#comics Bruce is really different from the animated Bruce I grew up with :(

[vonehrenfest]

DCxDP: Dead guys stick together

(A Batman 138 fix-it)

After Bizarro becomes King of Hell he watches the mortal world and is distraught to find that his brother/best friend/sorta father-figure has been hurt very badly and is calling out for help.

Distraught, he goes to another lord of the netherworld who he's heard has access to a portal (and subjects a bit more compatible with the act of helping someone). He asks King Phantom would he please please help him protect his brother/friend, and if he does Bizarro will owe him a favor and leave his realm alone.

When the inferno had initially breached the Ghost Zone Danny had thought he was going to have to deal with f*cking Trigon again, but as it turns out that guy's been replaced and the new guy is pretty nice. After a brief cosmic battle and a clearing of misunderstandings, Danny agrees to Bizarro’s request.

While Gotham's vigilante civil war continues on its rooftops, Jason is in a cell. He is trembling, practically catatonic again, and losing his mind. He’s seeing the flaming figure of a knight on horseback appear from the shadowy far wall of his room, like some kind of fairytale nightmare version of Batman. It takes a while for Jason to realize he’s talking. 

“... part of the treaty between the King of Ghosts and King of Demons, Jason Todd: Prince of Demons has been granted special status and is henceforth a protected and honorary citizen of the Infinite Realms.” 

Nightmare-Bruce touches his flaming sword on Jason’s shoulder and the unearthly fire instantly engulfs him. Relief washes through Jason, and it’s so strong he nearly drops asleep.

Bruce is apologetic when everything’s over and he realizes the mistakes he’s made... but nothing really changes. (It is a relief to Bruce that no one died or was permanently injured, Jason's condition resolved itself somehow, and Bruce is normal now so really everything is fixed or at least it will be fixed.)

Just like when Jason first came back from the dead, Bruce's response makes him hurt deeper than the physical torture itself. Jason is the one who died but Bruce acts like the ghost. Singleminded, possessive, stuck in time and blind to it; bound to repeat the same cycles again and again. Jason is the ghost but he's died multiple times now, and maybe that's kind of like living and maybe that means he can move on. 

Dani and Bizarro become friends, and she gets Danny's friend Tucker to somehow set up a working Wi-Fi connection in hell so they can all play games together. (He’s not going to question it. Everything about Amity Park is abnormal. They helped him and they’re good to Bizarro, that’s all that matters.) 

Jason forges a fake identity for Dani. He might ask Babs to make a better one for her if she ever needs it but he doubts that's likely. He hasn’t had a living identity for years now after all, he’s an old hand at fake identities. Dani is delighted and starts attending school soon after. 

Danny has good friends, and as far as Jason can tell plenty of reliable mentors in the ghost world. You wouldn’t think it, but Jason’s less worried about Danny in his role as a little godling than in his civilian life. He’s got too much on his plate- too much power yet not enough to actually resolve his real issues. Not enough to protect himself where he’s vulnerable. 

The “Guys in White” that Danny likes to complain about are concerning. So is the fact that Danny’s lives with mad-scientist parents who are trying to hunt down his alternate identity. So is his ever grinding cold-war with the mayor of his town… And something else too that had been niggling at the back of Jason’s mind ever since he’d first gotten to talk to these kids. 

One day Danny’s sister, Jazz asks to talk to him. He’s an adult she says. That’s true he replies. He’s capable of protecting himself and other people, she says. Well, he has the training and experience for it, he agrees. If things go wrong, would Jason let Danny or Dani stay with him- just until she becomes a legal adult? She asks. Jason’s... not the sort of person who should be taking kids in. Danny saved his life though. He won’t say no. He says of course.

Jason knew it. Everything about Amity Park is abnormal.

The town doesn’t technically exist- there are no maps that include it and even satellite imaging is corrupted where Danny describes his hometown is supposed to be. There are no references to it on the internet that couldn’t be referring to a totally different Amity Park elsewhere, and judging by the problems they occasionally had on gaming nights and the odd offhand remarks Danny and his friends sometimes made, it was looking extremely likely that all communications between Amity Park and the outside were being heavily censored. Before Jason knew it he had started a full-on investigation on the GIW, Mayor Vlad Masters, former Mayor Montez, and Axion Labs.

Hope and fear lodges itself in Danny’s chest. Jason’s an adult and he’s actually going to help.

[piedpiperart]

It was an interesting read. :) I know very little of the full DC universe, but yeah, you're totally right about that superman and batman thing. it's why Batman is my favorite hero from there. He shows you don't really need a fancy power to be one.

Right?!

It’s one of the main reasons why I like batman so much. I used to really hate Superman growing up and I never really knew why until later. It was cuz it bugged me how he’d always act like he was the know it all on justice, and viewed people with powers or groups or certain actions that didn’t fit his worldview as the bad thing that meant that person was bad.

Superman didn’t really get the black and white, and much like All Might, a lot of that gray is about discrimination. For a lot of small time criminals, they get to where they are because lack of education, money, support, etc. Batman knows this, understands it, makes charities as Bruce Wayne to support people like that. Superman might know but not understand. He’s also not rich so sure he might not be able to solve it really, but he’s still a daylight/spotlight hero. No one would expect Batman to do a press conference on discrimination, but that’s something Superman has the power (and responsibility) to do. It’s what Bruce Wayne does.

This discrimination is a lot like in My Hero Academia. Bad quirks are seen as villainous. Take Hawks and Miruko versus Spinner for example. All three are mutant/body changing quirks based on animals. However the only difference is that Hawks and Mirukos quirks are able to be fetishized by the public/media. Spinners Lizard mutations are seen as gross and momsterous, leading him to a life of crime because of the discrimination he got from kids, adults, when looking for a job, etc.

Miruko being a bunny quirk also had the added stereotype of being weak, meek, shy, etc. She feared getting stuck with those labels and made herself work to be seen and act differently to become a strong powerful hero. But her costume still shows her femininity, people still underestimate her, she’s not overly valued as a hero because she’s not seen as stronger than most of the top ten men heroes, etc.

Same could be said for Shinsou. Evil-stereotyped quirks get certain treatments and can lead to less choices in life for jobs, friends, etc. Stuff like that All Might isn’t aware of and won’t think to advertise or fundraise for.

It’s also the same for people with ‘good’ quirks. How many people do you think were chosen for a job specifically for their quirk? Like lie detector Tsukauchi. Was he pressured into police work? Could you imagine him being a chef or something else? It’s the same with heroes and villains. Could you imagine someone with shigarakis quirk running a coffee shop? Probably not and that’s the problem. Quirks are valued and that makes people valued differently.

Bakugo too is seen as a heroic quirk, but could also easily be spun as a villainous one. Depending on how he was raised and how/where he grew up, he could have been a hero or a villain. It was speculated that bakugos parents are middle class, maybe a bit richer. What do you think would have happened if Bakugo was poor? If he went to a school district in a different area? If they saw him as a thug instead of a hero. You think he would have been able to keep his snappy personality? Or would he be forced to keep his head down so no one would feel threatened and call the police on him?

There’s so many different layers to quirks and quirk discrimination that All Might and Superman type heroes are generally unaware of. You can see this with Iron man and the xmen. Iron man in the mcu wants the Accords, that have restrictions on mutants and want mutants to be documented. He, as a person without powers, doesn’t understand how this would affect the lives of people like Peter or Wanda (which is one big arguement I would have for having peter on team iron man but he’s also a gullible kid here so I’ll let it slide) and often in xmen comics the accords screw over many many mutants. (Prime example is Cloud 9) Xmen also have issues though. Take a look at Charles Xavier, who, in many comics and even shows like xmen evolution, puts much more time and effort into helping the mutants who could pass as normal humans or come from good backgrounds or have useful powers.

Take xmen evolution, where Charles doesnt put effort into helping the brotherhood as much as he could have. He doesn’t spend time helping the kids with problems that parents would, instead focusing on training and etc. Many xmen leave because they’re not receiving the help they need. Mutants like nightcrawler, beast, toad, etc. are often overlooked because they don’t have ‘cool’ powers. This can also be said for hulk. These type of powers are seen as less or worse or evil, etc.

In one spiderman cartoon, peter starts mutating uncontrollably into a giant spider. Xmen who look perfectly normal are like you should accept yourself for who you are, sorry we can’t help you. Meanwhile Beast knows exactly what Peter is going through and helps him in a way that actually matters, in a way that he needs. So. It shows that even within marginalized groups there’s different groups or levels within that can be at odds.

It also shows a lot of parallels to real life struggles with poc, lgbt, disabled, neurodivergent, and women’s rights,etc. in the LGBT community there’s many parallels to xmen and the TYPE of sexuality/gender you are. Gay people are discriminated against yes but they can and do often exclude trans people or people of more specific (or less marketable, etc) sexualities or people of color or disabled people within that community. Just like Xmen and certain good or bad powers. Or quirks and the discrimination surrounding that.

I think mutants or quirks in general that have a visible outward appearance are particularly interesting in this case. Media and society play a huge part in whether or not certain people are socially acceptable/good/bad. Back to the point about Spinner versus Hawks. Hawks and Miruko are fetishized by the media, hero society, etc. You don’t see Ryuku(I forgot her name but the dragon lady in MHA) who can turn into a full on dragon, being marketed the same way. Spinner and Gang Orca (I’m talking about in the anime not in real life, shush) are not being fetishized by the media or heroes, were bullied in much the same ways and are seen as scary. Ectoplasm too. You also don’t see them closer to the top ten heroes rank. You don’t see them much in the show either.

Even in Class 1-A, you see clearly what is being valued when you look at the main characters. What are their quirks? Ah yeah strong ones, right. But do they have anything that would allude to them not having a normal physical appearance? Nope. Tsuyu occasionally because while she is frog she can be marketed as sexy and cute to the public. Mina is harder to do than Tsuyu but still can be marketed as cute ‘despite’ her eyes, skin, horns, etc. You know who won’t be marketed like that? Tokoyami and Shoji and Kouda. You hardly ever see them in the anime either. Not main character material. Not classified as cute, etc. harder for business students to market them as heroes, seen as not as strong, etc. I guarantee the writers coulda made tokoyami a powerhouse, could have done so much with Mina’s acid or Kouda controlling animals.

So not only is it shown in anime, it’s also marketed that way to the viewers who prefer the cute boys, etc., it’s not as popular a show if the mcs aren’t cute. Same with MCU and DC movies. Justice league movie? Great but let’s take out hawkwoman and Martian manhunter. Only sexy men and one woman allowed. Avengers? Great but let’s focus on the ones without discrimination and limit parts with Bruce Banner and get villains that are aliens and very clearly ‘other’.

One movie that was great with this was guardians of the galaxy in that they had clear differences physically and not in a sexy alien fetish way. I liked that, that they were a ragtag group of very very different people and still made a family. (Leaving out the latest love and thunder movie tho) But in that show it was clear to see that the main characters were not all the stereotypical white men and women with cool and a useful powers. Sure they still had one white dude but I think it’s great he doesn’t have any actual powers.

Deadpool also does an awesome job with this!! Having disabilities, plus size characters, key women characters (domino) other than the one girl who was a plot device (Vanessa) and poc (russel and domino), etc. and a lesbian couple! Love it. And I love the found family aspects and the diversity! It makes me happy to see.

