#comic panels were too annoying to format into this but actually. it's kinda even more impactful as quotes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ectonurites · 3 years

Text

Conner Kent in Suicide Squad/the Infinite Frontier era: wtf is going on

Alright lads hello I just need to type out some theories/thoughts about what’s going on with my boy Kon right now. This is more for myself than anything else (just trying to organize my thoughts) but since some of y’all like to hear me talk about comics (and some of this discussion has already been happenin in my inbox) I figured i’d format it and put it on here too! its like 4k words and written over the last few days mostly at 3am. sorry <3

this is basically just me going like

Also fair warning that like, I can be wrong and misinterpret things just as much as anyone else can, like I use panels to support why I think what I do but a lot of this stuff is subjective/complicated to understand so like... in general somethings should be taken with a grain of salt, especially because exactly what changes to the universe were made by Death Metal/Infinite Frontier haven’t been super super clearly defined yet. Also sometimes comic writers make the most random nonsensical shit happen, so I as a fan am also allowed to theorize about random nonsensical shit.

But to start: let’s backtrack!

Many months ago when Infinite Frontier was first announced they dropped some promotional art, and I remember being a little confused because. Well:

(Variant Cover spread for Justice League (2018) #59)

(Variant Cover spread for Superman (2018) #29)

Notice how Conner is back to his Teen Titans 2003 look up top, but in his YJ 2019 look at the bottom? This seemed weird to me! But then they announced that Conner would be part of the Suicide Squad ongoing title, in the T-shirt look, so I wrote this discrepancy off in my brain as ‘oh I guess that cover was just the last hurrah for punk Kon’ and moved on with life.

In Suicide Squad right away we learn he’s very much so there against his will:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #1)

Which corroborates more or less what we were also shown in Future State: Suicide Squad, although admittedly it tells... a slightly different version of the events. When I first saw both of these together I just chalked it up to being a bit inaccurate as it’s shown as a memory in Future State:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Issue 2 we saw him in action with the Squad, trying to do his best to still be a hero despite the team, but things get a little more interesting in the following issue. It starts off with an account of his history

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

This page gave me a few immediate red flags, mostly minor things that had to do with coloring, so more irl problems than things to take seriously in-universe (Kon’s pants are the wrong color in the first Superboy shot, and Bart’s Impulse costume is in Kid Flash colors instead of the correct Impulse ones) but then also it just bugged me the phrasing “he joined Young Justice” when he was a founder of the team, he didn’t join it he made it with Tim and Bart.

But again, chalked that stuff up to just.... writers/artists being inconsistent/unaware of things that they should be aware of, or even Nocturna just not being specific with details. But it did still strike me as a little odd considering the very accurate use of villains in those same shots, Scavenger who was a reoccurring bad guy from Kon’s solo days and showed up basically nowhere else (even holding the Spear of Lono and everything!) and Billy/Harm (Greta’s brother) from Young Justice.

But then a few pages later we got this:

(Suicide Squad (2021) #3)

Which is interesting. My first instinct was to think he’s being drugged w kryptonite or something thats leaving him hazy/out of it, but my thoughts on that have kinda changed, we’ll get there in a bit. But in general the context of ‘something’s wrong’ made the slight discrepancies on some details of his own history make more sense.

I also want to then bring up the next part to this story, the crossover issue in Teen Titans Academy.

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

So a few things. Does it feel weird to anyone else that Conner Kent, a known previous Titan who literally has a framed picture of himself in a case there, would set off alarm sensors like that? Wouldn’t he be... recognized as a Titan not an intruder by their sensors? Interesting! Anyways.

He looks really pained looking at that picture, and sad, and almost frustrated, which ya know makes sense and hurts my heart because he misses them! He misses his friends and being happy.

But, importantly for a criticism I wanna make thats less theory related and more just me bein annoyed at Tim Sheridan, that’s a picture of Conner. Right there. That’s Superboy, on display at Teen Titans Academy, so the people who frequent this building would know who he is and what he looks like and be able to recognize him, he’s even in the same outfit and everything. Alinta recognized him at the end of Suicide Squad #3.

