#first time posting a real comic strip!

[taro-wong]

Was halfway through this comic when I realised it would be funnier with Steph, who’s punched BOTH her dads

[the-prussian-nap]

Day 23, Dreams

Emmet dreaming of his future friend and dream job!

[imperiuswrecked]

BDS HAS CALLED FOR A TARGETED BOYCOTT OF PRO-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA CHARACTER SABRA!!!

BOYCOTT SABRA (RUTH BAT-SERAPH) IN MARVEL'S CAPTAIN AMERICA : NEW WORLD ORDER!!!

As Captain America: New World Order is released I urge all fans who are against Zionism to flood the Captain America tags with messages of Boycott Sabra. All the links provided in the graphic are publicly available from their websites, and social media.

Anti-Zionism =/= Anti-Semitism!!! We are boycotting Sabra not because she is Jewish but because she represents a Pro-Israel, Pro-Zionist message that should not be platformed in any media. Her comics have Pro-IDF propaganda.

Marvel was made aware of the fact that this character promotes a Pro-Israeli & Anti-Palestinian sentiment when the character of Sabra was announced for Captain America 4, despite fan concern, and calls for Marvel to remove this character from the movie and despite have more than enough time to respond to what type of statement this would promote, a Pro-Zionist, Pro-Israel stance and despite reshoots Marvel has still chosen to keep Sabra in the movie. Shira Haas is the actress playing Sabra, she is Israeli and has shared Pro-Israel posts online even during the genocide of the Palestinians.

Marvel claims they will be reinventing the character however a character whose very nationality and backstory relies on Pro-Israel & Pro-Zionist ideals is irredeemable especially because not once in all her comic appearances does she ever change her Anti-Palestinian stance. Israel is currently committing a Genocide against Palestinians. Since of October 7th more than 30,000 Palestinians, of which over 12,000 are children, have been murdered by Israel. Over 60,000 have been injured, more missing, and millions displaced in Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing of the people of Palestine. This is in addition the 75 year long occupation, countless war crimes, and 16 year blockade on Palestinians.

Marvel claims to care about Jewish characters, but Marvel hasn't even cast Jewish actors for Jewish Characters like Moonknight. Marvel choosing to back a Pro-Israel, Pro-Zionist character like Sabra sends a very clear message that aligns with Marvel Comics long held Anti-Palestinian sentiment. There are other Jewish characters for Jewish representation, such as Magneto, and Kitty Pryde, who were not created with a Pro-Israel, Pro-Zionist background.

BOYCOTT SABRA!!! Send a message, write a tweet, make a post, and tag Marvel and Disney and let them know why you are Boycotting Captain America: New World Order. I love Sam Wilson as Captain America but I will never support a movie that has Sabra as a character.

For more information about the character's history here is a breakdown of her appearances in Marvel Comics.

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #256 - Sabra's Origin

On the cover of Sabra's origin issue is the image of a dead Palestinian boy.

continued...

As we read the issue, we find Bruce Banner/The Hulk has stowed away on the ship "The Star of David" to Palestine, in the comics it is called Israel, however Marvel Comics has long been erasing Palestine, calling it only Israel.

This is Marvel Atlas (2008) #2 page on Israel

Marvel Fandom Wiki states that Palestine was the name of the land before Israel. While I understand that Marvel's 616 Universe is fictional, it's important to state that they base their locations on Real Life locations, and in 1948 Palestine underwent The Nakba, in which Israeli Forces displaced over 750,000 Native Palestinians and killed countless men, women, and children, stole land and homes, and forced the remaining Palestinians into the Gaza Strip which is the world's largest concentration camp, or confined to the West Bank all of which is under Apartheid laws today, or out of Palestine with no right to return to their homes and lands.

That being said, Sabra was created in 1980, as a Mossad Agent, Mossad is the Israeli Secret Service which has done so much harm to Palestinians. In her first issue she was working as a cop in Tel Aviv.

The Editor's note states: "The word Sabra denotes a Native-Born Israeli, the name derived from an indigenous form of fruit - a prickly pear possessed of a sweet interior, and a spiny outer surface to protect it from it's enemies."

Sabr (arabic, it also means "patience") is a cactus prickly pear that is Native to and found growing in Palestine. Read more about it in this article talking about the politics of Palestinian erasure and the Sabr fruit.

The Prickly Symbolism of Cactus Fruit in Israel and Palestine.

“If you look at most Palestinian villages demolished in Israel, what’s left is cactus fruit and olive trees,” says Qattan. Since 1948, he adds, this has imbued the cactus plant with a “mythical symbolism.”

When Blum’s father started the farm, he knew that many parts of the world have cactus fruit plants, so he wanted to make theirs the best. They chose Dimona, in southern Israel, because of its intense sun and “the Zionist dream of making the desert bloom.” 

"Making the desert bloom" is a racist Zionist ideals and propaganda that has caused severe ecological damage to Palestine by destroying thousand years old Olive trees to plant non indigenous trees that are not native to Palestine in a form of ecocide. So even the character Sabra, her very name brings a connection back to the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians & promoting Zionism.

However Sabra's name also has another very real and very tragic memory. One I will discuss here before returning to the comics. Just two years after her appearance in comics in 1980, Israel's war crimes continue.

The Sabra & Shatila Massacre 1982

The article linked above has information of what occurred September 16-18, 1982. There were the Refugee camps of Sabra & Shatila, where Palestinians displaced from Israeli Occupation lived, and they, as well as Lebanon Civilians, were killed by the right wing Lebanese Militia working with the Israeli Military, which took the lives of 2,000 - 3,500 people in 2 days. Raped, tortured, murdered. Many Palestinians know the history of the massacre and bringing up the names of Sabra & Shatila is a constant reminder of the deaths that occurred, the war crime that was committed, and that 42 years later not one person involved in the massacre was held accountable.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre is remembered as one of the most traumatic events in Palestinian history and its memory is commemorated annually by Palestinians in Lebanon and in Palestine.

Marvel promoting a character like Sabra who's very creation ties into the Pro-Zionist Israel a statement that Marvel is promoting a Pro-Israel message. No matter what changes occur to the character in the movie, already her very creation, her very name is linked to the deaths and torture of thousands of Palestinians. It does not matter that she was created 2 years before the Sabra & Shatila massacre, her name is still connected to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the 1948 Nakba and the creation of Israel.

For anyone who says "Well Marvel couldn't change her name just because of Political Controversy" let me remind you that when the American Black Panther Party gained popularity Marvel changed The Black Panther's name temporarily to the Black Leopard because they didn't want to associate the character with the American Black Panther Party.

Now that you have an understanding of why Palestinians are rightfully boycotting an Israeli Propaganda character let me return to the the comics.

Back to The Incredible Hulk (1968) #256; this comic is one of the most Anti-Palestinian, "Arab Terrorist Propaganda" comics I have ever read so I will briefly outline the plot: The Hulk meets a poor Palestinian boy who was stealing a watermelon (The watermelon is the symbol of resistance for Palestinians) and Bruce spends time with the boy, Sahad, however Sahad is killed by a bomb. Hulk is enraged and fights the Arabs, Sabra intervenes and thinks Hulk is in league with the Arabs and attacks him.

Hulk takes Sahad's body away and Sabra thinking Hulk was fighting with the Arab Terrorists goes after him in order to protect Israel. However she finds that Hulk wasn't the monster she thought he was. Hulk's angry speech about the Israel-Palestine conflict leaves Sabra shaken and for the very first time she sees a Dead Palestinian Arab Child as human.

"For an instant, Sabra prepares to give chase. She is, after all, an Israeli Super-Agent... A Soldier... A Weapon of War. But she is also a woman, capable of feeling, capable of caring. It has taken The Hulk to make her see this Dead Arab Boy as a Human Being. It has taken a monster to awaken her own sense of humanity.

Reminder this is her FIRST FULL COMIC, this is her ORIGIN, and you would think that perhaps she is more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians after this but she isn't. Let's continue with the rest of her comic appearances.

Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions (1982) #1-3

Sabra is included in the contest of champions where superheroes must team up to battle their foes, she is teamed up with Iron Man, and The Arabian Knight (1st incarnation: A Saudi Bedouin with mystic artifacts/powers). Again, the Anti-Arab racist stereotype of Arab men being misogynistic towards women (misogyny is not a trait of ONLY Arab men, it is something that occurs world wide, however focusing it only on Arab men is racist) as well as the Zionist Propaganda lies that Arabs hate Jews, Arabs vs Jews, Arabs and Jews are enemies because of their religion. Not to mention that this Arabian Knight (Abdul Qamar) is from Saudi Arabia, he has no ties to Israel, so Sabra is judging him because he is Arab and has conflict with him because of their countries, it ties into the stereotype that "All Arabs are the same", Saudi Arabia is not Palestine.

Even after The Arabian Knight saves Sabra, she states her hatred and racism towards Arabs; "I would rather be dead than allied with you!"

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #279 - Sabra once again states it was the Hulk who taught her about Humanity.

Marvel Super-Heroes (1990) #6 - Sabra fights Israeli Anarchists who want to overthrow the Israeli Government and saves the American Ambassador's son, who is deaf. The main villain is a woman who Sabra saved by giving her some of her life energy, and she is upset because she did not want to be saved nor does she want to fight for Israel with the powers Sabra gave her. Sabra takes her life energy back and it kills her.

A constant running theme throughout her comics is that one of Sabra's repeated goals is the protection of Israel even above her own life.

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #386-387 - Sabra thinks the Hulk is in league with people who are trying to kill a boy, and attacks him. Later she thinks Hulk has defeated her and has this speech where she says that Israeli Soldiers are beating their wives out of frustration.

Again, how is that not the fault of the soldiers, why is it even when they are perpetrators of violence it's not their fault because they are frustrated?!

The main plot was that a Jewish man, who survived the German Nazi concentration camps, believed the boy to be the next Hitler which is why he wanted to stop him.

I never downplay the horror of the Holocaust or what Jewish people suffered from Nazis, from Anti-Semitism, throughout their history, but I am mainly focusing on how Sabra's character is in the comics and how that related to Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab sentiment.

The New Warriors (1990) #58-59 - Sabra reveals that her six year old son was killed by Arabs, bombed on a school bus, after she urges the New Warriors to kill Batal, a Syrian Super-Agent. Batal then states that it was the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) that killed her son and to stop generalizing all Arabs.

Batal: Well Sabra? There's a Palestinian over there -- aren't you going to push him out of his seat and claim it as your own? Sabra: I don't respond to child-killers

Again, Sabra's racism against Arabs doesn't end at Palestinian Arabs, but extended to Saudi Arabia and now Syrian Arabs. LET ME BE VERY CLEAR THAT SABRA IS BEING RACIST: Batal has 2, TWO, only 2 comic appearances, he is there as security detail like Sabra is, there is nothing about his character that indicates he's anything but a Syrian Superhero, and Sabra still called him a child killer because she thinks all Arabs are child killers. Batal is written with the stereotypical racist Arab Man writing that many Arab characters suffer from, and he does insult Sabra by calling her an "Israeli Pig" after she treated Batal with disrespect, distrust, and suspicion ever since his arrival.