Even deadpool in deadpool 2 shows that xmen has issues within them. In that conference room most were white men tbh. They value certain kinds of people and often the rest of the mutants with unfavorable powers go with Magneto, just to be accepted even if he’s got evil and bad intentions. To me, Charles and Erik have bad intentions and don’t actually care about helping the mutants have a safe space, they’re mostly focused on how the rest of society will accept them. Charles wants to do it peacefully and magneto wants to do it forcefully. They don’t actually set up any kind of contingencies or start petitions and laws and policies that will actually help these poor kids. (Ex. Morlocks)

In the justice league too, you can see the characters with more physical differences like Martian manhunter, lagoon boy, beast boy, etc. aren’t many. They’re not seen as main character material, not able to be marketable in the same sexy way that Hawkwoman could be, etc. they’re underutilized in the league and underrepresented. Take killer croc or the killer shark guy. There’s literally so few of them around in DC comics and movies and aren’t marketed to the general audience. Like, there’s a reason why Marvel focuses on certain characters over others. Reason why they focus on avengers over xmen. But it’s changing and more diverse characters are being represented so that’s good. Hope they keep it up👍

Anyways this is getting super long so I’ll leave it here, sorry if it doesn’t make sense? But I just love talking about stuff like this

[fractualized]

I totally see where you're coming from with how you like your mix of comedy and seriousness and I think I'm really similar! I can definitely tolerate a lot of cheese but I'll almost always consider it a one off situation. I recently rewatched Batman and Robin while my wife was making a cast of my body so we could make cosplay and it was just so funny and silly that like it reminded me of what one of those really campy comics would look like in real life and I respected the fact that they could commit to it that way and make an artful movie that brought that to life but there were a few elements that didn't make sense to me like Barbara being Alfred's niece that I was just like whatever man and I knew I couldn't like... use it as a foundation for my basis of characterization, like I can with other media! I really love the animated series too, I grew up with it being my first experience with Batman and I always really respected it as a medium that I could trust to be satisfying and whole. I also really really liked Batman beyond because it felt like the closest continuation of that story even though I know it's really not canon and it kind of doesn't work, I like to view it as like a semi-official what if fan fiction from the original writers lol

I completely get what you mean about the comics, cuz I kind of view official comics like fanfictions even in their own right? I mean when you think back on like Bill finger and Bob Kane like eventually every other writer is going to be writing fanfiction of their characters but it's really fun to go through all the different Batman media and see whose stories you kind of like more and then whose stories you kind of tend to avoid

and when I mentioned I knew you liked comics, I was also speaking more from the perspective that you seem to have more knowledge about them Rather than I thought you had a preference for them, because you put together that comic PDF with batjokes moments and I was really impressed with that ☺️

i love your telltale fics and the games as a beautiful breath of fresh air into the life of batman so sometimes I like to imagine the animated series would be a great way to say where is juce 10 years later, if those universes were more cohesive setting wise lmao

Yeah, Barbara randomly being Alfred's niece is definitely one of the aspects of B&R that just… I guess it breaks up the campiness? That and Ivy being in love with Freeze for no discernable reason. And teaming up with him even though he'll kill her plants. And poor Bane! And then that weird bit at the end where Freeze is sort of forgiven but Ivy can't be? And Alfred almost dies. Should taken all that stuff out and added more camp.

I really enjoyed Batman Beyond too! I didn't even realize a lot of people didn't like it until recently. Honestly it's one of those things where I don't look into the reasons too much. lol I liked it and I'm fine with having liked it, no notes!! (OK I sorta lied. That bit in JLU where they made Bruce Terry's bio dad, that was bizarre.)

I am definitely in the "anything not created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane might as well be fanfic" camp. Like, sure, if DC puts resources behind a project, it has a better chance at being worth your time, but when I get down to it, I can't put a lot of weight behind the idea that someone's official derivative story is more valid than another someone's derivative AO3 post just because there was a cash exchange with a company that owns the original "asset." People who want to lean into that idea, that's their business.

The wild thing about the batjokes spreadsheet is I know that it's only a fraction of what's out there. I have read hundreds of comics at this point and I still feel like it's not enough to totally have a handle on things. Especially knowing how little I've retained. 😅 But that's another reason for the spreadsheet!

Thank you for enjoying my fics! And for implanting the idea in my head of a Telltale universe animated series… Just hijinks and maybe a little more murder with John and Bruce, bestest buddies.

[zeroducks-2]

(newbie anon) thank you so much for the answer!! i will most definitely scroll through the tags you pointed out, just like you advised later after work! i did read and just finished the slade in tt03 meta that you linked, though.

i wanted to say, i agree completely with what you said in it by the way. while i am new to the comics, i did watch some of the animations series as i grew up, including tt03. i remember being creeped out and scared whenever he showed up on screen, and the fear that he ignited was not the kind of dramatic “oh noo he is gonna try to kill the good guys!!”, but it was the kind of fear that i/most people get when watching a horror-ghost movie, and i just wanted to run and get away from it.

also, while following the series, at one point i began to wonder “is it just me or slade is so obsessed with robin, in a very weird and creepy way..” but i was a teen back then, didnt have much/any critical reading therefore didnt catch the sexual subtexts/undertones of his actions.

anyway, for now, i only have one question, which is that: what is your reading/take on dick’s character? i was a marvel comics fan, so i understand the inconsistencies of characterization in comics, especially when you add the reboots etc into it. it’s basically a contradiction all over, multiple readings/characterizations based on which canon that you pick. but there must be a consistency in the writing from their initial creation (especially for character as old as dick, during classic era) to the current era.

(and for me, i judge & shape my reading based on that. what characterization did they have initially—from the classic era, and which stay consistent to that purpose)

ahh sorry this got very long :”) thank you so much for your answer once again!

Hello again, sorry it took me a while to get back to you. You ask a difficult question and I had to think about it a lot (then RL also got in the way you know how it is), and to be honest I'm still not sure how to answer!

Dick has been written in so many different ways that I can't pinpoint a constant. I read him as the first child of an abusive guardian, who can't really ever break free of the trauma bonding. I also read him as extremely parentified and in charge of the emotional well-being of his family, and of having shoulders broad enough to carry it (unfortunately for him). Surely I prefer when he's written as empathetic and emotionally intelligent rather than when he broods and acts brash, but that really changes according to who's handling him at the moment in the "canon continuity", or in any given DC byproduct like the videogames, WFA or an animated movie.

My main thing with Dick is that I associate him with emotional vulnerability, selflessness, hope, and the strength to keep going despite everything. As toxic as their relationship tends to be, Dick was the light of hope for Bruce and allowed him to keep going and find something worth fighting for. He chose the name Nightwing after a Kryptonian hero and then decided to become a beacon of hope for Bludhaven, a city so full of violence it was even worse than Gotham. He's a symbol among vigilantes and heroes alike and I guess he's a symbol for the DC fandom as well in a way.

My take on Dick is also that he's destined to never truly be happy unless everyone around him is happy, but this will never happen because the moment he manages to make everyone happy, he leaves to find another situation like that. This is because being a vigilante in DC comics is a sysiphean task - Jason can never go past his trauma of dying and having been unavenged, Damian can never free himself from the shackles of his heritage, Bruce can never stop being Batman because the same villains will keep haunting Gotham, and he will never elaborate the loss of his parents. Dick can never stop looking for the happiness and carefreeness he had from when he was a circus kid, unable to find his own center and inner peace, and so he will keep guiding young and old heroes on their paths without ever truly reaching his personal happiness and fulfillment.

I'm not sure this was the answer you were hoping to get, sorry if I went on a bit of a tirade. Again welcome to the fandom!

[bjurnberg]

Something I've half noticed is that in the DC x DP fandom, Danny gets shipped with....everyone? Like I've seen him paired off with Jason and Damien most often i think, but also with Dick and Bruce. Just feels surprising. (also only dude? Huh)

Where do you land on this? Do you ship him with anyone in particular? Care to share your thoughts on this?

I was also surprised by this when I first joined the batphandom. I’m so used to other fandoms that have strict pairings, with little deviation and so few rairpairs.

But I really enjoy this aspect of the crossover. It’s fun to explore different character dynamics and stages of life. I think it comes from two things.

1. Batman and DC is old. There’s 89 years worth of material to cherry pick from, and EVERYONE has their own favorite era, storylines, and characters. It doesn’t matter how you characterize any of them because it will always be canon somewhere throughout the years. And there’s so many plots to explore you’ll never run out of material.

2. Danny Phantom is complete. The show ended 16 years ago, which means the people viewing it originally on Nickelodeon (me) are generally around age 30. So we relate to more adult characters like Bruce, Dick, and maybe Jason, but still feel connected to our childhood emotions through the canon-young characters so shipping Danny with Tim or Damian still makes perfect sense because of their canon ages.

Another aspect is that these characters rarely age within their own canons, so it’s easy to keep them as-is, or say “hey I grew up and I wanna make Danny grow up too.”

Danny is my age. He was just 14 in 2004 when the show started, and I was barely 15, so I grew up with him. I also grew up with Tim being Robin in Batman: the Animated Show, so pairing them makes sense to me age-wise, but these are also fantastic fictions that never overlapped so the timeline they exist in is nebulous.

It helps that Danny fits every trope of being a Robin. Young, sassy, jumps in to fight without guidance, black hair blue eyes, puns for days, near/full death experiences, and a vampire themed billionaire with a basement lab who’s trying to adopt him. Like… *waves hands around*

Honestly? I missed this kind of Fav Character Being Shipped With Everyone mood we got in the early days of Harry Potter. There’s so many characters to choose from that its just fun to explore. Having strict parings reduces creativity imo, so joining this fandom and getting an explosion of options is refreshing.

As for Danny just being shipped with guys in the DC universe? Yeah, I’ve never seen him shipped with Steph or Cass or Babs. Part of it is an outcome of misogyny. The male characters are more fleshed out and focused on by the comic writers. They’re better advertised and showcased in more tv and movies. The women are neglected so they aren’t as widely known unless you seek out their comic runs on purpose. Very few are even shown in the animated movies, which is where the most frequently used story lines come from for fandom. (Or at least that’s my experience.)

And fandom is just super gay. Fic was the only way to get good queer relationships and representation for so long (still is imo), that straight pairings aren’t common or are overlooked as part of the long term culture.

I don’t have a particular favorite pairing for Danny. My main interest in fiction is character growth, so I look for plot driven fics, or hurt/comfort, or found family.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Do you have a favorite pairing? Or have you seen a good Steph/Danny fic? Cuz that’s a rairpair I could get behind.

[ramoth13]

Thoughts on an old love:

Vertigo Comics

With the release of the recent Sandman show (highly recommend!!! Mr. Gaiman is, as always, a brilliant storyteller), I thought it might be time to have a look back on my favorite publisher back in the day. I know a few people (especially towards its final days) didn't really distinguish Vertigo Comics from DC comics, but when I tell you that there was a difference, I mean it was just something that can't be replicated.

I don't exactly remember which Vertigo comic I read first. It could've been The House of Mystery or Hellblazer but I'm pretty sure it was Fables. And that's the thing, they were all so special.

