#it's wild how they were actually doing some interesting character work with lex in the beginning of s7

[fairyroses]

She was the only thing I was living for. I’m sorry for your loss, sir, but right now we need to get you airborne. Police will be here any minute. I’m well aware of that. I’m turning myself in.

— SMALLVILLE, “Bizarro” (7.01)

[thevindicativevordan]

Any thoughts on Grant Morrison's Action Comics run? Beyond T shirt-and-jeans Superman being great.

That whole run reinvigorated my love of the character.

There have been numerous thoughtpieces about New 52 Superman, how he worked and how he didn't but these two entries really do a great job of summing up why Morrison's take on Superman was great. Morrison laid the foundation for a new generational Superman that DC completely fucked up and ran into the ground. I'll always be bitter about that, even if I had tapped out of reading the New 52 Superman books by the end due to how bad they got. Editorial and their idiotic mandates were what screwed over the potential of this take in my eyes.

Now I get that it wasn't to everyone's taste, but I cannot fathom how anyone could ever claim that Pre-Flashpoint Superman was better. If you liked Byrne's reboot better, your guy already got rebooted after Infinite Crisis. For someone like me who really enjoyed the Johns/Busiek era, that era's potential got spoiled after Johns & Busiek left, with New Krypton imploding and the awful Grounded taking it's place. When you get to the point where the best Superman book is the one starring Lex Luthor, it's time to reassess the franchise and figure out where the hell it went wrong.

Which is exactly what Morrison did. For this new Superman, Morrison mined all the best ideas of every Superman era to really give what I consider the ideal "base" for Superman. They also took pains to address common criticisms about Superman, working to correct his pop culture image. People have been complaining that Superman is "too perfect", "too unrelatable" for a long time, so Morrison addressed that. They gave Superman his balls back, and let him reacquire that Golden Age edge he had originally.

There are a lot of complaints you can make about Morrison's Superman, but I don't see how you could accuse this guy of being "flawless" or "bland". He definitely had a personality that you could describe, love him or hate him. Compassionate, but not a pushover. Clearly holding himself back, but unafraid to occasionally let loose. Flaws that were patently obvious, Clark had a temper here that could get him into trouble. There was a real showcase of anger here, of Superman being furious at the way people were treated by the rich and powerful, then doing something about it that I ate up.

I read this run just as I was coming into my teens and it hit perfectly for where I was in life. Did not want a Superman who would smile and tell me it gets better, I wanted a Superman who looked you in the eye and told you he felt that same anger, and then encouraged you to go out and do something about how you felt. That was what this run delivered in spades, and it expanded what I believed could be done with Superman.

While it totally blew my mind to see Superman acting this way the first time I read Morrison's Action Comics run, in retrospect it really isn't that different from how Superman has acted even under Byrne. One of the few traits I've seen carry across Superman incarnations in the comics is that he has a temper underneath that affable nature. "Don't tug on Superman's cape" as the old song goes. This run simply elevated that to the forefront of the character again, for the better in my eyes given I believe "Wrath" is Superman's Deadly Sin.

In fact, one of the strongest features of this run is that Superman gets actual character development over the course of the run, analogous to what Batman underwent in Morrison's Bat-Epic. While the Bat-Epic was merely Morrison re-canonizing Batman's entire history, and applying a retroactive character development storyline that culminated in Morrison's current Batman work, their Action Comics run had them attempt to craft something similar for Superman from scratch. What that meant was Morrison attempting to draw on the most important traits of every Superman era and incorporate those into this new take. So Superman had the Golden Age temper, compassion for the oppressed, and cockiness. The Silver Age supergenuis, proud scion of Krypton who cherished his Kryptonian nature, member of the Legion of Superheroes, and participant in stories that weren't afraid to get weird. Superman's wrestling with his place in the world, the importance of Clark Kent, and making journalism a key part of the character strike me as all being hallmarks of the Bronze Age. From Post-Crisis we got that Clark views himself as human and loves his adopted parents, considering them as equal to his birth ones.

One of the big frustrations for me with the endless origin stories for Superman, is that so many of them follow a predictable and stale formula where Clark puts on the suit and is essentially ready to go. Doesn't interfere with human affairs, is modest and humble, restrained in usage of his powers, it's like Clark has meta knowledge of what he "should" be, despite that he shouldn't have any foreknowledge of what a "superhero" should look like. He operates the same way at the start as he does in the modern day, and that's really boring to me. This Superman, because of the difference in powers and attitude, operated extremely different from his "present day" incarnation. Dangling Glenmorgan over the edge of a building isn't something a fully powered and mature Superman should do, but it works great to make his early days different and exciting to read about, it makes returning to that era something you can do different storytelling with. This run is the only time where I really cared that Superman is "supposed" to be the first superhero, because figuring out what that means here is a big part of how he develops.

We all know the common complaint that Superman is "too powerful" and that "nothing can hurt him" (funny how Thor never gets hit with those accusations), so Morrison made sure to show that this take on Superman could be beaten even if he could never be defeated. Events conspired to force Clark to use his brains as well as his powers to overcome the challenges in front of him.

Examples include him using his heat vision to fry Lex's equipment and escape the military, using his rocket ship to defeat Brainiac, and rallying the population of Metropolis to banish Vyndktvx. Not to say that Clark never used his brains before to win, but this run was very upfront and in your face about how important Clark's intellect is to triumphing over his foes. Can't take seriously the complaint that Superman is too overpowered when Morrison constantly showcased how even a very powerful Superman could get his shit wrecked by his Rogues.

Another example of Morrison addressing criticisms is Kryptonite. A lot of people poke fun at how convenient it is that pieces of Superman's homeworld follow him all the way to Earth. Isn't that a bit of an asspull? So Morrison made Kryptonite the power source of Superman's rocket, giving it a perfectly natural and believable reason both for it to end up on Earth, and for Lex & the military to get a hold of it since Pa Kent gave the military the rocket. That's still my preferred explanation for how Kryptonite ended up on Earth.

It also provides a better explanation for all the different Kryptonite variants. DC can handwave away the different types as a result of Lex experimenting or the different "forces" on Earth such as magic or the Speed Force or whatever creating the different variants. That to me is much more believable than Kryptonite travelling all across the galaxy yet still ending up on Earth somehow.

There have also been a lot of complaints about Superman's villains, and Morrison diligently set about reworking them. By far one of my favorite aspects of the run, was the villain revamps. Nimrod felt like a clean revamp of Terra-Man, making him into Superman's Kraven the Hunter struck me as a patently obvious route to go, wild no one has followed up on that or used him since. Metallo felt like a good synthesis of Johns take of him as an Anti-Superman weapon, and the sympathetic aspects of Corben's origin that are always there, I liked that Morrison didn't make him a total bastard before his transformation like Johns did. Brainiac got some sympathy added to him in that the collected worlds that were already marked for damnation, thus he was "saving" them in a fashion. Clay Ramses embodied toxicity as a wife-beater even before becoming Kryptonite Man, and I thought his backstory was a great way for Clark to still deal with "real" issues via a manner he could punch. Ramses is still the best take on Kryptonite Man. Vyndktvx felt like the greatest realization of the threat Mr. Mxyzptlk could pose should he decide to get serious since Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, plus I'm a sucker for stories where superheroes fight the Devil. Drekken and Superdoom took the only interesting aspects of Doomsday (his ability to evolve and that he can kill Superman respectively), and were much more interesting characters.

And oh my God, speaking of Superdoom, that part of Morrison's Action run has aged like fine wine. I don't know if they caught wind of DC's plans for the character, or if they were just prescient, but everything that Superdoom is playing on is still sadly all too present. What Superdoom is as a character is a condemnation of what DC keeps doing with Superman: killing him off or making him evil.

When you realize what Superdoom (demand for a more violent and "realistic" Superman) and Vyn (WB/DC) stand in for, it makes the frustration Morrison is channeling much more palpable. Those two plotlines are all DC can think of to do with the character, returning to those again and again. Endlessly attempting to recapture the high of Batman and Doomsday beating the shit out of Supes in The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman. Overcoming these two obstacles is Superman's greatest challenge as conceived by Morrison, because both are out to corrupt and ruin the very idea of him. It's not just a physical death he faces, but a metaphysical one as well. Sadly it's a threat Superman just can't seem to lick in the real world, with more and more takes on "Evil Superman" coming.

Lois and Jimmy are great here, because Morrison actually made the investigative journalism aspect of Superman important. Lois is an active participant in the story, trying to break in to the base where Clark is being held by her father, competing with Clark for stories (I love how Morrison writes the banter between the two of them), and generally being classic Lois. Jimmy though benefitted from being positioned as a peer rather than as a kid in comparison to the two, something I wish the comics had carried forward. It looks like My Adventures With Superman is going with that interpretation at least, so I hope others do as well. Jimmy being Clark's roommate really adds to their bond, and I wish we had gotten more stories with that status quo.

Investigative reporter Clark Kent was so actively used here that it feels jarring reading other Superman runs where they tend to downplay and ignore it. Following Clark as he travels to different areas of Metropolis and actually interacts with people, instead of hovering above them as Superman, makes him feel human. Watching Clark actively pursue stories aimed at bettering peoples livelihoods, and seeing how those stories crossed with the superheroics, was one of my favorite aspects of the run. It's one unfortunately few other writers seem all that interested in, especially the New 52 writers who followed Morrison (I know editorial probably bears a lot of blame for that though).

Besides all that, this run was a lot of fun! The Legion of Superheroes showed up, their connection to Clark restored, and they got to play a big role in Clark's adventures! Krypto the Superdog! Martian colonies! Memorizing all of medicine, Superman performs a lifesaving operation! Lex using a "bullet train" to knock Clark out! 5-D imps! Rampaging robots from beyond! A Phantom Zone Halloween story! John Henry Irons suits up as Steel and kicks ass alongside Clark! Every Superman Rogue teams up to try to kill him, but Lex Luthor saves his life because that's a privilege he reserves for himself! Showcasing their trademark love for the Supermythos, Morrison took us on a tour of Superlore that demonstrated the depth and width of what could be done with Superman. Meanwhile the backups by Sholly Fisch excelled at giving us smaller, more human stories about Superman (the one where Clark meets Pa again via time travel "after" Pa has died always gives me a lump in my throat to read).

Ultimately this didn't get to be the foundation for the next generation of Superman stories as it deserved. Johns made New 52 Superman the scapegoat in Doomsday Clock for a lot of storytelling choices he did over in Justice League, something that pisses me off to no end. You want to tell me that this guy "didn't relate" to people, didn't inspire "hope"?

