*. especially when most of the people shitting on her haven't even consumed her source, and their reasons for disliking her can apply to any other Robin, especially Tim. but as long as you put say, Steph or Cass on a pedestal, you can talk on and on about how you want to kill Carrie for the crime of existing. it feels like acceptable misogyny. i also think this extends to writers. if you put say, Gail Simone on a pedestal, you're free to blame everything under the sun on Devin Grayson. (to be clear i think you can and should hate Devin Grayson for a lot of things, but most rumors about her are untrue and if you look at every badly written comic and go "sounds like something Devin Grayson would write" that's really weird bc everything she's done, men like Chuck Dixon, Tom King, Tom Taylor, Marv Wolfman, etc have done in tenfold.) like, misogyny = bad unless it's That One Woman We've All Agreed To Hate. it's weird and i keep noticing it. and no one seems to unpack it. (i mostly see this on TikTok, not Tumblr tbf)

i don't care if you ship BruDick or not, but it's not weird for canon content to imply or state Dick had a crush on Bruce when he was first taken in. even in canon where Dick sees Bruce as a "father figure" in the most generous sense, that bond took years to build and when Dick was freshly orphaned, he *had* the memory of loving parents and didn't want Bruce to fill that role. you don't have to ship BruDick, you don't even have to like batcest, but if you're vitriolic toward just the idea that "hey maybe a young kid on the cusp of puberty might have some weird feelings to work out about the canonically very attractive mysterious playboy who took him in before seeing him as family because that bond took years to build" is nasty and terrible and wrong to you, you don't like the Batfamily, you just like the nuclear "neat" version of it in your head

the Batfamily characters are *all* too hypercompetent. like all of them are just *too* good at what they do that in order to write them in interesting arcs together, you have to willingly make some of them OOC in order to not immediately have the Problem wrapped up. i get it, Bruce is the greatest detective, Tim is wicked smart, Jason's a heavy hitting brawler, but we've reached a point where all of these characters have so many buffs they're not *fun* anymore. especially not in a group setting where you need to justify them needing each other's help. and even worse-so when they interact outside of the Gotham, you end up making every non-Batfam character seem useless just to make the Batfamily look cool. it's exhausting. i want to see these characters lose fights, look stupid, and not be the best for once. they're all getting so good they're just kind of. boring. which is the worst sin for a character, IMO.

i think we should go like. a good year of all Justice League-related teams not having a single Bat on the roster. just as a cleanse so *someone else* can shine. i get why non-Batfam DC fans are sick of the Batfamily bc jesus. it's oversaturation of the market.

power scaling "who would win" fights are fucking boring and i don't care. that's the least interesting thing about the fandom. you're missing the point of all of these characters if you only care about who could win a brawl. also it's just a stupid debate because the answer will *always* be: whoever the author of the comic wants to win.

the Batfamily is too damn big. i love every single one of them do not get me wrong. i'd die for the little niche characters who are likely never going to be relevant again like Julia Pennyworth or Kate Spencer. but it's too fucking big at this point. it's insisted to us that these characters are family but like. half of them have barely existed on the same page together more than once. it's ridiculous and it cannot sustain itself. none of these characters are allowed proper shine because they'll just get dropped for the next new shiny character. i think Maps Mizoguchi is a cool lil lady, but i know in my soul in like. three years she will fade into comics limbo and we'll have a new shiny character to fawn over. it's a brutal cycle bc DC doesn't know how to give any of these characters follow through, just wants to wave around cool new concepts.

both Under The Red Hood and Death In The Family are mediocre adaptations and strip the most important emotional elements of Jason's story from the plot. you can't properly adapt Jason's death if you leave his mother out of it. like they're phenomenal movies as their own pieces of media, but they lack the necessary emotional weight for Jason.

on the note of adaptations: the Young Justice cartoon is i think the best case study of "how do you react to a piece of media that's amazing on it's own, but is a fucking horrible adaptation?" because like, i can't discredit it. it's a good show. but it's a bad adaptation and i think people using it as an entry point for DC can make their views of certain characters and teams *very* warped. the Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey movie falls into a similar vein for me. if that movie was it's own thing with original characters, it'd likely be a top five movie for me. but because it's *such a fucking bad adaptation* i can't help but hate it for brutalizing the characters and the general concept of the BoP. it should've been a Gotham Sirens movie, and Young Justice should've been a Teen Titans show. and sure, adaptations don't owe us accuracy, but they have negative effects on the comics when they gain popularity. so i struggle to like Young Justice bc of how badly it's affected certain characters.

also on the note of adaptations: the best adaptation of how comic media operates is the Sandman tv show. adapting comics to tv shows or movies is difficult bc comic arcs don't operate the way show/movie arcs do, but the Sandman show proves it's absolutely doable to adapt the storytelling style while still making the typical adjustments you need for an adaptation.

DC needs more Deaf representation. in most areas, DC either matches Marvel or outperforms Marvel with representation of marginalized identities, but it's fucking tragic we have no deal Deaf rep in DC whereas Marvel has quite a few to pick from. this one is personal bc i'm Deaf but it does fuck me up the only option we have is a side character from Tim Drake: Robin who doesn't appear anywhere else and isn't a great character overall. DC i'm in your walls.

on the note of representation, if i see one more person say Titans had "perfect casting" while in the same breath admitting Dick was whitewashed, you are weird and i dislike you. it's really fucking weird that whitewashing is permissable to this fandom if the actor cast/fancast is hot. Dick should've been a Roma actor. Damian should not be fancast as a white actor. it's the bare minimum.

i have so many more but i will end with this especially controversial one: Dan Mora's art is overhyped. that man has the worst same face syndrome i've ever seen and i will not lie half the time i can't tell which Robin he's drawing. his art is technically gorgeous and it's so pretty to look at, but begging for every comic series to be drawn by him is boring and terrible. the art style of a comic reflects it's genre. wanting all comic art to look like Dan Mora's art is sucking the style out of comics. i miss art styles like Todd Nauck's that clearly reflected the genre of the comic.

i lied i have one more i'm REALLY passionate about: Tim's vigilante name after Red Robin should not be bird-themed. naming him Sparrow or Cardinal is *just* as bad as naming him Red Robin longterm. they're *just* as derivative and they *sound* cool but don't hold any real unique identity for Tim outside of Robin. like it baffles me we all agree he needs to move on from Robin and then decided "let's name him Robin Lite". if he has a bird name, it should be Jackdaw so at the very least, he's not red anymore. and Jackdaw could be a fun callback to Drake, in that it uses part of Tim's real name (his middle name, Jackson) while standing out a bit. but if i really had creative control i'd give him a completely unique name. if it has to be Batfamily related, Gray Ghost. but in my head, his name should be Conspiracy. i could write a lengthy meta on why and tbh it is based in my love for the Question and wanting Tim to have a similar detective noir-esque gritty solo, but i genuinely don't think he should be Cardinal or Sparrow. those names only continue his identity issues of being trapped as either Robin or a Robin knockoff.

[empire-of-the-words]

I am quite new to the DC fandom in general and I'm interested in your Catholic Cass Idea :D

So what's the general idea?

Hi! This is kind of late, sorry 😅 I hope the length makes up for it

So this actually all started with a Jason Todd-centric WIP that has yet to see the light of day, where I needed Jason to meet more characters out of costume, so I made him Catholic and go to the same church as Jean-Paul Valley, who's also introducing Cass to Catholicism because he thinks she could really benefit from it, which then grew into a plot bunny of what Catholic Cass would actually mean

The thing is, Cass is haunted by her mistakes, in a way that's ironically reminiscent of people's ideas of Catholic guilt, to the point where I think she would have trouble believing in God's mercy. She would have trouble believing that going to Confession actually forgave her sins, and that God could actually forgive her, a murderer. It just wouldn't make sense to her, despite her ability to comprehend it for everybody else

But since Catholic guilt isn't something (supposed to be) encouraged by real priests, it would turn into a point of contention. Story wise, I think the best setting would be OCIA (for non-Catholics, this means Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, aka classes about Catholic teachings), where Cass could freely clash with the priest (or whoever's running it), with the story leading up to her first Confession

From the vigilante/secular side of the story, the plot would come from Cass's past. David Cain would be the obvious choice, but I think a better one would be the family of the guy she killed. Maybe they're a suspect in a crime or something, and Cass is silently struggling because she’s afraid to admit to her murder

The story would have to have a scene where Bruce learns about the murder and (eventually, at least) embraces Cass anyway, which might help push her to understand how God can forgive her (Babs would also play a role but the idea of Father is important here)

This is all a bit vague at the moment, but yeah! I think Catholicism would be really hard for Cass, but would give her a lot of peace once she has a chance to grow, which is of course what the Church wants!

Thanks for the ask! ❤️

[amageish]

With Wayne Family Adventures returning, I would like to overanalyze one panel from one of the preview images, as I have not been able to stop thinking about it...

[ID: Picture of Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake sat in a kitchen area. Tim sits in a chair while Steph sits on the table, giving him a pat on the head and smiling. In the bottom-left corner of the screen, bunches of lavender are visible. End ID.]

So, this panel is a nice moment between Stephanie Brown and her ex-boyfriend Tim Drake, with Steph giving Tim a supportive pat on the head. This may indicate that we will see them discussing their relationship history in some form this season - like the many, many, many other cases of “Thing that comic fans wanted to see acknowledged in canon is done better in the webcomic” before it. But that’s not what I find interesting.

What I find interesting is the flowers in the leftmost corner of the panel.

Drawn in a surprising amount of detail, we see a bundle of lavender. Now, this isn’t wholly interesting in of itself - Stephanie Brown does love purple, after all - but I find the choice of lavender specifically to be really neat and potentially meaningful given the history of Steph and Tim specifically and the mantles of Robin and Batgirl more broadly.

Lavender is a flower that has often had queer meaning assigned to it, dating all the way back to the early 1900s. The flower and references to it have often be used as code for queer community in a similar way to how rainbow flags are used as symbols of queer community.

[Content Warning: The next paragraph will include discussions of homophobia and systemic oppression of queer people more broadly.]

This unfortunately includes the Lavender Scare, the 1950s anti-gay crusade that ran parallel to the Red Scare. That period, horrific in its oppression of queer people in many different ways, also had a surprisingly major influence on the history of comic books in general and Batman in particular. The publication of Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 argued that comic books were having a negative influence on the youth of the day, including claiming that Batman and Robin were gay lovers and that readers would be “corrupted” by their relationship. In response to this book and the massive amount of scrutiny it put them under, comic book publishers founded the Comics Code Authority to regulate their content and DC created the characters of Batwoman and Batgirl as love interests for Batman and Robin in order to “prove” their heterosexuality.

With this in mind, I find the choice of lavender in the frame of this image really interesting. While Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake are not the Batgirl and Robin of the Lavender Scare, they are still a broken-up Batgirl/Robin pairing. Tim Drake is now an explicitly queer man, in a relationship with Bernard. Stephanie Brown has not been made explicitly queer, though the coding is certainly there in several of her appearances (mostly famously in her reaction to Zatanna in Rebirth Young Justice and her relationship with Cass in Future State). With this in mind, the flowers feel like a kind of cheeky nod to the past and how we are now able to move forward - in new, queerer, more lavender directions.

Or, y’know... Maybe Stephanie Brown just really likes purple and I’m thinking about this too hard... Who knows!

[fantastic-nonsense]

Wait some trades are better than others?

The general answer is "yes," especially if you're comparing older trades to newer trades. While most of the time, it generally doesn't matter which editions you have, sometimes different trade editions of the same run/event can collect different issues. They can potentially leave out issues that are actually important for contextualizing or understanding an arc or event, or maybe they leave out some of the single one-off issues because they don't fit in a larger arc.

Example A: The No Man's Land trades. The original trades collected just over half of the issues actually involved in the storyline (I think the exact number was 40-41 out of around 80 relevant issues). Newer editions (including the 'modern' collected editions from 2011, which are the ones still on the shelf in comic shops) had a much more comprehensive collection of the event arranged in a much more understandable order. They also published a new Cataclysm trade and a two-volume 'Road to No Man's Land' set that clearly noted their connection to NML and grabbed a bunch of connected issues that led up to the event:

Sometimes, issues don't get printed at all, or get printed in odd places; this happened with Steph's Batgirl run, where the Red Robin/Batgirl crossover issue Batgirl #8 was only printed in Tim's Red Robin trade but not in her own trade, and Cass's Batgirl run, where a whole section of her run never got published in any of the various 1st edition trades:

Sometimes, these publishing gaps happen because they're event tie-ins and so are published elsewhere (Batgirl #24, 27, 29, and 33, for example, are part of the Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive storyline and so are published in those trades rather than the Batgirl trades), but sometimes they just......never got collected anywhere. The only way you can ever find them is by grabbing the single issues.

So as you can see, different trades (especially trades collecting events) can include different issue sets put in slightly different orders, which gives a slightly different picture of the event. Sometimes, comic companies will even leave specific pages out of trades because they feel like they're unnecessary or paint a different picture of what happened. Most notably, the Under the Red Hood trade famously does not include the final page of Batman #650, the arc's last issue, because it subtly implies that Jason died (again) in the building explosion during Bruce and Jason's final confrontation, a decision DC obviously backtracked on due to fan response to UTRH:

So sometimes, it's about the actual content. However, it can also be about the physical quality of the trade itself; trades produced in the early 2000s, for example, often have a very rough newspaper-like quality to their pages. It's not necessarily bad because it makes trades cheaper to produce and buy, and sometimes it can actually enhance the art (I'm thinking of the Wonder Woman: Land of the Dead trade here), but most of the time it just feels cheap and flimsy. For example:

Pictured: a page from Batgirl (2000) #28. Trade on the left is the first edition trade, Batgirl: Fists of Fury, and trade on the right is the newer edition, Batgirl: Point Blank. (Please ignore the UTRH trade holding them both open; they wouldn't stay open on their own, lmao)

The newer trade has a glossier sheen to the pages, the colors are more vibrant, and the bubble dialogue (which can't really be seen here, unfortunately) is slightly easier to read.