Sabra is then mind controlled into stopping the peace conference and killing everyone who allowed it to happen. She is stopped by the New Warriors.

Sabra's son is never once shown in a flashback, we are only ever told of him and how he died.

X-Men (1991) #67-69, 72-73

Sabra's dead son's name is revealed to be Jacob, she uses her position in Mossad to get secret information for the X-Men.

She later has plans to track down and kill Magneto, but ends up fighting with his clone, Joseph, before being told that wasn't the real Magneto and stopping.

Excalibur (1988) #120-121

Sabra teams up with Excalibur to defend "Israel" from Legion's ghosts. Then she is debriefed of her mission by Mossad.

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #366, 367, 379

Sabra takes Joseph (Magneto's clone) to an Israeli Military bunker where scientists study his DNA and state he is a clone of Magneto. Later Sabra attends Joseph's funeral.

X-Men (1991) #111

Sabra makes a statement about Magneto; Israeli Super-Agent Sabra weighed in on the looming war with her usual candor, "It is clear to me at least that Magneto has become the monster he claims to despise. There are some factions who believe this rumored son of Israel has brought much shame to his countrymen. Factions who believe he should be dealt with once and for all. Okay maybe not factions. But certainly Individuals... like me."

New X-Men (2001) #131-132

Sabra attends a funeral for Darkstar in #131. In #132 Sabra interacts with the mutants, and x-men, and says to Quicksilver (on the apparent death of Magneto), "I'm sorry Quicksilver, but good riddance. Magneto was a master-race lunatic who coherenced the entire Genoshan mutant population into a war with humanity and brought this on himself."

JLA/Avengers (2003) #4

Single panel appearance where Sabra is shown protecting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Again she is called an Israeli hero.

Side Note: I don't think there's been a single comic where Sabra has a major presence that has not mentioned at least once that Sabra is an Israeli Super Hero, a Mossad Agent, or an Israeli Super-Agent at least once. It's so noticeable that they always mention it and how big of a role it plays in her character.

Excalibur (2004) #5

Flashback two panel appearance of Sabra on Genosha.

Civil War: X-Men (2006) #1-4

Sabra fights on the side of Tony Stark/Iron Man and battles Archangel, then aids an injured Micro Max.

Civil War (2006) #6

Sabra fights on the side of Tony Stark/Iron Man.

Union Jack (2006) #1-4

The Arabian Knight has changed mantles, the 2nd incarnation is portrayed by a Palestinian Hero, Navid Hashim. I make mention of this because in Union Jack (2006) #1 Navid is called a Saudi, then in Hulk (2008) #45 Navid is called a Afghani, however the Marvel Fandom Wiki stated he was a Palestinian and I wanted to confirm it, which I did in:

Marvel Encyclopedia, New Edition (2019)

In the first issue of Union Jack, right off the bat, Sabra has an issue with The Arabian Knight, and is antagonistic towards him.

Navid is written in Marvel's usual racist writing; the misogynistic Arab man stereotype. Navid tells Sabra she should embrace her role as a mother instead of a hero. Sabra snaps and chokes him while telling Navid that Palestinians killed her son. Note how now it's Palestinians and not, Arabs, and not the PLO? Because by now the PLO is no longer considered a Terrorist group, so Marvel can't blame them and instead shift the blame to all Palestinians for the loss of Sabra's son. Arabs is too general, so of course it's the Palestinians.

To this date Sabra's son, Jacob, has still never appeared in any flashbacks, never seen drawn into a comic with Sabra, no mention of who the boy's father is. Nothing except Sabra's loss and hatred of the Palestinians. Even in her first solo comic series, which I discuss further down, does not mention her son. Using the death of an Israeli child to justify villainizing the entire group of Palestinian people is Zionist Israelis do. It's Anti-Palestinian Propaganda.

Later Navid gets hurt and Sabra checks on him, he tries to apologize;

Arabian Knight: About your son... I only meant. Sabra: Don't. We are allies of the moment. Another day I would have driven the dagger home.

Later Sabra, The Arabian Knight, and others are mind controlled by the villain to attack Union Jack. Union Jack is told that he can distract them by turning them against their "natural enemies" and then Union Jack insults Sabra and uses Sabra's hatred and racism towards Arabs to turn her against The Arabian Knight. Sabra calls Navid a terrorist as she attacks him.

The mind control gets broken, and the team rallies to save the day by the last issue. The final exchange between The Arabian Knight and Sabra shows a tense acknowledgement between them meant to show begrudging respect. This is the nicest Sabra has been to any Arab character since her creation. The bar of "showing respect" is literally on the ground.

Secret Invasion #6

Cameo one panel appearance of Sabra in Israel fighting a Skrull.

Astonishing Tales (2009) #6 - Astonishing Tales: Sabra

Tagline in the comic states: Sabra: Whether as an agent of Mossad, or a superhero, the Israeli mutant Ruth Bat-Seraph has never doubted her decision to put her country above self. Fighting alongside the Avengers, X-Men, and Captain Britain, as the patriotically garbed Sabra. Ruth has proven herself a champion to all nations.

"Sabra in Flight" - is one of the most disgusting pieces of Israeli comic propaganda I have ever read thus far in Sabra's comics. For my first time reading it I was shocked at how easily they projected the narrative of Israel as something noble and worth dying for. This piece of utter trash is the very first time Sabra has her own solo comic story. Let that sink in. This is the first time in 29 years since Sabra's creation 1980 that she has her own solo comic story. Sabra's total presence in the comics is 42 years.

The only things we know of her character is that her name is Ruth Bat-Seraph, she was born and raised in a special Israeli Kibbutz (Israeli settlement), that she manifested mutant powers that include; flight, energy quills, poisoned quills, super strength, and life energy transference. Sabra had a six year old son named Jacob who died in a bombing. She has always stated or maintained her solidarity and defense of Israel even above her own life. She is racist to any Arab, especially Palestinian Arabs.

It also important to note her costume changes over the years, her Star of David has diminished greatly from being on different parts of her uniform to just barely being a necklace/neck accessory. Her roles as Israeli Hero is greater than that of her being a Jewish Hero.

This comic introduces us to Ruth at a Israeli social function in Jerusalem, where is with her mother. Her mother tells her not to spill anything on her Sabra uniform, and mentions how people want to talk to her, Their Greatest Soldier. Again the emphasis on her being an Israeli Soldier and a Mossad Agent is hammered home in the first page of this comic.

Mother: "Your dad would be so proud of you, Ruth. To see his daughter in uniform protecting the Nation." Ruth: "I just hate being put on display at these receptions. I am a Mossad Agent after all."

Then the next bit of news we learn is that Sabra has a brother. So now we know she has a mother and brother who is living, and her father is deceased. Next a old friend of Ruth's arrives with her teenage daughter, Yael, in tow, she introduces Sabra to her daughter and leaves them to talk. Sabra then mentions to Yael that she must be getting close to her mandatory military service soon. Yael mentions she is nervous because her friend was in the military and was paralyzed in Gaza.

Sabra then spends the next part of the comic reassuring Yael that it's ok to be nervous and that she was nervous too sometimes and mentions a story where she faced Hydra, and that when Yael goes into the Israeli military (IDF: Israeli Defense Force) she will learn a lot.

Sabra: "You'll learn a lot when you enter the Military. But the biggest thing you'll discover is that you have two families; your military family, and your personal family. Both will always be there for you, and perhaps even sacrifice themselves for you. A hard truth I learned the day my dad died rescuing me."

Yael mentions how her father was killed by surface to air missiles, and then goes on to say she was accepted into the air force flight academy and she always wanted to fly but that she was nervous. She mentions she might go into Military Intelligence. Sabra says that is good too but Yael then says she feels she was always meant to fly. So to convince Yael go into air force and alleviate her fears Sabra then takes her in her arms to fly her over Jerusalem and tells her that this land is what their dads died for. And she is convinced that Yael will make the right choice.

Side Note: Excuse me while I throw up, this entire comic made me feel so disgusted. I always try to write and speak about comics as professionally as I can but fuck this comic. Fuck this Pro Israel Propaganda. Fuck Sabra. Fuck this Pro-IDF comic. Fuck making an entire comic about reassuring a young teenage Israeli girl to go and join the IDF to fight in Gaza, to kill Palestinians. THIS. This is why Sabra will NEVER be able to be divorced from her origins, her character, as a Pro-Israeli Super Agent. No matter what Marvel tries to put into the movie this is who the character is at her very core.

Over 12,000 children have DIED since October 7th. Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, but Marvel and the MCU, and Disney think it's ok to have a Israeli Superhero in a Captain America movie? Boycott. Scream out online to them. Tell them we do not want their Israeli Propaganda. Sabra should never ever be used for any platform, movies, shows, animation, comics, ever again. Over 30,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered by Israel in the last few months alone. Never forget.

I'm shaking with rage as I write about this comic but we move on. There's still some comics left to discuss. However in my firm opinion this character is indefensible, she literally is an Israeli Propaganda character. She is propaganda for the IDF.

History of the Marvel Universe (2012)

Cameo Appearance.

Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #685, Amazing Spider-Man: Ends of the Earth (2012) #1

Sabra teams up with Spider-Man and other heroes, she is introduced as a Israeli based mutant, she fights spider robots in Jerusalem.

X-Men (2010) #31, 34-37

In Paris, Sabra greets Storm and later she helps the X-Men using her influence as a Mossad Agent.

X-Men (2013) #9, 11, 16 + X-Men Legacy (2012) #23

Sabra aids the X-Men.

Captain America: Steve Rogers (2016) #18

One page Cameo, Sabra appears to have completed a mission and gathered files.

Avengers (2018) #11

Sabra and the Arabian Knight are at a meeting called by The Black Panther. T'Challa wants everyone to work together, they are currently discussing an issue with Namor the Sub-Mariner, King of Atlantis. Ursa Major makes fun of the situation; "Haaaa, look at Sabra and the Arabian Knight! Even the Jew and the Muslim are agreeing! How touching!

Zionist propaganda of making it seem as if the conflict between Israel and Palestine is a religious conflict between an Arab and a Jew. Making of a Jewish and Muslim character getting alone because they should be fighting is racist, Islamophobic, and anti-sematic. The conflict between Israel and Palestine is NOT a religious conflict, Israel has been occupying and murdering Palestinians for 75 years. It is a conflict between Israel being a colonizer and Palestine being colonized. Israel is committing a genocide as I create this post.

At the end of all her appearances spanning 42 years Sabra has not once changed from her palestinian, arab hating, israeli zionist roots. All we get is her trading a few words back and forth with Arabian Knight and acting like an adult at a table full of kids. There isn't even respect between them. That is all the appearances of Sabra.

Why is important to boycott Sabra? In addition to the character being Pro-Israel, Pro-IDF Propaganda, giving a large platform like the one an MCU movie provides will give the actress a larger platform.