Like hell he didn't. This guy was Superman in every way that mattered and he deserved better than to be framed as the scapegoat for all the stupid decisions DC made about what to do with him. Greg Pak was able to do some great work with this version after Morrison, and just like how Gene Yang got a redemption work starring Superman, I hope to one day see Pak return to the character. Would love to read a Black Label Superman story by Pak that follows his take on young Superman.

All wasn't lost however. Against all odds, and Rebirth trying it's damndest to sweep everything under the rug, it looks like parts of this era have actually survived to the current Infinite Frontier era. With Morrison being heavily involved no less, both as an ideas guy and as an actual writer.

Superman & the Authority is explicitly Superman coming full circle back to the attitude displayed by his young counterpart under Morrison. Janin has outright said that the costume Clark wears here is reminiscent of the t-shirt and jeans era of Superman, and this book so far feels saturated with an energy level from Morrison I haven't seen in their work for hire since they left Action. Reaching old age and realizing he never really delivered on the high ideals of his beginnings, it's Superman putting together a team to hopefully succeed where he couldn't alone. Scathing in how it criticizes the superhero status quo, this has been extremely entertaining to read. Wish Morrison was writing 12 issues with this team, and that ultimately it will be up to PKJ to deliver on the potential is a drawback (although I've loved PKJ's Action run so far), but I'm glad to see DC finally treating Morrison and their ideas with more respect than was shown during Rebirth.

Jon meanwhile feels like an even more explicit attempt at redoing New 52 Superman. There's the updated new suit, designed to appeal to a new generation with it's streamlined look. Positioning Jon as a Superman who wants to tackle the "real" issues, with Taylor explicitly comparing him to Golden Age Superman which as I mentioned was an era Morrison tried to reincorporate into their reboot. There's the Legion of Superheroes connection which played an important role in Morrison's reboot. The rumors about Jon's sexuality are interesting, hinting that DC is willing to go outside the box with him in a way they never would with Clark. I'm excited to see what kind of Superman Jon ends up becoming, if he can deliver on the promise of the New 52 Superman all the better.

This run deserves to be remembered and to have the lessons it tried to teach respected. Probably my favorite mainline run on Superman, I hope more people come around to liking it as time goes on.

[jonroxton]

can you talk about chlark beyond chloe? personally i think it's weird that the writers kept adding kisses and weird romantic moments without any pay off. i don't know much about the fandom back then but i think the writers were baiting fans since clark/chloe seems to be the second most popular ship after clex. second i personally think chloe would never be happy with clark or anyone tbh and she doesn't seem like the type of person who would have kids so the finale was weird to me.

this got looooong :)

0. it WAS weird, and the choice to never not once go for it with them was to the story's detriment. I'll get into it a little later on in this post.

Re: shipping in sv fandom. there was definitely drama (clana was HUGE when the show was airing and every ship was basically derailed by it lol) but I stayed in my clois lane with a small circle of fandom friends much like I do now. a good measure of clois fans were fans of lois and clark from other mediums, come to sv just for lois and clark, myself included. we were pretty insulated as a fandom even back then. I do remember seeing more Chlark after the S5 finale (when Chloe kisses him goodbye), but those dropped off after Jimmy was introduced right away in S6. The most drama I encountered was with Chloisers: Chloe fans who believed wholeheartedly that Chloe was Lois. They hated SV!Lois and were convinced she would die so Chloe could take her name and job and place by Clark's side, thus a Chlark endgame. this was a popular theory amongst that fandom even into s9, when the clois ball started to roll for true.

bait and switch

a lot of Chlark is rooted in this notion that chloe WOULD be the best thing for Clark, the ideal Lois, the true best friend, the human hand guiding him through Earth's troubles. she would be could be the BEST possible lois archetype for Clark. it's not a wrong interpretation. she was specifically written as a lois-and-lana-proxy (teenage lana is a reporter in some AUs and even some as an adult as a tv correspondent) and she's given many lois-ish traits (tenacious, secretly crushing on clark and in denial), but this interpretation is deeply flawed. first, because lois does eventually enter into the picture and she has her own defining traits that, when compared to chloe, make chloe seem much shallower than realized. secondly, within the complete context of the story, her position in the greater narrative is not as ~the one who got away, the way it did very early on in S1-S4, but one who clark tolerates.

they're friends because clark is forgiving and chloe has staying power. their friendship is riddled with insecurities and unknowns the characters create for themselves. their dynamic is defined by conflict, not resolutions. this is not made easy by the fact that chloe is such a strangely written character, but ultimately she is positioned as a counter to clark achieving his happiness. not a thematic narrative foil but an obstacle clark eventually relents to.

2. and it has been so from the get-go

S1 is the best season for them and the single season which actually considers Clark's side in this dynamic. everything about them later on can be explained with how they are in this season. and that's the problem. when they're 14 it's nice teen angst drama and works perfectly to establish the dynamic. when they're 24 it's at best a pattern, at worst regression. we expect certain behaviors, dismiss them too, when it's children, at least I do. clark and chloe never move beyond the dynamic they establish in s1 and early s2. in essence, clark and chloe remain children around each other. they have many discussions in the later seasons that make at least one appear petulant.

so S1 clark has just been told the greatest secret of his existence and he imprints on lana hard that same night (right AFTER jonathan tells him, he meets lana at the graveyard and talks to her for the first time EVER, a lot of childhood imprinting going on in SV). all of s1 follows clark's heartache over lana, watching her from afar and figuring out a way to be near her. this pain is exacerbated by the fact that he believes he caused her her greatest grief: the death of her parents via the meteor shower which he arrived in.

here the first beat of the chlark dynamic is established: chloe's job and passion – the wall of weird and her pursuing the meteor infected oddities of SV - directly affects clark in a negative way (he's suicidal for much of s1-s3). so her crush on him is countered with her unknowingly causing him great grief. om top of that: clark becomes part of this passion of hers and she eventually begins to pursue him as a story to be uncovered, very superman yes. here tho, it causes nothing but strife for them and paints chloe in an awful light (and clark too, highlighting his refusal to open up). I personally enjoy this aspect of them in s1. bc they're so young I give em a free pass and it's a good conflict playing around with old superman tropes, but it makes for a fraught friendship.

3. the second beat

is that neither chloe's crush on clark, nor his asking her to stop pursuing his truth, do anything to stay her. her tenaciousness becomes intrusiveness and inconsideration (many of her accomplishments irt the daily planet are directly bc she betrays clark). she simply will not listen to her friend and does not believe his livelihood and autonomy is worth losing a story over. this is literally the opposite of comics/live action lois lane, who in various versions drops the clark reveal story to protect him. this passion turns vindictive pretty early for chloe, who eventually pursues stories about clark out of jealousy and entitlement (against lana also).

4. the third beat

is that clark doesn't ever see chloe as romantic prospect except this time in s1. the tornado trapping lana pulls him away from any solidifying of the clark/chloe dynamic, and that's that. but we know clark was willing to go for it in early s2 when he apologizes to chloe about running off on her. it's chloe who decides not to go on with the relationship. clark is visibly confused, but also 15 so he can't see that chloe is putting on a brave front to protect herself from clark running off again. I liked this too as it's another play on superman tropes, but my sympathy for them stops here.

5. and stays here

these beats are the entirety of this dynamic. everything about chlark can be distilled down to their childhood. it's why I don't hate them completely, bc I have a lot of love for kids who hurt in such a way and that time is never easy. in s8 (I think its s8) when we get a flashback to when they meet as kids (more imprinting!). little tenacious cute chloe kisses insecure clark bc of the funny awkward tension, acknowledging it, and then immediately takes it back because they're better as friends. (also they’re like 11 lol)

every single romantic moment with them is undercut either by chloe herself, or by the presence of other storylines/romances the writers wanted to pursue. the lack of integrity in chloe and the lack of interest in clark, regardless of how sincere their connection or how messed up, is a central part of their dynamic that needs to be reconciled with their friendship. and its exhausting bc there is never a point they are ever truly comfortable around each other.

6. to a fault

knowing the secret doesn't change chloe's methods. it doesn't make chloe clark's great confidante. if anything, it complicates matters for both because their relationship then becomes about the greater good and clark's great destiny. everything chloe does becomes about that, which in theory sounds awesome, but is executed much the same way as s1!chlark: by reiterating behaviors that highlight the negative aspects of that loyalty and the negative aspects of their characters.

the single time they do actively examine what this loyalty means and how chloe's hero complex complicates things for chlark is with s8 and davis. she protects davis with the skills of subterfuge and secrecy she developed as clark's friend. and it costs her jimmy and a lot of her personal integrity as a character. tho ironically it makes chloe the strongest she's been as a character. this is the first time clark is forced to view chloe as an enemy and he never quite recovers from discovering the dark depths she’s willing to go to. 

it's an arc dealing with the established beats: how far chloe is willing to go for a kryptonian (very far), how much she's willing to do for him (A LOT and all of it illegal), and what it costs her (jimmy). it deals with her jealousy (always second choice) and her motivations (uncovering the truth). this great want that she struggled with for years is turned on its head and examined, revealing just how weird and dark her hero complex is because obviously davis is not clark. davis/chloe served to highlight more than any other arc how it's really too bad that clark never saw her that way, because she has so much love to give and when channeled, it's a great force. only it's a great force for evil. clark has to confront that it’s not just lex but his other closest friend who is willing to go so far. they backtrack hard in s9 and s10 but they keep this underlying wariness in clark towards Chloe throughout. it’s not anything new, but it’s no longer subtext that clark doesn’t fully trust chloe.

7. And that's the rub

in the end. chloe and clark have many storylines they're in together and chloe's important.... to develop clark and as a counter to clark. clark never instigates anything, not once, for 9 years! when the show did give us Moments TM, clark is reacting, not actively making choices to connect to her. if anything, clark is incredibly awkward about chloe when they become intimate. he doesn't seem to know what to do with her crushing on him (the elevator scene is a great one to show just how awkward chloe makes him feel). more than that. clark never tells her his secret. and later on, chloe doesn't tell him half the crazy wild shit she does to protect him bc she knows he would disapprove. I still hold that the only reason they work is bc clark is a forgiving character and would give her chance after chance after chance. that's the watsonian explanation, but the doylist explanation is that the writers just never cared to explore them beyond this point.