So why does only one person during this big fight then comment on his presence?? Why doesn’t it get a bigger reaction???

(Teen Titans Academy #3)

And after the fight we don’t see any on panel moment of Wallace going up to the staff Titans (who weren’t present for the fight) and saying like “HEY NIGHTWING UHHH SUPERBOY WAS WITH THE SUICIDE SQUAD?” we just see him talking with his friends upset about Crush leaving. We see Alinta talking to them but we don’t see the exact dialogue. So I do just wanna take the writer by the shoulders and shake him a little bit and ask WHY because that just feels like... something you’d wanna address on panel! This is like the first time since joining the squad that Kon’s at all in contact with people from his life before Waller got involved, I feel like not addressing those people’s reactions to it/not discussing it at least a little bit on panel (especially when Conner CAME UP in the previous TTA issue, Dick brought him up and everything!!!) is a really odd choice. Maybe it’ll happen next issue and i’m just impatient, but who knows. Anyways, gripes with Sheridan aside, lets move on.

I wanna bring up how Conner... doesn’t really respond to Wallace’s question? At all? Except to just fight him off, not even an attempt at a ‘Sorry’ or anything? (the ‘Ha! That all you got?!’ seems to be coming from Culebra not Conner, although the placement of the bubble is vague enough it could be that it was supposed to be Conner? but it seems more like what she’d say, especially as she’s grabbing Emiko like that) That just feels weird. It feels off. In general he speaks so little in Suicide Squad #3 and this issue. Tbh it almost feels like he doesn’t really recognize Wallace which I mean I suppose they never exactly met (they would have theoretically during Death Metal, basically all past/present Titans were together for a while during that), but Kon’s been back in existing long enough he’d have a sense of who current heroes are anyways.

But right, so, lots of little things that feel weird... that gets us caught up to the most recently released comics... but in this household we look at solicits as they drop. Which gives us some info on what’s coming up a few months ahead of time, albeit without full context obviously. Issues #4 and #5 don’t mention Conner in their descriptions or show him on the covers at all, because there’s just other plot things going on, so ya know seems things will be quiet for him for a bit.

But then we got the August solicitations and oh BOY it’s a doozey for him! And some things start to kinda connect perhaps!

I want to just take a moment to look at that specific wording. “The teen calling himself Conner Kent” I’m probably reading too much into it but that feels deliberate, like why wouldn’t you just say ‘Conner Kent’? Usually these kinds of descriptions are trying to keep a low word count, not add in extra words that don’t need to be there. It makes it feel like that’s a name he’s using that... doesn’t actually belong to him.

So the theory I want to propose (that has been floating around already) is that based on these covers and the description, and how the Conner we’ve been seeing in Suicide Squad apparently talks about his own personal history like he’s ‘reading a wikipedia entry’ and had little response to people he should be aware of like Wallace and apparently isn’t recognized as a Titan through a bio-scan and also bearing in mind those initial promo arts with two separate looks at the same time for him... I think we're looking at a situation where the Conner in Suicide Squad so far has actually been a clone of original Conner (like... like he’s Match 2.0 or somethin) the whole time, that’s just not aware he’s not the original.

Now that’s the base theory I wanna work with and build off of, but there’s MANY different directions that could go in/ways that could work.

For example, one idea is that the Conner we saw in #1 who was chained up is the original Conner, and he’s been being cloned and held captive, so everything else with Conner in Suicide Squad so far has been this Match 2.0

Another idea could be the original Conner in #1 is also the Conner in #2 who Waller had then commented wasn’t ready during the mission in Arkham and had zapped with a lil Kryptonite, and after that moment she took him off the field because his spirit hadn’t been broken enough to be obedient (as he was a lot quieter in Issue #3 & the TTA crossover compared to #2, and #3 is when the Nocturna thing with the history happened)

Or it could even be original Conner in #1, then in #2 was one clone that wasn’t ‘ready’ that after that point she stopped using him, and switched to a diff clone for #3, because like that first cover did show a LOT of clones. That could be more just ‘artistic interpretation’ or something, covers sometimes do exaggerate/mislead, but it also could indicate we’re looking at a lot of clones.