Israeli Actress, Gal Gadot, who is Pro-Israel, Pro-Zionism, Pro-IDF, and was a former IDF soldier, was cast in a high profile role of Wonder Woman, she used her platform, power, and access to thousands of fans to further messages of Zionism and even promoted a Pro-Israel propaganda film to be aired in Hollywood. The film was used to further the Zionist agenda of continuing their genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. Bearing Witness (2023) is a Israel IDF propaganda film that Gal Gadot endorsed as Israel continued their genocide of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Wonder Woman isn't even Israeli, however the actress used her ties to the character to promote Israel. In Wonder Woman: 1984 there is a very racist, Anti-Arab, Anti-Palestinian message including a scene where Wonder Woman, played by Gadot, saves 4 Arab boys from a missile. Article Link

Why is that scene so controversial? Because Israel murdered four young boys who were playing on a beach in Gaza back in 2014 by a drone missile strike. Article Link

Gal Gadot and now Shira Haas having roles in movies with as much exposure as DC and Marvel movies promotes Israel, and Zionism. Pro Zionist groups have already voiced their approval of Shira Haas playing Sabra.

I will boycott any piece of media that features Sabra, the Israeli Propaganda Super Agent.

Use the Captain America tags to Boycott Sabra.

If you have read this far then please support Palestine. Support Palestinians and fight against Zionism. Comics were created by Jewish Creators, do not let Zionists try to erase their contribution or use comics to promote Zionism. Comics are never created in a vacuum, they are the pulse of current pop culture, of current news. Comics are Political and always have been. Marvel choosing to keep Sabra in the MCU sends a clear message of support for Zionism & Israel.

Find a Protest near you

Donate or Join Palestine Action

Donate to Palestine , HelpGaza , Palestine Donations , Aid Palestine

Learn about Palestine

[mixelation]

wait hold on. i figured out the best* way to deal with jiraiya subconsciously writing his teammates fucking in reborn au

*best, as always, means funniest

okay, so. tori is trying very hard to go back to her old fannish ways wrt icha icha. the PROBLEM is that she's "too young" for it. kushina sees no problem with a young girl exploring her sexuality via dumb novels and loans her copies, but basically everyone else gets super fucking weird when she tries talking about it to them.

tori: hey did you see the new fan comic strip in-- (KAKASHI SLAMS HIS HAND OVER HER MOUTH)

kakashi: (nervous laughter) why does a kid know about that???

the konoha fanclub won't let her in. she's tried a henge a few times but there's enough ninja in the club she gets caught. she has to do a lot of convincing and sweet talk to buy fanzines or her own copies of the books. she meets jiraiya and even he is like ".....why don't you look me up again when you turn 18" and then kushina attempts to murder him

so she turns to OTHER franchises to look at. rpf. bad tv. itachi's library of completely stupid paperbacks. in fact, i realized this Solution because i was looking through old posts and one was talking about a book series about a kunoichi turned into a cat and then adopted by the missing-nin she was assigned to murder, which for some reason i named "kitty girl stabby ninja." it's PG-13 rather than E, so tori reads the first book of what is allegedly itachi's favorite series and then attempt to talk to him about it, and he's............ bad at it. like he's just bad. at conversation??

not to be deterred, tori is like "okay, fine, THIS is my fandom now and i'm going to start a book club" and itachi is just of like "okay?" and she goes to deidara first and then kakashi and then some random icha icha fan club people she barely knows because she doesn't have real friends. all of them are like "that sounds completely stupid" and she's like THAT'S THE POINT. then the whole idea gets completely out of her control because kushina finds out and wants to join as a team thing and tori is like NO, NO COMMANDING OFFICERS AT THE FUN SOCIAL EVENT-- but somehow they end up at kushina's house and so the goddamn hokage is also there. smiling. with snacks. the two normal people tori tried to pull from her failed forays into the icha icha fandom bail because would you willingly go talk to your hokage about a stupid as fuck romance novel for teenagers? while other famous ninja like kakashi and itachi* are there, judging???

*don't try to explain to them uchiha itachi is the source of the club or that kakashi likes icha icha for the romance and not the raunchy parts and barely needed convincing to read the catgirl romance book, it will confuse them

toward the end of the inaugural meeting deidara asks tori if people still hate her fics and minato is like "if you want writing tips, i can invite jiraiya to the next one :)" and tori is going to kill both of them. yes, even the hokage. maybe ESPECIALLY the hokage. she doesn't even really LIKE stupid kitty girl stabby ninja she just wants to do fun fandom stuff okay!!!!

jiraiya shows up at the next meeting anyway because he wants to "scope out the competition" and he makes a very dramatic speech analyzing why ninja romances appeal to civilians and how he's very cleverly using his spy skills to infiltrate civilian spaces and figure them out psychologically--

itachi, sounding genuinely confused: i thought all your plots and characterizations were just projections of your complicated relationship with Tsunade-hime and Orochimaru

Jiraiya: (SHOT DEAD)

jiraiya has to leave immediately to go rethink his entire life and maybe drink himself to death, but tori is touched itachi apparently listened to her at some point u_u

[transformers-mosaic]

Spotlight: Stunticons - Covers & Page 1

Originally posted on January 28th, 2012

Story - Josh van Reyk Art - Jeremy Tiongson Colours - Josh Perez Letters - HdE Cover A Art - Andrew Griffith Cover A Colors - Joana Lafuente Cover B - Kris Smith Pin-Up Art - The Boo

deviantART | Seibertron | TFW2005 | BotTalk

wada sez: This week, I’m going to be re-serialising Josh van Reyk’s full-length fancomic, Spotlight: Stunticons! Conceived in the same vein as Transformers: War Journal, the comic is a big collaboration between a bunch of different Mosaic contributors. This time, there’s a much smaller set of creatives, with Josh van Reyk handling the entire script, and each artist team contributing the pages devoted to a specific Stunticon. The Stunticons are a favorite of van Reyk’s, and he’d written several Mosaic strips focused on them in the run-up to this project’s release: in order, these were “Hail To The King”, “Forgive And Forget”, and “The Bigger Picture”. This first page serves to re-establish the team, communicating their simple character traits: Wildrider is reckless, Breakdown is paranoid, Dead End is depressed, Drag Strip is a try-hard, and Motormaster hates all of them. We briefly see Hound, Ironhide, and Starscream in the background, all using their Cybertronian designs from The War Within. Now, for the rest of this series, I’m actually going to be shuffling the pages around a bit, which I realise is bad archival work but which is logistically necessary (and shouldn’t affect the story too much due to its already-unconventional structure); if you want to read the story exactly as it was originally published, visit the deviantART gallery above. In case you were wondering, “CWP” is van Reyk’s own brand, Choose Wisely Productions, which I’m not sure is a real company. Artist Boo had to drop out of the project at an early stage due to his IDW workload, but contributed two pin-ups for fans to color; you can find those below along with clean art for Griffith’s cover and some preview panels.

[steakout-05]

OK SO THE TRAILER FOR THE NEW GARF MOVIE CAME OUT (and of course youtube didnt tell me about it until now) AND!!! ITS SO CUTE!!!!!! so here's me yelling and screaming and fanboying about how much i love how this movie looks so far :D

ok first off, BABY GARF!!! HE IS A TINY BALL!!! LITTOL GUY!!!! :D

he's so miniscule! so microscopic! an atom! he's tiny!!! but he's just living in a box who would abandon such a little guy :( (his dad probably. yeah he's in this movie and i hope Garfield's mum is also in here because she appeared in a classic Garfield special and she's so lovely)

after this scene we see our first look at Jon (my beloved) eating alone at an Italian restaurant, and like, this means so much to me. look at these shots:

i'm not sure if they're in order or not but like. look at the way he watches the family! he has a look of bittersweet love and sadness in his eyes and i'm just,,, 🥺 he just wants to be a dad.... i love how Jon has always kinda been portrayed as a father figure to his pets, in classic shows and specials he calls Garf and Odie his boys, in Garfield Gets Real he calls them his kids and now here, he wants to be a father so bad i'm going to burst into tears i love this man

the garf appears!! the littol baby has arrived!! the tiny little miniscule microscopic molecule atom of a cat has approached the window!!!

the way Jon puts his finger to the window, the way he cuddles baby Garf with so much tender loving care and adoration..... he's so sweet i love him!! how can people hate this man?? look at him!!! look this sweet and loving father figure in the eyes and tell him you hate him. you cannot. he's too pure for this world

also i haven't mentioned this yet, but it's commonly accepted in the Garfield fandom that Garfield was born in a pizza shop and then was transferred to a pet shop where Jon then adopted Garfield in 1978, but to be honest, i didn't really like the pet shop part of that backstory. the pizza place part was great but i dunno, Jon just going to a pet shop and buying Garfield isn't as heartfelt to me. this backstory though? i LOVE. two lonely creatures meeting each other and forming a family is so adorable and sweet, especially for modern Garfield. i feel like we need less cynicism in modern Garfield and more stuff like this i love it so much,,, also this movie looks fucking beautiful holy shit

i really like this part because like, Garfield didn't develop his bizarrely huge diet over time. dude was BORN with it. and like look at that look on Jon's face, he looks like he hasn't even finished processing what just happened yet and is just staring into the mist wondering what and how and why that happened. beautiful. also that second image is really funny to me it should have a silly ominous text post caption on it

also this shot, i didn't notice it the first time but holy shit the look of absolute HORROR on Jon's face!! he is witnessing the TRUE extent of Garfield's powers and he is NOT ready for it man i love this shot so much

okok so what i REALLY LOVE about this specific shot is that it reminds me of a classic Garfield strip where Jon is attempting to give Garfield a bath!! here's the strip it reminds me of:

Jon doesn't actually wear anything but like. the fact that he has to go through so much preparation to give Garfield a bath so he doesn't claw him up in the movie, it just has to be a reference to this strip it's gotta be man i'm betting money on it. also hiii Lyman :)

this scene is so fucking pretty!!! look at the warm colours! it feels so homely and it's exactly how i feel reading my dad's old Garfield comic books! all the warm bright colours and gentle lighting, all the freshly baked lasagna that i really wanna eat because it's so delicious looking.... how can people say that Jon doesn't feed Garfield when he is RIGHT THERE grating extra cheese for him because he knows Garfield likes extra everything in his lasagna. such a sweet adorable man :') i'd like to see ihatejonarbuckle make a good rebuttal to THIS

there's some other neat little references in this movie too, like the Stuck On You plushies made by Dakin being referenced with Garfield smacking into a car after his dad throws him out of a train,

and a reference to the giant Garfield balloon at a Macy's Thanksgiving parade that makes me think that 'Garfield' the comic is canon in this movie, it's created by Jon (cause y'know he's supposed to be a cartoonist) and it's based off his own stories with Garfield and it is now an international phenomenon like in our world. neat!

the question is though, does Garfield know he's a worldwide sensation or does he have absolutely no idea? it'd be funny if it was the latter option honestly cause he'd be extremely confused yet flattered as to why there's a random giant balloon dedicated to him in the city

so the big dude on the left is Garfield's dad, but also, this reminds me of this other Garfield comic where Garfield meets his former self from 1978 and they proceed to eat all the food in the fridge together. thought that was cool :D

(it'd be really funny if this was Garfield's dad and he was messing with Garfield by telling him they are one in the same haha)

oh yeah and here's the two of them eating everything in Jon's fridge from the movie:

see what i mean? there's a similarity there and i think it's really funny. also Jon's probably thinking "wtf there's two of them now???" like Garfield got so fat that he just split into two cats or something lol

so! does it look like a good movie? abso-fucking-lutely yes!!! i am SO excited to go see this one! i think this is the best Garfield media we've gotten in YEARS! i love the colours and the shots, i love the slight modern redesign they gave Jon, Odie looks a little weird but he's still super fun and adorable, and while i do find it odd that the Garfield balloon looks more like Garfield than he does, i do like how expressive the characters' eyes are and it's miles better than the previous 3D Garfs we got! i really wanna see this movie and boy am i going to be RAVING about it for WEEKS this blog will be FILLED with Garfield for the next few weeks when this goes digital!! super jazzed to see it!!

and with that, here's one more comparison that i think is extremely funny:

[christabelq]

Hey, It’s another of those posts where I jabber on about costume design for a while💬💬. This time I’m focusing on my Tank Girl baseball cap. I didn’t do enough with this for it to need a tutorial ,but there are a few features I want to highlight, because I think they’re pretty cool. Unlike most of my Tank Girl stuff, it isn’t based on anything in the comics or movie. I bought the hat itself because it was going cheap in my local army navy store and decided to customise it because I had a bunch of stuff left over from my Tank Girl helmet project🪖 (see earlier post).