8. and what was beyond that point?

they would've been a great counter to lexana in S6 and early clana (clark finally having a gf who knows). it’s playing the clark/Chloe as a straight lois/clark proxy before actually pursuing lois and clark. it could’ve been the precursor to davis and caused an even more personal conflict! the kiss at the end of s5 was their chance. they could've written chlark devolving much the same way lexana did in s6 (or not). but again. the writers never went that far and clearly never wanted to. it kept chlark forever in this stage of childhood friendship always on the brink of collapsing, tittering either way. it's also tough to speculate bc clark's just not into her. in fact he becomes more and more wary of her, to the point where he believes she can do horrible things, and he's right. the stories continually make their methods complete opposite.

they go out of their way to show chloe realizing how happy clark is with lois. and even play a joke on the fandom by literally turning her into lois and seeing the sparks between her friends. it's almost... cruel but it does serve to show how clark is when he's smitten and he's never looked at chloe that way except during the dance when they were kids. other unrequited dynamics have at least some spark from the desired, but nil from clark. clark is into chloe in late s1, but she shuts him down, and when he seems to be into her again (damn that s5 kiss was a good one lol), she shuts him down again. it's just a weird writing choice all around, and that they kept nuggets of it throughout the show is the thing I cringe at most whenever I rewatch.

9. bait and switch 2

with hindsight it is definitely ship baiting and that sucks for that dynamic bc without it their friendship would’ve been the stronger, or at least not full of so much negativity. all it did was remind everyone that chloe’s been duped since she was a kid and that clark is both stupid and strange for never noticing and letting her get away with shit just bc she’s the most loyal. I don’t ship them and even I get frustrated lol

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero

I guess I should provide my hottt takes on the new DBS movie.  A few days ago, they did this video for Comic Con announcing the title of the movie and teasing some details about the story.  

I gotta say, this is exactly why I’ve never had any interest in Comic Con.    They put this on YouTube, I guess because of the pandemic, but any other year they would have gathered an enormous crowd and made them stand in line for hours to watch all of this in person.   I live in the Midwest, and when I went to comic book conventions it was for the sole purpose of rummaging through back issue bins.   SDCC was always promoted like the biggest and most important convention in the U.S., but all I ever heard about it were trailers for movies and TV shows.   Or, like, you had to go to Comic Con because that was the only way to get an exclusive Orange Lantern Hal Jordan action figure or something.   They would always hype up all of this useless stuff and I just never heard of anything so important that I was willing to fly out to San Diego and stand in line for three hours for it.   So now SDCC peels back the curtain with this video, about something I’m fairly interested in, but it’s really not that big a deal.  I found out most of the information on Twitter before I even knew to watch this video.

But I’m just not that hyped about trailers or sneak peaks or sneak peaks at trailers.   Which is probably why I waited this long to talk about it.  

I’ll just go through the video.   The first four minutes are Hironobu Kageyama performing “Cha La HEAD Cha La” live on the stage.   That’s a pretty epic way to open this, but I feel like it oversells the importance of this event.  You finish watching him and you think you’re about to see the movie itself, instead of hearing from the people who made it.  

Next we have Sascha, the host of this panel.   He speaks better English than I do, but I’m not sure what the point was in having any of this in English since he has to talk to the guests in Japanese.   Pretty much all of the important information in this video is in Japanese, and I think everyone understood that going in.   I guess it does give an international feel.  If I spoke another language as fluently as Sascha, I’d want to show it off too.

4:56 is where Masako Nozawa comes out, and she’s just a joy to watch.   She looks like this sweet grandmotherly figure, all warm smiles and then she busts out “Ossu! Ora Goku!” and immediately sounds like a badass. 

Guest #2 is Akio Iyoku, Toriyama’s editor.   Not to be confused with the awesome editor who poo-pooed all the androids and Cell’s semiperfect form.    That was Yu Kondo.  Iyoku comes out dressed like Goku, but he can’t talk like him so he’s immediately second-tier. 

Guest #3 is Norohiro Hayashida, Producer from Toei Anaimation.   He is also rocking the Goku cosplay, which would be a faux pas in most fandoms, but he can just say that he’s cosplaying as Krillin or Yamcha, which gives him greater nerd credibility because those are more obscure references.

Around 8:30 we really start getting into this, and they show us a model sheet of Piccolo.  Is Piccolo being in the new movie a big surprise?   He had a dry spell in the mid-90s, but he’s been in every Dragon Ball movie made in this century so far.   And it’s not like they changed his look, like when they put Goku and Vegeta in those adorable coats last time.   I’m not complaining about any of this.  It’s nice to see that a) Piccolo is confirmed for new movie and b) they didn’t tinker with his appearance.  

All I’m saying is that they only brought up this model sheet to show off how they’re using his color scheme from the manga as opposed to the anime.   Hence the red belt and the yellower arm sections.   In the anime, the belt was always blue, and his biceps were hot pink instead of off-yellow.   But it’s such a subtle thing that even Sascha didn’t pick up on it.   It’s like they were hyping up the fact that it’s such a minor change.    I like it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a weird flex.   Also, he looks like he still has his five-fingered anime hands, so I’m not that impressed.   Give us four fingers, Toei!

Sascha asks Masako Nozawa what she thinks about Piccolo and she just starts off with “He was Gohan’s teacher,” and talks about how strong and cool he looks.    She speaks of him like he’s a family member, because she’s awesome.

Next up, we have Pan, and now we’re talking.  The scuttlebutt is that this was the character Toriyama was referring to when he spoke of an “unexpected character”.  And I guess Pan fits the bill, since I don’t think anyone expected her to be this old in the movie.   I understand this is her kindergarten uniform, so she’d have to be about five or six years old.  I love Masako Nozawa’s reaction here.   Throughout this video, you can see that Goku and Gohan aren’t just roles to her.   

I’ll put on my fanboy hat here and point out that Pan’s age may imply that this movie takes place after the final episode of Dragon Ball Z.    She looks older here than she did when she fought Wild Tiger, at any rate.   So far, the entire Dragon Ball Super franchise has been set during the ten-year gap between the Buu crisis and the finale of Z.    So everyone has been wondering if DBS would move beyond End of Z, or whether Akira Toriyama even still recognizes the continuity of those final chapters.   They were supposed to be ten years of peace, but all the battles in DBS say otherwise.   Also, I’m pretty sure Pan and Bulla’s ages in the DBZ finale don’t line up well with their appearances in Super, but I’ve never studied it very closely.  

So this might be set post End of Z, or this might be Toriyama retconning End of Z altogether.  I’m interested to see which way this goes. 

Here’s Krillin, still working for the police, although his uniform looks more like Bronze Age Lex Luthor than anything else. Like Piccolo, the “big” story here is that he’s been tweaked to resemble the coloring in the manga, so his sclera are now white instead of fleshtoned.  

Never mind that, here’s Piccolo’s house.  This is probably the breakout star of this video, because I think everybody is excited to see Piccolo’s house.   Because it’s new lore!  No one even knew if he had one or not.   It was a running gag in DBZ Abridged that he was homeless.   I mean, congratulations to Krillin for getting his eyes colored in right, but that doesn’t tell me anything new about the character.  But Piccolo’s house is a big friggin’ deal.   What’s inside of there?  What’s on the second floor?   Check out his mailbox.   What kind of mail does he get?  It’s exciting.  

Nozawa even points out that she and her co-workers would talk about this sort of thing in the recording studio.    That’s a big deal to me, that the voice actors think about the same kind of stuff that I do as a fan.   

Around 15:30, they start talking about Toriyama’s commitment to the making of this movie, which seems like a weird thing to focus on, because he wrote the screenplay to the last two movies.   Did anyone think he was stepping back? I get the impression that there’s still some hard feelings about the failure of Dragon Ball Evolution, in the sense that they want to reassure everyone that we’re still in good hands.   I suppose one of these days, Toriyama won’t be as heavily involved in a project like this, so maybe it makes sense for Toei and Shueisha to make it clear that today is not that day.

On the other hand, Toriyama was just as involved with Broly as he was with Resurrection F, and Broly was a much better film.  The Dragon Ball Super manga seems to have revived the old argument over who’s to blame when the story is a letdown, and I think that misses the point.  Look, the Zamasu arc sucked, and I don’t care who wrote what parts, or whether Toriyama had a bad idea or whether he handed a good idea off that was badly executed.   They can hash that out behind the scenes if they want to.  

About 19 minutes in, they show us this model sheet, and refuse to explain who these guys are or what they’re doing in the movie.   Are they villains?  Who knows?  I’d like to think they’re important characters to the story, but I have my doubts that Krillin will have a big part to play.  

At 20 minutes, they announce the title of the movie, and I’m not very thrilled with “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero.” They can talk it up as much as they want, and maybe the title is relevant to the plot, but it’s just too many uses of the word “super”.   Especially when they’ve got another series called “Super Dragon Ball Heroes” on YouTube. 

Then we get this teaser trailer, or whatever you want to call it, with a CG Goku hopping around and doing his classic fighting pose.  Now, for some reason, lots of people concluded that this means the entire movie will be done in this CG style, which has led to a debate over whether or not that’s a good thing.  If they can make the whole movie look this slick, then I’m fine with it.  Hell, I’m not picky.   They could animate the whole thing in Yukio Ebisawa style, and I’d be thrilled. 

But I’m not understanding where people got the idea that it’s definitely going to be a 100% CGI movie.   They never spell that out in this video, and they even go out of their way to admit that this shot of Goku isn’t actually from the movie.   So is there some other source people are referring to, or did everyone just jump to conclusions?  

And that’s pretty much it.   I don’t mean to sound negative on this panel, but I don’t feel like they revealed very much, unless this is actually going to turn out to be Piccolo and Pan having an adventure by themselves.    I think Toei could make a movie like that and it would be a success, but I have my doubts that they’d go in that direction.  If this is going to turn out to be another big slugfest with Vegeta, then I’m down for that too, but don’t show me Piccolo’s house if the movie’s going to be about Vegeta punching a guy. 

Bottom line: I’m still looking forward to this, but I don’t feel like I know much more about the movie than I did before.   Well, except for the part about Piccolo’s house.  I’m looking forward to seeing the inside of it.

[davidmann95]

Thoughts on the leaked Superman TV suit redesign?

Assuming this is real - and I’m inclined to say so, that’s a real assistant costume designer on Arrow and a concept artist credited, both people who would be assigned to do this sort of thing but finding their names would take more work than I imagine the typical dude with photoshop would put in for this - while probably not final I actually like it a lot! It’s not the truly correct answer of putting the classic s-shield on Routh’s Crisis suit, but next to that it addresses all my issues with what Hoechlin’s had so far: the belt’s better (and visibly functions as a belt) and does the missing trunks’ job of breaking up the colors, the boots are streamlined, the texture of the cape is better, and the cape clips are placed so that the cape drapes over him as it should while still providing the apparent comfort of that compared to tucking it in. Not wild about the red cuffs or the two-tone on the bodysuit, and if the lighting isn’t deceptive it needs to be more colorful, but as if nothing else a representation of where the creators’ heads are at I find it very encouraging, and the suits have always been tweaked over subsequent seasons on the CW shows anyway.