(Suicide Squad (2021) #2)

With all of those in mind I also wanna bring up this little bit from Future State Suicide Squad:

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Again Future State is a ‘possible future’ so stuff from it isn’t set in stone, but the idea of ‘she still has his YJ 2019 outfit somewhere’ makes me think it could be something along the lines of like, Clone!Conner finds original Conner and frees him and he gets back his YJ outfit, which could lead to like the imagery on that variant cover/the idea from my very first part of this post where I was talking about Kon being shown in both outfits in different places.

Alternatively entirely from all that, another option is that she maybe got ahold of what was needed to clone Kon, but doesn’t even have the original Kon in her possession. (again with the Future State thing, she could be lying since elsewhere in Future State we did also see a copy of YJ 2019 Kon’s costume in one of the Jon-focused Future State comics in a display case 🤷‍♂️) Which could also lead to that confrontation on the variant cover & the promo art thing... and could also explain why we have seen nothing about anyone looking for him, because in that sort of scenario he wouldn’t have even been missing in the first place.

There’s a lot of possibilities! It’s still too early to solidly know anything, but I feel pretty confident we’re entering another cloning related plot with our Clone Boy so it’s... ya know. Clone time. On the one hand it’s annoying because god we have done clone/multiple Kons plots before. We’ve done them so much.

BUT on the other hand, I think it could be interesting to use this situation to tie into some older stuff from pre-reboot that I can see some connections to, because due to Infinite Frontier altering the world and people’s memories it’s all technically fair game storytelling-wise again (and like, the use of Scavenger specifically in that flashback way above, who’s not a super well known villain in general, makes me think maaaaybe the writer did do some of their Kon homework)

Something also just dawned on me that i’m not quite sure what it means but still is worth mentioning: The Conner here in Suicide Squad is back in his Teen Titans Vol. 3 outfit, and his history as he tells it stops during Teen Titans Vol. 3. And doesn’t... mention when he died? It feels like it... stopped before that, because like I feel if he was telling his life history (even the wiki version LMAO) the part where he died and came back would be pretty important to bring up?? And Nocturna specifically says that he didn’t explain how that stuff from TT Vol. 3 then led to him in his current situation. That’s a pretty big gap (like uhhh everything from resurrection until he got lost on Gemworld + all the rest of the Young Justice 2019 stuff?) So like.. there could be something funky going on here that has to do with that.

Similarly when he flashes back in Future State: Suicide Squad to his past it also goes right from Teen Titans Vol. 3 to the current Suicide Squad run? Like I get it’s one page so they can’t show that much, but the fact that there’s now two places that flash back to that same specific time period and nothing past it until the Suicide Squad feels just... noticeable! Not concretely indicative of something, but noteworthy.

(Future State: Suicide Squad #2)

Like...this almost has me thinking maybe it could be something where like, they tampered with his dead body and cloned from that? BECAUSE, for those of you who may not be familiar with how Kon’s resurrection (during Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds) worked, when he came back there was time travel involved! He was brought back to life in the future (like. Legion of Superheroes era) because it was a process that took that thousand or so years to work/heal him (essentially because of his hybrid dna the process that healed Clark when he had died back in Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen in the 90s just took a lot longer, but its the same Kryptonian healing chamber thing) meaning when he came back to the present alive again, his dead body was still also in the present just in it’s process of healing. Meaning especially if we’re bringing back stuff from before the reboot, Kon likely has his dead body just vibing out there while he’s goin around living life 🤷‍♂️

SO them doing something related to that could explain the choice to put him back in the T-shirt (since thats what he wore in the era his brain would be caught up to if we’re relating this to when he died) and why he’d recognize himself in a group photo with Bart, Cassie and Tim but maybe not someone like Wallace who didn’t exist back then. I don’t know, this branch of thought is still half baked. Will maybe come back and elaborate on this later. But I’m now really thinking there might be a connection to the early Teen Titans Vol. 3 era specifically because of it being referenced twice in stuff with this Suicide Squad.