Occasionally, older trades are superior, either because they're arranged in a better order, collected in a way that more sensibly divides up story arcs, contain issues that have never been reprinted elsewhere, or because they include better bonus content. But as a rule of thumb, newer trades tend to be more comprehensive and better arranged, especially compared to trades published in the late 90s/early 2000s.

However, I will note that most of the time, it really just comes down to preferred cover choices and personal preferences; I continue to refuse to update my 3-volume 1st edition set of Steph's Batgirl run for the new 2-volume set, even though Batgirl #8 is collected in the new editions, because I like the covers DC chose for the first editions more.

[jinmukangwrites]

i'm not a big fan of DC, but I have a general knowledge of it. Perhaps something to do with some some family bonding with the bat family? it doesn't have to be fluffy, but it would be nice to see that something nice is happening to this found family of people, even if it's small. good luck and may you have success and fortune in your future!

So this ended up not being a drabble. Oops. Listen, I've been wanting to write a camping-esque fic for a long time and somehow this just ended up being it. >.<

-o-o-o-o-

It is Dick's first camping trip.

He's young, bright eyed, and smiling like there's nothing to be down about even though Bruce knows they're both painfully aware it's only been a month since his world quite literally fell apart.

Bruce doesn't really know what he's doing, having not gone camping himself in what must be over a decade, but he still successfully sets up a decent tent large enough for four sleeping bags, but has more than enough room for two. Alfred is on a well deserved vacation, so there's no need to make room for a third one. It's just Bruce Wayne and his new ward Dick Grayson, alone in the wilderness with a bag of marshmallows open between the two of them and a campfire crackling in front of them. It's Dick that shows him how to roast the perfect "mallow", and that apparently involves shoving the entire marshmallow into the center of the flame and laughing maniacally until it blackens and chars. Bruce almost has a panic attack just watching Dick bring the flaming marshmallow out to his face to blow out the fire.

Bruce remembers the times he's watched people roast marshmallows in movies, and he decides holding it just above the worst of the flames until it's a golden brown is the way for him.

There's owls hooting softly around them when the moon reaches high enough to suggest maybe calling it a night. Another tell-tale sign is Dick ever so slowly leaning against his side, all bundled up in a warm oversized jacket; marshmallow, chocolate, and graham cracker residue dried to his lips and cheeks.

Bruce stares at watches for a moment, before smiling, something he thought he lost when he watched his parents die clinking back into place in his chest. Filling him with a warmth he never thought he'd ever have again.

He scoops Dick up and bundles him into his sleeping bag. Dick is out like a light, mouth open in soft snores, and Bruce frowns, a desire in him that he doesn't understand.

He pokes Dick's shoulder gently, making sure the child is asleep, and Bruce sucks in a lungful of air. Unsure and afraid. He runs his fingers through Dick's hair, lifting up his messy bangs, and slowly bends down and presses his lips against the child's forehead. He then backs quickly away, his heart pounding.

Dick was never supposed to be his son, but pretty early on Bruce discovered how much of a lie that was.

-o-o-o-o-

It's Jason's first time camping. His second time in the mountains as well.

Dick took him skiing for his first time, but Bruce at least gets to take him for his first night out in the fresh wilderness of the Appalachian mountains. Just the two of them this time, being as Dick is still angry with him. And while that hurts, Bruce is content with spending some much needed one on one time with his newest adopted son. (Because he knows now he made a mistake keeping Dick away at arms length with the word "ward", and now it's too late to take it back. He won't make the same mistake with this one).

Jason seems more concerned with running around and climbing trees than eating marshmallows. Surprisingly, more concerned than Dick was. Though that doesn't mean he still doesn't enjoy a marshmallow here and there, especially since a new kind has come out recently that makes the marshmallows even bigger and puffier when roasted over the fire. Good for nothing but sugar. Not that Bruce minds. He can't remember the last time Jason looked so relaxed as he stands and watches Jason marvel at a waterfall they've hiked to. If it earns that kind of wide eyed unashamed smile, Bruce would gladly invest in the company making even bigger marshmallows.

Bruce finds quickly that Jason also thinks Bruce makes marshmallows wrong. He knows this because as stuck the sugary monstrosity on his roasting stick and gently held it above the fire, Jason cried out in outrage.

"You're making it wrong!" He yelled as he grabbed Bruce's arm and dragged it away from the fire. Bruce is almost afraid that he'll demonstrate how to make a proper smore by shoving the whole thing into the middle of the fire to blacken it like Dick does. He doesn't want to know what kind of mess a marshmallow this size would make on fire, but the Jason shocks him by rushing into the tent and stumbling out a moment later with a colorful bag in his hands.

Starbursts?

"Where did you get those?" Bruce asks, trying not to sound amused that Jason snuck candy with him out on the trip.

Jason snorts, opening the bag and pulling out a pink square. "I asked Alfie to get me some, because I knew you'd be uncultured in making a freaking smore."

Jason then impales the unwrapped pink starburst on the roasting stick next to Bruce's waiting marshmallow. He unwraps a yellow one and puts it on his own stick. "The red ones are gross, by the way," Jason says, sticking his stick above the fire. Bruce huffs out a small laugh and puts his stick over the fire as well.

He's not sure what he feels about the taste of roasted starburst mixing with the marshmallow, chocolate, and cracker, but Jason eats enough to gain a stomach ache.

Bruce carries him to bed too, and tucks him in, and instead of waiting for him to fall asleep, Bruce carefully pulls Jason closer to his chest, and because his arms are full of legs and arms, he kisses Jason's forehead with a layer of hair between them.

Jason doesn't pull away. Just yawns happily, and falls asleep in Bruce's arms.

Bruce decides that camping trips for Jason is definitely a thing he needs to make a regular thing. Just to see his boy look so peaceful and happy in his arms.

-o-o-o-o-

It's not Tim's first time camping. But Bruce suspects it's the first time Tim actually has fun camping, as well as his first time making smores.

Dick's here this time too, the relationship between him and Bruce held together by paperclips and string. Which is saying something, as it used to be held together by nothing at all. Bruce is just happy that he's here and that they're civil enough with each other to let Tim be a disgusting, dirty, rowdy child in the mountains for the first time in his entire life.

Tim stood at the edge of the river, but ended up being shoved in by Dick, and they both came back sopping wet and laughing.

Tim picked at the bark of a large tree, but ended up in its highest branches when Bruce lifted him over his shoulders to give him a headstart.

Tim frowned at the marshmallow bag and sticks, but ended up with a mess all over his face, pupils wide in the firelight as the sugar gave him a rush.

Bruce roastes his above the flame and Dick tries to convince Tim that sticking the entire thing into the fire is the only right way to roast a good marshmallow. When Tim looks unsure and tries both with uncertainty, Bruce takes a chance and pulls out a bag of starbursts he almost decided to leave behind.

And once Tim tries the roasted starburst s'more, the rest of the s'more actually goes forgotten as Tim decides roasted starbursts is best left left alone—he snacks on almost the entirety of the bag, and Bruce tries his best to not let the stabbing in his heart ruin the moment. He wonders how well Jason and Tim would get along if Jason... But he shakes his head, choosing instead to point out the glowing little light in the forest that isn't the stars.

It's not Tim's first time seeing fireflies. But it's his first time running through the trees with a jar, holes poked into the top to capture them.

When it gets so late that even Bruce is beginning to yawn, he corrals his oldest and unofficial youngest into the tent and frowns at how even though the packaging said it's big enough for four people, it's still quite squeezed together with two grown men and a lanky young teen.

Bruce ruffles Tim's hair, squeezed Dick's shoulder, and for once Dick doesn't flinch at his touch. Just smiles and kisses Tim's forehead. Bruce is almost tempted to copy the action, the night feeling wrong without it, but Tim has parents.

Tim isn't his son. Isn't even his ward. He hugs Tim, and finds himself hugging him tightly, only letting go when Tim voices slight confusion.

They lay down in their spots, the silence of the world being interrupted once as Tim verbally complains about Dick's feet finding themselves under his legs.

"But you're so warm, baby bird!"

The sound of Tim's laughter is something Bruce wishes he had been quick enough to record, so he could listen to it over and over and over again.

Tim's not Bruce's ward. Or son.

But it's so easy to selfishly wish he were.

-o-o-o-o-

It's not Cass's first time camping. But it's her first time camping for something other than survival. Which means it's definitely her first time making s'mores.

Taking her out to the woods is nerve-wracking in a way that it shouldn't be. She's his daughter. Officially. Legally. Not by blood. Bruce doesn't have anyone who's by blood. But she's definitely the closest thing to it in his heart. She's different from the boys. He doesn't know what to expect from her.

She doesn't go out and get all gross and muddy in the river with Tim, and she doesn't take up Dick's bet to climb to the top of the waterfall. Instead, Bruce finds her sitting nearby with a notebook in her hands, her hand scribbling away at something with a pen. She looks up at him and smiles, but closes the notebook and sets it off to the side, patting the ground next to her. He takes her up on her invitation and sits down besides her, their shoulders gently touching. He glances at the notebook, raising an inquisitive eyebrow, but she just smiles and shakes her head. He doesn't pry. She didn't grow up with a whole lot of privacy, and Bruce isn't about to take some away from her.

She sighs and leans back into the soft grass patch she found, and he lays back too, shoulders still touching. They're silent for a long time, the only noises around them being the leaves rustling and the distant sounds of Tim and Dick trying to figure out how to lash a rope around a tree near the river so they could swing into it.

Bruce finds himself, not for the first time, missing Jason more than ever. Jason is alive. He's back. But he hates Bruce and wants nothing to do with Bruce. Jason would be all over getting that rope swing to work. Bruce can practically imagine his young voice screaming in excitement as he launches himself into the water.

He forces those thoughts away, because this isn't about Jason right now. This is about the beautiful, perfect young lady laying besides him. His daughter. He looks over at her, and her eyes are closed and her lips turned up in a slight smile. Her bare toes wiggling in the breeze.

And Bruce thinks that maybe it's a good thing Cass isn't out and about causing trouble and getting dirty, because maybe to her that's not what this trip is about. Maybe it's just about showing her that she can sit back, close her eyes, and wiggle her toes in the breeze and be safe without having to feel obligated to do anything.

Because she is safe. And Bruce will never let anything hurt her.

When they roast marshmallows, she watched with amusement as Dick interrupts Bruce showing her the normal way to do it by shoving his own into the flames. She watches as Tim shows her how to carefully make a roasted starburst that isn't too stuff nor too drippy. She watches as Bruce suggests making a s'more with a starburst. And she tries them all, a frown on her lips the entire time. When no strategy seems to stick out to her, Bruce almost panics, not sure how to make the night fun and full of sugar like he wants to, but then she pops a raw marshmallow into her mouth with a curious tilt to her head, and then a chunk of raw chocolate, and then a bite of plain cracker.

She then quickly gains her own stash of untouched s'more supplies and her roasting stick goes forgotten. Bruce doesn't know what's so much better about eating the ingredients raw, but the sound of her muffled laughter behind a mouthful of marshmallow and chocolate as Dick struggles to blow out a flaming one is definitely something Bruce will not complain about or try to change.

Going to bed is a hassle. He brought two tents this time, just in case Cass wanted to sleep alone, and at first he thinks that is actually what will happen. He hugs her before they go their seperate ways, the urge to kiss her round cheeks stronger than ever, but he doesn't get the chance. Or the courage.

But he finds he didn't need to worry, because when he, Tim, and Dick are all snug in their bags, the zipper of their tent goes down and Bruce has the air knocked out of him as Cass collapses on top of him, wrapped up in a fluffy pink blanket that she bought with Barbara. Bruce finds himself grinning as he shifts to make room for her between him and the snoring Dick, careful to not nudge the half asleep Tim too much whose under his arm on the other side.

Then, when Cass is nestled in his side, she does another thing that pleasantly surprised him. She presses her lips to his temple.

And Bruce falls asleep that night not knowing what he's done to deserve Cassandra Wayne.

-o-o-o-o-

It's not Damian's first time camping. It's not his first time making s'mores. It's not even his first time having fun while camping.

Bruce was thought to be dead for almost a year, and Dick was the one who got the honor of doing those first things with Damian.

But dammit, Bruce was going to try and do this with Damian anyway, even if Damian is quiet and unsure and distrustful with Bruce.

So maybe that's why Bruce thought it was so important for it to be just him and Damian this time. Maybe this is why he didn't ask Dick how Damian liked to roast his marshmallows, or ask Alfred if he needed to bring an emergency bag of starbursts, or even considered bringing a second tent just in case Damian wanted to sleep alone.

Bruce is Damian's father. His biological one. But he doesn't feel like it.

He wants to feel like it.

He woke Damian up at the spur of the moment and coaxed the boy into the car stuffed with a weakened supply of things to get them through a surprise camping trip. Damian was too groggy in the morning to ask much questions, blinking fully awake an hour into the drive and asking with a quiet voice where they were going.

And when Bruce answered they were going to camp, Damian didn't respond with joy or excitement. Just a quiet oh that almost made Bruce pull over the car and beg Damian to let Bruce in and let him see what he's thinking.