The truly big thing however is that this is hot on the heels of Superman & Lois being officially picked up as a series rather than waiting for the pilot to be judged - obvious as it seemed, it would have also seemed obvious that they’d pull the trigger on this 3 years ago, and also there was always the worry that the movie division would either pull themselves together or simply chicken out and pull the plug on this at the last minute. But now it’s official, and having been 3 years since I first gave thought to how a Hoechlin Superman series could work (Tulloch and Cryer weren’t even in the mix yet), many of my assumptions as to what would be in play have been dashed, and it’s ended up with distinguishing features going in I never would have guessed. So as is, my primary hopes for the series:

* For the first couple years, keep things relatively simple and streamlined in terms of season arcs. Todd Helbing’s in charge, and from what I’ve seen of his past work as showrunner of Seasons 4 and 5 of The Flash (where I jumped on, which is a shame since it sure seems like there was a drop in quality compared to what I’d been seeing before) he had a really hard time juggling the substantial cast of characters it had built up by that point alongside a season-spanning threat…but he also wrote or cowrote excellent individual episodes, including easily the best episode of the entire CWverse to my knowledge “Enter Flashtime”, and it’s arguable those seasons were generally casualties of having used up the obvious threats and buying time until Crisis. Going into this I don’t see much need for a sprawling supporting cast from jump, so if the overarching villain can be managed appropriately I don’t see him being a poor choice for shepherding the first season or two.

* Keep the soap operatics largely confined to the sons. Whether it’s Chris or Conner or Damian joining Jon, I’d imagine half the point of bringing in a pair of teenagers to a show with a pair of leads who have moved past the figuring-out-life-and-love travails of your average CW protagonist is so that *they* can do that stuff instead. Let Lois and Clark focus on reporting and superheroics and as advertised “the stress, pressures and complexities that come with being working parents in today’s society”, along with assorted character journeys and challenges tailored to them that fall outside the typical arc of CW series leads. Meanwhile, the teens can contend with burgeoning love lives and deciding who they want to be alongside figuring out how to become heroes.

* Maybe break it up across multiple timelines? I know they did a lot of this sort of thing with Arrow with the flashbacks and flash-forwards as series-spanning anchors; maybe there’d be something to be mined here with present-day sections, past sections of Superman’s earlier years in Metropolis before he and Lois got together or Lex turned on him, and future events. Heck, the latter could get the super sons as teens without any need to age them up in the present, and permit easy crossovers with Legends or the upcoming apparently future-set Green Arrow and the Canaries.

* Lex obviously has to be in the mix, but shouldn’t be the sole villain of the first season when he was already the bad guy for the last season of Supergirl. Given his amazing new status quo of being Silver/Bronze/Modern-Age Lex masquerading as Byrne’s Luthor, taking him down would be the obvious centerpiece of the Daily Planet chunk of the series, especially for Lois since that’s presumably going to be her primary domain. Once he’s exposed though totally go all-out supervillain with him.

* Can’t believe I’m saying this, especially on the heels of that last note, but maybe don’t get too political. I know Supergirl has made efforts, but everything I’ve heard about the execution sounds incredibly mixed, between a black Machester Black being told not to kill Nazi stand-ins, and the first preview for the current season basically opening with Supergirl narrating “We deposed our corrupt Trump analogue, so I thought people would be committed to fighting for social justice…but they’re obsessed with their Facebook gizmos instead!”, a truly bizarre instance of trying to appease all sides. Totally have instances of Superman taking some lefty or at least liberal stances as is tradition, but it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to try and build a season around a given message given both the track record and that all the extra eyes on this will mean it being subject to even more extensive pressures.

* Speaking of the number of eyes on it, god I hope this is allowed to get weird even given it’s probably going to be the flagship for the network and therefore will definitely have higher-ups wanting to make sure it isn’t alienatingly off-beat. They put Beebo and Sargon the Sorcerer in the Crisis finale for Christ’s sake! The least they could do is let Hoechlin fight Krull or go on an adventure with Calvin Ellis, and let Tulloch get witch powers and tame Titano; the last live-action Superman show in Lois & Clark was made in a pre-Morrison world and aired on ABC, and it still had a time-travelling H.G. Wells as a recurring character and an episode where he gets shrunk down to a teeny-tiny little Superman (which also just happened with this guy!). The clear All-Star influence so far is a good sign along with how odd The Flash has frequently gotten as the current center to their shared universe - including under Helbing - but this is still probably my primary concern. Give us at least a few truly high concepts per season even if I suspect the goofiness will be toned down relative to its older siblings.

* I’m not that concerned with the villains: he’s got a few established already between Lex, Metallo, Mongul, Reactron, Zod (maybe the inexplicable decision to have had Superman kill him off-screen can be undone by Crisis), Maxima, and Doomsday, it’s implied by Elseworlds he got his own Bizarro, Brainiac’s easy to introduce, and the villains introduced as specifically Supergirl’s enemies such as Parasite, Silver Banshee, and Mxyzptlk could easily roll into Metropolis. And there’s plenty of other possibilities with the likes of Solaris, Prankster, Subjekt-17, Terra Man, Magog, Ultraman, Riot, or Atomic Skull who either have tons of potential to unearth, or don’t but as a simple visual or gimmick could easily carry an episode or two. I’d still prefer the more exploration/mystery-driven angle suggested in my original pitch up above, but I recognize that’s not too likely.

* Finally, if he’s truly committed to being done after getting the little epilogue and sendoff he deserved he’s got all the right in the world, but if Routh would have any interest absolutely make him the shows’ equivalent to John Shipp on Flash as Uncle Kal from Earth 96, popping by every now and then to be the fun uncle to the boys and give Clark life advice.

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

So 5x18...

...Well hot d*mn.

Man when Supergirl fires on all cylinders...HOO BOY.

Case in point: *gestures to all of 5x18*

To be clear: I liked this one.

A WHOLE LOT.

Not that I disliked 5x17, necessarily. It’s just that 5x18 was more... Entertaining? ...I dunno. I dunno how to explain it.

...Okay yes I do and that explanation is: Someone remarked on Kara’s use of language and Kara overcompensated on the ‘NOooOOooOO I’m totally 100% normal!’ AND there was a musical quote AND it was WHILE TEAMING UP WITH ALEX TO FOLLOW A LEAD.

But I’m getting ahead of myself let’s backtrack...

TO THE TOWER! WITH ALEX! NIA! KARA! AND M’GAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!!

June Foray voice: WOULD YOU LIKE TO STAY FOREVER?!?!?!

I know I’m not the first person to make that reference but it’s always fitting and, for real, recurring character status WHEN. (I mean. Obviously I would prefer series regular but that feels like a big ask considering that all future TV production is...uh. Ah. Erm....

...Up in the air. At the moment.)

And then we check in with the Luthors and Non Nocere isn’t working???

I am shocked! Shocked, I say!

And then we’ve got Obsidian doing something ill-advised which is basically the company’s MO at this point but KELLY AND WILLIAM ARE ON THE CASE REGARDLESS.

(So that’s kinda the one thing I’m sad about re: the Crisis reset; Andrea’s character development. But she’s sticking around for next season so I’m not too upset that she remains...kinda...one note for now.)

And THEN the library scene. 

It was so gooooood.

Then Leviathan and okay. Alright. Okay. Huge points in this episode’s favor: Rama Khan feels like a far more significant threat. And I feel like 80% of that is the fact that they just let him wear normal clothes. Thank you, show. Thank. You.

Also the rock effects were way better in this episode because they weren’t footing the bill for a giant crossover episode this time around

I am a little confused, though, by what has and has not happened with regards to Rama Khan on Earth Prime. Did the pre-Crisis stuff...happen? The dialogue...kinda made it hard to decide one way or the other. ‘He hasn’t been seen on this Earth for 100s of years’ but then also, ‘a chilly place you know quite well.’ So...he...did go to the Fortress. And fight Kara? But...all that stuff before Crisis...???

...Not gonna bother with that right now.

POINT IS...Leviathan is finally like...invested in killing Supergirl* and menacing in a very real way which both raises the stakes and makes it personal and that’s way more interesting than ‘nebulous evil organization that must be stopped.’

*I know they kinda sorta already did the whole, ‘let’s kill the Kryptonian!’ and invaded the Fortress but I don’t know what to tell ya, it was just lackluster.

J’ONN AND M’GAAAAAANNNNN

I am firmly in camp: I don’t care if they’re never green again I love seeing them in the super suits with their human faces IT’S GREAT.

Love that Nia’s snoring interrupts the moment.

Also love the deck of Rama Khan playing cards, that must’ve been a fun project for the graphic designers.

Then we’ve got William and Kara at CatCo and it’s baked goods! A hilarious line delivery by Staz! A ridiculous fabrication involving a shy, violent cat!

...Now I want Alex to actually own a shy, violent cat!

“Cats love me, for some reason.” “Of course they do.”

Side note: Love Kara’s blazer.

And then it’s ALIEEEEEENS TO THE RESCUE!

WHAT A TEAM UP, FOLKS.

We love to see it.

The interrogation scene is good n’ tense and ramps up to a very impressive showdown in the DEO (but BEFORE the sparks really start flying we get that rad shot of Kara leaping through the window and doing the superhero landing and it’s just

Perfection.)

Also perfect? Lex playing a game of transmatter pickle with the prisoners.

Then we jump back to the DEO where things are not going well!

Like, really really bad! 

But J’onn and M’gann save the day! If not the building!

RIP DEO. 2016-2020

Obituary: The DEO headquarters is survived by its elder sibling, the DEO desert base.

Look none of the favs work there anymore save for Kara and Brainy and they’re both gonna be better off working freelance for J’onn but I do expect Brainy to at least pick up some additional cash by working as a Lyft driver next season.

Me, watching the characters struggle to make it in the gig economy: I feel so seen.

The final portion of the episode is just ALL ACTING and I must say...good stuff.

Like. This cast, man. They take the plot points I’ve been ‘meh’ about all season and they turn in some stellar performances and suddenly I’m like STANDING OVATION, CAN’T WAIT TO SEE WHERE THIS GOES.

Also, reason #342 I love Jon Cryer’s Lex: that scene with Lena.

Terrifying.

Full disclosure: I went in to this episode fully prepared to be really annoyed with whatever was going to happen with Lena and I still don’t...love the trajectory of this season, being so tied up in her personal drama but. 

But.

Katie McGrath’s performance...went an awful long way here. In making this...not as bad as it could have been.

Like tearfully admitting she was hurt? And that hurt was the basis of all the nonsense she pulled? Finally owning up to the fact that this was never truly about the greater good but that it was all rooted in some personal issues and OUTRIGHT STATING SHE WAS BEHAVING LIKE A VILLAIN????