ANYWAYS moving on, this is probably a shot in the dark and I only thought of it because I just was reading 90′s Superboy, but right away when thinking about ‘Amanda Waller’ and ‘Cloning Kon’ I was reminded of some stuff about the circumstances around the first clone that was made of Conner: Match.

(Superboy (1994) #35)

Match was created by an organization called ‘The Agenda’, that was after a while primarily under the control of The Contessa, Lex Luthor’s ex-wife, aided by Amanda Spence who had a personal grudge against Kon bc her dad was Paul Westfield the guy Kon was originally cloned from (before the Lex/Clark retcon). They were the big bad guys of an arc called The Evil Factory in Superboy (where Cadmus personnel got replaced with clones) which also then tied into the Sins of Youth event over in Young Justice (Remember how Match was posing as Superboy for a while there? yeah). After those plot lines finished the Agenda was pretty defeated (Amanda Spence was still out there and came back later but still) and... who got their hands on the remaining Agenda tech?

(Superboy (1994) #87)

Why none other than Amanda Waller herself!

If they re-canonized pieces of this (which also tied into Young Justice which ya know, YJ 2019 was all about re-establishing stuff from YJ even before Death Metal happened soooo) it would totally make sense for Waller to have complete access to the exact technology used to clone Conner before.

Now, a thing to consider here though is what happened to Kon after he’d been cloned that first time, where his DNA got all destabilized by the process (and he needed to go through a procedure with Roxy as a genetic template to keep him together, which was how he got stuck at age 16 for a while). This was something where he was fine for a period of time before the side effects began to kick in. Now, I think it’s worth mentioning that was also back in the days where he was not yet Lex & Clark’s clone, but still Paul Westfield’s. So there could easily be a ‘now that certain Kryptonian genes have kicked in as he got his newer powers it doesn’t destabilize him the same way’ reasoning or something along those lines to avoid this problem. Alternatively, it could be an interesting thing to embrace rather than retcon away, especially if we’ve been seeing Clone Conner in action and Original Conner hasn’t been in our focus, things could be wrong with him that we just don’t know about.

Another branch of thinking that I think is even MORE a shot in the dark but could be interesting (or again even related to what I just said, could be a combo of things) is if this somehow ended up related to those clones that were reverse engineered from the remains of Match from the very end of Teen Titans Vol. 3

(Teen Titans (2003) #99)

All of them were then taken down with Kryptonite and killed in battle (by Rose & Damian)

(Teen Titans (2003) #100)

But like... idk man if Waller got her hands on those corpses or even just the data from Dr. Caligan that he extracted from Match to make them... that could also be a potential way to make some new Conner clones, and that could be why the bio-scan thing at Titans Tower wouldn’t work properly because of the thing he says above about it not being a “complete match’

One thing I don’t think is the case, but has been brought up to me, is stuff with New 52 Kon. I’ve talked extensively about New 52 Kon in recent weeks because I read through all his stuff, but the thing that makes me shy away from him being part of this situation is the fact that... he’s not interchangeable with Kon the way I think some people think he is. He wouldn’t visually be recognized as Original Kon because he is literally on a genetic level a separate person. They’d prob look related, sure, like they’d pass for brothers because they both have Clark’s DNA, but New 52 Kon has Lois’ DNA and Original Kon has Lex’s. New 52 Kon would likely look more like Jon, rather than Kon. Lois specifically commented in an Action Comics issue that Kon had some resemblance to Lex, even. So like, things like Wallace recognizing him or him looking at his own matching reflection alongside the group picture at the Tower... those wouldn’t happen the same way if this was New 52 Kon.

Now I think it coooould theoretically be possible for Waller to have gotten her hands on that future N.O.W.H.E.R.E. cloning tech that had been used to make New 52 Kon, like I wouldn’t rule that out. Because she knows where the remains of their bases are as shown in Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #16-17, and like, Harvest is dead so she could easily just send teams out there to gather shit if she wanted.