The first improvement I made was to fix a strap and plastic slider to the back. This was partly to make the size adjustable, but mainly because I wanted something to hang stuff from. The process was simple and just took a bit of sewing. Once I’d done that, I sewed on a couple of patches as well – one with a target on, because as any Tank Girl fans will know, that’s kind of her trademark, and a flower, just because I like flowers.

Then I spelt out TANK with letter cubes on a chain and added this. I bought a huge bag of these letter cubes a while back, but annoyingly, there were no Ts, so I had to modify one of the I cubes to make the word I wanted. Next, I pinned on some badges and also attached a few old toys which I picked up in a thrift store.

The final addition was a toy tank. This was another thrift store purchase and was in pretty bad shape when I got it. Parts were messily painted, other parts were worn and the wheels were busted. I was going to hang it on the hat as it was. Then I remembered how sick the tank in the TANK GIRL movie looks and thought it would be cool to make the toy one into a little replica. I stripped it down to bare metal with some nail varnish remover (which I always have plenty of), and fixed the wheels with some trusty super glue (I use Gorilla myself, though as I’m not getting any sponsorship money from them, I’d like to point out that there are other brands available). Next, I sprayed it matt black. Although it’s only small, this took a couple of days, because I had to let one side dry before I could turn it over to do the other one. In the time between, I rewatched the movie to check what the real tank looked like (which I enjoyed immensely as always). The paint job was too complicated for me to have copied exactly on such a small toy, so I drew a simplified design to work from. Then I got to work painting and was surprised by how well it turned out. As I say, the pictures on it aren’t identical to the movie ones, but I definitely think I captured the spirit of it. I just wish it was big enough for me to do a photo shoot with and take out for spin. What can I say… me 💜 tanks.               

I’ve already posted a few pics of me wearing the cap and will be posting more soon. See them here or at 👉ko-fi.com/christabelq👈. Tanks for reading this and have a wonderful weekend.

[damianbugs]

saki i'm sorry i don't know much about DC comics, but i have been confused about something recently when seeing fan comics — are Bruce and Two-Face (Harvey?) still friends post-whatever happened to him? I think they were friends before, maybe, but some fanon has been suggesting to me they might still be, so I was wondering about that. Opinions on him, too, maybe? I know fuck all about him but he's so quirky

i wouldn't say they're... still friends exactly. let's do some background real quick.

i think the really sweet and close friendship bruce wayne and harvey dent had prior to his acid attack, that inspires a lot of fancontent — is from Batman: The Animated Show. in this iteration of their history, they're close friends who obviously mean a lot to each other, which is why the guilt batman feels for two-face is only more painful.

(of course in much earlier comics and harvey's original introduction (detective comics #66) bruce and harvey are friends too. though, it's not often referenced as his origin much anymore.)

in the comics however, the friendship starts and unfortunately ends with batman. batman, (captain) jim gordon, (DA) harvey all work together to try and solve the case in Batman: The Long Halloween.

they grow close and personally, i think bruce was really starting to form a close bond and trust with harvey throughout their partnership. this really shines through when after harvey becomes two-face (which is a long and sad story), bruce still has somewhat of a belief that harvey can still be good.

though, we know now that two-face ends up having a permanent spot in gothams rouge gallery, but i suppose it's because of this history of trust that batman continues to encourage harvey to turn his life around (a sentiment he has with a lot of his rouges, but something that is especially prominent in his relationship with two-face).

as for what their origins are in the new 52? i have no idea! moving on.

for what their relationship is like currently;

the most recent interactions i think they've had is in ram v's current Detective Comics run (which is FANTASTIC) and out of all the harvey and bruce comics i have read, it is probably my favourite. they're not even the main focused relationship, but it is such an important one for the theme of this arc.

in this run harvey is at war with himself, struggling between being 'good' and being 'bad' — but also struggling to simply have a choice at doing either. bruce is also facing a similar turmoil. so we see this really wonderful parallel in the midst of a battle where harvey is debating whether or not he wants to save bruce or leave him to die, and bruce is battling whether he wants to give in or keep going.

two-face does end up saving bruce. this is something very important to both of their characters.

it shows bruce that the man he befriended is not lost and it gives harvey a sense of autonomy that he's been stripped of for a long time. it's a short but very moving subplot about hope.

that being said, harvey isn't doing this because he wants to be friends with bruce again. or well, two-face isn't. it's complicated.

i don't think i could do the writing justice (there is also like, an insane overarching plot going on). once he drags bruces half dead body to safety, he threatens him, leaves bruce there and is currently, on the run.

so friends? not really. enemies? also not exactly. really tragic story about missing someone you once knew, wondering if you ever really knew them in the first place? ABSOLUTELY.

there is also some insanely obvious queercoding taking place in their story, but i focused on their friendship side of things.

it's one of bruce's more complicated rouge relationships, and probably the best one thematically. harvey is such an interesting character and if dc wouldn't use the same green headed dumbass as the villain in all their batman stories, two-face would definitely be the most compelling rouge for bruce.

i don't know if this actually made any sense, and also apologies for taking so long to answer this! here is probably one of the best detective comics covers ever made as an apology (it is bruce standing in the middle of a split two-face carved golden door with a batman shadow in the back. this shit is marvelous).

[harukadrawsthings]

EDIT 7/10/2023: Wow, in less than 24 hours I already got the 5 slots filled! Thank you to everyone and my apologies to those who didn't manage to have a slot in time. There's always a next time! As soon as the replies become ready I upload them but there's no deadline. Stay tuned!

---

Original post 6/10/2023:

Hello, everyone, hoping that this start of Autumn is being good for you!

I've been a little busy dealing with mental health and quotidian stuff but over two thirds of the next part of the comic of Soul(mate)s of Light has been already developed. Thank you for your patience once again, expect its upload in the near future once it's ready to show.

In order to maintain the focus on the comic strips creation I'm re-opening the Ask box for a very short time once again. This post will be updated as soon the inbox gets closed.

After validating the questions of 5 different users made that include at least one to AU characters I'll temporarily close the Ask box once more. First come, first served. So if you were saving questions in the meantime, hurry up and ask them now while slots are available!

BEFORE SENDING AN ASK:

Last time in August when I was checking the pending messages and validating the questions that were suitable for replies I’ve observed a few things that I want to bring out some attention, as well reminding about a few factors:

There were users not respecting the “Maximum three character-directed questions per user” rule. Please consider there are other people that send questions and it’s not fair for them to have to wait longer because somebody made more asks.

For a better management of posts, I also want to ask to please make those three questions in a single post whenever it’s possible instead of sending them separately.

If someone sends me more than 3 character-directed questions per wave of replies, I’ll either only respond to the three first questions and suppress the others, or select the best 3 questions of that message.

Please don’t ask the characters questions about crossovers with IRL IPs unrelated with Pokémon. It’s 99% certain I won’t answer them. I reinforce that I reserve the right to not reply to questions that I find them inadequate to my AU standards or for other reasons not listed in the rules.

Although I don’t forbid questions done to characters that aren’t part of the main/secondary cast of the AU story, please consider that questions made to characters outside that circle are subjected to be unanswered if I conclude that replying them doesn’t bring anything relevant either to the readers or to the AU itself.

If the Ask Button isn’t available it’s because I’m not accepting character-directed asks at the moment. Do not use this thread to send character-directed asks. Please wait for a reopening and save your questions for next time! 😊

Author-directed questions are quicker to be replied than character-directed ones (especially if there's no character-directed ask included in the entire message). If I see it helps to speed up the inbox cleanup I can consider giving priority to answer this type of questions.

A reminder about the original rules to also be considered

Be polite, don't use foul language/swearing.

SFW asks, only! NSFW asks will never be replied.

Gore scenarios are very unlikely to be replied or if it involves a trigger subject that requires a real graphical depicting as well.

I reserve the right to not reply to a character ask if I find it inappropriate or for any other reason not mentioned here.

Maximum three character-directed questions per user. If author-directed questions are included alongside with character-directed questions, please don’t surpass 3 character questions and 2 author questions (making it a total of 5 questions per user).

Due to my personal life and the development of a new comic, replies to the asks won’t have a fixated deadline to be developed and published. Please be patient!

If I find the asks to be suitable for replying I might take some time to draw the character answers since it's something I have to do in parallel with ongoing projects like AU comics or illustrations (and there's my personal life to consider as well, of course!).

The more questions in the same ask message I receive, the more time I'll need to draw them as well since I have to submit every answer on the same post!

I give priority to draw answers for the asks I receive first in my inbox. Asks sent after someone has done it first will be in the drawing queue.

While I don't discard the possibility of drawing replies to questions directed to characters that don't have much relevance to the AU I can consider to do them if I conclude it's doable. However, I recommend that the questions are done for characters that are more prominent to the story.

I highly advice that the questions are asked in English, although I understand questions done in Portuguese or Spanish without having to use automatic translators for other languages.

Thank you in advance!

[doyouwanttoseeabug]

Hey I posted GuyHal for the first time in NINE YEARS pray for my soul. What if, when Guy was following Hal around during everyone's late-90's breakdown, they ran into each other in a gay bar?

My apologies to the good people of Lennox, South Dakota, which is a real town where I have never been.

----

The tire blows twenty minutes from Lennox. 

