#i do love peoples different sinner designs so making a whole bunch of designs would be vibes

[mossdoesartshit]

Here’s something to keep in mind. So like the sinners take on the forms of what killed them typically, in scenarios of violent deaths, like that is displayed across both series, so like what if Adam ends up partially resembling Niffty as a result, to propose an alternate design?

that could be cool! i did include nifty's stabbing through adam in his scars, hes got scars from rib removal and nifty around his stomach!

alas, admittedly i have also grown attached to my design of sinner!adam, for atleast the story im planning to tell(and there are reasons ive designed him like that, and this answer is getting so long already i dont want to make an essay HUGFDNOIUJN), so any nifty related changes would not be anything major i dont think. Could be a fun design exercise though!

adam will be getting his... groove back? so to say? the stuff ive currently been working on ive been calling Arc 1, after which he'll get the Full Sinner!Adam Design(tm), and more of his snark back, so maybe some small nifty elements can weave their way in, who knows!

thank you for getting my brain cogs whirring though, that design exercise is very in the brain

[anvils-and-dynamite]

Hey Felix! - A Review of The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat - Space Time Twister

Hello again! This time, we’re reviewing the second episode of Twisted Tales. If you thought the first one was trippy, well, brace yourself, because this is going to get even weirder the further we go, at least during the first three episodes!

SPACE TIME TWISTER

- 8:03-9:10 We start with an overall view of the world Felix lives in: a city with a cartoony tinge. This is shown through several elements: the peppy jazzy music, the slightly bounciness on the cars and some of the characters we can see here (including some living cars and a mouse waving at the audience)... Even Felix bounces in his place a bit while waiting to cross the road!

So the situation is that Felix has to catch a train on the subway (and gets the wrong one), and we mostly hear his thoughts during this sequence. We also get to see more fun background characters while he’s looking around for gate 9. I especially like the horse mechanic, the punk lady and the butler-like man carrying a duck. What can I say? I like it when people come up with unique designs for characters who are only meant to be scene filler. It shows that someone in the studio cared about it!

I haven’t mentioned it before, but I like those sound effects you sometimes hear, like someone just made them with the mouth. Here you can see an example of that when Felix sprints through the gate (”pshew”), but sounds like these were in Guardian Idiot as well.

We also have Felix waiting for the subway while walking in circles doing his famous, pensive walk. I just love how expressive Felix is in this series and all the poses he does!

Oh, and how the train’s door forms a face and licks its lips after Felix has entered? I really appreciate all these little details to keep something as mundane as going through the subway interesting. But it also warns us that Felix is getting into something dark (and not just in the literal sense), just like the mouse that flipped the gate’s number (around 8:37), the bats, and the skull with crossbones (which, of course, is alive as well).

- 9:10-10:07 And yet again, we have another instance of Felix being put in a vulnerable situation. Just like in Guardian Idiot when he was hungry and at the mercy of a heartless butcher, here Felix sits in an empty subway train, feeling uneasy about the whole ordeal. And then… the lights go out.

He lights up a match, but a mouse delivers him a shit-eating grin before blowing it off. Unfazed, he lights another, only to see a gajillion more mice, to which he flees in terror (you’ll see how Felix has special trouble with mice in some episodes of the series, guess it’s just a cat thing). In his frantic escape, he jumps out of the train, which continues its march without him. He shows a bit more of his attitude delivering a mocking gesture before wandering off around the empty tunnels. I like these little bits of attitude, he tries to fight against the circumstances even when he loses.

He walks into an especially dark one, which delivers us another of those scenes where only the eyes of a character are visible, but then it only reveals Felix’s outlines to show us how he got his flashlight... he made one out of his tail! I really like it when he transforms his tail into tools or uses is to express emotions. His magic bag of tricks basically does the same, but for bigger objects, right? At first I thought one would be superfluous to the other, but considering this, they work together just right!

And yes, the tail lights up, but it reveals a bunch of skeletons. It’s interesting how some of them have the “white mask” you see in old cartoons, and odd to add something like that onto a thing that’s already white, but it works well with light grey. Anyway, Felix is so scared even his flashlight-tail screams in terror! Notice how the tail turns into an exclamation sign before reattaching itself to Felix and then poofing up like a real scared cat.