He keeps driving, all the way until he's at the normal spot by the river and a trailhead that leads to a waterfall. Damian walks the grounds quietly as Bruce sets up the tent, his footsteps sure and curiosity lacking. He's been here before. To Bruce's perfect camping spot.

And Bruce wasn't there.

The rest of the day goes about as well as could be expected. Damian hardly says anything to Bruce, the words he does say are tense and tight, like the very thought of saying any unnecessary words to Bruce is painful. Bruce tries not to take it to heart, so he continues onward. He takes Damian hiking, he takes him to the river, and eventually they both end up at the campfire in uncomfortable silence.

Bruce watches as Damian puts the marshmallow on his stick and holds it slightly above the flames, waiting patiently for the flames to lick the white sugar golden.

Bruce sighs and risks a joke. "Finally, a son that makes s'mores normally."

He didn't expect Damian to stand up with anger in his eyes before tossing the stick down and running off into the forest. The marshmallow left forgotten as it bursts into flames in the coals.

Bruce only hesitates a second before standing up and running after his son.

Because even if he's terrified Damian wants nothing to do with him, Bruce still wants to make sure he doesn't get himself hurt in the woods.

He eventually finds Damian sitting in Cass's spot. That perfect patch of grass that's perfect for laying down in and cloud gazing. Or, this late at night, perfect for milky-way gazing.

Damian isn't looking up at the stars though. He's curled up and glaring at his feet, something suspiciously wet trailing down his cheeks.

Bruce takes in a breath, hoping bravery would enter his lungs as well, and sits down next to his son.

They're silent next to each other, for a long time, until Damian finally decides to speak up.

"You came," he says, and Bruce wants desperately to launch himself forward and wrap the boy I'm a strong embrace. "You followed me."

"I will always find you," Bruce says, and Damian sniffs.

"If... If I wasn't your kid... Would you still..."

And Bruce remembers that Damian grew up being told he was simply a tool. That he had a purpose and he was only wanted because of that purpose.

He's asking Bruce if Bruce would have still wanted him, even if their blood wasn't the same. If Bruce had no obligation to take him in and give him safety and allow him to be the second half of the dynamic duo.

Or if he would have turned the boy away.

It breaks Bruce's heart.

So he slowly reaches around Damian and pulls him closer tightly. Damian sniffles and practically launches himself into Bruce's lap, arms curling around so small that it's not a complete hug, but it's tight enough to be one of the best kinds of hugs.

"I will always want you, Damian," Bruce whispers into his hair, pressing his lips onto his forehead before he can even consider the action. "You have no need to worry. I want you more than anything in this entire world."

And they sit there, holding each other, and Bruce wonders if this is what his own parents felt for him.

And if they'd be proud of him.

Bruce carries Damian to bed after they've both let out their emotions, and even though tent is large enough to have space, he keeps Damian with him, in his arms even as he climbs into his sleeping bag.

And he's never letting go.

-o-o-o-o-

It's nowhere near Duke's first time camping, or making s'mores, or having fun, or feeling safe. But it is his first time camping with Bruce and the rest of the family.

Dick, Tim, Cass, Damian, and even Jason are all here, and Bruce won't lie and say he didn't find it amusing how intimidated Duke needlessly felt to be on a family camping trip with everyone.

It's the loudest trip Bruce had ever been apart of. The children are back to figuring out that pesky rope swing—Tim snuck a grapple hook and had the decency to look a little ashamed when Bruce noticed it—and Cass is at her normal spot with her normal notebook. Duke looks unsure and nervous, not really knowing where he fits in with all of this.

Bruce adopted most of his children when they were all young, Cass being the exception but it wasn't like she had a good experience with her last parents, so it was almost like adopting her young. But Duke is different, he's a teenager, considering college and everything. He already knows how to drive a car. He'd already had loving parents. Bruce doesn't want to step in front of that, but he still wants Duke to feel welcome and loved.

One of Bruce's favorite things in the entire world is to watch Duke slowly exit his shell that he crawls into whenever he's nervous or feeling like he's imposing. The smirk on his face that appears when Dick calls him a genius for finally being the one to figure out the rope swing. The bubbling and nervous laughter when Jason slams a hand proudly at his back when he beats the rest of the family up the waterfall in their annual race. The excited chatter when Tim shows him the best climbing tree. The relaxed posture when Cass shows him something in her notebook, and the happy smile when Cass takes his feedback in consideration. The mischievous glint in his eyes when he and Damian get into a competitive spar with pool noodles.

Bruce finds his chest so full with warmth he almost thinks it's going to burst as eventually they all end up around the campfire with roasting sticks in everyone's hands except for Cass who has her own stash of s'more supplies. Jason and Tim fight over the bag of starbursts even though Bruce was sure he brought two. Dick laughs as Damian yells angrily about his flaming marshmallow catching Damian's on fire. Cass munches on a cracker and leans into Bruce's side. Duke sits besides them all, tongue sticking outside his mouth as he concentrates on making a marshmallow that isn't golden, but isn't completely raw.

No one bugs him on his strange "I don't want it burned at all!" comment, and they all include him in their jokes and bantering. The laughter becomes do loud that Bruce is sure the entire forest can hear them.

He relishes in it. Almost feeling like he might cry.

But he doesn't. The moon rises and be ushers the kids all towards that four person tent. It's too tiny, but nobody seems to care. Not even Jason who's only made one comment about Bruce being a billionaire who's definitely rich enough to afford a bigger tent.

Because, somehow, with or without Bruce, the family had ended up close and wanting to be close together. Dick doesn't complain as Cass lays herself on top of him. Tim only snarls a little when Jason jokingly stuffs his feet in the younger boys face. Damian crawls into Bruce's side like it's the most natural thing in the world. And Duke accepts the strong hug Bruce risks and gives him. Duke then lays down with his back against Bruce's free side and his legs on top of Jason, like a puzzle piece falling into place.

And the family all fall asleep to the sounds of nature surrounding them, and the soft snores of the people they all hold dear.

And Bruce thinks that taking in a kid who's just watched his family fall from the trapeze, a kid who tried to jack the batmobile, a kid who showed up with a camera in his hands and a demand to make him Robin, a kid who decided love and happiness was more important than the way she was taught and raised, a kid who decided he didn't want to be the weapon he was born to be, and a kid who only wanted to do good after his parents were torn away from him was without question the best thing Bruce had ever done.

And he wouldn't have it any other way.

[sohotthateveryonedied]

dykegreenlantern isn’t a visual artist? Also if you think it’s all about whether you, personally, like the characters I think the point of that post went so far over your head you’re basically underground

(you’re right, i misinterpreted the art in their original posts which i guess they just commissioned from another blog or something.)

also that’s not what i meant, but thanks for asking. the point is that firing generalized accusations into the void doesn’t give anyone the authority to judge a person’s motivations. i love cass and include her in plenty of my fics, but whenever i see art of the batfamily without her in it, i don’t immediately go “that person is a bigot and hates disabled women.” they probably just don’t know enough about her. same thing with steph, duke, kate, and the others. the thing about the original post that i had a problem with was op’s assumption that saying, “i don’t include steph/cass/duke in fancontent because i just don’t know much about them!” isn’t a perfectly valid answer. plenty of people in the dc fandom don’t read comics, so of course they don’t know every single character. sometimes people write fics/make art without including every character and that’s okay. 

do i love duke, steph, and cass and believe they should be included in more fan content? hell yeah i do. but the point is that you’re supposed to educate, not condemn.

[secretlystephaniebrown]

Batman: War Games - Worst Comic Event Ever? Probably!

I had so many fucking thoughts about this trash fire of an event comic, guys.

War Games might genuinely be one of the worst things that have ever happened to comics. It's riddled with horrific art, bad writing, bad treatment of beloved characters. The few attempts at brevity, goodness, or even relief are frequently undercut by homophobia, rape jokes, transphobia, and sexism.

As a fan of multiple of the storylines which were interrupted to produce this all-time low in comic event storytelling, and a fan of characters who were fridged, character assassinated, or otherwise shoved aside in favor of a narrative where Batman shoves aside his family and is more convinced than ever that he is right and blameless in the events that happen... it was awful.

Detective Comics #796 might just be one of the only worthy reads in the entire book: Stephanie Brown comes to blows with Zsasz in her time as Robin, and the art is good, Bruce expresses concern and care for her, and in that issue, we can almost see what could have been a better story, where the two of them learned and grew together.

(More below the cut)

A highlight that I did not expect, however, was the Batman 12 Cent Adventure by Devin Grayson, which was probably one of the most empathetic perspectives into Steph’s mind at the time, and clearly showing how she had been set up to fail. Through this book, we see the set up for the War Game, in a much more detailed way than we saw pretty much anywhere else throughout the book, and we also got a brief history of the Bat Family told two ways—the way that Steph knows it, and the way that we, the reader, know it actually happened, because Steph doesn’t know most of the family’s secret identities, and is in the dark about some of the fundamentals.

What can I even say about Steph’s treatment in this comic that hasn’t already been said, that isn’t part of the narrative of War Games? Maybe I could mention the horrifically porn traced torture drawings. The way that the torture is clearly stylized as sexual assault. The way that Steph is insulted, belittled, and poorly treated, even beyond the torture and fridging. The way that this was supposed to be how her story ended. As a fan of Steph, it was horrible to read. I cannot emphasize enough how new fans seeking Steph content, should avoid this series. Reading Detective Comics 796 and her issues as Robin in Robin and Batgirl… and just… never pick up War Games properly. Don’t be like me.

The Robin issues by Willingham were… fine, if frequently sexist, and continuing the comics tradition of treating male sexual assault as harmless or a joke (Tim is forcibly kissed by a fellow student, and is cheered on for it, despite having made clear to Darla that he is already in a relationship. Later, he ends up taking her on a pseudo-date for hot cocoa. There were a few nice moments squeezed in; Tim at one point says that Stephanie and Bruce had a good relationship and brought a levity to the role that was good for Bruce… right before claiming that her making Bruce joke wasn’t that big of a deal because the joke was “rudimentary.”

Catwoman was decent enough; I’m a fan of Brubaker in general, and the bits where Selina got to bond with Steph, do her own thing, and protect the East End were lovely… but so many of the infamous torture panels occur in this book that it’s hard for me to say that these issues were worth reading.

Orpheus and Onyx though… hoo boy. Onyx had some fun moments throughout the series, being battle buddies with Cass, chatting casually with Deadshot, and things like that. But in the end, the overwhelming awfulness of Batman coercing a black vigilante into becoming a gang leader, and then the vigilante being murdered, and his face literally worn as a mask, was bad. Bruce getting Orpheus to become the leader of the Hill Gang also undercuts his own argument that he had never intended to implement the War Game to give himself control over all of Gotham’s organized Crime… because he had put Orpheus where he was specifically to control one gang already. Orpheus was done so dirty, and he and Onyx deserve to get to come back and be treated better.

Batgirl had some nice individual moments when the story focused on Steph and Cass’s relationship: Cass desperately searching for her best friend and the last time the two of them met was absolutely heartbreaking, but the rest of it was generally just more of the same, constant fighting, and it’s her sections that get to feature the transphobic joke, on top of the sexism that permeates this entire event. Cass doesn’t get too much to do in this story, which is a real pity, since I think her book was one of the strongest from this era.

Nightwing was infuriating for the simple fact of when in the Nightwing the story takes place: barely after Nightwing’s assault at the hands of Tarantula. Tarantula is given a heroic story here, protecting young children who had been recruited into gangs, and even being appointed one of Batman’s top lieutenants in the crisis. She’s referred to as Dick’s stalker, but this is treated as a joke, and she touches him and flirts with him constantly, and the only negative consequences are that Oracle becomes jealous and insults both her and Dick.

Oracle is treated generally pretty poorly in this story, snapping at everyone, insulting Cass and Dick, and while some of it could be understandable given the situation, it’s kind of annoying that so many of her early appearances in the series are playing her up as a jerk. But in the end, Babs comes through in what would be, in any other story, a brilliant ending concept, but instead ends up being undercut by the rest of the story. Trapped in the Clocktower by the Black Mask, with Batman coming to her rescue, Batman is so furious about the War that he no longer cares if he lives or dies, and is even willing to kill the Mask. To pull him out of it, Babs activates the Clocktower’s self-destruct sequences, forcing Batman to chose between vengeance and his purpose as a hero, saving her life rather than killing the Black Mask. What undercuts it, though, is that Bruce’s rage is made out to be not about the destruction that the Mask has caused, or even about Stephanie Brown, who was tortured and is dying in the hospital, but instead, about the failure of his plan. So… nearly good, I suppose.

And Leslie. Leslie is right up there with Steph and Orpheus in terms of horrible treatment. DC has never been good at understanding pacifism. Leslie yells at Cass for saving her life, constantly claims that superheroes do more harm than good, and denies Steph life-saving treatment. The character ends the series exiled to Africa, with Bruce telling her never to come back, a character who was functionally his foster-mother, and one of the most important older women in the Batman books.

War Games is emblematic of some of the worst Batman writing: the character is pig headed, cruel, and even abusive, but we are told by the narrative that he's smarter than everyone, so they should just deal with it. Repeatedly characters try to call him out on his behavior, but he tells them to stop whining and deal with it, and even when his actions backfire, it’s portrayed as a tragic inevitability that he is not held accountable for.

And the ending goes out of the way to explain that it's not his fault that beloved character Stephanie Brown died, not really, it was because mean old pacifist Leslie Thompkins was overtaken by the "Batman is blameless" virus and decided to deny a girl medical treatment. Batman declares that what happened was a war crime, and there must be war trials, but in the end, he fails to take any responsibility for his own actions, and inflicts massive amounts of trauma on the entire city.