I am. Extremely impressed.

EVEN MORE IMPRESSIVE THOUGH: Kara remaining distant both physically and emotionally throughout that scene! Not in like, a cold uncaring way, but in a, ‘I have emotions and I have a right to feel them and set boundaries in regards to my trusting you right now given all that has transpired’ kind of way.

GOOD. YES. GOOD.

(Lex’s outburst has that kind of same Nice Guy undertone--albeit more pronounced and rage-y--as Lena’s in the Fortress. Like, ‘I supported you and you still rejected my plot to take over the world’ and ‘I was kind to you and you still messed up my mind control’ which...I dunno I might just be digging in too deep here in order to further justify the character turn but I think Cryer’s performance regardless is a really sobering wake up call for Lena, different than Lex stuff we’ve seen before. It’s close and intense and uncomfortable in a way that really sells the motivation.)

“You’re a monster...but that doesn’t mean I have to be one too.”

Wow. Might be...the first time I’ve liked Lena all season.

...whispers: might be the first time I’ve liked her ever at all

For real: credit where it’s due, that was an excellent line read.

*insert applause here*

CUT TO ADORABLE J’ONN AND M’GANN MOMENT 

D’aaaawwwwwwwwww

But, look, it’s a little undermined by the fact that they both gotta try and embrace in those bulky super suits, I’m sorry, it’s true

...Maybe it’s more endearing that way?

HEY remember how I foolishly assumed that the now-unemployed Alex would simply continue to work with J’onn in an investigative capacity and, ya know, NOT jump straight back into costumed badassery? 

HA. HAHA HAHAAAA.

Those leaked set photos make sense now.

OH NO, WILLIAM!

Real glad Staz confirmed he’s returning. Otherwise I would not be able to DEAL WITH THE STRESS.

I already talked a little bit about the loft scene but some additional points! Beautiful lighting. Wonderful score. Excellent performances all around.

A truly great end to a truly great episode.

Like, it makes me retroactively sad, that we’re only getting 5x19, as opposed to 5x19 and 5x20 because I wish that the crew/writers/actors had a little more space to let all of this good work they’ve done settle and breathe. 

(But also, it was good that they stopped production, from a safety standpoint, so. Can’t be too upset.)

And, regardless of how the next episode goes down (b/c I’m gonna be real, SG always does really great set-ups for their season finales and then kinda...rushes to the finish line and that can only be further exacerbated in this particular case) I’m just really impressed with this effort here.  

...but also LET’S TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE SOME WILD GUESSES. Specifically, what is Alex’s vigilante name gonna be??? 

...

Alright I generally try to avoid addressing specific fandom complaints in these things b/c I generally try to avoid the fandom itself but of course some stuff has already leaked through all of my blocks/muting so:

‘Lena didn’t apologize!’ The words ‘I’m sorry’ were not said, sure, but 1.) season’s not over and 2.) for Lena, admitting she was wrong is huge. HUUUUUUUGE. It’s solid character growth and I really wish various subsets of fandom would recognize that it’s not fun, when fans hold on to negative stuff from characters’ past and refuse to acknowledge that the characters have changed.

‘Brainy should have seen this coming!’ This one is kind of more down to personal preference I guess but I feel like they’ve established that Brainy’s got a bit of a blindspot due to his feelings about his friends, so I don’t take this as a knock against his intelligence so much as him being stretched fairly thin because he’s playing all sides, and worried about the people he loves. YMMV, though. 

All the ‘fix-it’ stuff re: the last scene, by making Kara immediately forgive Lena. Lose me with that nonsense, bleh. 

[fialleril]

Oh man I would watch the SHIT out of all of those JLA/JLU sequel shows you pitched. But I have to know: will John Stewart's terrifying landlady be making an appearance? (Also you reminded me of just how much I desperately wanted J'onn's human wife's backstory. Or like, even a name?)

(Original post is here for those just joining in.)

John’s terrifying landlady would be a recurring character. At least once per season she would get to wail on a supervillain or five, but there would also be a running gag where she keeps beating on other members of the Justice League. At one point John even introduces her to Flash, but she still whacks him over the head with her broom the next time he comes by and John isn’t home. Once she even beats up Batman.

I keep thinking that J’onn’s wife was named Ming, and then remembering that was just fanon… But yeah, I would really love to know the story of how they got together. I’m imagining a situation where they’ve been dating for months and J’onn has been agonizing over how to tell her the truth about who he is and finally after some harrowing adventure or other he just kind of blurts out, “I’m an alien,” and to his shock she just pats him on the hand and says, “I know, dear.”

Other things that definitely happen at some point on these hypothetical shows:

Remember the Flashmobile? Wally’s…very expressive van? Yeah. Wally, John, and Shayera absolutely go on a road trip in the thing. John complains about the van the entire time. Shayera genuinely likes the leopard print cushions. At some point Wally installed a karaoke machine, and John very much lives to regret this. Shayera sings death metal, which honestly isn’t that surprising. Wally also sings death metal, which…kind of is. John insists that he doesn’t sing, but eventually the other two wear him down and he does a decent riff on Ray Charles.

One time Queen Audrey is taken hostage by a Kasnian nationalist group that wants to see the country leave the World Assembly and rebuild their military might. Diana for some reason can’t get to her for most of the episode, so the plot is just Audrey playing her captors to keep herself and the other hostages alive until Diana can show up and punch some fascists.

Shayera still gets a lot of hate and distrust as a result of the Thanagarian invasion, and although she tries to ignore it, sometimes it still gets to her. In one episode she’s sunk particularly deep in self-hating thoughts, so Wally decides that she’s gonna spend the day with him in Central. She’s not really interested in socializing but he’s insistent and weirdly excited about the idea and it’s kind of impossible to say no to that puppy face, so she goes along. And then the whole episode is just about how the people of Central City absolutely love Shayera. Like they’re stopping her on the street to say thanks, asking for selfies and autographs, kids are shyly giving her pictures they drew of her looking badass and saving the day. It’s wild. Finally she just straight up asks a woman why everybody is being so nice, and the woman looks at her like she can’t imagine why they would be anything but nice and just says, “Well, you brought Flash back from that vortex, after all that business with Brainiac. Of course we love you.”

One time John gets called back to Oa for a couple of weeks and the Guardians send Guy Gardner to cover for him on Earth. It’s a two part episode and half of it is John being a badass and fighting off an invasion of Oa, and the other half is just…people on Earth dealing with Guy Gardner. Like nothing momentous happens on Earth at all. It’s just…Guy Gardner.

The Glorious Godfrey tries to make a big TV comeback by announcing that he’s discovered the Flash’s secret identity. Wally spends half the episode worrying about this but there’s not much he can do. Then Godfrey’s big moment comes and he reveals that the Flash is, in fact…Bruce Wayne! The evidence is all there. They’re both fun-loving playboys, and the fact that Wayne lives in Gotham obviously wouldn’t be an obstacle for the fastest man alive. Wayne’s vast wealth would also explain how the Flash can afford to keep himself fed with that outrageous metabolism, and as the Flash is a founding member of the Justice League, that also answers the question of how the League could afford to build not one but two incredibly advanced space stations, not to mention all the other tech they have. And, says Godfrey, it explains why the other founders continue to hold Flash as an equal even though he’s clearly not on their level - because he’s bankrolling them!

Batman is completely disgusted by this entire production. Wally assumes it’s because Bats feels insulted, and Bruce lets him think that, but tbh he’s most annoyed that Godfrey would say Flash isn’t on the same level as the rest. He will never admit that, though.

Wally, meanwhile, finds the whole thing absolutely hilarious, and gleefully tells Bruce that there’s an obvious corollary here: Batman’s secret identity must be Wally West! After all, he is a detective.

In one episode of John and Shayera’s show, there actually is an alien that sucks out people’s brains. It’s finally stopped by John’s landlady and her broom.

About a week after J’onn finally settles into an identity and an apartment for good, Agent King Faraday moves into the apartment just down the hall. It’s an open question for the whole of the show’s run whether Faraday knows J’onn’s true identity or it’s just a really wild coincidence. This question is never resolved. King Faraday and Jon Jones become friendly acquaintances and every now and then they stop to chat in the hallway about their respective days. Faraday talks about what J’onn knows to be his work with the League as if it were a humdrum office job. J’onn talks about his retirement as if he had retired from an equally dull office job. Neither is ever sure if the other knows they’re lying.

There’s a Batman and Flash crossover episode in which the Joker and the Trickster team up to do something nefarious, so Flash and Bats have to stop them. Flash doesn’t seem at all worried about it, though, and Bruce knows Wally well enough by now to get curious rather than annoyed. In the end it turns out that Trickster was working with Flash all along, solely for the joy of seeing Joker’s face when he reveals the trick.

Aquaman appears for a cameo once per season on every show. Every time he’s riding on the back of an increasingly enormous and terrifying sea monster. He says something suitably badass, and then returns to the ocean.

Diana takes Audrey home to Themyscira to meet her mother and sisters. Audrey is suitably impressed with everything except the party scene, which is pretty nonexistent. She sets about fixing this. Hilarity ensues.

Lex Luthor somehow gets out of his happy fun anti-life adventure time with Darkseid and is pretty pissed about once more being denied godhood. He shows up in Central looking for revenge on Flash for the Brainiac incident (not to mention that time they switched bodies). But it turns out Flash isn’t even home, and the whole episode is just the residents of Central kicking Lex to the curb.

Several old Cadmus files that were meant to be destroyed are stolen and sold on the black market, and there’s a massive crossover finale where all of our heroes have to team up with Amanda Waller to get the data back and undo as much of the damage as possible. Aquaman shows up at the climax riding on the world serpent.

[tcmpcral]

1. FIRST NAME: masha.

2. STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF: my father’s birthday is the day before mine :v

3. TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON: i mean, i’m asexual and aromantic but aesthetically i guess i could say the quintessential. roman?? nose for some reason fjfeka; i just like the look of them lies down also certain kinds of genuine smiles get me right in the heart. dark eyes are also very nice. or perhaps i should say like. when someone has dark eyelashes?? i think that’s it. also i’m always reminded of a girl i went to ireland with who had a seriously endearing case of doe eyes, and i’m still not sure if her eyes were just naturally that shape or if she used makeup to get that Look but either way i thought she was extremely pretty the whole time lmao the fact that she was also very sweet and thoughtful didn’t hurt either

4. A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF: rice and eggs fjjfiea; eggs in general, tbh. possibly also noodles. and dumplings. cheesecake. lotus paste. smoked cheeses hhhh sALMON. sweet potatoes. maybe pears and apples listen i’m sorry i love food, there can’t be Only One

5. A FOOD YOU HATE: hominy fjfkda; cauliflower. uhhhh also tuna casserole blegh. asparagus jfjkf;da oh YEAH I HATE BOLOGNA TOO i can’t. i can’t do it hhhhghg. and yet i love vienna sausages and deviled ham...