Big, flat South Dakota country in all directions - blank horizon, long strip of green meeting long strip of blue, the laziest child’s drawing. In a movie there’d be a hard-bitten man riding away from that line or towards it, bringing trouble or taking it, maybe stealing one last kiss from the pretty schoolteacher or penitent dancing girl. John Wayne would call someone pilgrim in that sweet slow drawl, and the credits would roll and Hal’s dad would ruffle his hair and Hal would go upstairs and practise that drawl under the green glow of the stars on his ceiling - I haven’t lost my temper in in forty years, but pilgrim, you’ve caused a lot of trouble this morning. But this isn’t a movie. No gunslinger. Just Hal, saying fuck with slowly but ever-increasing fury as the car stumps and stumbles to the edge of the road. 

He slams his head against the steering wheel. Slams the door. Opens the boot, looks at the blank space where the spare tire should be. Slam.

“Well,” he tells the sky, “fuck.”

He touches the ring in his pocket. Walks the last six miles into town.

[aita-blorbos]

aita for not being able to get over someone?

this is going to be a prety long story. i (31F) ended up in a really messy situation. basically i draw comic strips for a living and i have a colorist (32M I'll be calling him R for this post) helping me with it. me and R started out having a strictly work relationship (he's always been really closed off and he hates getting personal with anyone) but over the years we became pretty close friends. so all this led up to his ex girlfriend (I don't care about her age,F I'll be referring to her as J) from italy showing up a while ago. she was engaged to some italian guy and R didn't want to look like a total loser for not having anyone so he asked me to pretend to be his wife? at first the idea seemed stupid to me but i decided to go along with it and i found myself... enjoying it more than i probably should've. by the end of the day J called her engagement to her fiancee off and seemed to be all over R and i felt actual jealousy.

The next day i asked a mutual friend of me and R if he thinks i have any chance with R and he said yes so i left a message on his answering machine about my feelings for him that night but i found out next morning that he got married to J and that she heard and erased the message before R could hear it. she said it's to save me the embarrassment so I can't really be angry at her but then again I'm not sure if i should trust her. something about her is just... off. she's just so selfish and hot headed and i can tell she hates me. of course she has her reasons but... I'm just not a hateful person you know? and yet i hate her. she may just be the only person in the world i hate.

so that's where i am now. i even got a boyfriend and he's... nice. but he's not R. and j think he knows that.

but the real reason I'm writing this is because i also feel like my presence puts a lot of tension in R and J's marriage and i don't want to be responsible for ruining things between them. I can tell J hates how much time R and i spend together but we still work together in my apartment I can't change that! but the fact remains. I'm deeply in love with R and I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.

tl.dr: i'm a cartoonist and i have deep feelings for my colorist which his new wife knows and hates me for. aita?

[hellothere-generalangsty]

It's way past my bedtime ans my cat is sleeping-purring next to me but I thought I'd post the process of the @ailani-reillata Ailaniversary art I made today just to talk a bit more about it

Disclaimer: doing traditional art is cool until you need to scan it or post a picture of it 😂 also kinda long post below so ofc no obligation at all to read it!

Phase one: Sketching the Idea

My inspiration for the posture was a Yara Flor comic strip I found on Pinterest. Yara looks over her shoulder and her hair falls on the side of her face, and I loved the way it framed her face and thought it would look great with Ailani's hair.

I drew a little doodle on the page to help me visualize how the hair would be divided, and focused on 3 main parts (the lines, the bubbles, the empty space) which would - supposedly- help me during the lineart stage. Below are images of the final sketch.

I was hesitant on adding details to her arms, such as the folds of a dress, but I was so anxious about ruining the drawing I abandonzd that idea. I was considering adding her tattoos and was still not decided at this stage of the drawing.

Phase 2: Line-ing the Art

Is that even a real word? Idk, I'm too tired to English properly so we will say it is. Following the sketching phase was naturalle the lineart phase, which is one of my favorite stage when drawing. I bought new inking pens too so I was able to test them out, and it went quite well!

As you can see, the ribbons, outline of the skin and facial features have been done with my new pens, and i was quite happy with the result! It gives a more natural look to the whole drawing in my opinion.

At this stage I decided not to add her arm tattoos and consider this version of Ailani as the one you would find in the early chapters of Begged and Borrowed Time, so before she would get her tattoos.

Phase 2.5: Line-ing the Hair

This stage has it's own part because it was really fun to do! The inspiration for the way I draw hair comes from @/ssavaart (aka Scott Christian Sava on Youtube). I've been following him for a while now and I'm trying to push my art beyond my comfort zone and try new stuff thanks to him, and having fun with drawing hair is one of these things!

Look how beautiful these curls are. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or anything, but I'm really proud of the drawing at this stage 😂 it's the perfect moment where the inking went well and I have not yet ridked myself with the watercolours - so I always take a long sight (and tons of pictures) to celebrate reaching this stage without incidents.

Phase 3: Watercolours

Here comes the difficult part. It always makes me nervous because I always fear ruining my drawing and all the efforts I put into it by doing the watercolours. But I love the medium too much and if I want to get better I need to practice. So, testing the waters, I finally dive head first into this crucial stage.

The watercolouring goes well, I'm overall satisfied enough to take some pictures and even try to scan it, with the hope that the scanned rendering will be better than the usual "photographing and editing" I do with my phone.

Spoiler alert: the scan was NOT better than the pictures, and no amount of editing could change that. (Or maybe I am just very bad at editing.) So, back to my "photographing and editing" habits, I somehow managed to get a good enough result:

I still feel unsatisfied as I find these digital versions do not properly render the visuals I have on paper, IRL. With the digital versionsw the hair is either so dark we don't see the details, or too bright, the colours are too warm and light... And while Ailani looks light-skinned, the paper version has these visible brown tones that I struggled to find on the digital version, even when editing the pictures. The closest I got is the tone you see on the first picture, but the image is not lighted enough so the overall quality of the picture is a bit lessened by that.

Still, I won't complain too much, because overall it was a very fun drawing to do, I enjoyed every stage of it and I would love to do another piece like this! But for now I will go to sleep because it is Way Past My Bedtime 😂

If you've made it this far, thank you for your attention, feel free to let me know which stage is your favorite and what you liked most (or disliked most) about this drawing!

I for one really had fun doing Ailani's lips, as well as filling her hair, and colouring her eyes! 😊

[fools-fall-much-too-soon]

Leon's personality "change" between RE2 & RE4

Disclaimer: I'm not a huge fan of the remakes so I don't really take them as 100% canon. When reading this, understand that I'm taking parts from both the ogs and the remakes, but primarily the og games. (TD;DR is at the bottom of the post)

Something that's been on my mind a lot lately is how we went from heart-on-his-sleeve, genuine RE2 Leon to loud, confident, sassy RE4 Leon.

RE4 got me into resi as a kid and remains my favorite game in the franchise. HOWEVER, it's pretty clear (on first inspection) that RE4 Leon is an outlier in the character's development.

In RE2 we get to see rookie cop Leon. I've seen a lot of people claim that og RE2 Leon doesn't have much of a personality but I'd have to disagree. Its abundantly clear that Leon is incredibly pragmatic, a very quick thinker, quite friendly and seems to be able to work well with just about anyone, he even kneels down to get on people's level. Often it seems more like he was trained as an EMT than a cop.

He doesn't approach strangers w a gun. He's so sincere and almost gullible in his faith in other people. That's not to say that he's stupid, he doesn't immediately trust people including Ada (although some folks wanna act like Leon is some lost puppy dog with 0 self-preservation skills). In a lot of ways he comes off a lot like a shonen mc despite him being so snarky. If anything, the closest comparisons I can think of are characters like Percy Jackson or early (comics-era) Peter Parker. All genuine, kind, smart people who are also spunky and funny. He stands his ground, voices his opinion, and is driven by duty. Yes, he's logical and level-headed and pleasant/easily digestible but he's definitely a big personality and a strong character. Practical =/= Boring.

I can't say that much of this changes going into RE4. The only real difference is that he's less gullible and sincere which definitely doesn't feel like its coming out of nowhere. He is 6 years older to be fair and while we only know of Operation Javier between the two installments, we know Leon gets sent on other missions... despite none of them being directly connected to BOWs until OJ. He's been trained by the military which is absolutely part of why he's less gullible other than the obvious reasons. And even then, he's so quick to untie Luis, despite not knowing if he's armed or dangerous, doesn't question the medicine Luis gives them, trusts Ada's intel for some reason, and still considers Krauser a good guy.

Leon was lied to by Ada, who he wanted to protect, and was left feeling used and betrayed. Only to be abandoned by Claire and had to look after the recently orphaned Sherry alone. That, plus the training would make him grow up quick... So what we're left with is the same old snarky, idealistic, but duty-driven Leon who is only a bit more grounded in reality/jaded.

It's also my opinion that all his cheesy one-liners is more than just a way to cope with stress.

Really think about how military training is meant to strip you of personality... It'd make sense that on solo missions he'd finally have the space to let his personality show. He has to hide it so much, ofc he'd be extra when there's no higher-ups to keep him in place. The thing that really hammers it home for me is that he tends to act a lot more serious when there's other agents/military involved. In both Degeneration and Operation Javier, Leon isn't funny. Even in most of Infinite Darkness he keeps his jokes to himself. He's been silly/campy since day one, it's just time and place and RE4 was the right time and place to let his personality shine (especially with all the other big personalities around him).

Leon's personality "change" just seems like a natural progression in response to his environment.

speaking of natural personality changes... I think Krauser and Luis's deaths really messed Leon up. In one day, Leon has to watch so many people die all over again. Innocent villagers slaughtered at his hand. I can imagine that knowing the parasite could be removed and that the villagers were tricked didn't sit easy on his mind either. Like yeah he gets Ashley home but that's one person saved vs the ~1000 that died. Krauser and Luis were important to him in different ways and in the end, things ended up just like Raccoon.

I think that's when it truly starts to set in for Leon that he's just as helpless as everyone else and what he's doing isn't much in the grand scheme of things... Not that he has a choice to stop. It also very easily explains why Leon starts to get more serious as time goes on. Fundamentally, he never really changes the part of him that gets easily attached and cares deeply about the lives of others, but as he ages, it gets harder for him to believe that what he's doing matters since nothing changes.

TD;DR: At the end of the day Leon's personality in RE4 isn't an outlier in his development, but likely of one of the last moments his personality gets to shine without as heavy a burden on his shoulders as he has later in his life. He was been always sassy and kinda campy since day one and him being the way he is in RE4 makes a lot of sense, even though he gets more serious in later installments.

[random-ln-stuff]

Hello! Hi! I am deep diving hard in the little nightmares lore and I think I’ve scrolled though most of your blog now (lol). There are still a few things I’m confused about and can’t seem to find…

The north wind, What is it? What powers does it have? Why is it so strong?

The lords, who are they? Do they govern this wrapped world? Do they ever convene with one another?

The eye, is it one big eye? Or is it a realm beyond the no where? Does it control all the other eyes that we see in the games?

If this is too much feel free to ignore it! Sorry to ask so much stuff (I am genuinely trying to make sense of it all) ps. I absolutely adore everything you have in this blog!!

Reading this made me realize that there’s a couple things i just haven’t explained anywhere.

The following is a mix of headcanons and actual (vague) lore.

1: The North Wind.

The North Wind is a monster found in one of the two official Little Nightmares Comics.