I grew up reading comics because my older brother and my Dad before him had grown up reading them. Shazam and superman were Dad's favorites, Batman, JLA, and Green Lantern (Kyle Rainer) were my brother's. But I had grown up watching the Batman Animated Series, where Bruce Wayne was kind, and Batman wasn't jaded, but hopeful, and the comics started pulling away from that.

That's when it happened, I noticed that the characters kept changing, kept evolving from writer to writer, moving further and further from the ones that I knew. Superheroes had been around a long time and couldn't stay the same. Writers had new ideas, new ways to represent the old. Batman was mean, condescending, and sometimes cruel. If they couldn't be updated, they were killed off. Superman lost his love of Lois. Spiderman killed someone. The characters I thought I knew, no longer looked like the ones I loved. So in 2008 I stopped reading them.

But I missed comics. Later, a friend of mine gave me some digital comics, probably illegally now that I'm old enough to know better, but one of them was Fables. I read over 30 comics in one day. I ate them up. And whichever one I read next, Hellblazer or House of Mystery, I read those too. And then, because of course, I read Sandman which opened me up to a world I was already falling in love with. And V for Vendetta, and the Watchmen, Preacher, American Vampire, Y:The Last Man, and The Books of Magic. These were stories that spoke to my very being.

Anything with a Vertigo Logo was gold. The stories beautiful, compelling, and mindbending. The characters were diverse, intriguing, and mysterious. It was like finding a pillar of magic in a sea of ever evolving stories that could never decide on a true identity for itself, Vertigo knew what it wanted to be. The stories haunted me.

SPOILERS:

From Dream besting Lucifer in the oldest game, to Constantine fighting his demon twin, to Bigby Wolf FINALLY marrying Snow White (And Prince Charming's grand return), to finding out who the REAL adversary was in motherlands, these stories never deviated or changed on whims, they always felt honest, sincere, and true to themselves.

:END OF SPOILERS~

There are many other non-DC/Marvel publishers that I love, from Dark Horse (Conan series and Hellboy), to Image (SAGA, Magdelena, and WANTED), to even smaller publishers like ASPEN and Zenescope. Yet, none of these, nor DC or Marvel will ever feel the same as as Vertigo in its heyday.

DC may have made Constantine a superhero, the Watchmen a series, and added all of the best magical parts of Vertigo into its official brand, but the things that made those stories special have stayed with those original books. Nothing against the writers at DC, they work hard and I have no doubt try to remain faithful to the originals... but contrary to what DC wants you to think with their magical league of superheroes, you can't capture magic in a bottle.

And VERTIGO had magic, in spades.

[sketchncanto]

Mass Ask #1 ✨

Okay, so I saw an artist tackle some of their asks like this and I thought it was the most genius thing ever so now I shall also tackle my asks like this so that I don't clog my blog and ya'lls timelines. Also, some of these asks are old as fuq, so my apologies to everyone I haven’t answered since February 😭

There's a possibility that some won't see their asks get answered (bc these are screenshots and they won't get notified that I answered) BUT I think this is the most efficient way to try to get to everyone! So without further adieu, here's round one of my mass ask answersss!

Yes!! Though admittedly I'm still working on the fics I currently have on the list. But I'm always open for new fics!! Even if the list gets exponentially long, there will come a day where I will read it. Even if it takes me years-- I will read it. So yes, send them my way! (No gore/erotica/inc*st please n’ thank you!)

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The most challenging Madrigaaal-- I think Pepa and Isa are both the hardest for me to nail. Their faces are like those perfect "princess-shaped" faces and I've always struggled with that. The easiest? It's between Antonio and Bruno! I'd only say Bruno because I've drawn him like 1000000 times at this point lmao his face is permanently locked into my brain chamber 😵‍💫

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Heheheh thank you!! I haven't drawn Camilo a whole lot so I'm glad you think he turned out right! ✨ @nerdish-simp

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Thank you so muuuuch!! I'm glad my art can brighten your day! 💕🥹 @mbbia2004

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My heart I— thank you 😭💖

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Thank you!! Tbh I think that's my favorite encanto theme to draw-- I have a deep need to see that man interact with babies 🤌🏼

Also HELLO fellow Chels!

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I grew up watching a BUNCH of animated shows, movies, reading comics, scouring deviantart etc. I think a combination of all of that inspired me to draw and never stop! As far as art style, I take inspiration from a looot of different artists. To name a few big ones, I really love Genndy Tartakovsky, Chris Reccardi (rest in peace 💕), Bruce W. Smith, Craig McCracken, Jin Kim, Shiyoon Kim, Nico Marlet, Thurop Van Orman, Brittany Myers, Jamie Hewlet— okay this wasn’t a few LOL but yes there’s loads more but I pull the most from these wonderful artists! ✨ @its-actually-ash

Alrighty that's it for this batch! Will def be answering more probably this weekend! 🤙🏼

[kaninchenzero]

dammit i have superman opinions so i'm gonna make it tumblr's problem now

obviously snyderfilm gets clark wrong but it's how it gets him wrong that's just stupid

man of steel is entirely setup for Clark Has To Kill A Dude

and that's not inherently a terrible concept but snyderfilm goes about it in a way that is very much about superman and not clark

clark is fundamentally an archetypal decent guy who happens to have godlike power

he just really likes people so he goes to the big city where there are lots of people and gets a job as a reporter which has him talk to lots of people about lots of stuff tbh he's wasted on just the facts reportage clark is happiest doing lifestyle and human interest stories

clark uses his superman identity to protect his relationships with other people, so he can keep on being just a guy with them

and since he's just way better at violence than anyone else on the planet he doesn't kill people when he can just put villains where they won't hurt anyone else for a while

(yes of course that's also an artifact of the comics code authority and the business model of superhero comics but moving on)

when kryptonians show up clark is no longer the best around at violence, they're every bit as good at violence as he is

there's nowhere he can put zod that's safe for other people, no way to make zod stop being murderously shitty except by killing him, so that's what he does

the same way he'd stop an animal infected with lyssavirus from infecting others

he wouldn't be happy about it, he'd probably get some therapy since for most people, killing other people is bad for us

but killing zod wouldn't be breaking an explicit and extremely rigid moral code like it would be for bruce

clark grew up on a farm for fuck's sake, he has a vastly different relationship with killing than bruce

snyderfilm spends its run time arguing that only superman is real, that clark is a mask he wears so people won't bother him with their petty pathetic human problems, that superman's defining feature is how good he is at violence

and that's just backwards, y'know?

[happytheoristavenue]

My opinion: Batman is one of the most down-to-earth heroes in DC Comics

Batman, The World’s Greatest Detective. He is the hero that is always ten steps ahead. He can profile you just by observing your daily routine. That’s how goated he is. He is a master in martial arts and has a budget to create and maintain his many gadgets, including his car. He is one of the most brilliant people in DC comics. There are many reasons to heed Batman’s warning, but I feel like people just think Batman is crazy. While he is not perfect, listening to him could save the world. His warnings would save the world because he uses logic and his knowledge to make those warnings. 

One reason I believe Batman is the most down-to-earth hero is his past. As we all know, Bruce is of the Wayne fortune; the dude literally grew up as the only child on a vast estate. His parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, took him to see a movie, and Thomas took them down to Crime Ally to meet Alfred. In that ally, Bruce’s parents were gunned down in front of him by a random criminal on the street. That alone is pretty traumatizing for an 8-year-old boy who had never been on the road. When he became an adult, he made sure to learn martial arts and everything he could about how to solve complex crimes as a detective. He also spent every night on the streets, watching these criminals and taking notes. One traumatic experience on the streets of Gotham shook his entire world. If that criminal didn’t gun down his parents, he would have never got to experience what it was really like in Gotham City. He wouldn’t go on to witness the corruption and disturbingly high crime levels. Superman, or Clark Kent, crashed on Earth in a little ship when he was a baby, and he had an everyday life in Smallville. Compared to Bruce as a child, Clark didn’t really experience crime as he did. So, when comparing the two, Superman seems very much out-of-touch with what city life is like.

When you think about it, heroes like Superman and Wonder Woman are literally in the clouds. When they see a crime, they swoop down, stop the criminals, and leave. Meanwhile, Batman is on a rooftop scooping out the scene. He thwarts the criminals, chases them for a bit, beats them down, and interrogates the last one standing to get information. These are two different styles of crime fighting that I’ve noticed, and it is because of Batman’s different kind that makes him unique. Does Superman watch criminals from the shadows? No, Batman does. Watching from the shadows allows Batman to properly observe criminals in their natural habitat. He sees how they act, their usual routines, and the places they target, and he hears their conversations. Those criminals usually work for prominent villains like Two-Face or the Joker. Listening to those conversations will help him be able to predict the next big plan to wreak havoc on Gotham. He understands that even the tiny muggings can lead to something bigger and more threatening. You don’t see Superman thinking about these things, he’s just the guy with super-strength stopping any crime he sees, or he’s in the Watch Tower.

This brings me to my next point. When I think of Wonder Woman and Superman and basically any hero that can fly, I think of people in the sky. Batman even says it in the animated movie Justice League Dark. In it, citizens in places like Gotham and Metropolis commit heinous crimes, but they all claim that they saw monsters and had to act. In a meeting about the matter, Superman and Wonder Woman suggested that they may be dealing with magic or something that causes hallucinations. Batman disagreed and said that people were just crazy. The League had encountered magic before, and even members had magical abilities. Still, they assumed that they were good people. There were good points on both sides, and Batman was wrong in the end; however, I see where Batman came from. Superman and Wonder Woman weren’t on the streets like Batman was. He was even created by a traumatic experience on the streets of Gotham. In this perspective, people are not always who they say they are. He saw them as people who needed help, of course, but he didn’t just assume that there wasn’t something going on psychologically.

Batman is not perfect, he’s been in the wrong before, and he’s even represented the antagonist ideal in some stories. But we can’t deny that his head is on the ground instead of the clouds. Which is one thing that makes him my favorite superhero. Superman is incredible, and this post is not to bash The Man of Steel. I’m just saying that he doesn’t think about the things Batman thinks about. Batman sees the bigger picture; he can sniff out corruption from the Batcave. Batman may be bleak and depressing sometimes, but he knows what he’s talking about. 

[stupid-sloot-headcanons]

do you have any advice for getting into batman and stuff? I got hooked on your jason todd stuff from before, but ever since I tried to search up on him: there's so much batman comics, video games, series, and other stuff pop up that I'm not really good with and I'm not really sure where to start :((

(This got super long because I love Batman shit and I grew up with one of the biggest Batman fan boys ever)

So of you're a manga fan, American comics are a bit more daunting to get into when it's a big title like Batman. I do NOT recommend starting with the original comics in the 1940s or so just because

They're very dated and unless you're into old comics and their style of art and writing

The Batman I personally love has very little in common with the original. While I like the original comics all the way back then and plenty of Batman iterations through the years, there's a lot more depth that's been added as comics became a more seriously-taken medium.