6. GUILTY PLEASURE: whispers taking the long way home so i can spend more time listening to the radio and singing along with it probably lmao

7. WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN: whatever i wore the previous day fjfjiea; I’M SLOPPY

8. SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS: technically neither, but i guess i’d take flings over the other

9. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE: lies down i do kinda wish i hadn’t dropped out of high school. on that front, it’s worked out in the end, but. still. it would have been nice to have kept up with my friends orz on a different front, i’m conflicted about it, but. sometimes i wonder how much better my life might be today if i’d gone straight for nursing instead of getting an art degree ._.

10. ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON: i. think i can be

11. A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN: yeah it’s still the kung fu panda trilogy lmao. but also tokyo godfathers, shutter island aaand. idk jurassic park? tremors? a good chunk of the x-men movies bc i’m not very picky with them and there’s things i like about most of them?? thinking emoji oH there’s also that movie push from 2009. the one with chris evans :v

12. FAVORITE BOOK: a little princess, war of the worlds, uhhh on the beach, house of stairs, the secret garden. i was once weirdly attached to this book i read in jr. high called where the lilies bloom. i also loved heidi uhhh. see, there were all these obscure books i read in late elementary school and jr. high that i loved that i often have trouble recalling rip. like there was one called eva, and another called home before dark. one named belle prater’s boy. the crystal garden. sweet sassy tree hhhh almost anything written by robert cormier ahaaa

13. YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE: i’m honestly very happy keeping dogs as pets, but i’ve always wanted to. like. idk, maybe pet a wolf or a fox or other wild canid. i’d also like to maybe have a cat someday. and parrots and other birds are adorable and i love them, but. oof. they just seem. Intimidating pets. maybe someday i can have ducks or geese again, tho. oh, and. i’ll admit i’ve always been amused at the thought of having a pet goat, bc my grandmother apparently did as a child lmao

14. TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS [IF YOU ARE AN RP BLOG, YOU CAN USE YOUR OWN SHIPS AS WELL]: oh boy there’s. a Bunch. let me think... i. still have a very big soft spot for germany/italy hhh. uh. i hope the rest of them don’t have to be canon bc..... yeah. anyway still attached to beerus and whis... wheezes and both euroshipping (kaiba/bakura) and what’s apparently called stormshipping now (fubuki/manjoume). and ok i have to go with another hetalia one bc i’m such a sucker for france/russia lies down i was also once a big lex/zex shipper, and i still have a soft spot for. what it once was. not entirely too comfortable actually shipping it now since i haven’t Kept Up with kh and i’m not 100% on zexion/ienzo’s age anymore squints

15. PIE OR CAKE: ....whichever one cheesecake falls under :v

16. FAVORITE SCENT: ohghfjfkda there’s A BUNCH. aloe vera, bleach, lysol, sweet pea, tea, tires, sawdust, cucumbers and melons, ginger, beer

17. CELEBRITY CRUSH: yeahh, i still don’t really have one but. i do have a lot of affection for weird al lmao

18. IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO: whispers i would love to go to russia some day, but i think everyone knows that lmao. i’d also love to revisit ireland, especially killarney and blarney castle. and i’d love to revisit sorrento. and possibly italy in general tbh aaaa. i’ve also always kinda wanted to visit china 6_6

19. INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT: pretty sure i’m an introvert, but i also happen to be one who really loves crowds

20. DO YOU SCARE EASILY: i’m a. very jumpy person kffja; also certain topics Disturb me way more than others, and ngl i have something close to an Actual phobia of the dark rip

21. IPHONE OR ANDROID: i’ve never had an iphone, so probably android

22. DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES: animal crossing. also tetris when i’m bored. i love puzzle games like poppit and bejeweled lmao i used to play kingdom hearts and super smash brothers, and i miss them both tbh. i also played crisis core, two star fox games, and the world ends with you at some point. and uh. a handful of legend of zelda games when i was a kid. my favorite game is probably majora’s mask :v

23. DREAM JOB: comic book creator orz or some kind of concept artist for animated movies. but. i’ve come to terms with the fact that i’m not really. Good(TM) enough for that, so nowadays i’m much more interested in something more mundane like nursing. as long as it’s night shift, i want it

24. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS: SO MUCH. get my car back in shape, pay off my grandparents’ house probably, go back to school fINALLY, move out lies down there’s so much i could do with that money lmao

25. FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE: there. aren’t any tbh lies down the most i usually get to is feeling neutral toward a character lmao except i just remembered umbridge exists so she might count

26. FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER: not counting the ones i keep coming back to, there’s uhhh. gundam wing, star wars (waaaay back when the phantom menace was first released lmao), digimon, x-men evolution. i was in the MCU fandom for like a month before i lost interest XD;; i might count yugioh and yugioh gx as part of this, but. i’m still kind of invested in those tbh

all of these i’ve just kinda fallen away from thinking emoji i’ve never really had a bad fandom experience, so. you know

[girlintheorangecoat-blog]

Red White & Royal Blue review

Short Summary: When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius―his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse. Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colours shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic.

Overall opinion: I absolutely loved this book. It has a very modern vibe which is exactly what I was looking for in a YA. There are some steamy scenes where I was surprised at how well she worked around the fact that the characters where actually having an intimate moment. Alex’s and Henry’s chemistry is so well written its almost like you can feel their love in the room. The book had me fully captured and it took me all the power to stop reading at 3am. There where some boring parts in my pinion but the definitely didn’t last long it was mostly just conversations about the presidency which I am not to interested in but it was also kind of interesting. Casey made everything seem very realistic even though a relationship from two different sides of the world would be rather harder than that. My favourite parts where the emails or when at the end thy get support from all over the world. And not to mention her iconic quote I want a t-shirt of ‘history huh?’ absolutely loved how it was repeated through out the book.

Alex Claremont-Diaz: I’m lowkey kind of mad that he was shorter than Henry, but other than that I really love how he was written. Lex is the perfect line between ‘workoholic’ and ‘fuck this shit’ he’s badass and a little cutie at the same time how cool is that. I enjoy how he turns into a caring husband when he’s with Henry.

Prince Henry of Wales: ok so in the beginning I thought he was unsure about his sexuality and that he’s trying to hide the fact that he doesn’t like girls. When he asked June to dance girl I was shook. But I knew something was up I think Casey wanted us to know but still be surprised when Henry kissed him for the first time which by the way gave me a whole ass seizure. The way he is so poetic towards Alex worms my heart but I also really like how he stands up for what he loves which took him a while to realize he had to do. The fact that when he’s having fun he’s not scared to do dumb shit and that he’s a little cutie at times, equally makes my knees weak (can I have someone like that please).

June Claremont-Diaz: excuse me if June isn’t the best sister. I stan how she’s this perfect daughter with her pointy shoes and pencil skirt but when she’s having a drink or if she’s with Alex she doesn’t give a damn and just has fun. She’s the perfect line between being compost and still a wild teenager. Also excuse me let the girl be a fucking writer if she wants geez.

Nora: I swear if Nora isn’t me. Shes so fun and out going and gosh Alex so needs her. In some ways she always manages to fit into the scene. However, at the beginning I didn’t like her to much because I thought she was going to tell Alex that Henry is a bad decision. But at the end when she helps Alex pick out a jacket, I absolutely loved her.

All the other characters were very well written as well I just like how Casey McQuinston manages to merge two personalities into one character and pull it off perfectly. In my opinion a few scenes where a little risky but nothing to extra. Over all the book was very good and I really recommend it!

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen’s Rambling: Playing a Fighting Game for Story (Under Night In-Birth)

Recently, I got my hands on Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st], or UNIEST for short, a fighting game I’ve been looking forward to playing for almost half a year now. I know Dragonball Fighter Z is the fighting game that everyone cares about at the moment, but this is a game I’ve been wanting a little more... and DBFZ has too many problems with its... everything as a fighting game (a lacking tutorial, a tragically basic challenge mode, not explaining tools for high-level play within the game, etc.). So, I feel like talking about UNIEST for a bit while I’m taking a break from its Chronicle Mode, give my first impressions and all that now that I’ve only got about 7 prologues left to get through. Hopefully I won’t Ramble on about this, but... we’ll see. Yeah too late, I rambled, as usual... jeez, saying that phrase tends screws me over way to much and gives me a butt load of editing to do. But anyway, here goes.

Expanding and Explain the Lore 

I like how Chronicle Mode gives us much more context to the arcade mode. It’s sort of the reverse of how Guilty Gear Xrd did it’s arcade and story modes. Rather than the Arcade mode being the prologue to the story mode, the story mode explains what is going on in everyone’s arcade mode, with each new prologue giving more and more context to each character and the setting overall. Every character has their own little prologue selection that goes on for about 3 to 4 chapters that explains their motives and past, with each prologue in itself being about 1 to 2 hours long depending on your reading speed. The only exception at this point seems to be Vatista, who is moreso giving exposition to the lore of the world in her prologue chapters. That’s harmless overall given her role in the story is more of an observer than an actual character moving the plot, and her own Arcade mode being her finally going out and observing things.

While the game was coming out I often found myself jokingly thinking that the world of UNIEST was going to be some extension of the Nasuverse given the inclusion of Sion as a character. Though I was joking at the time it really feels like Nasu had his hand in this series in terms of writing, as I see some of the same issues I had when playing Fate/Extella. 

I have two major issues with the game as far as its story mode and writing is concerned: the pacing, and the localization.

Pacing

This is where most of the Nasuverse comparisons come from. Now to be fair to UNIEST, “bad pacing” is kind of a subjective critique nowadays due to it being thrown out far too much for its own good (my own posts and critiques not helping), so I’ll say that the pacing just feels slow to me personally. I feel like there’s too much idle chatter going on with people talking about things that aren’t important to the plot. For an example, in Orie’s prologue she’s talking to her friend/partner Lex about moving to Kanzakai, the location of the game. They discuss a bit about the mission, Orie goes into thought about her opinions of it, we learn a lot about Orie’s personality and nature when she isn’t in Licht Kreis Mode and slaying Voids, and so on. This is fine, but sometimes it felt like their friendly conversations about sweets, fashion, what restaurant to eat at, and adjusting to Japanese customs felt more like padding at times than characterization. This is all fine on paper, as it expands on both Orie and Lex’s personality, and it does lead to some interested interactions with Wagner when she appears, but for me it just feel like it drags. The main takeaways from Orie’s prologue is that she’s going to Kanzakai on an undercover/infiltration mission to learn about Amnesia and Paradox, work as something close to Wagner’s probation officer and make sure she doesn’t go to wild, and show off her personality when she isn’t in Licht Kreis Mode. The extra bits just feel unneeded to an extent. You could just skip to the restaurant scene after Orie and Lex get to Kanzakai, cut out half the dialogue about cakes and uniforms, and things would flow a little better. Though... that’s just my own opinion.