In short? Don’t read War Games!

[dyketectivecomics]

Cassandra Cain and Zatanna Zatara for the character ask thing

I’ve got another ask waiting JUST for Cass so I’ll save her for later! (& again y’all if ya wanna send in more characters plz send them individually thanks!)

Favorite thing:

How grounded she is. With every fantastical adventure and magical obstacle she faces, no matter how much it turns her entire world around, she’s still engaging with the Normal™️ world and approaches from that mindset when she can. She knows she’s a bridge between mortals and magic and she’s perfectly content and takes pride in that job.

Least favorite thing:

Bc of this she tends to be DC/fandoms go-to magic user. Guys there’s at least TEN others y’all can use too. She’s the most well-known but Zee is a BUSY lady thanks. The burden of being A bridge doesn’t mean that she’s the ONLY one.

Favorite line:

“OGRE FLOG A GOLFER GO!” (It’s a palindrome ok? Ya just GOTTA READ THAT ISSUE)

Friend-Ships:

Ima list DinahZee later too, but that’s bc I love BOTH their friendship+romance. Uhh, otherwise LOVE how she’s kinda started building a rapport with Kirk & Bobo in JLD, and just when she makes friends with Magic users in gen? LOVE LOVE LOVE the banter she has with her Crew too

Romantic-Ships:

Magicblazer, DianaZee, DinahZee, Covenshipping 2.0, Batanna, IvyZee, Catanna, NightmareMagic, Zee13 but only bc I like that being a Consistent Part of her History and also a Regret™️ lmaooooooo oh WAIT AND MIKEYZEE. That’s StageMagic hahaha

Don’t Ship at all much anymore:

Can’t think of any off the top of my head, other than Chalant sometimes making me Grumpy. But that’s bc WhYJ in general makes me Grumpy for what they did to Zee lmao

Random Headcanon:

Absolutely gives impromptu street shows on her days off. But she has a self-imposed rule to ONLY use sleight-of-hand for those moments. It’s how she puts in Practice when she’s trying out new, close-up tricks. Also some-what related: if she’s setting up a Three Card Monte op for the day, she tries to suss out marks that give Vibes. Whether those Vibes are Good or Bad will determine how the game goes for them lmao

Unpopular Opinion:

Zee COULD be OP, but anyone who says that she’s OP unironically doesn’t understand her. Magic takes a toll on her just like it does anyone else. She’s not an endless magic battery that can just keep speaking the universe into inverting itself forever. She can do a lot of impossible things, but that doesn’t mean she can make it stick forever. Or that she wants to make it stick.

Song I Associate with them:

Currently? Stevie Nicks’ “Rooms On Fire” Generally I associate Stevie+Fleetwood with Zee & most magic users already but this ones really HITTIN it for me for Zee today

Fav pic of them:

The variant cover for Zatanna #3 (by Brian Bolland) is one of the BEST pics of Zee. Just such a Classic™️ Celeb Look. Altho it’s TIED with her outfit+how she carries herself at the end of Zatanna #7 but I don’t wanna stretch this post any further lmao

[littleeyesofpallas]

I don’t usually dwell on American cape comic shenanigans too much, because it’s a fast and loose kind of writing that doesn’t really play well with being scrutinized or really thought about at all, at least any longer than it takes to get through a page, but man... this whole Tynion IV Batman thing is still rubbing me the wrong way...  and what bugs me is how it’s definitely not all “bad,” and in fact a lot of the build up is great, but then the resolutions (or lack there of) are massive let downs, but then also he keeps skirting by with these loose ends that feel like they weren’t forgotten but that they might get picked up later.  It would almost suggest he has a real big picture planned as a through line across multiple stories...

So, when Tynion took over with issue 86 and Their Dark Designs, he actually provided a great premise: In the aftermath of City of Bane and Alfred Pennyworth’s death, Bruce muses over his apparent old habit of sketching himself little snapshots of an idealized Gotham he holds in his head.  We have a clear establishment of the theme of Design, and also the idea that Bruce has an end game in mind.  He’s not just reacting to crime as it happens, he has a long term plan.  This is a genuinely good angle to have for a Batman story.

To build on this, we learn that Lucius is working on some new tech for Bruce and he specifically marvels at how far Bruce’s war on crime has escalated.  The bat-gear hasn’t just been getting more sophisticated over the years, its development is beginning to outpace its practical applications.

Additionally, we get a weird kind of distraction of a B-plot with various master assassins convening in Gotham under a singular organized job, but among them the spotlight falls on Deathstroke.  Does Tynion talk about Deathstroke being one of the classic anti-batmen?  Does he talk about Deathstroke’s healing factor?  No.  He talks about Deathstroke’s augmented brain processing faster than Bruce can keep up with (a trait most authors tend to overlook with Slade); this means his only means of competing with Slade is to have a plan that puts him down before his super fast brain can think of a way out, because implicitly he will out think Batman given time, and if they’re both whittled down to adapting to one another in the moment, Slade wins.

Again, our theme is Master plans/Designs/end games.

Enter the heretofore unmentioned legendary, nigh mythical, Gotham villain named The Designer has reemerged after an indistinct time missing from the criminal underworld.  His claim to fame is planning 20 steps ahead, outpacing his adversary’s planning to snub any and all resistance utterly and completely.  

He’s brought up because he once mentored Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman, and Joker in their early days(and in their 90s era outfits as a clever reference) and apparently the master plans he devised with each of them that were never enacted have been queued up by “someone.”  Designer is back, but he’s supposed to be dead; In a painfully uninteresting, cliche “twist” Joker was too KuHrAaZzY to handle and Designer turned on him rather than finish his tutelage, and in the ensuing firefight the 4 Gotham rogues killed the legendary Designer.

So, there are a lot of fun questions this raises, like who the apparent new Designer is, what his plan is, and what he wants...

Bruce has another run in with Slade and launches into an awkward, kinda whiny rant where he tells Slade that if only super villains hadn’t wasted so much of his time escalating the arms race of powers and gadgets and gimmicks, that he could have fixed Gotham years ago.  So, here we are again, this idea of plans, of reactionary escalation, and of the absolute need for a master plan that snubs the opposition before they can react and learn.  Batman beats Slade, of course, which just goes to show what we’re always meant to assume from Batman anyway, that he already had Slade beat from the get go.  He had a plan; Batman always has a plan.

So this is super cool!  It took us kind of a plodding 6 out of 9 issues of this story to get here, but this is a good place!  We know Batman has a master plan for Gotham, we know from what we’ve heard about plans/Designs as a theme that means he’s already got all his villains accounted for, and that he’s just going through the motions: turning the wheels to make the machine work.  It’s only a matter of time, now.

I’ll be honest, my thought at first when I was reading these?  I thought The Designer was Batman, or some part of Batman’s plan.  That he’d resurrected this mythical villain as part of his own master plan, to perhaps trick all his biggest adversaries to go all in on a singular massive criminal enterprise that Bruce had already designed from the get go to fail, and to take them all down with it once and for all.  It fit the profiles, and it felt like the natural direction this all was headed...

But then it was just The Joker.  Designer really was dead, Joker brought him back, stole his master plan and pulled it off himself.  He stole Batman’s money and gadgets, and took over Gotham (again).  That’s it.  It was a 9 issue/4 month long fucking prologue to Joker War.  And more importantly... NONE of these themes paid off, even a little...  And to be fair, if these had turned into something to be addressed and resolved in Joker War, I might have been okay with it...  But they weren’t...

Also there’s a (would be)great little moment towards the end here where we learn that The Designer’s original nemesis, a master detective whom he crushed and humiliated, once taught Bruce “how to lose.”  And this went nowhere.  But it could have been super interesting, because what exactly does that even mean?  Does it mean learning to accept loss and move on?  Does it mean letting the opponent’s plan succeed because if they put everything into the one plan, then it means they never actually had a follow through, so now the board is wiped clean and everyone’s back to square 1?  What exactly was the point of bringing back the Designer’s legacy if we just learned that the real Designer wasn’t even the master mind of this whole story?

So then we meander into Joker War, curiosity still piqued, but expectations drastically lowered...

Joker has all Batman’s gadgets: that’s actually kind of cool.  I like the idea of Joker having infinite resources and Batman being the one working underground.  It’s kind of been done before in pieces, but never quite as explicit as this.  It’s not genius, but its a solid premise.  Joker goes on a meta-rant about people watching “the classics” over and over, and audiences being content to see the same old story, provided it’s done right.  (A bold called shot, Tynion.)  

And we glimpse the mysterious future Batsuit that apparently Bruce doesn’t remember designing.  It’s kind of a throwback to the gray and blue look of the silver age Batman, when comics were a little more cheery and goofy and child friendly.  It’s a nice commentary on the idea that Bruce wants to make Gotham into a better place, not where he doesn’t need to be Batman, but where he can be a less grim Batman.  It speaks to Bruce’s character, his vision for Gotham, and Tynion’s nostalgia that is now being strongly established as a driving force of these stories...

Joker’s plan involves paying Gothamites, in the middle of this citywide takeover by clown gangs, to attend screenings of Zorro, at which point he’ll kill them walking out of the theaters.  Batman shows up at one theater, fights some Joker zombie things, get gassed, gets rescued by Harley and given an antidote that induces a hallucination chat with Alfred.

Laughably, in this talk Bruce admits “I failed...” when talking about letting Alfred die and letting Joker take over the city but then hallucination Alfred talks Bruce OUT of it.  So whatever it was Bruce learned about losing from the old detective, this apparently wasn’t it; this was the wrong kind of losing.

Joker mentions part of his plan was to make a new generation of heroes and villains with the massive shared trauma of the theater killings.  We’d been seeing bits of Clown Killer, but that’s it.  He actually seems pretty cool, but he wasn’t really doing much more than cameo in this.  No new villains* actually, not until the epilogue gives us the anti-hero GhostMaker.

*correction: there are a few retroactively established villains who are new to publication, but no new villains born out of the actual Joker War scenario.

The whole Batfam shows up to wrestle clowns.  For some reason Tynion or DC editorial in general went to GREAT lengths to contrive Dick being back in the old Nightwing outfit, Tim being Robin again, Cass and Steph being Batgirls, Babs being Oracle, and Damian having renounced the Robin title for this...  They don’t do jack shit; They wrestle clown goons in the background.

Yet, again one of Joker’s stupid genius plans ends with a fist fight between a highly trained martial artist and a guy in a purple suit and we’re expected to be excited about this.  Harley shows up to trick Bruce into leaving Joker to die, but of course he survives anyway...

So there are a few themes here that got heinously underutilized...  Joker’s super into this self-aware thing about this being just another Batman-v-Joker affair, and about recreating Batman’s origin, and we see this play out on the other side with the weird walk back on the Batfam’s costumes.  But we know Joker will lose, so ostensibly the bottom line here should be that, no, actually... doing the same old thing isn’t enough, and people aren’t as predictable as Joker thinks.

But if we’re acknowledging this idea that Batman-v-Joker is a thing that happens in cycles and it’s always kind of the same thing, and people are sick of it, then you know what one undeniable fact of continuity flies in the face of that?  That no matter how many times we reboot the universe and repeat this whole song and dance, Batman keeps accumulating more sidekicks.  I’d have loved if this whole thing had just climaxed with Joker “winning” in his over elaborate 1v1 grudge match only to have half a dozen extra bats bust in and kick his ass.

But more over, Batman NEVER had any sort of plan in this...  The whole lead up in Their Dark Designs, which took LONGER to set up Joker War than Joker War actually lasted, was about Bruce having this Design for Gotham...  And Joker War goes out of its way to remind us of this lingering concept, and doesn’t actually do anything with it, but tries to still dangle it over us, like... “oh no, we didn’t forget it, it’s just for later!”  And like, I’m still kind of on board for it, but less and less so the more this shit drags out without any satisfying benchmarks along the way.  And it’s just super frustrating to want to give Tynion credit for the genuinely good set up he seems to have here... Except is it still a “good setup” of it ends up not actually setting anything up?  or if what it sets up turns out to be disappointing and bad??

It’s just really bizarre to me that I honestly kind of desperately want to like Tynion’s Batman (Clearly I’m having a fucking field day digging my teeth into it) but in spite of the good that’s there, and the clear forethought that appears to have gone into it, he keeps tripping himself up somehow.

[bat-lings]

Opinion on Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne relationship as a father-son?

ALRIGHT the human rambling disaster that I am struck again

Jump to the conclusion if it’s too long!

It’s just really hard discussing anything about Jason without acknowledging the sheer mess that DC’s whims made of him. To take that inconsistency into account let’s consider his relationship with Bruce from three angles:

Before Jason’s death / during his Robin days as portrayed before Starlin;

Before Jason’s death / during his Robin days as portrayed since Starlin and up until Jason’s resurrection, through mentions & flashbacks;

Post-resurrection.

Sadly enough the first era is the only one that bothers to portray a father-son dynamic with enough content to have a real opinion on, but I’ll take what I have. And what we have then is pretty great.

Jason’s Robin days

We’re in the 80’s, and Jason & Bruce’s relationship is the most ridiculously pure thing to have graced our poor souls. It’s soft and good.

They have great interactions, a real proximity, and overall bring a lot into each other’s life. Alfred and Bruce are happy to have another kid at home, and Jason is as much in need of guidance & of a family as any other kid. Jason doubts himself a lot and Bruce does his best to reassure him. He’s also is a teasing little shit and that’s great.

[Batman #377 || Detective Comics #579]

[Detective Comics (1937) #573]

JASON YOU’RE TOO CUTE. Also the tired dad feel is strong in that one lmao. Jay, lad, my son, my life,, what have you done to the newspaper,,,,

Ahem right, less gushing more commenting.