When it comes to non-comic book works, I cannot recommend Batman: The Animated Series enough. THIS is the series that made me fall in love with the series and characters as a child. It is a classic example of a dark-deco art style, 90s-early 2000s Western animation, and imo the best use of Paul Dini's art style. If you find you enjoy it and want to see something with more DC heroes, there's also Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond (a sequel series set in the future with a very old Bruce Wayne training a young boy to be the next generation's Batman), and both Justice League and its sequel Justice League Unlimited! The Paul Dini universe (or Dini-verse) is where a LOT of inspiration for subsequent Batman adaptations comes from, right down to the video games featuring the voice actors for Joker and Batman (Mark Hammill and Kevin Conroy respectively) from the shows.

The 1960s Batman show starring Adam West is great if you love goofy bullshit. It isn't everyone's cup of tea and is somehow more cartoonist than the cartoons, but I love it for what it is. Also Eartha Kitt is there as my favorite Catwoman (with Julue Newmar as a close 2nd), Burgess Meredith's delightful take on The Penguin, and also Vincent Price plays an original villain called Egghead who I fucking love.

The video games/Arkham games are very similar in tone and content to the Paul Dini-verse, and are in my opinion the best video game adaptations of a superhero ever made. Arkham Origins is a prequel made by another studio, and the rest were made by Rocksteady; that's why it feels a little different and the voice actors for Joker and Batman are different (but still alright imo). Now the first game in the official trilogy is Arkham Asylum. This one is the most distinct in my opinion; unlike its sequels, Asylum is a more enclosed space. Imagine something like the maps in Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but it's a Batman game. The sequels still have a main story, but it's much more of an open sandbox to play and explore in.

The mechanics in the Arkham games are fucking phenomenal and really sell that feeling that YOU are Batman. You're stealthily taking out bad guys with plenty of tools you can upgrade, and in the actual fistfights the combat is very satisfying. It almost feels like a rhythm game with how punching, blocking, and dodging work. The boss fights in the games are...varied in terms of quality lol. They're not amazing but they're not awful either, yk?

In terms of movies, the Nolan trilogy is good! Imo the best is the Dark Knight (aka the second movie) and Beyond (the first) and Dark Knight Rises (third) are still good but nowhere near as solid as Dark Knight. The newest film, The Batman, is a very unique and very well-done film that I would definitely recommend if you want a great character study of Batman and Bruce Wayne himself. As far as animated movies go, if you like Jason Todd then I'd recommend Batman: Under the Red Hood. It's a nice adaptation of Jason's story after Robin and becoming Red Hood, but it may assume you've read the comics/know some characters already (like Ra's al Ghul and the shit with the Lazarus Pit). Also if you like Jason Todd, you'll probably like the third game Arkham Knight.

For animated films, I'd recommend Under the Red Hood if you like Jason Todd, Son of Batman if you want to learn about Batman's son and one of the later Robins, and (after checking out the animated series Batman Beyond) Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. This is a made-for-tv film that serves as the end to Batman Beyond.

Now as far as comics go...there are a few "classic" storylines that I enjoy. Here's a quick rundown of what I might say are essential:

Batman: Hush. This one features the intro of a very underrated Batman villain named Hush, who has an appearance in the Arkham game. It's just a solid storyline with a good blend of action and Batman doing cool detective shit, plus some nice interaction with Superman and Catwoman.

Batman: The Long Halloween. This one is a golden storyline that I think 99% of fans love. A new serial killer named Holiday has appeared, killing people on various holidays. Batman's trying to solve this case and I love the reveal of the killer, and the various interactions with various villains and Batman are great. This one also has a few references in the Arkham games!

Batman: Anarky in Gotham City. If you like the political and philosophical takes on Batman, look no further. Anarky is another underrated (and sadly, poorly adapted) villain who gels very well with Batman's role and personality.

Batman: A Death in the Family. This storyline is where Jason Todd as Robin dies, and how deeply this affects everyone in the Batfamily. If you're a Jason stan, this is basically required reading lmao.

AFTER A Death in the Family, read Under the Hood. This is when Red Hood makes his appearance and the Jason as you've seen him in my work really appears. This is a sequel to the events in A Death in the Family though, so make sure you read that first!

Batman: The Killing Joke. So first things first, there is an animated film version but it's shit. With that in mind, this one is about Joker and his relationship to Batman, as well as the transformation of Batgirl/Barbara Godron into becoming Oracle after being forced to retire her cowl. This is ALSO heavily referenced in the third video game, Arkham Knight, and even shows the main story beats.

Batman: Sword of Azrael and then Batman: Knightfall. Knightfall is another classic and I will not spoil why, and it's also heavily referenced in the games.

Now when it comes to specific villains in Batman, there's a collection of comic anthologies called Batman: Arkham centered around each villain. For example, I have the collections for Riddler, Scarecrow, and Two-Face. If you just search smth like "Batman anthology + [insert villain]" they should be easy to find. Not all villains have one though, since Batman's Rogues Gallery is so huge.

Also, if you live near a library I guarantee you that your comics section will feature a good chunk of Batman comics. Like my local library has a ton of anthologies for the Court of Owls storyline, Anarky, and a shit ton of other Batman-specific stories. And since western comics are a web/shitshow of intertwining stories, don't be ashamed to just look up the series on Wikipedia to see if you want to just skim the basic plot elements so you have a basic idea of what's going on in the book you want to read. Also there is no shame in pirating lol; my advice is read what you can online for free or at the library, and then buy the stories you enjoy. Also watchcartoononline has all the Paul Dini animated series and the Arkham Games are some of the most common finds at used video game stores, so don't worry about breaking the bank to watch them and play them!

[maxwell-grant]

You have done an (excelent) post on how to reinvent Batman as a Pulp Hero. Do you think you could do one to Superman as well? Or do you think it is impossible to do this with the progenitor of the Super Hero genre without transforming him in a totaly diferent character?

Well, you saying it as impossible only makes it seem ever more tempting of a challenge, but yes, it is a bit harder. I'm gonna link my Batman post here as a reference point.

Partially because Batman's a franchise I've thought extensively about for a long time in regards to what I like about it or how I'd like to approach if given the opportunity, which is not something I can really say for Superman until more recently the Big Blue to start orbiting my brain. I don't have years worth of redesigns or fan concepts saved on my galleries and files to comb through to pick and choose here, and my experience with Superman as a character is considerably different, in some aspects more deeply personal, and not really something I'd like to go into in this blog, at least not now.

Part of the reason why it's harder is also because Batman and Superman have very different relationships with their pulp inspirations. Batman was, ostensibly, a pulp character adapted to comics, a dime-a-dozen Shadow knock-off who picked up and played up diverging traits from other characters and gradually ran with them to gradually forge a unique identity. Superman right from the start was rooted in a much stronger conceptual underpinning: the Sci-Fi Superman and Alien Menace who, instead of being a tragic monster or a tyrannical villain, becomes a costumed adventurer and social crusader. Even the name Super-Man was taken from an early story of Siegel and Shuster about a telepathic villain who ends the story lamenting that he should have used his powers for the good of mankind instead of selfishness. I hesitate to call what Siegel and Shuster were doing “subversive” because that term's picked up a real negative connotation, and it's not like Siegel and Shuster were out to upend their influences (they were pulp aficionados themselves), but rather putting a more positive, new spin on them.

Which is why it also becomes a bit harder to do what I did with Batman and align Superman with some of his pulp-esque inspirations, like John Carter, Flash Gordon or Hugo Danner, without just making it "Superman but he's John Carter", "Superman but it's Flash Gordon", and "Iron Munro / Superman but everything sucks" respectively. It's harder to create a character that wouldn't feel reduntant and derivative at best, and actively contradictory to Superman at worst.

I guess if I had to come up with a "Pulp Hero Superman" take I liked, well first of all I'd have to take steps to distance it from the likes of Tom Strong or Al Ewing's Doc Thunder, those two are as good as it gets in regards to Pulp Supermen. I stipulated for Batman a "No Guns, No Murder, No Service" policy partially to distance my takes on Batman from all the "Pulp Batmen" that just add guns and murder and take Batman back to the barest of basics. Likewise, I'm adding a "No Depowered Science Hero" rule here, which means it's a take that's likely going to veer off a lot more into fantasy and probably enough tampering with Clark's character that it does risk becoming a different character.

Frankly I don't think I'm gonna succeed at doing these without just making it a new character entirely, because with Batman you can get away with just upending the character's aesthetic and setting and even origin and still keep it recognizably Bruce Wayne (in fact Batman does that all the time), which isn't really the case with Superman, who needs those to remain recognizably Superman as he goes through internal changes and character shifts. I guess what I'm gonna do here is more taking the building blocks of Superman/Clark Kent and see a couple new ways I can rearrange them to create a Pulp Superman

Perhaps something we can do is to scale back or recontextualize the "superhero" parts without diminishing Superman's role as a superpowered fantasy character.

One way we can start is by picking on that connection between Superman and the sci-fi supermen/alien monsters of pulps I mentioned earlier and play it up further, to create a Superman who's deeply, deeply alien in a way that no mild-mannered disguise or colorful outfit can really disguise, something so dramatically powerful and alien, that instead you could get tales about the kinds of ensuing changes and ripple effects this has on the world upon the The Super-Man's arrival. And for that I'm gonna have to quote @davidmann95's concept for Joshua Viers' absolutely stunning Superman redesign on the left side of the image above

The red, the goldish-orange and white, the alienness, the angelic, sculpted feeling, the halo, that innocently curious expression: it’s genuinely beautiful. Superman as a redeeming science-angel from beyond our understanding, as much past the uncanny valley of limited human comprehension as a Lovecraftian monster but tuned to the opposite key - you could spend an endless procession of human lifetimes trying and failing to understand this being, but all you’ll ever know for sure is that it is beyond you, and it knows you, and it loves you.

Superdoomsday from Earth 45, healed and transformed into the savior it was originally envisioned as? Some descendant of his, or a future of the man himself? An alien who picked up on a broadcast of Superman from Earth, and so inspired reshaped itself in his image to spread his ‘gospel’ to the stars?

Alternatively, to come back to Earth a little, many, many pulp characters and series were built off the antics and personalities of real people, celebrities getting their own magazines or serials or fictionalized takes on them, so perhaps one way to make a "pulp" take on Superman would be to emphasize a bit more of Superman's real-world roots, trends that inspired his creation directly or indirectly at the time. The Jewish strongman Sigmund Breibart and Shuster's interest in fitness culture, Harold Lloyd's comic persona, the rising "strongman" film genre in the early 20th century, actors Clark Gable and Kent Taylor that supposedly named his secret identity, Clark Kent being a socially-awkward journalist based of Siegel's own school experiences.

Maybe one start to an authentic Pulp Superman, who would still be Superman, would be to just ask the question "What if Superman was a real person and/or a celebrity, and they started making pulp magazines and serials dedicated to him? What would those look like?". You wouldn't even have to restrict it to just a story set in the 1930s, in fact you could even play around with the rise of new mediums over the decades.

This third one is a little closer to some plans I have for my own take on a Superman character, not necessarily what I would do with Superman proper but one of my ideas for a Superman analogue. Superman's a character I'll always associate strongly with childhood and childhood fantasy, and to tap into that I would emphasize the other end of the fiction that influenced Siegel and Shuster: comic strips, in their case specifically Little Nemo and Popeye.

In my case I would bring additional influences from some of the comic strips I personally grew up reading like Monica's Gang and Calvin and Hobbes, and I already talked a bit about Captain Fray in terms of how he’s a Superman character despite being a villain. I guess you could call this one "What if Superman was a public domain comic strip character, stripped of the importance of being the founding figure of a super popular genre or extended universe, and also was kind of ugly?".