- 10:07-10:34 So Felix runs away again, but this time, he slams against a heavy door. But instead of appearing solid to emphasize the impact (like, let’s say, Tom & Jerry), he’s just like putty before falling on the floor and reforming into Felix again. I think this comes from old cartoons as well, it happened in Swing You Sinners, for example.

And here’s to another of my favourite moments of the series. He attempts to open the door by pushing and pulling, but the door itself scolds him (”Hey! Whaddya think you’re doing? Can’t you read the sign?”). Felix spends a few seconds thinking what to do, and I’m think it’s from this point where he acts out of curiosity rather than fear.

That little smug smile he delivers to the audience before liquifying and sliding under the door.

- 10:34-11:28 And while Felix might outsmart a sentient door, he can’t outsmart the rest of the world he lives in, because the scenery just straight up tilts to make him fall! And he’s not just falling a long fall without a destination, he’s going straight to the center of the Earth! What awaits him? Hell? A civilization of mole people? Will he keep falling till he reaches China? Well, if you guessed any of that they’re all WRONG!

It’s a cavernous hallway that leads to another room where jazzy music comes from. Inside that room, there are strange machines that wouldn’t look out of place in a mad scientist’s lab, but even a mad scientist is too normal for Twisted Tales. The most prominent feature of the room is the strange man dancing on some sort of arch: a blue, hermit-like being that personally reminds me of the Old Man of the Mountain, from the Betty Boop short of the same name. In fact, his musical number is reminiscing of hers!

It’s a song about someone who doesn’t care about his physical appearance because he has the power to twist time and space, hence his name. This musical number’s got a good amount of gross-out scenes, and my reaction to them is the same as Felix’s:

Putting that aside, I really like it! It introduces us to this character in an effective way and does some fun stuff with him: despite not having slept “in a century or two”, his movements are really bouncy and swift! I’d also like to point out that last bit where his eyeballs fall off, crack like eggs and chicks hatch from them: it’s more of that surreal disturbance I like so much, and I’ll take it over plain gross-out any day.

This sequence does not only introduce us to the Time Twister, but also shows us Felix’s several reactions to him: double taking in disbelief, that “yuck” gesture I showed before, and grinning greedingly when the Time Twister conjures the little magic box that allows him to warp reality, to show that he covets it.

- 11:28-12:03 Finally, the Time Twister goes to sleep after the musical number. After observing for a few seconds, Felix winks to the audience, and retrieves the artifact with the help of his tail. Again, I really like it when he uses his tail, and while I think it can coexist with his magic bag of tricks, I can’t help but feel one is ditched over the other.

I really like this shot of Felix tiptoeing with the box. Makes it feel he’s in a cave even with no particular cave-like elements.

And when he feels he’s far enough from the Time Twister and tries to make sense out of the box… suddenly, the frickin McGuffin of this episode becomes alive! How wonderful is that? “Hey! Whaddya think you’re doing? Let go of my nose! Now you’ve done it: you’ve twisted time and space!”

And if you thought this was going to be a simple time travelling adventure, lemme tell you: You’re. Dead. Wrong.

- 11:03-13:05 There’s spirals, there’s screaming, there’s Felix fucking devolving all the way back to the primordial sea. It’s quite a cool notion that, when time travelling, you change along with the time period! Felix as a fish has a run-in with a hungry fish, and rushes back to the Box, who is casually chilling underwater.

Note how he keeps devolving even if we’re getting the very few bare bones of a plot (escaping from bigger fish). What would have happened if Felix didn’t find the box in time?? For an extra dash of body horror, Felix forces himself to grow arms in order to use the box again, which results in these skeleton arms ripping from his now single-celled body. And the Box’s expressions and dialogue as if it has seen it all already (“Yipes! I’m outta here, man!”)

- 13:05-13:32 In our next time warp (oops), we zoom into Felix’s eyes, which have now turned into clocks. And then we see he’s in a world full of clocks, representing Time. And when they strike twelve, they make such a thundering noise that Felix can barely handle it.