In the story, the North Wind is a formless entity, being the wind itself, although he is shown to be capable of making himself a humanoid shaped body deep within the storm that he is, probably forming the shape of a person using dust and debris he’s picked up.

He’s shown making a wager with the Ferryman (which I now believe is “who can pull this child fully into the Nowhere first” or something similar) and given how he calls the Ferryman a Cheat, he’s probably done a similar thing with him many times before.

He’s also one of 3 entities that acknowledges the Ferryman’s existence, the other two being The Mall from the podcast, who recognizes the Ferryman and begs him not to take Noone, and the Lady, who the Ferryman works for.

Besides his ability to literally strip things to the bone with nothing but wind and his own control over it, the mere fact that the North Wind can both casually wager with the Ferryman and the fact the the Ferryman often needs to cheat to win against him shows that the North Wind is equally as powerful or at least very close in power to the Ferryman (and also the Lady).

As for WHY the North Wind is so powerful, I think it’s because of the same reason that the Ferryman is so powerful, but I’ll get into that in a bit.

2: Lords.

First off: All inhabited areas of Nowhere have some sort of Vice or Obsession related to it. A thing that most, if not all of the inhabitants are obsessed with. The Pale City had Escapism and TVs, wherever Guests come from (and by extension the Maw, which is a restaurant that serves these people, not their original home) has food and hunger, etc.

(The Nest is an exception. It doesn’t have any sort of Vice because it’s only inhabited by three people, not counting the Lady whenever she presumably stays there, and doesn’t have the population or resources or anything to sustain any kind of obsession. Sure the Pretender has her dolls, but that’s more of a “spoil this kid rotten” thing than an addiction)

A Lord is basically just my word for “Any creature that controls a given area or vice of the Nowhere”. Meaning The Lady, The Broadcaster (not the Thin Man, but a separate being. I got a whole theory post on that), and if you take the Podcast into account, The Chained Woman, Living Mall and Ventriloquist. Along with any other rulers of the Nowhere we haven’t seen yet or even will never see.

Also included in this list are The North Wind, Ferryman and Signal Tower Flesh Walls. They don’t truly control any real areas (unless you count the North Wind tearing his way through the wilderness) but their power and influence is too great to really ignore, especially since out of the three of them, two work directly together with other Lords in ways that other minions simply can’t. The Ferryman works for the Lady alongside dragging kids into Nowhere to begin with, bringing them to either the Maw or the Nest depending on what the Lady needs. The Flesh Walls aid the Broadcaster in his control over the Pale City, helping spread the Transmission by literally being the Transmission Tower. I’d even argue that for the Ferryman and Flesh Walls, helping the Lady and Broadcaster respectively is more of a beneficial partnership than working under them, especially for the Flesh Walls.

Lords are also the entities that can pull children into the Nowhere, although some do it far more than others and as such are more experienced. For example: The Ferryman, North Wind, Living Mall and Flesh Walls.

(Also while I’m on the topic, I fully believe that Noone’s dream in Ep 3 of the Podcast is essentially an unplanned, forced detour for Noone’s Nowhere Tour, with the Living Mall being the thing that pulls her in this time instead of the Ferryman, which is why the Ferryman ends up taking her away from the Mall at the end instead of just letting her do whatever until she wakes up again. This would explain not only why the Ferryman actually helped Noone during her escape from the Mall, pointing at her necklace and gesturing for her to take it off before offering Noone his hand to escape (which brings to mind the North Wind comic, where the Ferryman does the exact same gesture to the Refugee Boy to take him away from the North Wind), an action we never him do before or after episode 3 when Noone is in danger, but also why the Mall got incredibly distressed and angry at the Ferryman when he showed up. The Mall pulled Noone in themselves this time, and the Ferryman had to show up to make sure his target didn’t get caught by different Lord before he could take her.)

Lords are the most powerful creatures found in the Nowhere, often possessing incredible power and uniquely, more humanlike intelligence and qualities. Adults in the Nowhere are more often than not mindless child killers who simply do their job or keep up with their obsession or vice (the Teacher teaching, the Hunter hunting, Viewers being addicted to the Transmission, etc) and completely LOSE IT when they see a child, gunning straight for it with the intent to kill unless something even more important (usually Obsession related) happens to stop them. It’s shown that some non-Lords can resist these child-killing urges with some practice like the Thin Man refusing to actually harm Six when he grabs her (although he did still leave Six to be corrupted in the Tower) and the Butler being able to look after the Pretender, who is a child, but this seems to be the exception. Especially since in all cases of this happening, there’s a reason for it. The Thin Man can still recognize Six, The Butler doesn’t harm the Pretender because she’s the Lady’s daughter, who the Butler works for and fears for VERY good reason, the Hunter didn’t kill Six immediately because he wanted to either cook or taxidermy her at a later date, etc

Meanwhile Lords have been seen completely ignoring any sort of child killing urge or compulsion easily. The Lady looked after anywhere from 2 to 6 children and is the one that trained the Butler to not attack her children in the first place, the Living Mall is extremely possessive, but doesn’t appear to have any real intentions of harming Noone, just wanting to keep her happy so she won’t leave them to be alone again and even begs her not to go further into the Nowhere for her own safety and even the Ferryman, despite his constant kidnapping of children in and out of Nowhere, never resorts to outright harming them or chasing them down like a wild animal like some other adults.

The Ferryman especially is a good example of this. Instead of chasing and snatching up any child he sees or mindlessly chasing one no matter the cost or killing them immediately upon capture, the Ferryman usually manipulates kids into giving themselves up nonviolently and is extremely persistent in doing so, stalking targets for YEARS if he has to in order to manipulate them or to wait for them to get into a position to be manipulated. He does tie up Six when bringing her to the Maw, but even prior to that he doesn’t chase Six down or harm her in order to capture her. He simply finds Six and points at her, causing every adult nearby to also point and make noises at her (possibly showing that the Ferryman has some sort of control or commanding power over Adults, just like some other lords we see), which overwhelms Six to the extent that she just curls up and tries to block out the noise, and after that the Ferryman presumably just walked over and took her without resistance, avoiding any sort of chase or fight entirely.

This isn’t to say that Lords won’t attack children or will treat them with any sort of kindness, the Lady will kill any intruders she can find and the North Wind seems to seriously enjoy killing things, making a whole game out of it with the Ferryman, but what I’m saying is that they’re able to resist those natural child-killing instincts if they ever want or need to. If a Lord kills a child, it’s because they want to, not because they need to. And boy do they often want to.

They’re also noticeably more aware and intelligent than typical adults. For the best example of this, compare the Maw and Signal Tower to any other adult in complexity.

Every year at the same time, but never in the same place, the Maw shows up, brings guests aboard and lets them eat endless amounts of delicious food and meat, only to later kill all of the guests aboard to feed the Lady with their souls.

The Signal Tower keeps producing the Signal by using a time loop. The loop is initially set up when the Broadcaster finds Mono, a child with signal powers, and attacks the Pale City Orphanage that he’s living in. The two meet, something we don’t get to see happens and Mono ends up in the forest outside the city, most likely coming out of one of the TVs there. Then Mono meets Six and the two journey through the Pale City. The actual loop begins when Mono releases the Thin Man, who kidnaps Six (and removes her soul by doing so). Mono then kills the Thin Man, and enters the Tower, only for a soulless Six to leave him there. Mono is then used as a living battery to create the transmission until he’s too old to be useful, at which point Mono (now The Thin Man) is released from the tower by his past self and is then eventually killed by his past self, who goes on to become trapped in the tower and so on infinitely.

All of these things are not only complicated (Especially the Loop), but when compared to other adults, even adults with Jobs like the Teacher and Doctor, have something that other adults don’t: A Purpose and Ultimate Goal.

The Teacher endlessly teaches fake students that can’t grow, change, learn or ever leave the school. She will do that forever simply because she is a Teacher and Teachers teach. The Doctor endlessly preforms surgeries on patients that never leave, simply waiting in the hospital to go through it all again, once again, simply because the Doctor is a Doctor and that’s what doctors do. The Hunter hunts and taxidermies because he’s a hunter, end of story. These adults CAN do things other than their jobs if they want to, like the Teacher playing the Piano in her free time and even writing and editing her own piece, but in the end they’re stuck endlessly doing their jobs for no real reason, with no end goal, simply because that is what they do.

But the Lady and Broadcaster are different. For example: The Maw’s whole thing isn’t something the Lady does just because she’s The Owner or The Host of the Maw and that’s what she does, she does it to keep herself alive, maintaining the whole thing as a way to guarantee a steady supply of souls to keep herself going year after year. In fact: The Lady didn’t originally run the Maw. She forcibly took it over from the previous owner (The Granny). In other words: The Lady planned out everything with the Maw. She took over because she wanted to use it as a guest trap and continues to use it as so. There’s also the Lady’s connections to the Nest, showing that the Lady can just straight up stop the Maw stuff in its entirety for a while and do whatever the hell she wants at the Nest, not to mention her own collection of books and spells deeper in her personal quarters, further abandoning any semblance of “I run the Maw because I am it’s owner and therefore it is my purpose”. The Lady runs the Maw and keeps track of all her employees because she wants to (use it to become immortal), not because it’s her only true purpose in life.

Her name actually somewhat reflects this. Instead of a job title or something similar, her name is simply “The Lady”. “The Lady of the Maw” for long. It’s just a description of her. Not a job title. Because the Lady does what she wants and doesn’t have a preset job-related purpose. The Broadcaster can also technically be used here as well, because The Broadcaster isn’t actually his name. We don’t know his name. He’s simply a second Thin Man that you can find if you search through the Lore enough. I just call him the Broadcaster because that was the Thin Man’s original name when LN2 had just recently been announced.

(The Thin Man also has a non-job-related name and isn’t a lord, but that’s because he doesn’t actually have a job to define him with. He’s a living battery for the signal tower, nothing more and nothing less.)

Point is, Lords are way more intelligent than the typical adult, and are able to think in ways that regular adults simply can’t.

Also (and this one is a pure headcanon with little canon evidence): Lords have the unique ability to speak in a language that both Children and Adults understand, when normally Children and Adults simply can’t understand each other. The only other creatures that can do this are The Butler, a Non-Lord Adult who can speak Child thanks to the Lady, The Pretender, a child that can speak Adult also thanks to the Lady, and Children that are still in the process of being dragged into the Nowhere, like Noone being able to hear and understand an adult shopkeeper.

Lords can be aware of each other, interact and even work together, as seen with both the Lady and The Ferryman working together either with the Ferryman working underneath the Lady or both on an equal partnership (it’s hard to say given how powerful the Ferryman is and how we don’t know what he’s getting out of this partnership) and the Broadcaster and Flesh Walls working together to create the Transmission, the Loop and everything else that keeps the Pale City the way it is. It really just depends on how close their respective domains are.

In fact: we know two Lords who are either rivals or outright enemies: The Lady and The Broadcaster (once again, a separate entity from the Thin Man, although they look nearly identical).

In Little Nightmares 2, you can find an apartment that used to belong to the Lady, implying that she used to live in the Pale City.