He's not "Sloth from the Goonies" ugly, I swear I didn't actually have Sloth in mind when typing out this idea, I've never watched that film nor did I know until now that he actually spends the film in a Superman shirt. That's not really what I'm going for. Visually I was thinking of modeling my take on Superman heavily after Hugo from Street Fighter and his inspiration Andre the Giant, to really emphasize the “circus strongman / freak wrestler” aspect of Superman’s inspiration, particularly in regards to how Hugo’s SFIII version strikes a really great balance in making Hugo ugly and both comedic and fearsome in battle, as well as lovable and even a little dopey (without being outright stupid, like his IV self) in his victory animations and endings.

He's still Superman, he still goes on fantastical adventures to help people, he's still a deeply loving and compassionate soul whose face beams with joy and affection and who's got wonderful eyes and a great smile. It's just that this smile has a couple of mismatched stick-out teeth or some missing ones, and he's got a crooked smile some people take as smug or malicious, he’s got a strongman’s gut instead of a bodybuilder’s abs, his nose is a little busted (maybe he’s had too many crash landings), and his hair is a little wild or greasy, and he doesn't exactly have very good people skills because of how others usually react to him and, y'know, he doesn't get the kind of publicity Superman would get despite doing ostensibly the same things. He’s not deformed, he’s incredibly intelligent and capable, but in comparison to how superheroes are usually allowed to look, he might as well be Bizarro in the public eye.

It becomes a running gag that people tend to assume some nearby fireman or cop was the one who rescued the hundred orphans out of a burning building single-handedly, meanwhile he's getting accosted off-panel by police officers who think he set the building on fire, or think they can bully this weird man dressed funny. He goes to rescue old people in peril and occasionally they yell at him that they don't have any money. He doesn't get asked to lead superhero meetings or teams even though many in the community advocate for just how much he does for the world, he gets censored out of tv broadcasts or group shots (even his face is sometimes pixelated when they do show him), people invite him on talk shows and don't really let him talk or assume they got the wrong guy. He goes to rescue a woman dangling off a building, and then he gets attacked by like three different superhero teams who assume he must have kidnapped the poor damsel. He was the first superhero, he is the strongest of them all still, but he never really gets credit for it, it nor does he even want to. None of this at all stops him or deters him, except for some occasionally funny reactions.

This never really changes for him, he doesn't really earn people's approval nor does he have to, instead the stories, outside of the gags and adventures you’d expect from a comic strip, veer more towards others learning to be less judgmental and him learning ways to better approach people. He isn't any lesser than Superman just because he doesn't look like most people would want him to look and he doesn't have to look like Superman. Really I think we could use more superheroes that don’t look all so uniformly pretty.

Again, probably not a take that would work for Clark proper, but it’s one way I would take a shot at doing Superman with my own

I have other stuff in the works for this character but I'd like to keep them to better work on them for now, but yeah, these are three of my shots at developing a Pulp Superman.

Alternatively here's a fourth idea that's more pulp than all of these: Join up Nicholas Cage with Panos Cosmatos again, or whatever weird indie director he decides to pair up with next, and let them do whatever the hell they want with Superman. Give us Mandy Superman. Superman vs The Color Out of Space. Superman vs Five Nights at Freddy's. Superman’s quest to find THE LAST PIG OF KRYPTON. Anything goes.

[9worldstales]

MCU: Loki and Midgardian clothes

So, I’ve seen some fans wondering how could Loki fix Mobius’ tie since Asgardians clearly do not wear ties…

…and it made me wonder ‘is this a mistake or Loki was actually familiar with Midgardians clothes?’

So let’s start with the sources at our disposition to answer this question.

SOURCES MENTIONED:

Movies: “Thor” (2011), “The Avengers” (2012), “Thor – Ragnark” (2017)

Series: “Loki” [More exactly a scene from: “Marvel Studios' Loki | Official Trailer | Disney+”] (2021)

Comics: None mentioned

Direct-to-video animated film: None mentioned

Motion comics: None mentioned

Books: “The Art of Thor” (2011), “The art of The Avengers” (2012), “The Art of Thor: Ragnarok” (2017), “Marvel Studios: All your questions answered” (2018)

Novels: “Thor: Ragnarok - The Junior novel” by Jim McCann (2017)

Webs: None mentioned

Others: “Thor” old movie script

Okay, now we can start.

So, as weird as it might seem at first, the second answer, which is that Loki is familiar with Midgardian modern attires, might be the intended one, right from “Thor”.

Let’s go back to that movie.

Thor is clearly unfamiliar with present day Midgard as a whole, and so are his friends.

We’ve various moments in which Thor shows he’s unaware of present day Midgardians customs, like when he can’t realize he’s in doctors’ care and thinks they’re attacking him (in a deleted bit, when they tell him they’re trying to help him, he demands they bring him healing stones, showing he has no idea how Earth’s healing system work), or when he breaks a glass asking another believing he’s showing appreciation for the drink, or when he enters in a pet shop, demands a horse and when they tell him they’ve only dogs, cats, birds, demands one of them big enough to ride.

It doesn’t mean he never went to Midgard, in the movie there’s the implication he had been on Midgard before...

Thor: We're going to Jotunheim. Fandral: What? This isn't like a journey to Earth where you summon a little lightning and thunder, and the mortals worship you as a god. This is Jotunheim.

...and there was a cut scene in which he recognized being on Midgard and even calling it ‘Earth’.

Thor: Blue sky... one sun... This is Earth, isn't it?

And there’s another cut scene that says that yes, Sif and the Warriors Three had been on Earth… but a thousand years ago.

Volstagg: Is it just me, or does Earth look a little different to you? Sif: It has been a thousand years... Volstagg: Things change so fast here. You leave for a millennium, and it's like the whole neighborhood's gone.

Now, Loki was a babe in 965 AD and “Thor” takes place in 2011. Sif likely doesn’t mean exactly 1000 years but, what’s more, we don’t know how exactly Asgardians age in the MCU.

Does their childhood last as much as ours and then their aging process slow down so as to allow them to live 5000 years? Or their aging process is proportionately all slowed down and they remains babes for years?

I tend to think their childhood is fast and then they have a slower aging process once they reach a certain age, but anyway this is irrelevant. Even if Loki visited Midgard 1000 years before and was familiar with its customs back then, well, things, as Volstagg points out, are changed a lot.

So… where do we can get an idea if Loki is familiar with Midgard or not?

When Loki goes to see Thor, he shows up dressed up in 21st century Midgardian attire.

In “The Art of Thor” is said:

Said Craig Kyle, “Loki wants to look good, he’s a man of style… Loki actually has three looks, Thor has one.” In addition to the three costumes he wears in the otherworldy realm of Asgard, Loki also makes a brief appearance in a suit and tie. Said Tom Hiddleston, “When he turns up on Earth in the movie, [he’s] very GQ.”

(For who, like me, is not familiar with the term GQ, it is used to describe a guy who is dressed nicely, very sleek, or very sexy to the ladies, The term comes from the men's fashion magazine named GQ (=Gentlemen's Quarterly).)

They don’t really explains why Loki decided to dress up like that, but the fact he chose to is meaningful.

Loki was going to see Thor, and he only let Thor see him.

He appears in the room Thor was, presumably after waiting for a while inside it but invisible since he complains about how he thought Coulson would never leave. When Coulson is back, Loki has magically disappeared again.

People doesn’t see Loki, not even when he tries to lift up Mjolnir.

Long story short, Loki’s attire is not to disguise himself as a human among humans and walk among them unnoticed, as he just doesn’t let them see him at all, and if he were, his very fashionable outfit would likely draw more gazes than anything else (compare it with Coulson’s plain suit), especially when he tries to lift Mjolnir while all around it there are scientists dresses in scientist garbs and guards dressed in guard uniforms.

So we can see Loki didn’t need to dress as a human to see Thor, he could have very well gone there in his normal Asgardians clothes, like he does when he goes to visit Laufey...

...though he could have forsaken the armour when visiting Thor, and just show up in his normal attire.

Instead Loki picked up a stylish Midgardian outfit to go meet his brother. Be it an illusion (more likely) or real clothes, Loki knew how a fashionable 21st century Midgardian would dress and decided to dress as such even though there was no need for it. This implies a familiarity with Midgard, or at least with its dressing style, which I genuinely doubt could have been a topic of study for Asgardians... even though Odin too was familiar with Midgardians attires as, when he bans Thor to Earth, he changes his clothes into modern, ordinary, definitely not fashionable Midgardian ones.

Loki knows the secret paths between words, it can be he travelled to Midgard and, once there, grew to like the elegant style we have.

But yes, this doesn’t necessarily mean he could learn how to fix a tie, as his clothes might be an illusion.

The final bit of “Thor” is a bit of a confusing thing as it shows Loki (dressed in Asgardian clothes) invisible to other people’s eyes controlling Selvig...

...which is confirmed by “Marvel Studios: All your questions answered” which describes that scene as:

Loki controls Selvig as he examines the Tesseract.

If Loki had controlled Selvig for an extensive period he might have learnt to tie ties as Selvig wears one.

However, although this scene was created and directed by Joss Whedon, this scene is kind of forgotten when “The Avengers” rolls around.

In it Selvig is free from Loki’s control until Loki uses the sceptre with the mind stone to turn him into his servant.

Now… “The Avengers”.

The story starts by night, with Loki arriving in the S.H.I.E.L.D. research center in which Selvig is studying the Tesseract.

Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner, Steve Roger and Tony Stark are all warned during night. It’s possible it’s the same night, maybe it’s the night after.

It’s full day when Steve Roger travels with Coulson. The following scene shows Loki remembering his talk with the Other and then we’ve Steve reaching the Helicarrier and meeting up with Natasha and Bruce.

Then Loki shows up at Stuttgart Museum again dressed up in 21st Century attire with his sceptre disguised as a cane. This time Loki is sort of disguising himself, as he’s actually planning to draw attention on himself but, at first, in a subtle manner so it makes sense he dressed up as a Midgardian to move among Midgardians so as not to alert common people but end up being tracked by SHIELD because they can see him on monitors and recognize him… something they wouldn’t be able to do had he been invisible.

Loki drops his disguise only later, after he has sent a holographic image of Dr. Heinrich Schafer’s eye to Barton. He confront with Steve and Tony and vanish his armour… remaining in Asgardian clothes. He’s short after taken by Thor, who then argues with Steve and Tony until Thor decides to get along with them and Loki is carried on the Helicarrier all in the same night.

Natasha takes care to inform us Loki killed 80 people in 2 days. This should mean Loki is on Midgard by two days.

Why all this is relevant?

Again Loki dressed up as a stylish Midgardian,

...his clothes similar to the ones he had in “Thor” yet vaguely different (in “Thor” the coat is green, in “The Avengers” black and the scarf motive is slightly different) and even knew that, in order to disguise the sceptre, he can’t mask it as, let’s say, a pitchfork but a cane. It’s true, since he’s been on Earth by 2 days, this time he could have gotten that knowledge by Barton or Selvig.