But, without a warning, the scenery changes, and Felix finds himself inside a beaker. I guess this place, if we can call it that, is meant to represent Space, and I find it interesting that instead of actual, stars-and-planets space, it’s represented by chemistry and the laws of physics. Electricity runs, the formula starts to bubble, and we get to see Felix transform into various… oddities. My best guess is that these forms are based on figures and other desktop toys the production staff had.

God, I love it when a series keeps surprising you!

I also like the music during the last two segments, that “tick tock” from the Time scene that speeds up during the Space one, and that jazzy segment… for me, it reflects some sort of loftyness, as if the laws of physics have changed so much from what we consider normal that now it’s so easy to alter a living being’s shape in a matter of seconds. What I’m trying to say is that it goes really well with what’s happening on the screen, for some reason!

- 13:33-14:16 Next, we shift to a different dimension, in which Felix, in the last form he took in the Physics dimension, is approached by strange, upside-down faced creatures. They start to blow raspberries at him.

Annoyed by it, Felix comes up with an idea quickly, and that is OUTRIGHT REMOVING HIS OWN HEAD, PUTTING IT UPSIDE DOWN AND BLOWING A RASPBERRY BACK TO THEM. You gotta admire how he tries to go with the logic of the world, even if it’s not his own world, and probably not even his own dimension! (also, this is a tiny gruesome detail, but have you noticed how the “drops” that come out when he pulls out his head are red?)

Back to the creatures, they don’t seem amused by this at all, because they turn into eyes and fuse together, threatening both Felix and the Box. Startled, the latter twists time and space to escape, and in the next scene we can see that poor Felix has had enough.

His pupils are dilated, he tries to run away, but comes across more interdimensional monsters: the eyeball from before, dinosaurs, robots, hell, even the Moon is angry at him! Desperate, he turns to the magic Box, “can’t you do something?”. Pay close attention. He’s in tears. He’s a cat who has seen too much.

- 14:16-14:48 “Oh for crying out loud!” What is the Box’s solution to Felix’s predicament? Call the Time Twister, who makes his appearance by literally ripping the fabric of reality (while Felix runs in circles). Isn’t he wonderful how he scolds Felix by singing, implying that he can only sing to communicate?

So he takes the box, kicks Felix out of a circle closing around him and… nope, the cartoon is not over yet! Felix hears music, and, curious yet again, pulls open the “circle” to reveal the Time Twister dancing with some of the characters we have encountered previously. And Felix joins the party! I guess that’s as happy as an ending can get here.

So, we’ve reviewed one of the weirdest episodes of an already weird series! It’s been a bit hard to guide and comment through the space-time twisting part of this section, because I guess that’s the nature of surreal and trippy things like this. But I’d really like to make sequences like this, so I think it was worth analyzing it!

[arkhangelske]

Favorite & Least Favorite Venom Story Arcs

So I’ve finished reading all the main (Earth-616) Venom&co. story arcs! Man, that was a lot. Took a few months. But totally worth it. I’m still digging up some of the alternate timeline things (read Deadpool: Back In Black last night, also finished up some Spider-Girl story arcs I read back in the day and never finished). I have to say, I don’t really understand why people think it’s ‘backwards’ for the symbiote to go back to Brock in the current story arc. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Flash stories (and was very surprised by how good Space Knight was!) but... the symbiote loves/has loved two people: Eddie Brock and Peter Parker. The whole marriage association with the symbiote literally goes back to the 80s stories (the title where it tries to re-bond with Peter is titled “Til Death Do Us Part”) and the subject has been brought up off and on by Brock over the years. I’m really enjoying the current storyline, and sometimes while reading the especially awful arcs I just had to remind myself that it turns out ok.  

BEST

80s/90s I’ve always been a much bigger fan of Venom as an anti-hero/lethal protector, but I also like him when he’s being scary as hell. The 80s and 90s were good for that.

ASM 332: Sunday in the Park with Venom ASM 346-347: Elliptical Pursuit & The Boneyard Hop Both of these classic “Venom vs. Spider-Man” stories have always been my favorites with Venom as a villain. I must have read these a million times when I was a kid.