As you can see, Jason and Bruce’s relationship before his death/resurrection is pretty peachy. The slice of life sequences strengthen their father-son bond into the reader’s mind. We’re shown they’re father and son rather than just told so.

At some point Bruce’s custody of Jason is temporarily threatened, and that arc is a vivid telling of how strong their bond is.

[Detective Comics #542 || Batman (1940) #377]

Just. That whole speech. “Only Jason is real.” Definitely one of my favorite papa-bat moments.

And as Robin? Jason is clever, often brings valuable insight during cases, and respects Bruce’s teaching and authority. Bruce makes a good job at addressing Jason’s insecurities and guiding him, both through his training and by honing his moral compass.

(Note that I said honing, ‘cause Jay’s moral sense is very much present well before he meets Bruce. He was cool with stealing to survive but Ma Gunn’s school was too much for him.)

He’s initially nothing like the violent angry kid he’s now known as. Pre-Starlin, the only times Jason acts brashly is when confronted with his father’s killer. When Bruce addresses the matter, it’s not about blaming or judging him. ‘Cause he gets it, but it’s also his job to make sure Jason’s not compromised.

[Detective Comics #580 & 581]

And when Jason promises to keep himself in check, it’s all it takes for Bruce to take him back on the case. That’s how much he trusts him. Read the end of the issue and see how Jason proves himself worthy of that trust.

Not only does Jason understand Bruce as much as Bruce understands him, but he’s very perceptive in general. He tends to be straightforward with what’s on his mind… at least when it comes to calling out Bruce lol

[Detective Comics #579]

(They’re talking about Leslie on the last one btw. She was Bruce’s surrogate mom after his parents’ death and they have a great dynamic. Another pearl straight outta the 80′s!)

They get each other, they trust each other, they respect each other. Honestly Bruce’s relationship with Jason was the most healthy he’s had with any of his kids.

We can kiss all of that goodbye after Starlin has his way with Jason. And since Starlin’s “““characterization””” is the one that crossed the years, of all things, we can consider Jason’s initial portrayal pretty much retconed— and his relationship with Bruce with it. Shame, huh?

Of Flashbacks and Victim-Blaming Robin days, 2.0

From the 90’s to the reboot there is… few material about Jason’s relationship with Bruce. Or about Jason outside of his death/Robin.

Whether Jason is mentioned or appears in a flashback, the goal isn’t to recall a father-son relationship. It’s to drive through the point that Jason was reckless and violent. That new portrayal has its predictable impact on their relationship, and that’s pretty much all there is to say.

[Gotham Knights #43]

Obviously Bruce doesn’t trust Jason, since Jason is now a “reckless angry kid who likes to inflict pain on criminals”. Beatty delivers cool stories, but if you read that arc you’ll see that he lies it very thick when it comes to victim-blaming Jason.

Depending which writer/comic book you’re reading, it’s implied or affirmed that Jason is Bruce’s son. You’ll probably have a line about Bruce’s unending guilt, or Jason’s (*sigh*) recklessness. Mostly Jason’s a cautionary tale addressed to either Tim (who never gave much of a shit about Jason btw) or Cass (Batgirl #7 is a rare instance where it’s done without victim-blaming because Pucket is da bomb).

But there’s legit no material about Jason’s childhood in the Manor, or how him and Bruce acted around one another, what they talked about, Jason’s personality aside of “angry”, how Bruce addressed his son’s self-doubts – oh right modern!Jason is an arrogant brat who claimed the Robin mantle for himself so that’s out.

DC rolled with Starlin’s portrayal, and didn’t bother to construct anything else between Jay & Bruce to replace the parts they chose to erase.

[Batman (1940) #645]

The point is: Jason and Bruce’s father-son relationship before Jason’s death is barely spoken of. We don’t know shit about how Jason was as a kid. Bruce loved him but didn’t trust him since his “mean streak” made him sooo dangerous and unmanageable. That’s it. Jason is the bad Robin first, the dead Robin second, and Bruce’s son last.

Resurrection and onward

Jason and Bruce’s relationship post-resurrection is complicated, for obvious reasons, and has interesting potential. My main problem with it is that it’s seldom addressed after Jason makes his dramatic return in UtH & the arc is closed.

For all that I have a love-hate relationship with Winick’s writing, and for all that I don’t like everything he’s done with Jason, his narrative is mostly coherent (and a good read overall!).

Winick doesn’t talk outward about Jason and Bruce’s bond before Jason’s death, but enough is implied. Jason’s damaged psyche centers around Bruce and what wrongs Jason considers to have suffered from him. He reorganizes his entire identity and actions around Bruce.

It’s not only consistent with Jason’s mental health at this stage, it’s telling of Bruce’s importance for him. The same way Bruce must have been his world after he took him out of the streets, Bruce is still very much his world when Jason is on a vengeance frenzy.

Killing Bruce, taking revenge against Bruce, making a point to Bruce; everything is about Bruce. It’s the whole “the opposite of love is apathy not hate” thing. DC could’ve expanded on that and made it evolve into whatever, but they just, y’know. didn’t.

[Batman (1940) #650]

I like Under the Hood and Lost Days well enough except for the Jason/Talia ugh. Problem is, DC obviously had no idea what to do with Jason after that, so his relationship with Bruce stays at a status quo.

Post-resurrection Jason isn’t so much estranged family than an antagonist who makes some cool appearances here and there— when they’re not so terribly written that they make me cringe.

There are some other interesting things here and there, giving depth to Jason’s estrangement from Bruce & the batfam…

[Green Arrow (2001) #72]

… but those elements are few and far between, and fail to establish a solid construction/development of any kind between Jason and Bruce. UtH!Jason put on some interesting bases but afterwards? Jason as a character is stagnating, and so is his relationship with any member of the batfam.

And then there’s the n52 & Rebirth I guess. It obviously wants to deliver a father-son narrative, but doesn’t do great job at it. Again, aside from a few cute scenes, the “he’s my son but he does baaaad things” eternal dilemma, and Jason’s newfound proximity with the batfam coming out of nowhere (especially with Tim wtf), I didn’t find much content to have a solid opinion on.

(Salty) conclusion

My opinion of Jason & Bruce’s father-son relationship is that it’s hella cute pre-Starlin and that Winick’s version of it makes sense within his Under the Hood & Lost Days narrative (I personally cut out “bad seed Jason” and keep most of the rest).

I think we lost a lot of potential when Starlin’s work became the reference. I think the Red Hood and his baggage with the whole fam could’ve been richer and more interesting if Jason’s initial characterization was kept in mind.

Yes, Jason and Bruce’s initial relationship could’ve used some more tension/conflict in between the sweet moments but… as far as I’m concerned Starlin’s writing wasn’t the way to go.

I think the only way to build a coherent interpretation of Jason & his relationship with the fam is to make a patchwork of canon elements and to fill in the blanks yourself. Thus what I have on Jason & Bruce that takes the Red Hood into account isn’t so much an “opinion” on canon material than a personal construction.

I’m sorry Anon, I bet that’s not what you expected when you sent that ask, but it’s all I have to give :’) Hope the answer is still okay & thanks for the ask!

[fancyfade]

Hi! I really love your Oracle posts. I haven't read a lot of Batfam stuff, but I think Barbara really is at her best when she's Oracle, and it's a shame that DC keeps trying to ignore that part of her character history. I was wondering if you could give me some recommendations as to where to start reading Oracle, and what comic runs to avoid?

Okay, so first I am glad you love my oracle posts ^_^ thank you! and she is definitely at her best as oracle.

Sadly I don’t have any oracle reading lists set up atm but i’ll tell you what I read

I read Birds of Prey (1998) which was 127 comics long. the most oracle content is in the first half, the team gets bigger and then the oracle content starts getting less and less there.

so I would start at Birds of Prey #1-46. This is Chuck Dixon’s run and somehow the weird conservative guy was the only one who didn’t do a magicure plot.

the issues he did that I would definitely skip here are 28, 29, and 30 when you’re reading because they struck me as really racist.

If you don’t like Chuck Dixon as a writer (and I wouldn’t blame you) i’d only read the best issues, which are outlined below:

The best issues in the chuck dixon run for oracle content IMO are Birds of Prey #8 (which has some very important things wrt quality of life and disability articulated) and Hunt for Oracle, which shows us just how formidable Oracle can be in her home turf. That was a crossover issue between Oracle and Nightwing  (nightwing 45, Birds of prey 20, nightwing 46, birds of prey 21). there are other issues i like her in, but those ones stick out in my head as don’t mis.

Then there are 10 issues of guest writers which sucked. one had a magicure plot, the other just brought nothing but some weird romance drama.

then there’s the gail simone run.

the pros of the gail simone run is she is much better at writing women than chuck dixon and seems to be a better writer in general. the downside is now the cast is larger and she also decides to do a magicure plotline eventually (temporary but i still hate it). to the best of my knowledge there wasn’t a huge deal made of it and oracle wasn’t like “oh now i’m whole” like she was in Terry Moore’s writing but still. it was unnecessary.

So far, I’ve re read 56-65. it establishes a nemesis for oracle and i like some of her dynamics there, and she gets to be scary. there is also a lot of black canary and shiva content you might enjoy if you like those characters.

i will be cataloguing my favorite issues and least favorite from gail simone’s run later, but since i only read through it once it’s less fresh in my memory.

outside of birds of prey, i like barbara in no man’s land. in no man’s land volume one, we see the fact that with the infrastructure in gotham crumbling, she is at a disadvantage that able bodied people are not, but also due to her preparations and the fortifications of her base she has a lot of advantages everyone else does – she both doesn’t need to leave her apartment, because it is well defended and she has a good stock of food, but she also can’t leave it, because of the inaccessibility outside. it’s some nuance i’m not sure i see able bodied writers include often (I can’t remember who wrote this issue, so i have no clue whether they were able bodied or not).

no man’s land volume 1 also has an ending plot with azrael which had some important notes on quality of life and disability.

no man’s land volume 2 has some crossover issues with nightwing, in which babs gets to defend her base (again) and be awesome. basically any time bab’s defends her base she’s at top tier. however this part had some disappointing things, in that it was implied that barbara being in a wheelchair was what stopped her and nightwing’s relationship. weirdly enough, this showed up in nightwing but not BoP even though they had the same writer at this time. maybe there was a cowriter or something on BoP making it better or a cowriter on nightwing making it worse? IDK.

No Man’s land vol 2 also has cassandra cain’s introduction which :P not oracle, but awesome anyway.

outside of no man’s land and birds of prey i’m not really sure where to go. birds of prey is barbara’s longest running series, it starts as a duo title between her and black canary and gradually the cast gets bigger (most cast expansion happens in simone’s run).

there is also a 3 issue solo mini series called Oracle: the Cure. despite appearances, it is not about magicuring. it had some good content, IMO, but also be warned: If you are pedantic about comics matching reality or at least being possible, the “computers are magic” vibe here might frustrate you :P

for more oracle as a side/supportive character, she appears a lot in Batgirl (2000-) as a mentor for Cassandra (though I dont’ remember a ton of moments that make me think this is an essential oracle series. We do see that she tries to keep some of Bruce’s unhealthy habits away from Cass and protect her, but also that Cass feels a bit stifled and like barbara is being overprotective or trying to force her into doing “normal” things) and Batgirl (2009-) as a mentor to stephanie brown. In batgirl (2009-) she interacts with another woman who became disabled and now uses a wheelchair, and sort of takes her on as a protege, which I liked, but she’s not the main character. the main character is stephanie.

[oh-mother-of-darkness]

asks (21)

Anonymous said: Hi! Do you still like Tim Drake?

More than I can describe!

Anonymous said: Please tell me those law school quotes are all from one professor

They are not, but MOST of them are from the civ pro professor. His name is Counseller, and he’s great. He got a standing ovation after his speech at my friend’s graduation yesterday. I once went to dinner at his house and a movie afterwards. He had us all hide his candy in our bags so he didn’t have to pay concession stand prices. 

@whambamthanksbatfam​ said: Do you know canonical nicknames for the Batboys?

Hold up lemme see what I have on file

Off the top of my head I can also think of times that Tim referred to himself as “Timmy” (usually while pretty young), and of course Dick has “boy wonder”

Anonymous said: What do you think will happen to nightwing comics? Writer changes in April, will they be able to reverse the amnesia arc? Do you think maybe the damage to the character is irreversible? I don't understand why they'd allow it especially after what happened when they tried to kill him off. It's also 35th anniversary of his first appearance in a few months. Looking at teen titans, jon kent's age, young justice "coming back" I feel concerned for dc comics' future ):

I’m basically taking my usual approach, which is (as far as comics are concerned)... everything will return to its most profitable form. Comics have a set form. With a few key exceptions-- changes in superhero persona, for example-- things generally make their way back to the “classic” form. Therefore I expect Dick to go back to being Nightwing, in a form we would recognize as typically Nightwing. 

Anonymous said: wait..... waitwaitwaitwait..... wait. did u just swear in that hashtag? i have followed you for like 2 years and the closest i've seen to swearing is "sweet texas on high" which ended up becoming a bad habit of mine to say irl and then have to explain where the hell i heard that, and then i said it enough that one friend started saying it as well, then it just spread like a virus in my friend group (this isn't a complaint this is just surprise and amusement. love ur blog!)

Glad to see my nonsense swears are spreading! To be honest, I (really) swear a lot. Don’t tell my mom

Anonymous said: Hey! I have to choose a quote for my yearbook and i want to do a batman/superhero quote but i cant think of one and was wondering if you could help me out? Im looking to go for kinda funny but also has a bit of meaning, ya know? Anyway thank you!