Onto some other things I don’t think are actually related but that I was reminded of/wanted to address:

I feel i’d be a bad timkon fan if during all of this discussion of past stories with cloning Kon I didn’t even bring up Tim’s cloning attempt stuff, but I think it would ultimately be unrelated. His tech was stolen from Luthor, and his attempts didn’t succeed because he was trying to build from scratch without Cadmus’ the data about how they altered the DNA from the original process.

(Teen Titans Vol. 3 #34)

Then that initial cover for the annual really reminded me of part of the Hollow Men story from Superboy Vol. 5 just with like... Kon in a room full of copies of himself. I don’t think this story would be related either because it was more magic Tannarak stuff rather than regular cloning, but ya know. It’s the imagery.

(Superboy Vol. 5 #9)

It also really reminded me of the stuff from Hyper-Tension which was hypertime stuff not cloning but again just... visually.

(Superboy Vol. 4 #62)

In general I don’t think we’re EVER gonna see Black Zero or any of these multiverse Superboys again LMAO.

To try to sum up all of this in a way that might make sense here’s kinda a... flowchart of some of my main ideas for what the cloning situation could be/how the logic could work. Again this is borrowing stuff from across continuities because Infinite Frontier means theoretically anything’s fair game. (Also I don’t think I mentioned this earlier but I do mention it in the chart, but I think it’s also reasonable that Waller could get her hands on Cadmus tech if Cadmus is like properly made canon again. She just has funky government connections!)

Also I just now thought of this now several hours after I already made the chart and I don’t wanna remake it so sorry not incorporating it there but I remembered there was also that bit during House of Kent where Clark took Kon to the Hall of Justice and they were running some tests on him, so I’m thinking it’s also possible Waller got ahold of that data/that might be how she found out about Kon in the first place for this timeline. And they indicated that there was something wrong with him there, where he might eventually lose his powers or something, so maybe she tried to do cloning stuff to be able to have a copy of Superboy in his prime or something??? before that started kicking in. I don’t know, just more things to consider:

(Action Comics (2016) #1028)

ANYWAYS in conclusion: there is clone fuckery of some sort happening, I’m curious where it’s gonna go, and I just want Kon to be okay.

If you actually read this uhm. props to you bc this probably makes no sense to anyone but me its just word vomit <3

#this is very long! and disorganized! i am sorry #this doesn't have one theory abt things it has like. many #its basically just brainstorming/spitballing ideas #i could also be entirely off base! with much of this! i just feel i need that disclaimer #grandpa max is god? i go to church now #i need a kon talk tag bc i swear i write more analysis stuff like this for him than anyone else

26 notes · View notes

ko2vo · 4 years

Photo

(djdgdfkdjhlk i have to post it like this because tumblr formatted the answer weirdly)

THANK YOU ANON ;w; <33

Ye, I’ve mentioned it in passing but I really don’t broadcast it cuz it becomes somewhat pertinent in the story? But it’s not really supposed to be a surprise either, he just is what he is.

I’m gonna put stuff im thinking about under a read more cuz I’m getting somewhat rambly whilst thinking about how people have done transgender characters in comics before.

Even though I don’t broadcast Ray’s transness, I also don’t really want to sensationalize the outing of a passing trans character by making it a secret until its being touched on in the story cuz I’ve seen it done before with varying results. Of course, there are always a lot of really happy trans people and allies at reveals like that, but there’s also an annoying amount of ‘this character had no hints about being trans, this is a bullshit pc culture move’ to extreme fandom discourse about a character’s actual gender identity once it becomes ‘in question’. A lot of this is stuff I’m remembering from the comics community five plus years ago where it was a spicy subject, but even dabbling in current comics that touch gender, there’s a lot of very heated discussions that comes down to some very strange gender policing.