ASM 361-363: Carnage I still really like the debut story arc of Carnage. Bagley’s original Carnage design remains my favorite, even if it’s not the most realistic.

Venom: The Hunger - I already knew this was my favorite of the stand-alone series’ from when I was a kid, probably because it’s the first time the symbiote was really explored on its own as a character. I actually kind of hate the art style in this (some people love it), because I feel like it’s too xenomorphic. But the story carries it. Also, I fucking love the chocolate thing.

Venom: Sinner Takes All - Another old favorite that still holds up. I like how it built more on Brock’s past, so it wasn’t just about him having big beat’em’ups with other Marvel heroes/villains. 00s I REALLY hated the 00s. This is when I originally quit reading any SM/Venom comics because I was so pissed off with the direction they took Venom. However, I must say that I liked a couple moments: Toxin 1-6 - I was so delighted by this storyline, especially since it came out of the shoddy “Venom vs. Carnage” story arc. I wish the Toxin symbiote would have stayed with Mulligan and they had explored this character more, instead of just dumping the symbiote randomly onto other people.

Spider-Man: Dark Reign - As much as I was not into the Mac Gargan era of Venom, this limited series was HILARIOUS and probably one of my favorite story arcs overall, to be honest. In general I enjoyed all the Dark Reign tie-ins, so much that I mostly read the entire arc through all the different books it crossed through.

10s/present

Venom: Space Knight - This series was amazing! I was so shocked, because when I saw the covers I remember thinking that it looked like it would be dumb. But it’s probably one of my overall favorite Venom storylines at this point. Kind of like Star Wars.... with Venom!

Agent Venom: Circle of Four - Honestly I didn’t care for the ending of this arc, but I did really like the beginning. I’m pretty sure this was the only time I gave a shit about Jack O’Lantern as a villain, and it was done really well. The writers did a spectacular job on working Flash into the role of Venom, so I actually didn’t not enjoy any of his story arcs. Carnage (Vol 2) - I was genuinely surprised to enjoy this, especially the cover art. Since I’m not a huge fan of crazy villains-only stuff, I didn’t expect to like this as much as I did.

Deadpool vs. Carnage -  Deadpool generally makes everything better, or at least more tolerable than without Deadpool. And I feel like this is an ideal matchup.

WORST

80s/90s

The Madness - God this one was awful. There wasn’t a whole lot that made sense, it was just a really bad setup to get Venom to fight Juggernaut. Venom: Tooth and Claw - another half-baked storyline to get Venom to fight Wolverine... just... a really terrible story. ( in general a lot of the mini-series’ from the 90s are just kind of ehhh, with a little bit here and there to keep the interest)

00s

Every story arc with Brock-Venom was pretty awful in the 00s. I was lukewarm with Anti-Venom as I didn’t completely hate it, but the weird turn of character in Brock was annoying. Given his more-or-less delusional personality I could ... accept it. These storylines were my least favorites:

SSM (Vol 2) “The Hunger” - funny how one of my favorites has the same title as the storyline that made me quit reading. Even now I wanted to stop reading for fear of how crazy out-of-character Brock and the symbiote were being written. Not to mention all the random new character traits and abilities the symbiote spontaneously manifested. It was just horrible.

Venom (vol 1) - Daniel Way’s weird ripoff off The Thing combined with a bunch of really far-fetched storytelling... which Venom wasn’t even in properly until halfway through... and then it ended in a really abrupt and unresolved way. The art was blech, the story was miserable... just the worst. Venom vs. Carnage - You’d think this would be hard to fuck up, but it was pretty bad. Art was rough, and for some reason it was like the symbiotes were just puppeting their hosts completely. The characterization of everything was plain wrong in this whole story arc. Toxin was about the only good thing to come of it. 10s/present

Thunderbolts (Vol 2) - every story arc in this series was a trial to get through. Mediocre writing, lackluster art... Deadpool was the only thing that got me through this. It did pick up a little at the end, but otherwise was miserable. Venomverse - I hate to do it, but I really didn’t love this extremely hyped event. I mean... it’s okay... but for all the promotion the weak writing really killed it. It’s possible some good storyline could be salvaged from it later, though.