It even has a picture of her (Masked, implying that she had her powers long before coming to the Maw, throwing a massive wrench into the Cycle Of Ladies theory) and one of her ceramic statues. The Glitching Remain found near it might even be the shadow-lifeforce-soul-stuff that the Lady stores inside those things, having leaked out and gotten ensnared by the Transmission.

Given the state of the Pale City and how the Lady now views the mainland as “Chaos”, it’s pretty clear that the Lady lived in the Pale City before the Broadcaster and Signal Tower showed up, and the Lady left once the Transmission started up.

Then in the Nest, we have the Lady locking up a TV in a heavy duty room while suspending it in the air (presumably so nothing can come through and if something does, the TV will fall and break, preventing them from escaping).

Combine that with the Broadcaster’s failed attempt to enter the Maw through a TV in the Post-Credits of Secrets Of The Maw and one of the Pretender’s drawings depicting the Broadcaster, and it’s very possible that the Lady did this in response to the Broadcaster trying to enter the Nest through that specific TV. To prevent him from taking her daughter. It would certainly explain why that TV was rigged to be one way. If the Broadcaster were to come through, the TV would fall, preventing the Broadcaster from escaping with a kidnapped Pretender.

It’s not the only TV in the Nest, as the Pretender does have one of her own, but there’s also a possibility that this specific TV is special somehow. Maybe it’s the only one in the Nest that can access live TV and signals, with the Pretender’s TV only being able to play pre-recorded stuff.

Final point is, both the Lady and the Broadcaster seem to despise each other, with the Lady leaving the Pale City once he showed up and the Broadcaster making multiple attempts to enter the Maw and Nest, most likely with the intention of harming the Lady and/or the Pretender.

As for how Lords are made, I headcanon that there’s two ways. A Deal with The Eye or being Made By It.

For the second opinion you have The Ferryman, North Wind, Signal Tower and Living Mall. They were just straight up created by the Eye. They aren’t the only ones either, as other Lords like them still have the capability to exist out there in the Nowhere. These are just the Lords we’ve seen.

As for why I believe these guys were created by the Lord, just look at them and what they’re capable of.

The Ferryman is described as a otherworldly figure with a face resembling melting wax (fun fact: that exact description is used in the podcast and is a reference to the Cut Character The Wax Bellman, who was confirmed out of universe to be an older beta version of what would later become the Ferryman.), who can shapeshift, teleport, speaks entirely in riddles and is shown to have direct connections to EXTREMELY powerful creatures, not to mention that Otto identifies him as “The guardian at the threshold. A mythic entity who’s appeared in the stories of innumerable cultures.”

The North Wind is a formless entity that is the Wind, is on par with the Ferryman in power and out of universe, The North Wind is often a character in legends and stories of various cultures, just like how Otto describes the Ferryman.

The Signal Tower and Living Mall are so similar that I first they were the same character. They’re giant masses of flesh covered in eyes that can mimic entire buildings. The eyes alone should give these things off.

Coincidentally (or not), these four specific lords are the ones who are better at invading people’s dreams and accessing Our World, with the Ferryman in particular being so adept at it that Otto initially believes him to be The “guardian at the threshold” of the Nowhere. In reality, all Lords we see can access our world through dreams, and it turns out that Eye-Created Lords are just naturally better at it. The Ferryman isn’t THE guardian at the threshold that Otto is looking for, but A guardian at the threshold. A Lord. One of many.

For the others like The Lady, Broadcaster and most of the Podcast Lords, they started out as regular adults.

Now it’s important to note that Regular Adults, despite being bound to that singular purpose or job, can do things outside of it and have unrelated things on the side, like the Teacher playing and composing on the piano in her free time.

For many, this is where it starts, with an adult using that Free Time and stuff on the side in very specific ways. They start researching the world they inhabit and how it works, the Nowhere, Magic, The Eye, and it all eventually culminates in them somehow getting the attention of the Eye itself, and making a deal with it. Either that or the Adult comes into close contact with another Lord, who ends up bringing the Eye’s attention to the adult for them.

The deal is all the benefits that lords have over regular adults (plus whatever is unique to them, like the Lady’s shadow magic and the Broadcaster’s signal powers) in exchange for… something. We don’t know exactly what, but this something is generally assumed to be souls. Many souls. For example, the Viewers of the Pale City are eventually consumed by the Televisions they watch, leaving behind only their clothes. It’s assumed that their souls are claimed by the Eye through this, the Eye getting any and all souls that the transmission ensnares and drags into itself.

Speaking of which….

The All Seeing Eye:

To my understanding and theorizing, the Little Nightmares Universe looks like this:

You have Reality as we know it, The Threshold between Reality and Nowhere, Nowhere itself, an unknown space that most likely just contains another threshold, this time between the Nowhere and the Nightmare World and the Nightmare World itself, which I also call the Eye’s Domain.

The Eye is a cosmic horror-esque eldritch monstrosity. Simple as that. It is the ruler and sole inhabitant of its domain, the Nightmare World. The Eye’s Domain essentially stands opposite to ours in a cosmic sense, and the Nowhere is created where both of these very different worlds overlap ever so slightly.

Also in a very disturbing twist, the Nowhere is actually essentially the universe’s DEFAULT STATE, or at least is as close as to you can get to it, and at some point in the incomprehensibly distant past (most likely during or even before the literal Big Bang), it separated into the stable, orderly “reality” where we live and exist and the horrifying chaotic eldritch nightmare world where the Eye exists.

We know this thanks to the Ferryman’s words: “Two flows from one, and here, is whole again”. In other words, there used to be one world, but then they separated into two, and in the Nowhere, both worlds meet again.

This also means that the Eye most likely predates the entire universe as we know it. In fact, I’d compare it to this bit of Adventure Time Lore:

The Eye’s Realm is literally just Eldritch madness the mortal mind can’t comprehend. Pure chaos with the Eye being omnipresent, all seeing and in full control of everything that happens in there. But the Nowhere is different. It’s not created by the Eye, at least not on purpose. The Nowhere is a space between spaces, where our reality meets the Eye’s nightmarish hellscape, and the end result is the Nowhere, where things make JUST enough sense to be comprehensible while also being filled with the Eye’s nightmares and corruption.

The Eye can see into the Nowhere and is almost always watching almost everywhere at once, but can’t truly interact with anything outside its domain like the Nowhere or Our World (thank god), but it can use other methods to influence things, like it’s various Lords. The massive amount of Eyes seen all over the franchise are less a thing the Eye looks through and more just a sign of Its Presence. It can’t show up physically, but the Eye symbols are a sign that it’s here and watching regardless.

However, despite the Eye being unable to physically appear in the Nowhere, we’ve seen it. In Episode 6 of the Podcast.

In episode 6, Noone is brought to the Threshold, the final barrier between the Real World and Nowhere, where crossing it will trap you forever. The Threshold (or at least Our side of it) is described as Extremely Dark, filled with black mist that makes it extremely hard to see, and contains a single wooden door simply described as “Ancient” with a symbol of the Eye on it. But after Noone crosses through the door and sees the Nowhere side of the Threshold, it’s different.

The Mist vanishes, and Noone sees countless stars that fill the sky with a red moon, but quickly realizes that those aren’t stars, they’re Eyes. Even the Red Moon is just a Massive, Red Eye. That is our description of the Eye itself.

The Eye can’t enter the Nowhere or Our World, but seems to be fully capable of existing within that border space between the realms, although it’s power is somewhat limited here compared to in its own domain.

Or maybe you can just see into the other realms from the Threshold. The Nowhere is compared to a one-way mirror at some point. Earth is on the mirrored side, and can’t look into the Nowhere, while the Nowhere can look at us. Presumably, the Nightmare Realm follows the same idea. From inside the Nightmare Realm, you can’t see the Nowhere either. You are on the mirrored side of a one way mirror. But from the Threshold, and more specifically the part of the Threshold that’s closer to the Nowhere? You are on the side of the mirror that lets you look straight through it, and with Noone being in-between Reality, The Nowhere AND the Nightmare World, she might have be able to look straight at the Eye in its domain, looking at it through the one-way mirror that is reality.

Anyways, That description of Countless Glowing Eyes matching the amount of stars in the sky with a single massive Red Eye surrounded by rings in the centre is the closest we can come to understanding what the Eye looks like. It’s the most complicated form it can take that we as human beings can still comprehend without going insane.

But there’s more. In episode 5, Otto attempts to use a machine to see into Noone’s dreams, but is stopped at the dark mist of the Threshold. He watches as a single eye appears from the darkness, and then it opens, staring at Otto with such intensity that he’s physically in pain from it, barely able to choke out words as he rambles that “it’s watching me” until the machine he’s using completely breaks down.

In other words, Otto tried to stare into the abyss that is Nowhere, but the Eye cut him off and stared right back.

Also also: Otto’s reaction to the Eye staring at him plus the sound it makes as it does so reminds me exactly of the Sentry Eyes used in the Maw and Nest that turn people caught in its gaze to stone. There’s also the unused TV Eyes from LN2 that do the same thing and it looks like the Mechanical Monster Baby in LN3 can do the same thing with it’s own eyes. This leads me to believe that many Lords directly draw upon the Eye for magical power, and Sentry Eyes (and the Eye Cameras in the Maw) use raw power taken straight from the Eye to power themselves.

Also as pure headcanon: In my headcanon post about some children being native to the Nowhere and some being from Earth, I mentioned two things:

Children that are visiting Nowhere as they sleep (like Noone) but haven’t been fully pulled in yet will disappear from Nowhere and go back to Earth if they die in the Nowhere, Fall Asleep in the Nowhere, or “go unobserved for too long”.

Children will naturally appear in the Nowhere (basically spawn in like Minecraft Mobs) in any area that is completely unobserved.

For both of these things, I’m not just talking about going unobserved by others, but also by the Eye.

The Eye, despite being present almost everywhere in the Nowhere and having a reputation as being all-seeing, is not perfect. Occasionally, a tiny gap will appear in its all-seeing sight, and when it can’t see a spot, Children, one of the only things immune to its corrupting, nightmarish presence, have a chance to appear in that unobserved spot.

[vintagegeekculture]

Archie meets Betty for the first time in the very first Archie story in PEP #22. 

It’s interesting to remember the original context Archie was published in. The reason Archie’s life seems so bucolic and Little Rascals-esque is that, really, the idea of a teen-ager (an in-between state, between being a child and adult) is something of a post-1945 idea. You were either a kid or adult. Prior to that, children were considered adults very early on in life, and were also expected to work for the family and take large responsibilities. There was also no culture unique to them as of yet, which is why what we would call “teenagers” in movies prior to the 1950s listened to the same music and dressed the same as their parents did. This is also why, in that cultural context, superhero “kid sidekicks” were not considered as strange as they later would look (e.g. unconscionable child endangerment). In other words, Archie Comics mostly predate the cultural idea of a teenager. 