I remember getting really upset about the discussions around Mutsuki from Tokyo Ghoul RE cuz his was a really fascinating case (I am not caught up so im just going by what pronouns i remember him using). He was introduced as male, an antagonist outed him in a really upsetting panel where his binder was exposed and he was called a woman, and the fandom exploded into some really interesting discourse but also some really REALLY transphobic discourse. This was further exacerbated because the manga went into an arc where all the male characters (including him) crossdressed to go undercover and yea, pre-op trans masc character in feminine clothes really confuses people. Also the antagonist gets really creepily obsessed/stalkerish with Mutsuki and writes love letters addressing him as she/her, while literally every other character used he/him. I actually really wanna catch up and see what went down with all that, but yea it had a surprising impact on me.

However, the first popular webcomic that I read where a major “trans reveal” happened was Prague Race. The artist kept a really tight lid on a certain major character’s status as a trans man and on the page that it was revealed, SO MUCH DISCOURSE omfg. And I think that’s also because this comic had been about five years old at this point? Mutsuki was introduced and revealed only a few chapters into RE, but webcomics take so much longer to make that like, I had fallen behind considerably but my friend who kept up with the comic messaged me about the reveal and i caught up on a couple years worth of backlog pages.

Both these cases were notable too because neither comic was LGBT or romance driven, Tokyo Ghoul was a supernatural horror and Prague Race was a fantasy adventure and I think that’s why the discourse became particularly upsetting for me. LGBT+ persons always seemed to get relegated to romance stories or stories that explicitly were for the community and yea, its easier to find those stories but I kinda really enjoy just stumbling across LGBT narratives in other genres when i least expect it? Especially ones that are trans too!

But trans characters always seem to wind up as the topic of some really heated debates about gender identity, visibility, and legitimacy. I dunno, it’s pretty stressful tbh.

dfkjdflhkj ANYWAY TLDR I’ve rambled a lot, but yeah, Ray is a trans guy and eventually that detail will get touched upon in Bad Seeds but it’s not gonna be a big reveal of any kind. It clears up certain motivations perhaps but I personally wouldn’t consider it a story spoiler. I definitely mentioned it in this post years ago pffff but that is an old old post and also a whole lot of OC rambling in general but Daniel, Poet, and Ray all have their own little sections if ya want some delicious somewhat outdated content wiiiiinks

#Anonymous #korvo talks #ask #i didnt NEED to write this much but i did ldfkjdfkjh #i dunno i get pretty passionate about casual genre-defying lgbt rep cuz i love it #especially trans rep cuz tbh even tho im passing i still get pretty anxious coming out to people when i gotta weeeps #ksdjhsdjgd one time i got so stressed out about it that i ghosted a dude i was interested in #but he was dropping some pretty wild cissumptions into my dms so my stress was legit #tmi in the tags dlfkgdlfkmg

4 notes · View notes

murasaki-murasame · 7 years

Text

Thoughts on manga license announcement stuff from day one of Anime Expo under the cut

OK to get the anime stuff out the way first since there’s less I wanna say, I’m still annoyed at Funimation for not giving any details about their release of Yuri on Ice. Like seriously I just wanna know when it’s gonna come out and what bonuses it’ll have and how much it’ll cost. Ugh.

I’m happy that Orange is getting a physical release. I probably won’t buy it, but I appreciate that it exists. I really loved that anime, even if it had kinda crippling production issues, and a few elements of the ending were iffy. Oh well.

I thought Utena had already gotten a BD release, but I guess not. Definitely interested in that. It’ll probably be too expensive for me, though. But this does align well with the recent manga box-set. I’m really happy this series is getting more recognition and availability.

ANYWAY onto manga.

Looks like it was just Viz Media and Yen Press today. Seven Seas should be in a day or two. Kodansha and Vertical seem to have a joint booth going on, so I hope they can show off some licenses. I feel like it’s been ages since we’ve seen physical licenses from either of them. Kodansha’s been going all in on digital manga recently.

There’s really not much to say about Viz since they barely announced anything. Wow. I feel like it’s been MONTHS since they announced anything and now all they have is one shonen manga, one shojo manga, two kid’s books, and a novel??? Wow. Are they just saving some announcements for later? This is bizarre.