I think a better prologue that did this sort of small talk/tangent thing well was Yuzuriha’s and Wagner’s. In Yurzuriha’s prologue we learn that she’s reluctantly the In-Birth Guardian of Kanzakai due to her older sister losing her powers on her first day of the job, and that while she knows that big things are going down in the city and is knowledgeable the Hallow Night, she’d rather just do nothing to draw attention to herself and keeps the peace by slowly crushing any rising powers making a ruckus. We also learn about the formation of Bankikai and #BestBoy Ogre. The writing goes into its usual smaller conversations and small talk, but it works a lot better in this case. Yuzuriha going on and explaining the Hallow Night in depth to Ogre makes since due to her wanting to make sure he understands that forming organizations will only worsen the situation as rising powers clash and only give rise to more Voids and more In-Births to create an endless cycle. It also shows that as knowledgeable as she is about it, Yuzuriha doesn’t give a damn about what goes on in the Hallow Night outside of keeping the peace and is only explaining things to Ogre because she doesn’t want to deal with him later... and she only had a broom to fight with at the time. On Ogre’s end, he was the type of character to make small talk, flirt, and go on long, hammy spiels about his goals, which constantly annoyed Yuzuriha, but it played well with the tone of the scenes and honestly made Ogre very endearing.

Speaking of endearing characters, the writing style of the prologues also helped Wagner’s character well too. She’s the newest playable character that I was personally interested in learning about. Wagner’s name actually came up several times in the the arcade modes of the previous game. From what we knew she was a mix of a merciless Templar that slaughtered anyone and everyone under the name of Licht Kreis, a wildcard that was Licht Kreis’s ace in the hole, and someone that Orie either feared, despised, or saw as a rival of some kind. The main takeaways from her prologue is that she is on probation after “overdoing it” in a past mission and has to live in Japan to cool her head with two attendants managing/confiscating her sword and shield, and while she personally views Orie as a rival Orie herself just sees her as a dangerous person that’s a pain to deal with. Those were the takeways, but the prologue does a lot to humanize Wagner and make her an interesting character. When not in Licht Kreis Mode she’s actually very endearing, being someone that knows little about society outside of battle. She struggles with academics due to her not liking the structure of Japanese schools, but slowly loving the more social aspect of it. She has a slight dependence on her attendants for more social activities. She’s a horrible actor to the point that her undercover backstory was that of being a shelter rich girl so she didn’t have to force herself to act in anyway and blow her cover. It’s all humanizing stuff from someone that was hyped up as a fiery, brutal killer of Voids throughout the series. She’s just... a socially awkward rich girl outside of battle, and it’s pretty enduring.

And just before I move on to talk about the localization I’ll just say that Carmine and Enkidu’s prologues could had easily been two chapters instead of three. The long conversations and small talk were just... out of character for those two, Carmine especially, though he is a lot more likable to me now, and Enkidu might just be my favorite character story-wise for his simplicity and how he bounces off Chaos and Hilda in Amnesia.

Now then...

The Localization

The localization... is terrible. 

No, I’m not kidding, this is some godawful localizing. Spell check apparently didn’t even exist when translating this script. Seriously, take a shot everytime you see a spelling or grammar error. Actually, don’t do that, you’ll die before you finish the first prologue. I mean... jeez, I know mistakes happen, and my own writings tend to be riddled with grammar issues here and there, but the amount I’m seeing here is just inexcusable. The misspellings especially. Serious, was spell check a thing when they translated this? Especially since there’s no dub every moment of grammar errors and misspellings seems more egregious. Reading these cutscenes and visual novel moments are a pain when I have to figure out what a character is actually saying. Which brings me to another issue.

There’s no dub, and that rustles my jimmies something fierce.

I don’t care how controversial it is for me to talk about this anymore. I don’t care how little the FGC cares for dubs and stories in fighting games. I don’t care about EVO, NorCal, SoCal, or anything other bull excuse used for a proper lacking localization. I kept my mouth shut about this when it came to Blazblue and Guilty Gear outside of some grumbles and general reactive whining, but now I’m actually pissed. There was no excuse this time for lacking a dub here, especially with the large window of time between the JP and NA release dates. 

For those that are curious, it was about 6 months. I remember Arc System saying something to the effect of having to delay Blazblue Central Fiction by about 6 month if they were to dub it. Six months... and this game has much less story stuff going on than in Blazblue. I remember people saying that BBCF needed to come out sooner so people outside of Japan could train for EVO. Folks, anyone that gives a damn about fighting games on a competitive level will import unless the time gap is a week’s difference or less. Period. Everyone else will either just do local tournaments, or is playing casually by extension of the more series side of the FGC. And frankly, EVO tends to be dominated by Japanese players anyway, so... I’m narrowing my eyes when I hear things like that. When this game had such a large time gap I think most of us figured it was for a dub, especially with Dragonball Fighter Z coming out just barely a month beforehand. However... no such luck, this game was basically delayed, had a poor release time, and I’m willing to bet money it was so this game could flop and they’d have an excuse to probably not dub Cross Tag Battle due to low interest in what would be one fourth of that game’s rooster (technically one eighth, but that’s a Rambling for another day).

Ugh, but I won’t whine about that any further, continuing to type this is only making me angrier... moving on.

Themes of Under Night

Now what kind of writer would I be if I didn’t at least try to talk about the narrative themes of UNIEST’s story? I’ll be honest. I’m having a hard time thinking of its themes. Not that it doesn’t have any mind you, but... I can’t really place my finger on it yet. Maybe it’s because I haven’t completed Chronicle Mode yet, but there is a theme in this game’s story. 

And it’s probably something really Japanese.

I’m not just saying that because this is a Japanese Anime Fighting Game, but... the story is constantly drilling in how peaceful Japan is despite how combative the Hallow Night is by nature. Wald and Enkidu are constantly going on about how they feel out of play being warriors in such peaceful times. Carmine talks about how hard it is to be a street punk picking fights in modern times. Orie and Wagner are bring up how peaceful and different Japan is compared to the warzones they’ve been in while in Licht Kreis. The list goes on, but the fact that this story takes place in a peaceful country like Japan is drilled into you. I still have quite a few characters to finish in terms of prologues, but... there’s something, some kind of commentary on peace and violence. Chaos heavily stresses that Amnesia never goes too far to kill people in these modern times in Enkidu’s prologue, Gordeu remarks how fights aren’t to the death despite the tension between warring groups. 

There’s... something here, but I can’t put my finger on it, probably due to my Western origins and beliefs. I’m sure if I talked about this with my Xenny might be able to piece together something since he’s learning the language and I get the feeling the theme might be lost in translation somewhere, but... for now, it’s all speculation until I finish the prologues.

As a game overall, this is a huge improvement to the original Under Night. There’s an in depth tutorial mode, there’s a Mission Mode to learn combos, there’s an network mode that’s leagues better than DBFZ at this point in terms of structure and netcode. If anyone in the FGC felt a little burnt by how Dragonball Fighter Z handled things like the tutorial and challenge mode and just generally not providing things for high-level play, I highly recommend giving UNIEST a shot, especially if you’re interested in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle.

Lastly, I would a moment of silence for Ogre, who has a great character design, interesting personality, had the coolest name for a special ability (Gate of Hades), but will never be playable due to... plot reasons. Farewell playboy fedora man, I would had definitely subbed you if you were playable.

[aion-rsa]

How Dark Nights: Death Metal Reboots the DC Universe

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The end of Dark Nights: Death Metal #7 is the last stop of more than a decade of Scott Snyder driving the DC metaverse’s bus. The conclusion to the Dark Nights saga, which started in 2017 with Dark Nights: Metal and ran through an entire Justice League series before concluding here, closes off storylines Snyder and his creative partner Greg Capullo seeded as far back as their first issue of Batman when the New 52 launched.

And with Infinite Frontier and Future State, DC’s next publishing initiatives, on deck, it’s worth taking a look at what Death Metal did so we can try and understand how the pieces fit together. Because if there’s one thing to take away from Death Metal, it’s that everything fits together. Even if you really gotta stomp on the pieces to get them to stick. 

THE ANTI-CRISIS IS HERE!

The final couple of issues of Death Metal throw a little bit of a curveball at readers. The entire series has felt like it was heading for a confrontation between Wonder Woman and The Batman Who Laughs, the Jokerized Bruce from the Dark Multiverse who (everybody take a DEEEP breath now) led an army of dark Batmen on behalf of Barbatos, the evil Bat god, in Metal; escaped captivity with Lex Luthor’s help in Justice League; betrayed Lex and usurped his role as evil overgoddess Perpetua’s right hand in Hell Arisen; and had his brain dropped in the body of a Bruce Wayne who had been turned into Dr. Manhattan after being killed by Diana earlier in Death Metal (with a chainsaw made from her invisible jet…just roll with it), giving him the nearly limitless power he needed to betray Perpetua earlier in this series. And from this point forward, we’re referring to him exclusively as BWL. Now let’s all go get a glass of water.

Ok, back? Cool.

So the rematch in the last couple of issues of Death Metal is what the rest of the series has felt like it was building towards. And we definitely get a BRAWL: Diana, charged up with Anti-Crisis energy (we’ll get there), is a giant embodiment of her golden lasso, and several times in the issue, she punches BWL so hard he traverses the history of the DC Universe. 

But it turns out BWL isn’t just fighting to dominate the entire multiverse. The Hands are returning. 

The Hands and the Green Lantern Connection

You know how DC time travelers can’t go back and watch the beginning of creation? Whenever they try, they just see a giant hand. This is pretty well established, going back to John Broome and Gil Kane’s old Green Lantern story about Krona, the Guardian scientist who first attempted to see the dawn of time. 

Turns out, the giant hand is part of a race of them: enormously powerful cosmic entities that bear a passing thematic resemblance to Marvel’s Beyonders, only sized up in power a few times. That hand we see when Krona tries to violate the laws of the multiverse, it belongs to Perpetua, and she’s one of them. Now they are coming to judge this local multiverse, and Perpetua and BWL both think it’s going to go poorly. So poorly, in fact, that BWL is asking Diana to join her Anti-crisis energy with his, as it’s their only hope of preventing The Hands from sweeping everything away and starting over.

Crisis Energy and Anti-Crisis Energy

Oh that. 