Of all the major, valuable comics from the Golden Age, PEP #22 (December 1941) is the rarest as only 22 issues are believed to still be in existence. A new one has not been discovered in some time, so for that reason, it’s hard to give a real price on what one would be worth, since it doesn’t change hands too often. One of the most startling things about the golden age is that comics sold in the millions, but they were so disposable, there are issues that no longer survive today, or issues that only have a single existing copy. 

It’s interesting to have a look at the cover of the first Archie comic. Interestingly, as 1941 was right in the middle of the wartime fad of patriotic superheroes, the debut of Archie did not take the cover of the comic at all, but was buried in the backup and wasn’t even mentioned on the cover, which had the Shield Interestingly, the Shield looks like a Captain America copy or rip off, but surprisingly...the Shield came first. Captain America’s shield, originally a medieval one, was changed to a round disk by the second issue, as it evoked the design of Archie’s Shield too much. 

If you’ve ever read comics from the 1940s, you know that they usually had five or six stories, not all of the same genre. There was the superhero story that got the cover, but also usually a detective, or magician in tophat and tails, an aviation action strip, and usually, somewhere in the back, a strip about a friendly skunk or other cartoon animal in white gloves, and last of all, almost as forgotten as the advertisements, there was the strip about the funny kid, like Sugar n’ Spike or “Lil’ Sis.” 

Later on in the decade, when Yankee GIs and soldiers started reading comics as well as kids, another standard strip in a 1940s comic would usually also be a hot girl story (like Bill Ward’s Torchy, Canteen Kate, or Katy Keene) which are essentially about a gorgeous fantasy woman who, in 8 pages, encounters an extremely mild and easily resolved life problem while standing around in pin up poses, and usually showers in the middle of the story or takes a bath. Considering the audience for this was soldiers overseas, we’ve only recently started to acquire the language to describe the appeal of the good girl comic: parasocial.

I cannot emphasize enough how surprising it is that, in that context, the “funny kid” comic in Archie not only dominated the book, but changed the name of the company, to the point that nobody even remembers that Archie Comics published superheroes or detective/aviation comics. Most comics had a “funny kid,” but nobody, not even fans, keep track of them. I once tried looking up if there was a master list of funny kid comic backups of the 40s and 50s, and I couldn’t find it, just...nobody takes an interest in this, even in the comics and collector world. The one other great unlikely survival of a funny kid comic from the 50s to the present was Sugar and Spike, who got their own comic that was published for decades. 

As a collector, I always get whiplash whenever I see a Sugar n’ Spike comic from the 1970s. Like Katy Keene, they were a coelocanth-like survivor of the mass extinction of kid comics and hot girl comics. 

[scruffyplayssonic]

Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 40: The one episode that's unique to the show's premise and characters (part 4: Spark of Life)

Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon. Today I have one last story arc I want to look at for the “episode that’s unique to the show’s premise or characters,” category. It’s the fan-favourite story arc Spark of Life, published in Sonic Universe #71 - 74!

Taking place during the Shattered World crisis adapting Sonic Unleashed post-reboot, Spark of Life saw Sally, Nicole, Tails and Big travel to Isolated Island (from Knuckles’ Chaotix) to answer a digital distress call from Nicole’s creator, Dr Ellidy. Venturing into the digital world, Nicole discovered Dr. Ellidy was being threatened by a rogue A.I. that was interfering with the reprogrammed badniks Ellidy had turned into his housekeepers, and which also tried to get its hands on Ellidy himself when he digitised himself to investigate the problem in Cyberspace. Combined with the continuing threat of the Dark Gaia monsters appearing at night and a shocking revelation about Nicole’s origins, the Freedom Fighters had a lot on their plates for this story.

Spark of Life is one of only a handful of stories written by Aleah Baker (with Aleah writing the script based on her husband Ian Flynn’s plot). Aleah regularly contributed to ArchieSonic for years by doing character designs, colouring, and working on the letter pages’ gag strip, Off Panel, as well as writing a number of stories for the post-reboot era. As well as Spark of Life, this includes the stories Light in the Dark in Sonic #260 - 262, Consequences in Sonic #263, Hidden Costs in Sonic #277 - 279, The Case of the Pirate Princess in Sonic Universe #91 - 94, and Knuckles vs. Break Man in Sonic: Worlds Unite Battles #1. Aleah has unfortunately not been able to write for IDW Sonic yet due to poor health, although last year she did colour an absolutely gorgeous cover for issue #50. I’m sure that I speak for all of us when I wish her all the best and hope that she gets better..

So what makes Spark of Life so special? Well a lot of it has to do with Nicole, and the relationships she has in this arc. By the time of this story Nicole had come a long way from the talking handheld computer she was first introduced as, developing into a real person with feelings, hopes, and dreams. Nicole and her development as a character was a large part of the Iron Dominion arc and its aftermath, but that was partially lost after the comic was rebooted and the Freedom Fighters’ backstories were all rewritten to be similar to the old canon but different enough to be distinguishable. Nicole’s awakening as a sentient being is shown as a flashback in this story, and it’s very similar to how it was pre-reboot, with Nicole creating a hard-light holographic avatar for herself and stargazing with Sally.

But how she got to that point was the big difference, as this time she didn’t have wacky body-swap shenanigans with Sally. She also wasn’t sent back in time to be Sally’s friend by a future Rotor - instead she was given to a young Sally as a present by Dr Ellidy. But it’s only during the events of this story that we find out why Dr Ellidy created Nicole in the first place.

Nicole was actually a failed attempt at creating a digital existence for his daughter Nikki, who was dying of a chronic disease. The idea was that he would be able to preserve Nikki’s mind in the digital world, but all he was able to create before Nikki passed was an A.I. that seemed emotionless and did not have any sense of identity or personality. Heartbroken, Dr. Ellidy decided to leave Mobotropolis and retire to Isolated Island, leaving the AI (now named Nicole by King Nigel) with Sally as a gift. However Dr. Ellidy was apparently more successful than he realised, as over time Nicole developed into an actual person - going from JARVIS to Vision, if you like. Dr. Ellidy lived up to the name of his new home and stayed isolated from the rest of the world for the most part, although he would occasionally make contact with the Kingdom such as when he sent Sally the ring blades that had become a part of her new design post-reboot. But Dr Ellidy wasn’t aware of how much Nicole had grown over the years and so he was naturally shocked when she came to his rescue in the digital world, and harboured some resentment towards her because she reminded him of Nikki.

The other main relationship that was focused on in this story was that of Nicole and Sally, as this issue was the first step on the road for the two of them becoming a couple. More like Spark of Romance, amirite?

…

…anyway! It was subtle and sadly not able to be followed up on before the series was cancelled, but the seeds of the romance that was supposed to come were there. With Sally, we got to see that she cared about Nicole very deeply and was very upset by how Dr Ellidy was treating her as if she were not a real person.

And for Nicole we got to see some character growth for her, as she started out chastising Sally for putting herself at risk at the beginning of the story but later realised she would do the exact same thing for her.

Nicole totally had an, “Oh… she just like me. She just like me FR!” moment there!

Aside from Nicole and how the other characters relate to her, there’s a lot of other great stuff in this story. Another one of my favourite moments from all of ArchieSonic is this incredibly wholesome talk that Sally and Big had.

In this house we stan Big the Cat. I'd go to him if I needed someone to talk about girls with too!

We also were introduced to Phage, the afore-mentioned malicious AI making everyone’s lives difficult.

Phage was a very curious AI who was fascinated by what she did not understand, and had an interesting speech pattern which indicates she may have assimilated a thesaurus at some point. We didn’t find out her whole story at this time, but we did discover that she was created by Eggman and seemed to be looking for a way to get back in his good graces. After Nicole foiled her first attempt on Dr Ellidy, Phage took Nicole hostage instead and demanded that the Freedom Fighters bring her the red star ring and the chaos emerald hidden on the island. 

Speaking of, red star rings now became a thing!

While they had technically been introduced the previous year in the Sonic Super Special Magazine, that was only in a five page story of dubious canonicity adapting the mobile game Sonic Dash, and the red star rings hadn’t been seen again since. This story served as their proper introduction, with Dr Ellidy explaining that the island’s Lake of Rings had one day created this instead of the usual standard rings and that he had been researching the increased power it generated compared to them. It was later revealed that the reason the Lake of Rings had started producing red star rings was because a chaos emerald had landed in it.

The best (and most unexpected) thing about the red star rings though is that they granted Nicole a super form!

But if SEGA asks, it’s not a super form, okay? It’s an overclocked form. Totally different. ;)

Dr Ellidy later gave both of the red star rings he’d obtained to Nicole as an olive branch, showing that he did actually want to have an ongoing friendship with her despite how the painful way she reminded him of his lost daughter. It was a nice gesture.

And the last thing I’d like to talk about in Spark of Life is the location. It was really neat to see the Knuckles’ Chaotix game get a shoutout in this way. It’s one of the classic games that is often overlooked (it doesn’t help that unlike most of the classic era games it has never been ported to modern consoles), and considering how different the modern Chaotix are to their classic counterparts, it’s hard to say whether it’s even canon any more. So for a long-time Sonic nerd like myself, it was nice to see it get this kind of representation. We get to see some of the badniks from the game and also the sling-rings, which actually make sense to be in this story.

This is in contrast to the pre-reboot adaptation of Knuckles’ Chaotix where they just came out of nowhere. Dr Ellidy was explained to be a scientist who was researching ring technology and had actually created them (presumably Knuckles and the Chaotix came across them during the events of that game and used them to get around the island). Considering the sling-rings were Chekov’s gun-ed early in the story, it felt a lot more natural for Sally and Nicole to use them against Phage than the way the Chaotix adaptation just jammed them into the story without any setup. 

So those are my four choices for most unique story arcs of ArchieSonic: Mike Gallagher’s Mecha Madness, Karl Bollers’ Return to Angel Island, Ian Flynn’s Iron Dominion, and Aleah Baker’s Spark of Life. I’d also like to shout out a couple of other Ian Flynn stories I considered for this category, but that didn’t quite make the cut:

#1: Enerjak Reborn. Ian gets his hands on Ken Penders’ echidna mythos, and like Karl Bollers before him, puts his own spin on it. Also like Karl Bollers before him, he really pisses Ken Penders off in doing so. xD

#2: The Tails Adventure. A very unexpected adaptation of the Game Gear game of the same name, introducing the Battlebird Armada! Tails takes Antoine and Bunnie to Cocoa Island for their long overdue honeymoon and hijinks ensue.

#3: Scrambled. It’s the big showdown between Snively and Eggman! With interesting cameos from the Egg Bosses and Omega, the introduction of Orbot and Cubot, and the long awaited return of the Iron Queen!

#4: Champions. A Sonic the Fighters adaptation in the middle of a Sonic Unleashed adaptation! Reintroducing a bunch of characters from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon! Only Ian Flynn would be so bold!

Well as much fun as it’s been writing for this topic, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to be moving on to some shorter topics now. Hopefully this’ll mean there’s a shorter wait for you between posts too (but I am rather preoccupied trying to find a new home, so no promises).

Next time I’ll be looking at episode 41 of our theoretical 65 episode syndicated cartoon: “Recap the origin story in yet another clip show.” See you next time!