“The art of The Avengers” again doesn’t tell us much apart that:

“Joss and Kevin both wanted a different look for Loki in The Avengers, in part for the fans and in part to serve the story,” Visual Development Supervisor Charlie Wen said.” For Loki, his costumes evolved from the super-clean look of the Asgard from Thor to a much grittier and more lived-in look to show the changes he’s gone through since then.” “For Thor and Loki, much of our inspiration came from Jack Kirby’s original character designs,” Wen said. “Loki represent mischief. He is a cultured traveller.”

But, if we put clothes aside, Loki is also aware of how:

Loki: The humans slaughter each other in droves, while you idly threat. I mean to rule them. And why should I not?

It’s something Thor didn’t seem to know/realize.

This seems to imply Loki knows about Earth’s history or, at least, of its present situation. Yes, he might have had a crash course in history of Earth courtesy by Clint or Selvig, but he might have also learnt it by himself in trips on Earth since Odin didn’t seem interested in Earth beyond protecting it from some attacks from creatures from other realms (he helps against the Frost Giants, however he doesn’t seem aware of the Skrulls and Krees walking on its surface nor he cares to check what humans do with the Tesseract doing nothing when Red Skull uses it to produce weapons) so he might not have bothered having his son learning about Midgard’s history and situation.

The last time we see Loki dressed as a human is in “Thor: Ragnarok”.

In it his clothes are much more simple than usual as he only wears a black suit, no scarf, no coat.

In “The Art of Thor: Ragnarok” there’s actually not one but 2 arts for more elaborate suits with coat but they were clearly discharged as Loki never wears them in the movie.

“Thor: Ragnarok The Junior novel” which is based on an earlier script says:

They were dressed in regular Earth street wear – shirt and slacks – and Thor carried an umbrella. His hair was swept back into a ponytail. Loki’s magic was projecting an illusion onto the duo.

...which seems to imply the scriptwriter originally didn’t even think dressing Loki stylish… and anyway mostly focused on Thor... so it’s possible Loki’s attire in the movie is a compromise between the scriptwriter, who though to dress Loki in shirt and slacks, and "Thor: Ragnarok” Visual Development Supervisor Andy Park who wanted to put him in an elegant and stylish suit as the other Visual Development Supervisors had done.

Still, the scriptwriter too thinks Loki is aware of how, if Thor wants to keep an object in his hands, it has to look like something ordinary and how an umbrella can fit the bill. As it didn’t rain during Loki’s short permanence on Earth, the fact he knows umbrellas exist and is acceptable to carry them around seems to imply Loki has an idea of how Earth works.

So all this to say… yes, Loki might be more familiar with Earth than it looked like and he might have learnt how to make a tie or, at least, how to fix it since this is more what he seems to do in that scene in “Marvel Studios' Loki | Official Trailer | Disney+”

We can only wait and see if “Loki” will give us more explanations about this scene or it will just toss it in and not bother to explain it at all.

Meanwhile I’ll have fun thinking before things went wrong Loki used to come on Earth and look up on fashion magazines and love the idea of how good he would look in such clothes that he began to dress up according to Midgard fashion style each time he got to set a feet on it.

[fractualized]

what's your favorite form of batman? meaning, do you prefer the comics, the movies, etc? i'm really curious to know if you like any of the cheesy stuff, like batman and robin... famous nipple costumes... or if you like more of the serious stuff, like the original source material... i know you really like comics but when it comes to the ideal flavor of batman, what kind of story do you most enjoy?

For my favorite, I always go with Batman: the Animated Series, which feels inevitable for anyone who grew up watching it as appointment TV with obligatory commercials, but I've never done a poll. lol Even watching it now and noting its imperfections, it's the gold standard for me. The art deco aesthetic, the storytelling, the characterizations, you can really see how much care went into it and the respect for the lore. Not that I knew much more than the lore basics at that age— but I didn't need to, because it was a well-done show that drew me in on its own. And in terms of serious vs cheesy, it had a good balance.

And really that's my preference! I don't need Batman to be dark and dour all the time, but I also don't want it to be nothing but goofs. I like a story that has stakes and knows when to be serious and also knows when to lighten up. Bruce's costume shouldn't be the only signal of how he was affected by his trauma, but when his behavior turns shitty, it shouldn't amount to him just being a rageaholic. Joker should be a dangerous villain but he should perform and make jokes because he's a friggin' clown, like come on.

Not that I'm against takes that lean harder on comedy. Er, nowadays. Back in the day, I thought going too funny with Batman just didn't fit, and it should be avoided unless it was parody or fanfic. So I enjoyed Batman Forever, but Batman & Robin veered too campy for me, and I wasn't interested in the '66 series. I guess eventually I got a better sense of humor, or maybe it was batmedia as a whole seeming to get too gritty after the Nolan movies, but now I'm all for being silly with it. You can't ignore that you're watching a bat fight a clown forever.

Though I still want a comedic version to be, like, good. I've seen many episodes of Batman '66 now and I think they're great. Hopefully one day I can get around to watching the whole thing. I saw Lego Batman in the theater and was thrilled.

Batman & Robin… I still think is bad. Less because of the camp and more because of the plot and the takes on the characters. Another example is the Harley Quinn animated series. I enjoyed much of it for the first three seasons, but ultimately I had to stop watching because the serious/comedy balance was off for me. Too often it had these serious moments that would affect character growth, and then it would throw them away for a sake of a joke later on rather than… just making a different joke that fits with your plot, I dunno.

It feels hard to say that I "like comics" since they're such a mixed bag by the nature of an 80-year-old franchise. I am certainly not having much of a good time right now. 😂 And as a consequence of Batman being represented so many ways over the decades, if I said I prefer the comics over other iterations, would that really mean anything? … Well, I guess by saying that, it could mean appreciating the fact that there's been so many takes over the years and that the medium allows that flexibility, that it is like fanfic (or exactly fanfic) and lets someone new come in and say, "But what if it happened like this?" That is a conflict I've felt when enjoying and not enjoying comics. It allows for change… but that can lead to a frustrating lack of continuity, change that comes not from where you understood the character to be from previous runs but almost from wholecloth. Which is all to say, my appreciation for comic Batman is in constant flux.

I can't close out without mentioning Telltale Batman, of course. Enemy Within is the game that brought me back into fandom and writing. A fresh new universe with a lot of room for reinterpretation, not as weighed down by the source material as the comics. (And a heartbreaking batjokes relationship that I still haven't gotten over.) Obviously with the choice system, the tenor depends on how you play, but once again it's a story with stakes that takes the time to add some silliness, so it works for me! (And I let BTAS Bruce guide my primary playthroughs. Except for my first go at the end of Enemy Within. I know Bruce would let Alfred leave but I couldn't do it gaaaahhhhhhh)

[moonybird]

Batman the Long Halloween. 2021 Movie review.

The latest released from Warner Brothers. The latest direct to DVD release from Warner Media and their animated DC department. Over the years, there has been a continuous joke going on that these animated direct to DVD DC movies has been overall superior to any DC life action movie. Which is something I have to wholeheartedly agree with!

This is not to say that each and every direct to DVD feature is perfect. “The Killing Joke.” sadly was very underwhelming to say the least. And had other major flaws we can talk about in another review if there is any interest. Also what is interesting about these animated movies is that they all share one universe and one long continuity much like the MCU or the classic animated DCU I grew up with in the 90’s and 2000’s. What is interesting now though is that the animated DC direct to DVD features had a reboot this year. Titled "DC Rebirth"

Last year marked the end of the old timeline with “Justice league apocalypse dark.”

And we have now begun a brand new timeline starting with. “Superman Man of Tomorrow.” “Justice society world war II” and now lastly. “Batman the long Halloween.” which all share a brand new art style which is very reminisce of 80’s comic book. And I can only assume these movies all share a new collected continuity. ‘Batman The Long Halloween’ is based on a comic book series of the same name originally published in 1996. It takes place early in Batmans carrier. Approximately a year after Bruce Wayne originally became Batman.

The story starts with the nephew of local Mafia Falcone getting shot dead and now Batman, a newly promoted Captain James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent prior to his days as Two-Face must work together to track down this killer who mysteriously only kills on Holidays and thus the plot takes place over the cause of one year where things only happens at the actual holidays.

The comic book itself actually has a very interesting legacy as it was the main inspiration for Christopher Nolans. “Batman the Dark Knight.” which by many is considered the best Batman movie.

And it is easy to see what plot threats that Nolan lifted from the comic book to put in his movie. Such as Harvey Dent being the shining light and hope of Gotham while Batman must work in the shadows and Jim Gordon acts at their mediator.

A scene where a giant pile of cash is being lithe on fire appears in both movies but the context is very different.

I myself am indeed a Batman fan. I grew up with the classic Batman The animated series. As well as it follow ups with “Justice League.” and “Batman Beyond.” for me that is the golden standard for Batman and I love those shows and Batmans representation in those shows dearly.

I am not as big a fan of Nolans movies. I recognize what they tried to do, and even understand why other people would love them. For me though they are not on par with the Batman I grew up with.

For this movie. “Batman the long Halloween.” I have to say that…. I loved it!

To me this was a perfect mix of what I liked about Batman Tas, as well as the darker more serious tone from the Nolan Batman universe.

This movie was dark, had a brilliant and tense atmosphere. It has an excellent mystery which has yet to be solved. It will be solved in Part two of “The Long Halloween.” which should be released on DVD in a month. July 27th. This movie had an absolutely gorgeous and dreading atmosphere, which truly felt Gothic like it should.

I found myself trying to guess along with the mystery, and was delighted as the movie itself tricked me and had me guess wrong.

Many often forget. One of Batmans main features is that he’s a detective. And his original appearance was in a magazine called. “Detective comics.”

So that his debut in this new universe should be in a story where we truly focus on his development to become the worlds greatest detective is delightful to me. That truly is something I have missed in any life action appearance of his.

I loved this movie. It was well paced, well written, wonderfully animated. Had an amazing atmosphere and I really hope that people will watch this movie. It truly deserves me.

So far. It’s my favorite animated feature of 2021. We are only six months in though. So there is time yet.

If there is an animated OR superhero movie you want me to talk about in the future. Please write in the comments :)

We can talk about. “The Killing joke.” some of the best episode of “Batman Tas.” perhaps a MCU movie. Or other animated movies such as “Raya and the last Dragon.” or my favorite animated movie of 2020. “Wolfwalkers.”

[theliterateape]

I Like to Watch | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

by Don Hall

Mythology is fun.

As a kid I loved reading Edith Hamilton’s book on the Greek gods and the myths. Hercules, Perseus, Apollo, and Hera—this fell completely in line with my love for superhero comics. The strangely petty human traits of envy, greed, and lust combined with the power to level cities make for some great storytelling.

Zeus was basically Harvey Weinstein in the retroactive revision we’re mired in today. If Harvey could’ve changed into a golden animal and boned unsuspecting ladies looking for careers in Hollywood I’m pretty certain he would. The gods and demi-gods of the Greeks dealt with daddy issues, mommy issues, bad relationships, and fighting. Lots of fighting. Sometimes for the good of humanity but more often for the glory of winning.

Zach Snyder is in the business of tackling myths and reframing them with a style all his own. His career has become its own myth.