Oooooh boy lemme see

I like Alfred’s quote in these panels. I would also maybe suggest:

"Whenever someone's asked what power they wish they had, flying is always at the top of the list. But I have to admit. I've learned to love falling too." (Nightwing #142, 2008)

I don’t know how helpful I can be on this one, honestly, but there’s my two cents.

night-mom said: Hi, I have a bat-centric side blog called Bat-Losers-Inc. I just discovered some of your writing on tumblr and have been slowly going through it when I have the time. I really love how you write each character of the Batfam and how each of them feels very distinct from each other but also different from their common representations in the Batman fandom. So anyway, I was wondering if you had a favorite Bat family member to write from in terms of point of view/personality?

Hmmmm a couple of years ago, I would have said Jason. For whatever reason, I’ve always given him a talking/fighting style that’s the most similar to my own, but lately I find myself drawn to Tim and Damian. My guess? Their points of view allow me to explore some things I’ve been going through-- specifically a nasty bout of depression, anxiety, and a psychotic breakdown. I would also say that Dick is the hardest for me to write, followed by Bruce, Duke, and Cass. Stephanie is pretty easy. 

Anonymous said: For some reason, I have this huge need of some angst... Could u please do a prompt of suicide Tim? But he manages to success?? Please???

Listen. I’m definitely not going to do that, and I don’t think I need to explain why. 

Anonymous said: I reread some old B&R comics. Bruce came back from his weird time adventures and one of the first things he said to Damian was, that it was his job as Robin to make sure that Batman gets home safe. Like yeah, I guess it is? But also you're talking to your 10 year old son, I'm waiting for that mentality to bite you in the ass at some point. I mean it kind of did when Damian died to save Dick in Batman Inc. Bruce's parenting is really dangerous sometimes o_o

I agree. I’ve always had a problem anytime the Batman/Robin relationship is framed around what Bruce needs. For the benefit of the child? Sure, I’ll suspend belief for that one. Because an adult needs it? No thanks. That’s why Tim’s origin story bothers me a whooooole lot.

@therusticate said: I just read the fanfic you put out around Christmas with the files on Dick and Damien and I MELTED. There were TEARS! I’m hoping to find some more of your work on your blog; I love your writing style and how everything flows. Thank you so much for creating content! You did a fantastic job and I love it.

Oh, thank you so much! I’m particularly fond of that fic

Anonymous said: how's outlining going?

Anonymous said: what is it that you are outlining??

Anonymous said: I hope your outline turns out good and you do well ❤ you can do it!!

@couldnt-pick-a-name said: Have you finished your outlining yet?

Anonymous said: Good luck on your exams!! I hope they go well and you take care of yourself and don't get too stressed

I appreciate you all for keeping me on topic <3

Exams went... probably pretty well? We’ll find out when grades come back. I was outlining for immigration law, federal administrative law, and constitutional law-- and I did get all of them done. Hallelujah. 

Anonymous said: Young Justice 2019 just got published and I realized I haven't consumed enough YJ material!! Do you have any comic recommends??

Oooooh I guess that depends on which Young Justice you’re talking about? Original v. based on TV show? Either way, my recommendation is to look up the associated series. Original YJ (Tim, Bart, Cassie, Conner, etc.) is the 2000 version by Peter David. That team just got a reboot, and I’m reasonably sure that’s what you’re asking about. Then there’s the YJ comic based on the tv show (2011, I believe).

Either way, I like pretty much the entire series. Sounds simple, but that’s my rec. 

@dontstopkiwibea said: I've been thinking about your fic with Damien and Tim having a conversation about Tim's depression and the time when Bruce was missing. I think about all that missing time a lot and how so much /could/ have happened to Tim but didn't. And then I think about Damien being sad when Tim was dead. And then I think about Dick hearing about Tim's mental state during that time, how bad it really got, and maybe Bruce learns too. Ahhhh I don't know about you but I want more fics about Tim and getting help

Honestly? Same. I feel like there’s a lot of emotion that’s never officially explored, and that’s a problem I personally enjoy fixing. 

Anonymous said: You asked for headcanons, so: Damian likes to give Tim a hard time, and one day Damian scoffs at the idea of Tim getting a pet, saying he’d probably kill it through neglect. Tim doesn’t appreciate that and ends up with a goldfish out of spite. He learns everything there is to know, and his fish is gonna thrive, dammit. And it does. Tim comes to genuinely care for this little creature (and secretly Damian is really pleased Tim is showing such interest in something that isn’t casework or WE).

Love it! Give Tim A Fish 2019

Anonymous said: What are you most looking forward to this year?

Hmmmmm... this is maybe a lil over optimistic, but I’m really looking forward to getting better this year. I’m trying harder and I have better resources than I ever had before. 

@xylophonicsynapse said: Which of the bat-kids makes music playlists?

I’d say that all of them DO it sometimes, but the one who really gets into it is Damian. He likes his music organized, thank you very much.

Anonymous said: Hey Amy! Saw the ask about the line "The sun is UP and so is JESUS we are partying today." and I thought it was hilarious I MUST know where its from! Plz and thank you <3

Lmaoooo that was from a post on Easter

[someoneimsure]

Aghdjd cass cain x Tim Drake Anon here I KNOW it’s so hard to find tagged content of the ship I want, if there’s even that much of it to begin with. Why are there so many characters named Cassandra 😭!! Also thanks for answering the ask so in depth with panels and all that was really nice of you. If anything I think I’d be #cancelled because of the age difference between the two rather than their ‘blood’ relations but I just wanted to make sure because I never really see posts about cass being anyone’s sister, I more get the vibe that general fandom views her more as like an associate if anything? But yea you’re probably right about general fandoms reaction thanks for giving it to me straight <3

I ask myself that question every single day! Why can't DC editorial come up with names that aren't just the names of random people on staff or that one Greek myth about speaking the truth and nobody listening? It's a sad state of affairs, anon. :(

Aww, thanks!! I try to be as nice as possible! <3 I want to make sure you're informed about the facts and unfortunate realities of our fandom spaces <3

I have looked at a lot of meta on ages and can assure you that age difference would not be a problem as long as fanon knows their real ages. (Btw, Cass is only 2.5 years older than Tim and they met when he was 16-17 and her 19.)

If anyone does try to use ages against you, anon, there's plenty of real life things we can try to get them to focus on. Such as how 16 is the legal age in many states for which a young adult can have sex with someone older than them even though girls are more likely to die giving birth if they are pregnant before they reach the age of 20. Unfortunately, my experience has told me that they rarely ever read the links. :(

I also found some really nice dc meta when I started asking myself 'How do Tim and Cass see each other in canon' question and found out they have met before in Batgirl 2000 #59. I like how their relationships with Steph are brought up in this one and how their ideologies conflict but they aren't enemies, just respectful.

*stares at Batman hard*

Thanks for the ask! <3

[ouchmaster6000]

I like Joker and Harley a lot, but would like to see other batman villains get the spotlight as well, like Scarecrow, Poison Ivy or Clayface.

I'd like to see less focus on the green lanterns, but more on the red lanterns cause they're cooler. Maybe also bring Aya and Razer into the comics, they were the best part of the cartoon.

I'd also be open to more batfamily content if we got to see more Cassandra Cain, or more focus on Batgirls over the Robins (I think the Barbara as Oracle, Cass as Batgirl, and Stephanie as Spoiler dynamic worked the best, and I wish current continuity would restore that)

And hell yeah more Big Barda! More Power Girl, Black Canary, Starfire and Raven too! And give Wonder Woman more focus like Batman and Superman! More sexy DC ladies in general! But Barda and Power Girl especially need more focus than what they've been getting.

Too many Green Lanterns.

Too many members of the Batfamily.

Too many comics about the Joker and Harley Quinn.

[renaramblesaboutcomics]

Wednesday Roundup 8.8.2017

Okay quite a huge week for my pull list, though with a few sad farewells as a result of that. Will everything pass the muster? Or have we got some duds in waiting? 

Just kidding everything’s wonderful and I’m going to explain why that is.

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine, DC’s Detective Comics, DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester, Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fists, Dark Horse’s The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars, Marvel’s Silk, DC’s Titans, IDW’s Transformers: Till All Are One

Marvel’s All-New Wolverine (2015-present) #23 Tom Taylor, Leonard Kirk, Michael Garland, Erick Arciniega

Probably my favorite Marvel book coming out right now is All-New Wolverine and I think nothing has helped my appreciation for Tom Taylor as a writer grow than this book. It’s everything I’ve always wanted for Laura and more, but I won’t waste time. Let’s just dig into the specifics~

Story: We’re in the midst of an arc that’s meant to completely avoid the stink of Secret Empire but also probably will limit exposure to Laura that will be given to the stupid asshole male Wolverine they replaced her with on the main team I meant that is meant to bring us into Laura and Gabby’s first big space opera adventure, which is a proud tradition for all Marvel A-listers, and especially familiar to the X-Men. But Laura’s not with the X-Men on this trip because a forced romance with Warren isn’t being shoved in our faces. She’s here with the Guardians of the Galaxy who are enjoying their rise in Marvel prominence quite a bit, I believe.

In any case, the Brood have kidnapped Gabby and this is pissing both of them off immensely because Laura’s protective of Gabby and Gabby’s protective of Jonathan their pet Wolverine, and everybody is trying to get in the way of the Wolverine ladies living a happy life that they deserve. 

Now I don’t often give summaries but it’s difficult to really parse what this story gets right and why even as the crotchety woman that I am who usually doesn’t care for superheroes in space, I am enjoying the aliens and the epic giant crossover and the cast of thousands. And that’s because this story and this comic series is about Laura and Gabby. It’s about the sisterhood, the mother-daughter relationship, the friendship, and the just general goodness that they’ve provided for each other throughout the past 23 issues that makes all the dressing not matter nearly as much as the moments where Laura declares her commitment to getting Gabby back or Gabby’s stern rebuttal to the idea that any outcome would be possible besides Laura coming for her. That faith and trust has been earned for over 20 issues and it’s the thing that really makes this comic stand out from the majority of the comics I’m going over this week. 

This is a comic that has always been about these two characters and the loving bond that they share for one another. And it is exactly why it works to the point that I can give a hilariously complex summary like the one above without it making a real difference, and it’s why the final page is so gut wrenching for a cliffhanger.

Art: Leonard Kirk, I believe, has done the majority of the artwork for this series so far, and I really appreciate the look he gives to the title and specifically to Laura. She’s treated with every ounce of power and intimidation that you expect of Wolverine and the sexy costumes or posing are brought down to a severe minimum. Really, his designs for everyone are great and service the action of the story well because with so many aliens and sceneries to be had, the precise and direct approach makes the comic easy to follow. And I like that it manages all that without sacrificing action scenes or Kirk’s own style. 

It’s solid comic art through and through.

Characters & Dialogue: For the most part I’ve said everything that needs to be said in the story bit, but I need to again give accolades to Taylor here because of the subtle character growth he’s allowed for in the way Laura and Gabby’s world views are evolving. 

The dialogue for the two of them is very specific to their characters, but now we’re starting to see the way that they talk is having an effect on the other. Laura has become more artfully expressive about her feelings and love of others, especially Gabby, which is a change that took a long time for her and also is something her father never quite learned as well. We are a long ways away from the Laura who was ready to give Gabby up to the Jean Grey school and not look back. Likewise, Gabby has become more stern, more encouraged. She relies on Laura and believes in her so much that she doesn’t fear, another far cry away from the Gabby who was abused and misused by the lab that created her. 

Basically the characterization isn’t just good, it’s subtle and full of depth beyond what people would be expecting from a giant space opera adventure trying to avoid a storyline centered around Captain Fascism. 

DC’s Detective Comics (2016-present) #962 James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson

So, I think my Roundups are a pretty fair record for how tumultuous my relationship has been over time with Detective Comics. It’s a comic and characters I love fiercely but it’s also often subject to fair criticism of being fairly unpolished, rushed, and just generally misses a mark from time to time that’s just difficult to overcome.

A mixed bag if you will. 

And we’re coming to the close on this particular storyline “Intelligence” and I think it’s as good of a place as any to really get into the nitty gritty of what the pros and cons of this Detective Comics run is.

Story: I only recently have begun reading Jean Paul’s original solo series Azrael thanks to DC’s new campaign to volumize old comics and it’s been a surprising read. But I’ve always been familiar enough with him as a character to be fairly curious about what more stories centered around him -- and not Azabats him but him him -- would be like. And I’ve stated before that I enjoy seeing the development of his friendship with Luke and would love to see it feature more prominently. 

And in all those respects, I feel like this conclusion and really this whole storyline paid very good tribute to Azrael and Jean Paul in ways that even contemporaries of Denny O’Neil tended to miss the mark on. The complexity of his relationship with religion while also dealing with the additional stress and pressure that has placed on him with his abusive past, the allusions to mental illness which serve throughout his stories. And really just Jean Paul getting a chance to be a character in a way he certainly wasn’t in his re-introduction through Batman and Robin Eternal worked out very well with me. And I’m grateful that his injury in this battle and his paralysis are not going to be immediately erased while they do acknowledge that in this universe that’s a possibility.

I don’t really like the state reasoning for the decision or the near certainty that his disability will eventually be “overcome” but it’s better than the nothing that DC has basically given us in the way of the major titles for a while now.

Plus, consequences! It’s nice to have consequences that matter.