I’m very happy to see Fire Punch get licensed. I was actually about to suggest it to Seven Seas soon but I guess I don’t need to anymore. I definitely expected this to happen eventually, but it’s still a bit surprising. It makes sense, though. Since this is at least their third release from the Shonen Jump+ magazine, I really hope this is a good indicator that they might license Ao no Flag eventually. I’d LOVE to see that happen. I’m already planning to import it, and I’m going to still try and suggest it to Seven Seas, but Viz would be fine. Anyway, as for Fire Punch, I don’t actually know a lot about it but I feel contractually obligated to buy it because one of the major characters is apparently LGBT. So that’s amazing. Apparently they’re a trans man, which is even better. The only other trans male representation in manga I know of is in Shimanami Tasogare, so it’s a big deal. But the vague things I’ve heard about the story definitely intrigue me. And also I really like the design of the covers, so that helps. I’m probably going to buy this as it comes out, but I might still read it online first. Maybe.

I’m sorta let down that Shojo Beat’s new license is just Kenka Bancho Otome. Partly because it’s only two volumes long, and partly because the anime version of it isn’t super great. But I just have a personal issue with the ‘girl has to disguise herself as a boy for REASONS and oooooh romantic drama and misunderstandings ensue’ trope. Oh well. I wasn’t really expecting much from Shojo Beat anyway. I still want to buy some of their stuff, though.

I’m DEFINITELY gonna get the FMA Fullmetal Editions. That’s a pretty huge deal. Even if it’s . . . not really a NEW license, just a new edition of an existing series. I’ve never actually read or watched FMA, and part of that’s because I dislike the look of both the single editions of the manga and the omnibuses. I was gonna cave in and decide to get the omnibuses next year, but thankfully with this announcement I can just get these editions instead. Sadly this is gonna be eighteen volumes long, so it’s gonna take AGES to come out. And it’ll be expensive. Oh well.

Onto Yen Press, who definitely beat Viz in terms of sheer number of licenses, at least. Considering that a few months ago they licensed like 14+ titles, and this is another 20+, I’m starting to get genuinely concerned about them as a company. Can they keep this up? I’m just terrified of another Tokyopop situation happening. We’ll see.

I’m definitely vaguely interested in checking out Silver Spoon, but it wouldn’t be a huge priority. It’s hard to justify getting a series that relatively long if I’m not super into it, especially since it seems very . . . mellow and SoL-y. I’m happy for Arakawa fans, though. People have obviously been waiting years for this license to happen. The coincidental paired timing of this and the FMA Fullmetal Edition license is kinda amusing.

Hatsu Haru seems like it might be cute, and it’s nice to see Yen Press get more shojo titles. Not sure how interested I am in this, but I support their intent in getting it. Same with them picking up Stupid Love Comedy and Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts. More shojo is always nice.

I’ve been vaguely interested in checking out Thou Shalt Not Die for a while, but if it’s just a digital license I’ll wait until they potentially do it physically. Which may not happen at all. Though they’ve been fairly good at bringing over a lot of their digital titles to physical format. I’m mostly interested in this because of Yoko Taro’s involvement. It’d be great to own something by him like this. Though I’ve heard iffy things about the manga itself. But then again I also like how he writes his video games whereas a lot of people don’t, so who knows how I’d feel about it.

Oh man they licensed the goddamn vending machine isekai manga. Holy shit. I feel like we’re quickly approaching a breaking point for the isekai genre in the west and soon enough it’s just gonna really irritate people.

I at least think there’s other LNs they could bring over that’d do better. Oh well. They got HakoMari and that’s all I care about.

And finally we have one of the more genuinely shocking announcements thus far. A goddamn Pandora Hearts box-set. HOLY SHIT. And it’s going to be done in a larger trim size? With preserved colour pages? Oh man. This is so genuinely agonizing to me. I just got the entire series less than a year ago, and now they announce a fucking box-set that’s gonna cost a few hundred dollars. Argh. I’m probably not going to be able to get this even though I desperately want to, and it’d be a nice way to re-read the series like I want to. Oh well. If the box set itself looks nice, which it probably will, that’ll be even more agonizing.