From Dawn of the Dead (not so much a reboot of Romero's zombie mythology but a philosophical reimagining of the genre that arguably jumpstarted The Hollywood fascination with it), 300 (a borderline homoerotic take on the myth of the Greek underdog), and Watchmen (a ridiculously ambitious attempt to put one of the most iconic takedowns on the potential fascism of the superhero legend machine ever written) to his nearly single-handed hack at answering the Marvel juggernaut with Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder is in the artistic business of subverting and re-envisioning the mythologies we embrace without even seeing them as such.

Snyder's style is operatic. It is on a grand scale even in the most mundane moments. The guy loves slow motion like Scorcese loves mobsters and Italian food. When you're tackling big themes with larger than life stories, the epic nature of his vision makes sense and has alienated a good number of audience members. With such excess, there are bound to be missteps but I'd argue that his massive take on these characters he molds from common understanding and popular nomenclature elevates them to god-like stature.

Fans of Moore's Watchmen have much to complain about Snyder's adaptation. The titular graphic novel is almost impossible to put in any other form than the one Moore intended and yet, Snyder jumped in feet-first and created a living, breathing representation of most, if not all, of the source material's intent. Whether you dig on it or not, it's hard to avoid acknowledging that the first five minutes of Watchmen is a mini-masterpiece of style, storytelling, and epic tragedy wrapped up in a music video.

Despite a host of critical backlash for his one fully original take, Sucker Punch is an amazing thing to see. More a commentary on video game enthusiasm with its lust for hot animated chicks and over-the-top violence that a celebration of cleavage and guns, the film is crazily entertaining. For those who hated the ending, he told you in the title what his plan was all along.

The first movie I saw in the theaters that tried to take a superhero mythology and treat it seriously (for the most part) was Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie. Never as big a fan of the DC characters as I have been of Marvel, it was still extraordinary to see a character I had only really known in pages to be so fully realized. Then came Burton's Batman movies. The superhero film was still an anomaly but steam was gaining. Things changed with Bryan Singer's X-Men in 2000, then Raimi's Spiderman, and those of us who grew up with our pulpy versions of Athena, Hermes, and Hades were rewarded with Nolan's Batman Begins. A far cry from the tongue-in-cheek camp of the 1966 TV Batman, Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne was a serious character and his tale over three films is a tragic commentary filled with the kind of death and betrayal and triumph befitting the grand narrative he deserved.

I loved Singer's Superman Returns in 2006 because it was such a love letter to the 1978 film (down to the opening credits) but by then, the MCU was taking over the world.

Snyder's first of what turns out to be an epic storyline involving perhaps seven or eight movies was Man of Steel. It was fun and, while I had my issues with the broodiness of Kal El, the odd take on Jonathan Kent, and a redheaded Lois Lane, I had no issue with Superman snapping Zod's neck. Darker and more tragic than any other version of the Kryptonian, it was still super entertaining.

Then came Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. By 2016, Marvel had codified their formula of serious characters wrestling with serious issues of power and responsibility peppered with lots of good humor and bright colors. Snyder's desaturated pallete and angst-filled demi-gods was not the obvious road to financial competition.

I'll confess, I hated it. BvS felt half-rendered. Lex Luthor was kind of superficial and played as a kind of Joker. The whole Bruce Wayne wants to kill Superman thing felt undeveloped and the "Martha" moment was just stupid.

When Joss Whedon's version of Snyder's Justice League came out in 2017, I was primed for it to be a turd and I wasn't surprised. So much of it didn't work on any level. I dismissed it as DC trying and failing miserably and was comforted by the coming of Thanos.

Following Thanos and the time heist was COVID. Suddenly, we were internationally sidelined and the movie theater industry caved in. Streaming services started popping up like knock-off smartphones and Hollywood was reeling, doing anything and everything to find a way back. Since Whedon's disastrous helming of Snyder's third act, fans online had been demanding to #ReleasetheSnyderCut but no one was ever really taking them seriously until all movie production was shut down for a year.

The stage was set to remedy a mistake (or at least make some bucks on a do-over of a huge box office failure). Snyder had left the production in part because of the suicide of his daughter and in part due to the constant artistic fights over executives looking for the quippy fun of the MCU but he still had all the original footage. Add to that the broiling accusations that Joss Whedon was "abusive" during the reshoots, the path seemed destined. For an additional $70 million and complete control, Snyder delivered a four hour mega-movie streamed on HBOMax.

Of course, I was going to watch the thing as soon as I could.

The Whedon version opens with an homage to the now dead Superman (including the much maligned digitally erased mustache on Henry Cavill). The SynderCut opens with the death of Superman and the agony of his death scream as it travels across the planet. It's a simple change but exemplifies the very different visions of how this thing is gonna play out.

Snyder doesn't want us to be OK with the power of these beings unleashed. He wants us to feel the damage and pain of death. He wants the results of violence to be as real as he can. When Marvel's Steve Rogers kicks a thug across the room and the thug hits a wall, he crumples and it is effectively over. When Batman does the same thing, we see the broken bones (often in slow motion) and the blood smear on the wall as the thug slides to the ground.

The longer SnyderCut is bloated in some places (like the extended Celtic choir singing Aquaman off to sea or the extended narrations by Wonder Woman which sound slightly like someone trying to explain the plot to Siri). On the other hand, the scene with Barry Allen saving Iris West is both endearing and extraordinary, giving insight to the power of the Flash as well as some essential character-building in contrast to Whedon's comic foil version.

One thing I noticed in this variant is that Zach wants the audience to experience the sequence of every moment as the characters do. An example comes when Diana Prince goes to the crypt to see the very plot she belabors over later. The sequence is simple. She gets a torch and goes down. Most directors which jump cut to the torch. Snyder gives us five beats as she grabs the timber, wraps cloth around the end, soaks it with kerosene, pulls out a box of matches, and lights the torch. Then she goes down the dark passageway.

The gigantic, lush diversity of Snyder’s vision of the DC superhero universe—from the long shots of the sea life in the world of Atlantis to the ancient structures and equipment of Themyscira— is almost painterly. Snyder isn't taking our time; he's taking his time. We are rewarded our patience with a far better backstory for the villain, a beautifully rendered historic battle thwarting Darkseid's initial invasion (including a fucking Green Lantern), and answers to a score of questions set up in both previous films.

Whedon's Bruce Wayne was more Ben Affleck; Snyder's is full-on Frank Miller Batman, the smartest, most brutal fucker in the room. Cyborg, instead of Whedon's sidelined non-character, is now a Frankenstein's monster, grappling with the trade-off between acceptance and enormous power. Wonder Woman is now more in line with the Patty Jenkins version and instead of being told about the loss of Superman, we are forced to live with the anguish of both his mother and Lois Lane in quiet moments of incredible grief.

To be fair to Whedon (something few are willing to do as he is now being castigated not for racism or sexism but for being mean to people) having him come in to throw in some levity and Marvel-esque color to Snyder's Wagnerian pomposity is like hiring Huey Lewis to lighten up Pink Floyd's The Wall or getting Douglas Adams to rewrite Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I loved Snyder's self-indulgent, mythologic DC universe.

So much so that I then re-watched Man of Steel and then watched the director's version of BvS (which Snyder added approximately 32 minutes). The second film is far better at three hours and Eisenberg's Lex Luthor now makes sense. Then I watched Zach Snyder's Justice League a second time.

After nineteen hours of Snyder's re-imagining of these DC heroes and villains, I saw details that, upon first viewing, are ignored or dismissed, but after seeing them in order and complete, are suddenly consistent and relevant. Like Nolan or Fincher, Snyder defies anyone to eliminate even one piece of his narrative no matter how long. With all the pieces, this is an epic story and the pieces left at the extended epilogue play into a grander narrative we will never see.

Or maybe we will. Who knows these days?

[popculturebuffet]

Darkwing Duck Reviews: Darkly Dawns the Duck Pts 1 and 2

It’s a Darkwing Double Feature! Just in time for his ducktales special, I take a look at the introduction of everyone’s favorite Daring Duck of Mystery. In his daring debut we meet Darkwing Duck, an egositical and attention hungry superhero who soon finds himself having to look after a feisty orphan to keep her from getting nabbed by local kingpin of crime Taurus Bulba with the help of his biggest fan. Darkwing owns the night under the cut with decades old spoilers. 

Let’s Get Dangerous.. is tommorow so with that in mind i’m doing a darkwing double feature to refresh myself before the big special. So i’ll be covering both the original series pilot “Darkly Dawns the Duck” and the ducktales reboot episode “The Duck Knight Returns”.  Let’s Get Dangerous Itself because I was so wiped yesterday I didn’t get the other review done and unexpectly got acess to the new episode way earlier than usual so i’d rather focus on that. Got it? Good. Let’s continue past me. 

As usual with a new show a breif bit about my history with it: I watched it years ago, as a friend of mine lent me the first two discs of the season 1 dvd and never found the third one nor asked for them back, nor cared I had them. I thoughtly enjoyed it, had a great time and then it took me a decade or so to actually watch the series again due to a combination of being too stubborn to just buy the season 1 dvd again, a very darkwing move of me in hindsight, and then when disney plus meant I had all episodes at my finger tips I.. sat on them till now.. though to be fair i’ve sat on a LOT of great shows on there including the mandalorian, gargoyles and boy meets world. I have a bad tendency to procastinate, the fact this is coming out so late in the day should be a giveaway. I did read about half of volume 1 of the comic and all of volume 2, so there’s that at least.  Point is this new episode finally made me decide to get off my ass and watch darkwing once again, starting with the pilot and the episodes related to the fearsome four to be ready for tomorrow to see what the differences are (Thoguh I did remember bushroot vividly, so I had that at least).  Something to note before I get started talking about the pilot itself though, is the episode order for Darkwing Duck is a Darkwing Clusterfuck. Now I do understand WHY they aired this way: While some episodes do logically take place after other episodes, you can reasonably pop on just about any darkwing and watch it and enjoy it with minimal need to know what happened in previous episodes, kinda like batman the animated series oddly enough. It was also aired between two networks so on some level I get disney’s confusion here.. but on the other hand it’d take ten minutes, they clearly can call up the creator easily as Tad Stones made a cameo in ducktales 2017 we’ll get to so they could easily get a better order from the creator himself, so they really don’t have an excuse for this, or for slapping the pilot in the middle of season 1. Then again both ducktales 2017 and x-men the animated series were sort of a mess order wise when first put up, so not giving a shit about where episodes are placed for re-watching clearly is a pastime of theirs. 

Now i’ve got that out of my system we can dive into the episode itself and a breif plot synopsis. Darkwing Duck is the superhero protector of St. Canard, a masked vigiliante who takes out crime but wishes he actually got fame and credit for his work. Kind of like Booster Gold but without taking endorsments or as far as we know coming from the future. He also has nothing else as shown by the fact he fights crime, does a training regimine to prepare his breakfast that’s a delight to watch then prepares to sleep. It’s an intresting concept, a hero who HAD a civlian identity once, as the rest of the series would play out, he just no longer needs it. And it’s also ahead of it’s time as batman would explore this idea both seriously with bruce wayne murderer and comedically and seriously with the lego batman movie LONG after this series aired, meaning the writers here figured out what many probably knew about batman and put it into their parody version: Batman is the real identity and Bruce is the mask. Batman only keeps his old self because the bruce id is useful to him: It keeps people away from his company, puts up a playboy facade that draws attention away from him being batman, and allows him to do various charities and what not and help honor his parents in a way that dosen’t involve swooping in and kicking people in the throat. And as seen with bruce wayne murderer when the option to throw bruce away for good came up Batman gladly took it.  This is the same idea: Drake Mallard ONLY cares about crime fighting, has no friends no family, we never do find out jack about his family hopefully if there’s a full reboot series Frank and Matt fix it for their version. He has nothing, and is fine with that. He hasn’t really had a reason to care about anything else than his own glory and works alone not because it’s less efficent but because his oversized ego means he dosen’t want to share credit. IT’s an intresting start and his ego would be a defining bit of who he is and used intrestingly int he reboot but we’ll get to that there. 