The magic part... well I enjoy Zatanna as a character to an extreme degree so my ability to be completely unbiased here was always going to be difficult. But this is one story where the magical elements being blended in with the spiritual.. I’m not really sure if it worked for me. It’s nice to see Zee, but in an ensemble book I’m getting a little tired of all the excuses being fit into the narrative to excuse not ever actually being about the ensemble.

oh look tim’s alive and ra’s al ghul’s behind it all who saw this coming

At least we don’t have another new made up organization that secretly spans across the whole world and Batman didn’t know about it ever. At least they’re finally converging a bit because that shit was getting ridic.

Art: Of the rotating art teams that we have for Detective, I have to say that this is one of the best and most consistent. There’s a good variation between splash pages and regular paneled format, there’s a proper use of shifting and varying panel differing. And overall it’s just a pleasing comic to read with easy action to follow and a great use of color and inking despite being a literally dark comic.

It is not the most stylized comic for those who prefer styles that are Out of House as opposed to the Big Two’s normal aesthetic, but it is a good comic and easy to read without being redundant. 

Characters & Dialogue: Detective Comics has way too many characters. Tynion gives all of them good voice, and everyone who’s featured gets quite a lot to do, but there is not enough balance for the ensemble and the constant addition of new characters, new villains, etc. makes even less room for development and especially for relationship building between characters. 

Like I guess Cass is just the only kid in the Belfry period now. Alright. 

Cass, Kate, Luke, and... *sigh* Clayface have very little to do in this issue, though I’d argue that their small parts are some of the best content when one’s reading. And while it’s more than okay to center different arcs on different characters and Jean Paul getting his long, long overdue dues is more than welcome, there’s still the problem of giving everyone something that pushes their own plots forward, or at the very least, let’s us see the progress that has been made as a culmination of the previous storylines. 

Cassandra is still not even adopted by either Bruce or Kate yet for chrissake. Someone give Cass a family.

Zatanna was good and if I have to measure a Bruce this Bruce is good for my tastes, but again there’s just so many characters it’s very difficult to fully dive into their various developments, especially when it’s hard to tell if there is one.

At the very least, I can give this comic thanks for getting Cass’ speech pattern back to normal. I have to agree with some other fans who have contacted me and said that it’s not too terrible if from time to time Cass learns and memorizes a Shakespeare verse thanks to her time with Clayface, but not showing any of the characters working with Cass to teach her to read and speak and then giving her full sonnets or soliloquies is way too much and is painfully out of character to read.

DC’s Gotham Academy: Second Semester (2016-present) #12 Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl, Becky Coloonan, Adam Archer, MSASSYK, Sandra Hope

After a few years of this fun, YA tale of mystery and friendship, we sadly come to a close on Gotham Academy with this final issue wrapping up the series that was very beloved by myself and a number of my comic reading friends here on the internet. It’s a different type of story in the landscape of DC’s Batbooks and it’s going to very much be missed, regardless of how well or not this last issue was going to do. 

But, with this cancelation, did the finale manage to feel like it came to a conclusive resolution for all of our favorite Gotham Academy kids?

Story: Given that this is the finale of both this storyline and for the series as a whole, going into story is a much bigger deal than it has been before. I mean, we’re talking about a narrative that really started back with Gotham Academy (2014-2016) and has come to its end here, a reboot and a year later. And it all, as it should have, revolved around the titular friendship between Olive Silverlock and Maps Mizoguchi. 

Of course all the friendships, all the support that has been built up for Olive throughout the series still play a fairly important role to her conclusion here, but it was always going to be the friendship that held Olive and Maps together that would be what drove the story at its core, and in that way this ending doesn’t feel forced or strained, but simply like a natural testing of friendship when both have made mistakes and are wrong for various reasons -- for Maps it was coming to terms with her treatment of Olive’s mental illness and accepting her for it rather than simply ignoring that it was a factor, and for Olive it was about relying on Maps and trusting her to be there for her whenever she should fall. 

That is what affects the narrative the most and that’s what the resolution to this story got right the most here. 

Still, the cancelation of GA has come at the cost of the resolution of a lot of other elements that had been built up over the series. An unfortunate affect of having spent so much of the bulk of the series building up the world, the supporting characters, and more for what was no doubt many more mysteries and subplots to come, but it’s ultimately a little lost here. Colton’s confession to Kyle doesn’t see some real focus in the finale due to time and that’s made all the more a painful thing to see cut short considering the confirmed LGBT+ elements of Gotham Academy never received direct attention in ways I know I wish I could have seen. And likewise some resolutions felt missed entirely or unnecessary, Tristan’s apparent comfort with his bat form by the end as an example of the former and Pomeline being in a romantic relationship again with oh-whats-his-beard in the final pages. 

I would not have wanted any of the final issue’s focus to have left Maps and Olive at all, as I’ve said, they are the driving force of this comic, but as understandable as it is that these shortcomings happened under the circumstances, they’re still shortcomings nonetheless. 

The one that’s the most glaring, however, is the way that Olive’s disdain and distrust of Batman ended up coming to an end here. This is a character trait that was built up with Olive since the first issue of the series, and that relationship complicated between her, her mother, Batman, and Bruce Wayne, began dropping off the radar the moment we came into Second Semester and became more and more lost only to give us this moment in the finale where she comes to terms somehow with the fact that Batman was just trying to save her mom? I don’t know. 

Speaking of which, this all coming down to magic and a secret society using Olive’s ancestral blood to control her or whatever reminded me exactly of when I was watching Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated for the first time and I adored that first season SO much and loved how it stuck to the tried and true Scooby-Doo formula of skepticism winning over superstition and the paranormal, only for the second season to... make a 180 and everything was due to magic after all. That’s kinda how I felt about Gotham Academy, we spent the first series constantly solving mysteries of Gotham Academy through the eyes of the Mystery Club and time and time again the lesson seemed to be that the legends and tribulations of the people at the heart of these things were just that -- they were people and they were real, and their problems paralleled the cast’s for that reason. 

Only for that to be somewhat wasted due to the fact that... it was all nobody’s fault and the strings were being pulled by the occult the first series had proved were false. And I suppose that’s okay, save for how it feels as though it tries to use this to wave off the genuine symptoms of mental illness Olive has shown throughout the series. 

It’s something I’ll have to chew on for a while, honestly. It’s given me a lot of complicated feelings. 

Art: Ah, the most contentious part of the series has been the massive shift in art. Karl Kerschl was the original artist for the first few volumes of Gotham Academy and his style remains a truly unique, very stylized, and very character driven style which was a huge contributing factor to launching Gotham Academy and getting it off its feet with a unique flare to draw in audiences that weren’t necessarily picking up other Batman books at the time. And his presence has been missed since he left the book, without a doubt. I’ve had people tell me personally that a big reason for dropping the book when they did had to do with the change up in art. 

I’m not condemning Adam Archer here for not being Kerschl, make no mistake. What I think has truly hurt this book, however, is that Archer either chose or was directed to attempt Kerschl’s style as close as possible which comes off as not feeling natural to Adam Archer’s own talents. That’s unfair because Archer’s work is unique, fun, and lovely n its own without this attempt to mimmic a style that was less his own. I think we would have all appreciated the art more in that respect, since other guest artists between the two like Chen were better received for their issues. 

That being said the art for this issue is not bad, but it’s not great, and missing that feeling of sincerity that was connected to by so many readers before. 

Characters & Dialogue: Considering how character driven this series is, it’s fair to say that the characterization and dialogue of these new Gothamites is unquestionable. They were always well rounded, interesting, and full of intrigue, and all the way to this conclusion, that remains to be the case. The big difference here would be that because we needed to focus on Olive and Maps, the other members of the Mystery Club were less involved than I would have liked though they very much did at least get to play a part in stopping Calamity (pun intended).

The good thing about having a single team writing from the very start of the book is that we get very strong voices throughout for all of the characters, and that remained true to the very end as well. Really, the characters were the best part and it made this feel like a very deserving farewell to our Gotham Academy family. 

Marvel’s Immortal Iron Fists (2017) #2 (of 6) Kaare Andrews, Afu Chan, Shelly Chen

Well, guys, never say that change isn’t real and tangible, because it almost looks like Marvel learned something from the reception of Immortal Iron Fist on Netflix and is creating a legacy from the title that shock of all shocks actually contains Asian characters for once. I know, I was stunned as well.

In all seriousness, I was super interested in this series when I first saw it with issue #1 but hadn’t bought it by the time I was doing my weekly reviews for that week. Obviously, that has since then been remedied and has left me open for a good ol’ review of the new Marvel Infinite series Immortal Iron Fists.

Story: We’re still very much in the early part set of this story, which is a combination of Danny trying to navigate the trials of adulthood while being a complete human disaster, Pei is attempting to fit in her new public school which is middle school and thus inherently filled with racist little sociopaths in training just like real life high school, and also about the two Iron Fists trying to harness all of these magic scrolls which are currently possessed by demons which increase in power each scroll before culminating into this Mega Awful Demon that is the mortal enemy of the Buddah.

So yes. Immortal Iron Fists is basically ripping off Jackie Chan Adventures and believe it or not I am absolutely fine with that, in fact I think it might be the most fine I have been with a Marvel concept in ages. It’s like making Laura Wolverine, creating Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, and now this. There, I had my arm twisted and admitted there are positive things about Marvel this week.

The story itself is a very soft, even light narrative considering the complexity of Pei’s origins and even her connection to Danny, but it’s also at the same time so fitting for what I assume is the intended audience (children and YA) and especially fitting with the art that is positively adorable and awesome. 

In this issue Pei makes her first friends, learns that there is a string of missing cases, and also decides that unlike everyone else in middle school she’s not going to be a “key to a single door” but keep all her doors open and try to bridge the gap between the various cliques, who were introduced to us Mean Girls style and it was hilarious. 

It’s just a fun read overall, but it’s also a fairly quick read so given that ever high Marvel price tag it’s hard to argue with the assessment that this one could be a trade wait for a lot of you.

Art: As I mentioned before, the art is very soft, gentle, and light. The colors pop, everyone is incredibly stylized, and the action scenes are surprisingly varied and plentiful. While they’re still simple enough to read for beginning comic readers, there is a flow to them, such as the sequence where Pei gets some revenge on some bullies at school through one extended fight sequence across a panel. 

I just really enjoyed the art and I’m glad to see so much variation in comic art lately. It’s been a long time coming.

Characters & Dialogue: Pei and Danny are the focus of the comic, obviously, and they play their roles incredibly well. Danny is ... I mean, he’s Danny Rand, he’s a complete disaster of a human being trying to Adult it with an inheritance he never cared about or really earned and as such everything rolls in and catches up with him. He literally can’t teach Pei how to clean the house without tripping on soap, and I feel like that is a perfect summation of everything anyone has ever needed to know about Danny Rand. 

In contrast, Pei is a reserved little girl, fish out of water, and drowning in a culture she has no familiarity with while also harnessing power and skills beyond her years. What I find interesting and subversive about this, though, is that Pei neither yearns for normalcy nor does she completely rebel openly against Danny’s orders for her to restrain herself and act normal. It’s honestly a relief to have a character whose problems are so relatable and have her just... treat it with the actions of a kid in the moment: uncertain but trying to play everything out until she decides she doesn’t fit the necessary mold. And she’s pleased with herself for not fitting the mold. It’s honestly kind of inspiring to see that in a kid character these days. 

But the big part of this issue was arguably building up the supporting cast, including the nanny Danny has hired for Pei and most of all the kids in Pei’s school. And how there’s apparently no point to her hiding her identity as the tiniest Iron Fist. It’s well paced and all the kids, right down to their overwhelming cruelty to their surprising generosity, are definitely acting like kids.  

Dark Horse’s The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars (2017-present) Part One Michael Dante DiMartino, Irene Koh, Vivian Ng

Ah, at long last!

While I was not in on the hype for The Legend of Korra as it was airing, my appreciation for what it’s become has grown over time, and more importantly, I fnd that it provides more possibilities and more opportunity to the world of Avatar, which is always a good thing.

As such, I’ve been waiting for this comic series to come out for quite some time! ... and then had to wait longer because for Reasons we don’t get the comiXology release at the same time as the regular issue’s release in stores. Oh, Dark Horse. 

But now to get into the specifics. 

Story: It’s always difficult to gage story with just the first issue, but in all honesty I think that the fact that the TV series ended on such an open note really helps the comic in this matter. “Turf War” is an interesting name for the story, but at the same time it’s oddly blunt and fitting. There is a war erupting between the Spirit World, the human lands and property settlement, and with the ever present Republic City triad gang wars. We follow all of these through the Krew members who are exactly where we last left off with them. 

Some of the stuff that deserves a lot of attention is the cementation of Korra and Asami’s romantic relationship, which is given a good amount of page time for the first half of the book. They confess true feelings for each other, share a first kiss, have a beautiful vacation together, and we ultimately get to see Korra’s blunt and protective nature play out accordingly. She rushes in to Asami’s aid and frets over her pretty consistently, which could be seen as a callback to the series itself when, as Korra was most down, Asami cared for and nurtured her. 

We also get to see Mako and Bolin working together as partners in the Republic City police. They deal with the triads and the general unrest that has come about as a result of Spirits and Humans openly interacting again for the first time in centuries. And this honestly felt like some greatly due development for the brothers’ relationship since in the series it felt like they had grown apart without it ever being explicitly addressed in the text.

And while all this turf grabbing is happening, we also see a parallel drama being played out. And that would be the story of how Korra and Asami choose to come out to their friends, family, and even the world. As usual, Korra barrels in half cocked and not thinking of repercussions, figuring “damned if anyone judges me” whereas Asami is more thoughtful, planning, and reserved. She’s nervous about coming out to people, and she’s nervous about how boisterous Korra is being about it. 