If they’re gonna do an entire box set for the series, for the love of god, I need an English version of the second art-book. I own the first one already and I love it but I’ve held off on importing the second one in case it gets licensed. I’d be amazed if it doesn’t get licensed eventually. I mean, it getting a box set is a pretty good indication of it’s popularity, and they have a good track record of doing multiple art-books for stuff like Black Butler and Soul Eater. So I just need the second Pandora Hearts artbook in my life.

I’m gonna be so fucking envious of people who can get this box set. ARGH. I want it so bad but it’s gonna be so impossible to buy, let alone justify buying.

So that’s basically it for today. Now to see if Kodansha and Vertical license anything at this con. And yeah in a day or two we’ll see Seven Seas’ licenses. I don’t think we’re getting anything more from Viz for now. Maybe at Comic-Con? Who knows.

I don’t have any clear wishes for what Kodansha or Vertical could license, though I guess I could see Vertical picking up March Comes In Like A Lion, which would be great.

For Seven Seas, literally all I care about is if they license Shimanami Tasogare, that’s it. That’s all I want from them. I’m gonna keep suggesting it every single month to them until they pick it up, or someone else does. I know that they might not have access to it since it’s a Shogakukan title, but who knows. I know that Viz would be more able to pick it up, but I just . . . doubt they would. They at least didn’t announce it at their panel, obviously. Mostly I’d just have my doubts about a company as ‘mainstream’ as Viz picking up a manga all about the topic of LGBT communities/discrimination [and also housing renovation in sea-side Japan, I guess]. Seven Seas seems far more likely to get such a title since they’ve made far more overt steps into the queer manga market, especially with My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, which was apparently a huge success for them, which is why I could see them picking up Shimanami Tasogare since it’s relatively similar in theme. But, honestly, Viz isn’t entirely out there as an option. They don’t exactly have much of a history with licensing manga with queer representation of any kind, but they’re improving. I’m quite excited for their upcoming release of Sweet Blue Flowers, in particular. I also highly appreciate that they licensed After Hours. That’s one of the main reasons why I think there’s a chance, since that’s a lesbian romance manga from the exact same magazine as Shimanami Tasogare. And they were hyping it up a fair bit on their twitter before. So it’s not too much of a stretch. I guess they also have experience with this magazine through their Dorohedoro license, as well. And this panel actually gives me slightly MORE hope than before, since Fire Punch is one of the only shonen manga running at the moment that has actual, legit queer representation in it, in a major way. I’m also SORTA sure it’s something people talk about a lot when the series comes up? So I assume Viz is aware of it on some level. So these recent steps into licensing manga with queer representation gives me hope that they might license Shimanami Tasogare. Until then, I’m gonna keep suggesting it to Seven Seas.

On a similar topic, as said above I’d love to see someone pick up Ao no Flag, and yeah I can see Viz doing that eventually. It all depends on how much of a western following it gets, though. Which it doesn’t have much of thus far. I probably wouldn’t expect any sort of a license announcement until next year at earliest. Oh well. But that’s another case of queer rep in shonen manga I want to see get licensed in English. At least, the manga definitely seems to be going in that direction. I’m fairly confident about it. I mean, it’s published in the same magazine as Fire Punch, so it’s not impossible.

Oh yeah, that reminds me that Viz also licensed Astra Lost in Space, which is also part of Shonen Jump+, and I think also has some good queer rep in it. Not sure what sort, though. But either way yeah that also adds a bit to what I’m saying about how Viz is getting better at getting manga with queer representation in them, which gives me a lot of hope in general. We’ll see.

Either way I’m gonna cross my fingers and hope for the best from Seven Seas’ upcoming panel. Even if it might not be until the day after tomorrow.

#murasaki rambles #I just really desperately want shimanami tasogare to come out in English :c #also this pandora hearts box set is gonna drive me insane since I won't be able to get it aaaah

1 note · View note