His life changes forever though when local crime boss Taurus Bulba unleashes his latest scheme: To steal the Ramrod, a gravity manipulating device created by the late Dr. Quackmeyer.. late because Bulba’s men killed him and were dumb enough not to get the arming code for the ramrod first a year ago. Bulba is also behind bars but in one of my faviorite gags of the episode despite the warden’s constnat gloating, Bulba has taken the “Supervillian makes jail into a base” Or “Jail is nothing to a supervillian who can easily get out trope” to ludcrious machines. He has whole meetings with his minions, keeps the ramrod once he gets his hands on it in the laundry and has a ship SHAPED LIKE HIS FACE built into his cellblock. I’ts just so over the top it’s glorious. But yeah since Bulba can’t go after it at first he sends his three goofy minons, one played by eddie “Mandark” deezen in.. love that guy. 

THey do end up stealing the ramrod thanks to the help of bulba’s cool, non-anthromporhic condor who he uses as his right hand man and as his link to his minons via a small tv aroudn it’s neck. That.. is awesome. Darkwing spots the condor but fails to stop the three stooges or the condor and gets unknowingly blamed for the robbery..and stopped to get glamor shots not realizing the guy thought he was a criminla which.. fair enough. It is a shadowy disguise after all. 

Darkwing ends up grabbing onto the vulture sonic 3 style, but ends up falling off him into a hangar where we meet the original version of Launchpad McQuack, whose apparently quit working for scrooge and has his own hangar now though it wouldn’t be a stretch that scrooge bought it for him.. he does , stingy as he is, appricate hard work and launchpad wanting to start his own buisness and while hte planes were probably all on launchpad, Scrooge would gladly buy a run down buliding for a loyal friend who wants to put in some hard honest work. Plus it’s a free place to store any vehicles he has in the st canard area.. I mean it’s still scrooge. And yes I know the whole “Tad stones said they aren’t the same universe” non sense. I do have the utmost respect for the guy and he seems really, nice but I don’ tlike that, no one likes that and both the comics and the current duckverse with the ducktales reboot entirely ignore that for good reason.While the two shows are diffrent in tone they stil lfit and it’s not a stretch for launchpad to want to spread his wings or failing that scrooge to help push him out of the nest and give him his own buisness or one of scrooge’s to run. 

But while Launchpad does help DW with a propeller plane they fail and while launchpad offers to be his sidekick, DW gives him the old I work alone bit.  However him being alone won’t last for long as Bulba still needs that arming code and since his only lead is Waddlemeyer’s grandaughter who grew up in his lab, he sends his buffonish minons to go get him. Why he never sends his lone female minon with them is because it’s funnier if she dosen’t I guess. Which it is so fair enough.  So thus we enter Goslyn, who the head of the orphanage is fed up with due to her antics. Goslyn is played as most of you knwo by christine cavanagh.. I honestly forgot and it still throws me off a bit she’s using what would later be her chucky finster voice for a character so completely diffrent. Granted it’s not unusual in voice acting, just weird here and only for me personally having grown up with rugrats but not darkwing. The orphanage head is a bit less jarring as she’s played by Marcia Wallace, aka Edna Krabable from the simpsons but A) that show was already running at this point and B), the character is basically a nicer version of edna versus chuckies voice coming out of a tiny if immensly fun to watch hellion. I do like goslyn, sh’es a fun character even in her shadier moments, it’s just something i’d forgotten about i’ll need to get used to is all. 

Bulba’s hired goons come in claming ot be friends of her grandpas and we actually get some really heartwrenching context for Gos’ behavior: While she does act out she actually LIKES THE orphanage.. ti’s just her friends keep getting adopted while no one wants someone “full of spirit”. It’s heartwrecnhing to hear.. and only gets worse when the goons try and kidnap her.  Thankfully Darkwing.. also kidnaps her, but he kindaps her from kidnappers and while Goslyn naturally takes a second to realize he’s the good guy them shooting at him clues her in. Darkwing, in a rare for the series as a whole moment of reason and not wanting to just power though something himself TRIES to do the responsible thing and leave gos with the police where she’ll be protected.. but given they think he’s a wanted criminal they shoot at him.. and the small child in his motorcycle. Yup that’s the police alright. 

So with no other options Darkwing takes gos home, hyjinks insue including her activintg the breakfast thing. But the two genuinely start to bond. While Darkwing dosen’t WANT to keep her around, the whole not wanting connections thing, it’s clear he’s growing fond of the little snot as she holds her own with his trianing course, they have a tickle fight and in the sweetest moment of the episode the two sing little girl blue, a song her grandfather used to sing her to sleep that she teaches darkwing. It’s an utterly heartmelting bit and Cummings and Cavanagh really sell the hell out of it. It also however turns out ot be plot relevant: Turns out just in case Dr. Waddlemeyer hid the code for the ramrod in the song, and when Darkwing sees a photo Goslyn got from bulba’s goons, he realizes this and realizes that depsite thinking she didn’t know it Goslyn had it all along.. and that as long as h’es around she won’t know.  Bulba is naturally livid at his minons failure and decides now’s the time to take this into his own hands and while he actually liked the prison hq setup, as it did make sense as it was the perfect cover and the warden was too full of himself to realize Bulba was still active and too convinced the bull was beaten down when he clearly wasn’t, but instead as mentioned above awesomely converts his cellblock into a flying ship in the shape of his own head.  Bulba.. is a great villian and I only think the show didn’t use him more because he’s a dead serious, deadly dangerous villian in an otherwise goofy but fun superhero parody show. The show later gained Negaduck, so they had a more dangerous threat for darkwing that fit the show’s tone better while still being utterly terrifying, and likely simply didn’t need him till the idea for the steerminator came up. But I love the guy: he reminds me a lot of the kingpin, a threatning villian who uses his sheer size to beat our hero down, is cool and suave and is an utter mastermind at planning. He also wears a nice suit.  And naturlaly he has a plan to take out darkwing since despite the two never having met, as Darkwing disparages when Goslyn assumes their lifelong mortal enmies like in the comics, they know of each other.. and thus bulba knows exactly what trap to spring to get him out of the way and goslyn into his ship: He flashes a message in morris code that he wants to surrender to Darkwing while stroking his ego a LOT. And it works... while i’ts an obvious trap Darkwing’s so full of himself he goes despite Goslyn telling him it’s very obviously a trap.  Naturally everything goes pear shaped as a result: Bulba shows up, revealing gos not only to be right but easily pummling Darkwing. Which makes sense: While Darkwing is a vetran crime fighter and secret agent, Bulba’s been at being a villian longer clearly as he’s built up enough of a rep both for Darkwing to know him out of hand and for the warden to be proud capturing him. Given what univese this is, it probably isn’t Bulba’s first round with a superhero and given at this stage St Canard only has one.. yeah Darkwing is outclasssed and the police grab him while Bulba scarpers. And while Gos puts up a good fight using the trianing course, Bulba’s vulture gets her. Bulba has everything he needs.  Darkwing meanwhile actually bemoans what a dick he’s been, that the first person he’s cared about besides himself in possibly ever is now in the hands of a murderous mastermind, and that he’s stuck in jail with no one to call on for help. Thankfully.. help arrives.. and by help I mean launchpad backing the ratcatcher, Darkwing’s bike, into the prisoin. He DID come just to bail DW out despite his earlier jerkishness, but backed in and Darkwing not beliving superheroes have time for paperwork, decides to just bust out. And to be ifair int his case he’s probably right as you know, a ten year old might die if they don’t get there in time. So off they go.. but with Bulba in the air they need something with wings to catch him. ANd luckily as Launchpad mentioned earlier he’s been working on something special for darkwing.  It’s with this we enter the thunderquack, which is DW”S awesome headshaped plane. It’s just cool it’s got a nice design, goofy enough tof it the universe but cool enoguh to still be fun to watch. Darkwing has really damn cool vehicles, as the ratcatcher is also awesomely iconic. But yeah the thunderquack impresses darkwing and rightfully so and he decides to make LP his sidekick afterall.  So now our heroes fly into the danger zone and attack bulba’s airship with Darkwing landing on the bow and a scuffle insues with darkwing and hte minons.. who use actual guns which for a 90′s kids show is  a suprise, especially one this intentioanlly goofy, but boy is it nice. However Bulba, being awesomely evil, isn’t dumb and instead of fighting darkwing, which he could win but would win him nothing and having gotten nothing out of goslyn, figures the hero might know the code.. and while Darkwing lies and says he dosen’t, Bulba points out .. he’s right.. but he’s always been a gambling man and has his condor drop goslyn to lure drake into telling him , with DW putting in the code and bulba testing it with a bank robbery.. before predictably having his condor drop the girl because he no longer needs her. Thankfully launchpad catches her in time and then they get revenge on the condor with the thunderquack BITING IT.. which is awesome. Hopefully the reboot version does that. 

Darkwing meanwhile saves the day, his new daughter and the city by simply sneaking over to the ramrod and mashign the keys till it overloads, silly, but undeniably awesome and effective. Bulba TRIES to finish off darkwing this time for foiling his plan.. btu the ramrod explodes and while bulba’s minons and goslyn and launchpad are safe... bulba and darkwing are apparently dead and it’s effective.  A few weeks later Goslyn’s back at the orphanage utterly distraught and broken at being basically orphaned again. Naturally though Darkwing’s alive, having taken his old identnity back since now he has something worth using it for and adopts her, hinting at who he is so she goes with him. And Drake has changed.. sure he’ll still be as egostical and impuslive as he was here.. but he’s no longer just darkwing.. he’s drake again as he has someone worth fighting for.. two someones in fact. He has a friend, a loyal partner to help him fight cime. And more importantly.. he has a loving daughter. And both needed each other: Goslyn needed someone who understood her despite her manic energy, and Drake needed someone who needed him and not darkwing, a reason to be a person outside the cape and cowl and outside the attention again. He needed a reason to live again... and he’s got it. And it’s going to be great. 

Final Thoughts: This pilot is excellent. Well paced, plenty of laughs, tense action and great introductions for everyone involved as well as a hell of a vilian> This is how you do a first episode: it introduces the main themes of the show, both comedically and dramatically, introduces the cast and gives us a one off , or rather two off it’d turn out, villian whose compelling and intresting. IT’s really damn good stuff and I can’t wait ot see what frank does with a simlar story tommorow. Until then, stay safe, and happy hallowen. We’ll be back shortly for The Duck Knight returns and then Let’s Get Dangerous tommorow.