But they haven’t communicated this detachment between their processing of the situation yet. It’s fairly obvious that a portion of Turf Wars is going to come to a head with Asami and Korra having to address being respectful of each other’s needs to come out in their own ways first. 

In any case, it was a real great start and had lots of little moments to help explain the world without acting as though the intended audience wouldn’t have some more than passing knowledge about what was coming up.

Art: One of the most widely praised and beloved aspects of The Legend of Korra from the very start had been the beauty of its animation, so much so that the same animation house got to move on to other passion projects like the current reboot of Voltron. And one of the things that makes the world of Avatar so unique is that aspect of Eastern philosophy combined with different disciplines which inspire the forms of bending in the series. And, as was pretty clearly seen before in the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics, that is not something that is easy to translate into a more still and less fluid medium like comics.

And that mostly goes the same here. There’s a distinct lack of bending compared to what you would see in an episode of the show, but at the same time that isn’t to say that there isn’t a lot more than I thought there was. It simply did not have that many creative takes on what to do with the bending. No splash shots into the next panels, no using the elements to transition. The sort of things you’d expect from a comic inspired by a show which was all about the uniqueness of bending. 

Still, the comic did a fair job of keeping to the style of the series without the character art seeming stagnant and stationary which is usually a problem with cartoons that are adapted into comics. Hair in particular was treated with much more fluidity than I remember the show being able to give it. And the styles of the various nations and cultures were well designed while also fitting. 

Everything was well compositioned and especially the events which took place within the Spirit World were beautifully colored, though that came at the seeming cost of a duller color pattern used in the “normal” world. 

It’s a good start, and I’d argue it’s better than if it had tried to strictly stay to only the style of the series and not rely on the personal style of the artist. 

Characters & Dialogue: Given that this is an ensemble story and there was a limited amount of time to dedicate to each of the characters, we did not get as much individual development for the wider cast. But Korra and Asami got relatively large roles and since they and their relationship seems to be the driving force of the narrative, it worked out well for this issue. 

Korra was brash to a fault, but as always it is her conflict and emotions and her validity that moved the plot forward. For a character it is always important that her purpose and her growth be the defining force. And I think we definitely got that.

Asami on the other hand was the quieter personality, yes, but her hesitation and temperance also did a lot to build suspicion for future conflict in the relationship between her and Korra and also in just the world itself. Her perspective and her concerns are as real and as valid as Korra’s which means that our concerns for their coming out narrative are validated here, too. 

The dialogue is a bit harder to pin here, as again there aren’t many characters with specific inflections that really pop out, so we’ll have to wait for more issues to get a larger grasp on how the dialogue changes between characters.

Marvel’s Silk (2015-2017) Vol. 3: The Clone Conspiracy Robbie Thompson, Irene Strychalski, Tana Ford, Ian Herring

I can’t believe I’m having to say goodbye to so many books this week. It’s like my personal Cancellation Day, and the only prize is disappointment that more series I enjoyed aren’t coming my way. I’m supremely sad to see Silk go, as Cindy Moon is a hugely inspirational and important character both for being an Asian-American superhero with her own book and for narratively dealing with anxiety in depression. 

And it’s also extremely sad to see her go on what was mostly tie-ins to yet another endless Spider Event. I won’t be going into a full review for that reason, it just doesn’t seem fair to recap the end of the series knowing that a lot of the context for The Clone Conspiracy is not included in this book, nor should it really have been, but I do want to say to fellow Silk fans that there’s enough of Cindy and enough closure to her narrative that it will be worth your collection and time, but yeah there will be some lackluster stuff in the majority of the issues in this since it is a tie-in. 

And I hate that, I hate how much endless tie-ins have felt like they’re killing books lately. 

But Robbie Thompson was a fantastic, thoughtful, and well articulated writer throughout this series and for Silk before this series, really making her a real character where her initial introduction was... not that... ugh pheromones and gross twitter trolls. Anyway, Robbie Thompson truly made a character to love in Cindy Moon, and the two artists who contributed throughout the series -- Irene Strychalski and Tana Ford did amazing very stylized work and weren’t afraid to experiment with style and page correlation.

It was a great read and I’m going to miss it a whole lot.

DC’s Titans (2016-present) #14 Dan Abnett, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse

Hello, world, it’s me, the Titans fan who wished upon the monkey’s paw that her favorite heroes would be restored to their former glory and that their friendship would be allowed to flourish on the page once again. And in return I got Roy’s stupid hat. 

But in truth, I’ve been fairly pleased with Titans since the very first issue in Rebirth and have felt taken aback by just how much the creative team seems to love the characters, their relationships, and their history. But now we’ve got to answer that ultimate question: a year later with those rosy tinted glasses still firmly on my face, am I starting to eep out of the honeymoon phase? Or it this book still living up to unrealistic expectations?

Story: We’re in the middle of the sleeper agent storyline and it’s probably more difficult to gage how good a story is doing by its middle than it is by its start, in all honesty. All the same, the distrust running through the Titans, the pain of conflict and second guessing each other’s friendships and so on. It’s not a bad way to flesh out the arc, and I wouldn’t say that like a lot of storylines’ mid-issues this one felt useless or flat. 

There is a definite escalation throughout the issue of how the Titans are beginning to fold in on each other, how HIVE’s master plan to destroy them from the inside may be working before we ever get confirmation about a betrayer. And the testing of the relationships among the Titans in that delicate web they weave cause everyone to trip over each other once they’re really put to the test. 

That being said, it’s still not hitting all those points perfectly. While you can see an organic build to the relationship of Lilith and Garth that’s been pretty fun and true to the characters so far, the love triangle between Wally, Donna, and Roy is something I’m pretty confident in saying no one wanted. I have seen no one say they wanted this. And weirdly it continues to put all the female characters in romantic relationships as the crux of their developments while we still have at least Dick and Gnarrk on the men’s side who don’t have to be motivated by this bull. The best part of the love triangle so far has been Donna throwing Roy and Wally both when she realizes what’s going on.

As for Dick being the sleeper agent well, I guess it’s one of those... shoulda seen it coming because of course we have Dick involved with another covert secret underground all powerful world corrupting group in another book. I don’t know why I was expecting different. But at least in the defense of Titans, it does feel like a good call back to the original New Teen Titans storyline with the cult of Brother Blood where similar happened and it was Dick again. 

People just really like mindfucking with Dick, there’s not really much else to say about it. 

Art: Ever since Brett Booth first appeared on my radar I’ve been fairly critical of him as an artist. His style was never really my taste, but he’s proven again and again on Titans to really pull some variation in body types and physicality that I hadn’t seen on his previous works. I like that the guys all have different body types and that the girls’ costumes and personality are reflections of themselves. 

That being said, we still have a problem of Sameface with the girls at the very least, where honestly some panels the only difference between Donna and Lilith is hair color. But the colors are vibrant and the panels are all full of details, no space wasted.

Which is both a compliment and a criticism since, to be frank, the absolute refusal to have any normal panels basically gives us the opposite of my criticism of Turf Wars which is that there seems to be no real complexity because of the constant unstable panel work. 

This is the comic book equivalent of shooting every scene in a movie with dutch angles. There’s no dramatic or narrative reason to have these panels slanted and all over the place, but every panel will be that way. Even panels where we’re literally reading the characters talking about pizza. 

It gives us no real change between action sequences and normal sequences so it’s just kind of boring in spite of the dynamic panels. Which I’m pretty sure is the opposite of what they wanted.

Characters & Dialogue: If it wasn’t clear in the story portion, I’m not a fan of how when it comes to individual character development, we have conveniently gotten all three of our female heroes into romantic subplots with at least one (now possibly two? if we’re hinting at Tula like I think we are) love triangles in the mix. It just feels like it’s 2017 and we should be beyond that sort of “what kind of subplot do we give the girls? love I guess”

That being said, it’s really been amazing to me, personally, to see just how good this comic continues to be at making these characters feel like the ones we knew and loved prior to the New52. Not exact, not perfect, but pretty close to the preferences for each of the characters as we can get with the current character histories being what they are. Like, personally, I’m much more enthusiastic about Dick and Wally in this book than I am about them in Nightwing and The Flash because it just feels like them, Wally’s current romantic entanglements aside. 

Still, it’s a fun book and for what it lacks with some characterization quirks it always tends to make up for later in the story so for the current storyline I’m willing to wait a touch longer.

IDW’s Transformers: Till All Are One (2016-2017) #12 Mairghread Scott, Sara Pitre-Durocher, Joana Lafuente

Wow. Another one of my favorite ongoings is ending today and I’m starting to worry it’s me. I hope I’m not actually the kiss of death to these comics because, full stop, Windblade and Till All Are One have been some of the most enjoyable comics I’ve read in the last several years and there’s probably no comic getting canceled this year that makes me sadder than this one. 

So, how does Till All Are One leave us?

Story: Mairghread Scott has absolutely blown me away over the last year with her comics and just her obvious, obvious love and understanding of the expansive Transformers universe. Her world building has spanned over several series now and her character work has truly been put to task by having to stand up against fan favorite TF writers like John Barber and James Roberts. And I think nothing has proved her talents more than Till All Are One, where all that build up and all that character work is allowed to at long las come to fruition. 

This conclusion could have been use to tease us with the ideas and storylines that Scott obviously had planned (and if people are curious I really encourage you to look up the storylines she had planned and posted to her tumblr), but Scott instead made this a solid ending and a celebration of the comic she was allowed to make. And much like Gotham Academy, she did so by bringing it back home to the characters which have driven the series the most: Windblade and Starscream.

The tumultuous relationship between the two same yet so very different jets has been something that I’ve adored watching play out. Their distrust of each other, their manipulations, their political games, and ultimately their teamwork for the greater good. It’s been fascinating and also has put me on the edge of my seat. 

There is nothing more uncharacteristic, nothing more selfless than what Starscream did by putting his own life at risk in order to save Windblade, and the fact that Windblade at last got the confirmation she’s desired about Starscream’s true self feels like a great resolution to all the buildup over the years. This is a very triumphant ending, to the point that 80s Business Woman style Windblade ended by strutting out the door. 

I sincerely hope we are going to be blessed with more of Scott’s signature Transformers writing in the IDW’verse and I desperately hope that this is not the end of Windblade who has quickly risen as one of my favorite Transformers. 

Art: The majority of the artists on the Transformers titles for IDW are honestly so good and so amazing that I barely know what even to say about the art. The art standard for bringing these robotic transforming cars with heart is so high that it leaves one baffled when it comes to what’s left to say about them, any of them. And even with that standard, Sara Pitre-Durocher manages to amaze me.

Of the Transformers artists I would say her style serves to be the most sleak and the most expressive. Theres not necessarily any time where you think of the Transformers as being “soft” or “pliable” -- they’re still metal and wires with all the complexity therein -- but there’s a believability to the phrase “living metal” that doesn’t always come across in some other artist’s work where the bulk and construction of the Transformers seems more prominent than their expressionism and agility. 

The fact that this book gets to at least end with having had consistently amazing art throughout is a highlight and why I think it’s going to be one of the titles returned to the most fondly of the IDW’verse.

Characters & Dialogue: Starscream’s duplicity is his most iconic character trait, of course, and I’ll be the first to say I’m sort of worn out with classic villains being “reexamined” and given redemptions and whatnot these days, but I love how malicious and cruel Starscream has remained in this series while simultaneously showing us and himself through Windblade and Till All Are One the kind of character he could aspire to be (hello Armada allusions) and therefore making it more frustrating and even tragic when he boldly makes the decision to be the opposite of his own potential. 

Windblade on the other hand has grown as a character since we first met her. Her naivety and pure intentions have been warped and she now understands how to play the game of politics, but also what it costs -- her honesty, her friends, her belief system. And she was willing to sacrifice herself despite learning all of that -- she was willing to put herself in mortal danger knowing that it wasn’t a perfect, harmonious society she was doing it for but a deeply flawed one. And the fact that she ultimately survived and is now capable of moving forward for herself with the new ambition of being open and speaking for herself more than being a figuehead or politician feels like an arc that was built up to through all this time and yet at the same time was something surprising and unexpected.

Other characters didn’t really play much of a significant role in this ending, which puts it like a lot of the other story bookends this week where a large cast doesn’t really get to close out with homage to the majority of those characters. But this felt more solid, at least to me, because of the wisdom Scott had in using the last several issues to bring the focus in particular to Starscream’s POV and then building up to Windblade’s. It feels like what loose ends for other characters are left are left in ways that are going to be easily picked up by another book or by another creative team entirely rather than everything simply being cut off. 

Just an awesome book and I’m so sorry to see it come to an end.

It’s another difficult pick of the week but for me, I absolutely have to give this one to Transformers: Till All Are One. It’s one of my favorite series in a long time and it ended on a resolution that made me honestly puff up with pride for the main characters. It’s a comic which embraces history of its franchise while growing it, a comic that embraces questions of politics, identity, gender, sexuality, and more. It’s been a beautiful ride and I wish the best to the entire creative team.

But I thought all the comics were great this week and highly recommend you check them out! Of course I’d love to hear back from you -- agree with me? Disagree? Think I missed any comics I should’ve picked up? I’d love to hear from you.

Before you go, however, I need to share that I am in a bit of a financial crunch for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being the medical bills I’m paying for my dog, Eve, who experienced a catastrophic dog fight and underwent surgery just yesterday actually. 

As such, I really would appreciate if you enjoy my content or are interested in helping me out, please check out either my Patreon or PayPal. Every bit helps and I couldn’t thank you enough for enjoying and supporting my content. 

You could also support me by going to my main blog, @renaroo, where I’ll soon be listing prices and more for art and writing commissions.

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