Perpetua and BWL power themselves up first (in Justice League and Hell Arisen) by harnessing the unseen dark forces of the multiverse – the invisible spectrum that manifests as John Stewart’s Ultraviolet Lantern powers, or the Speed Force’s opposite number, the Still Force, for example. They eventually graduate to eating universes to expand their power. These are examples of what Death Metal categorizes as Crisis Energy. 

Diana is charged with its opposite: Anti-Crisis Energy. This energy is produced by the connective tissue of the history of the DCU, by the totality of the DC Universe’s history. That’s why “everything counts” in Death Metal #6 was a big deal: it was a massive power up for Diana. It’s also an interesting meta critique of DC’s history of reboots.

Crisis Energy is described *by Diana* as being selfish and short sighted, focused on short term gain at the expense of respecting the sweep of history. Anti-Crisis energy is constructive, drawing strength from the depth and breadth of 80 years of DC continuity. 

We have to be careful assigning authorial intent where none may exist. But it is certainly a valid read of Death Metal to see criticism of DC’s accelerating continuity reboot cycle built in. It doesn’t take an enormous leap of logic to transpose Crisis Energy and all of Diana’s critiques over to Crisis Events and some of the fan criticism – short term sales boosts at the expense of the richness of an 80 year publishing history. 

Who Was Right? Wonder Woman or the Batman Who Laughs?

Diana, of course. She refuses to give into BWL’s cajoling, punches him through continuity a few times, and eventually meets The Hands, who come to her wearing the form of…her.

More specifically, they show up as Golden Age Wonder Woman. 

The Hand she speaks with explains to her that they were going to sweep away Diana’s multiverse because of its propensity for gross selfishness, but Diana’s personal heart and generosity touched them, so they’re giving the DCU another shot. Only this time, they’re putting everything back in place: the full history of the DCU, along with a blossoming multiverse. And it’s heavily implied that the barriers between worlds in this multiverse are going to be…less walls, and more suggestions. The price the Hand extracts for this boon is Diana’s existence: she ascends, no longer living as a physical being on Earth Prime. Instead, she joins the Hands protecting the new multiverse from a hinted at but as yet unstated threat.

It’s worth noting here that this evolution of the DC multiverse somewhat mirrors Snyder’s evolution as a writer at DC. His early Batman work, on the “Black Mirror” arc of Detective Comics, and early in his New 52 Batman run is very carefully plotted and paced. They’re written more like traditional detective/horror stories. Similarly, the DC multiverse has been slowly returning to continuity since Infinite Crisis and 52, only very slowly, with rigid rules and boundaries about what constitutes the new multiverse. Remember the Orrery of Worlds? 

The difference, in both Snyder’s style and the cosmogony of DC’s multiverse, are the rules don’t matter anymore. Death Metal, both in how the story is told and where it leaves the DC multiverse, has a certain “FUCK IT, EVERYBODY HAVE FUN AND WE’LL CLEAN UP LATER” vibe to it and if we’re being entirely honest, that’s kind of exciting. 

What Does this Mean for the Future of the DC Universe?

I’ll admit, it hits a little different landing after a year of wild rumors about the future of DC’s publishing line. The journey of Death Metal saw a bunch of new bosses coming in and rumors and threats that they were going to rip the DC Universe down to the studs, and whatever came next wasn’t anyone’s business. 

The end of Death Metal is a jubilant explosion of everything bright and beautiful about the DC Universe – our heroes have made it, and not only did they survive, but they did so specifically because everything in their publishing history saved them. Everything counts now, everything happened, everything mattered, and it’s that counting/happening/mattering that saved the day. And then Black Canary, Superman, Wally West, and Batman play a big metal concert for all the celebrating heroes. With Jarro on cowbell. 

Future State is the next step, in-universe and out of it. Death Metal closes with a group of heroes and villains – Martian Manhunter, Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl, Lex, Talia, Vandal Savage, and maybe Wally West (it’s not explicitly clear that he’s part of the group and not just visiting) – gathering together to talk about the cosmogony of the new omniverse. Hypertime is healing, the multiverse is growing so infinite that it’s now the omniverse, pasts and futures are opening into what Wally calls an Infinite Frontier (NEXT PUBLISHING PHASE MIC CHECK!). But Earth Prime is no longer the center of the multiverse the way it once was, as you can see from your handy dandy Multiversity map. It’s replacement is actually two worlds: one yet unstated, and one the group of DCU bigwigs is calling…the Elseworld. 

After reading the first batch of Future State books, one could be forgiven for assuming many of those stories take place there. Each book has a blurb about the saved multiverse, and the wealth of new possibilities growing out of the ashes of Death Metal. These books are dripping with multiversal references. But I think that’s beside the point – some of the Future State stories will end up being Elseworlds tales; some, possible futures; and some will slowly integrate to regular continuity. I think the variety is the actual point here; variety of settings, variety of stakes, and a variety of stories and storytellers. 

One would think that emphasizing variety might also lead to variances in quality, but the hit rate for the Future State books is remarkably high. These books are genuinely exciting to read. Several of them look nothing like what DC has been doing before, almost to the point where we can hold a funeral for DC House Art Style. 

The characters are certainly vastly different from what came before, and a couple of them are going to be absolutely huge – watch Yara Flor, the new Wonder Woman. If Joelle Jones’ first issue of Future State: Wonder Woman is any indicator, she’s going to be extremely popular. 

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It has been a long, and sometimes very odd journey to get here, but between the power chords of hope from the end of Death Metal and the completely new jams being played in Future State, it’s hard not to be cautiously optimistic about the future of the DC Universe.

The post How Dark Nights: Death Metal Reboots the DC Universe appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[projectnaga]

a 21st anniversary, a 1st anniversary, and the state of the translation

Well, here we are. It’s the 14th of May, 2017. It’s the 21st anniversary of Genealogy of the Holy War’s original release, and the first anniversary of the release of its first complete translation.

God, it still feels so weird saying that. Complete. Not only did i actually do it, but it’s actually in the game and people are actually playing it now. i swear, it was only days ago that i was still puttering away at the earliest drafts in some dim corner of tumblr, just as a lark. There’s something surreal and heartwarming about seeing people play my work en masse. Thanks, people.

After the first release, we published five updates in relatively quick succession up until July, at which point we just.... stopped. And stopped. So what happened?

Full disclosure: it’s squarely my fault. Honestly, it’s getting kind of embarrassing. DDS has put in plenty of work since then and has a nice fat stack of bug fixes and assorted technical cleanups ready to roll out, and at this point i’m literally the only thing holding back the stack. i’ve still got a lot of work that i want to do on the script for the next iteration and i’m still chipping away at it at a very slow rate. i keep setting targets for finishing up, then promptly letting those targets whizz by. Hell, about a month ago i genuinely planned to have everything done in time for another anniversary release to be plausible, and as you can plainly see that did not pan out at all. It made sense up until February, being that university was still a thing i had to contend with, but now? Yikes.

What needs fixing, then? As far as i’m concerned, a hell of a lot. my first pass over the game was, in hindsight, not particularly careful. Working on Genealogy was very much a learning process - i’d certainly never done anything like it before - and it’s as much of a mishmash as you’d expect of a product of somebody whose expertise and translation philosophy slowly evolved throughout it. Before we launched i certainly made efforts to straighten things out and retranslate, relatively speaking, the worst parts at that point (hello, chapter 1) from scratch, but it really came down to the wire so a lot was missed. The current product certainly gets the job done, but i can’t help but wince at screenshots: all the flaws of my work are suddenly blaringly obvious to me much too late.

And you know what? Genealogy deserves better, and not by virtue of being a particularly special game or anything, but because anything i work on deserves better. If there’s only one thing i’m good at, it’s holding my own feet to the fire and demanding stupidly high standards of my work. At the risk of sounding like a pretentious wanker, i can’t say i fancy the idea of settling for anything short of clear, tonally and conceptually accurate encapsulations of the text and narrative, expressed in as natural and readable a manner as i can muster. i’d like to think i accomplished that with the majority of the game, but i can’t sit back until everything is up to scratch.

So, what’s coming up, then?

Tweaks to Genealogy

Fun fact: i am really, really not good at keeping notes on what needs changing and what has changed. It’s kind of hilarious in the saddest possible way. Every time i keep meaning to but then something catches my eye, then something else, and it’s all so fast that i don’t even think to record it and before long i’ve forgotten what i’ve just tweaked. Either way, some of the most prominent incoming changes (that i can actually recall) include:

Lex, i’m sorry to say, did not fare particularly well in my first pass; i did a pretty bad job with portraying his tone and nuances, including literally his first block of dialogue in the entire damn game. Thankfully he’s the only character who got substantially distorted like this, but fixing him up was a top priority. Just about every speaking role he has has been redone from scratch.

The majority of reworking is proving to be in the first generation chapters. Honestly, i’m not surprised; being the first part of the game i did left them much more prone to error than the rest of the game. There’s still a fair few second generation corrections, but still.

boy shitting howdy i used the word “geez” a lot and in hindsight it drives me up the wall. at the absolute minimum that’s been reduced heavily

Probably the biggest amount of legwork involved is tidying up the epilogue’s map narration grand finale, specifically ensuring that the individual parts actually cohere properly when the game combines them in any outcome. The way English grammar is structured makes this somewhat more difficult than it was in Japanese, and it’s probably the biggest reason why i’ve been slacking off. While we didn’t do the worst job in the world as things stand there are plenty of rough spots which i need to sand out. Thankfully the script itself is still sound for the most part, so it’s just a matter of presentation.

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that we absolutely plan on doing Thracia 776 next. I’ve been planning on translating it for several years now, DDS has already done some preliminary hacking work on it (pictured above), and these days i have the fortune of having a lot of friends on hand with a vested interest in seeing Thracia done properly. It just makes sense, y’know?

As some people might know i started work on the script of Thracia a few years ago, but i’ve sort of let it slide for a while because of other commitments. Once i’m done sorting out Genealogy, i’m absolutely climbing back on that particular horse. i’d rather not make any hard time commitments for myself or anyone else since that would be a great way for things to end horribly, but considering i’m now much more experienced at this and have much more in the way of assistance and support in my favour, i get the feeling it’ll be a smoother project than Genealogy. At the very least, whenever we launch, the script will certainly be less bumpy than Genealogy’s was on this day a year ago.

Other stuff?

iunno. probably not, idk. we’ll see what happens

In conclusion

Really, in hindsight, i can’t believe how stupidly lucky i've been to have had the chance to work with such talented people on this. First, to have friends like amielleon and gringe who were willing to advise me on the translation and writing processes and, once or twice, step in to compensate for my shortcomings; then to work with hackers as talented as DDS and Azimuth, who as far as i’m concerned went through absolute hell to make my vision for the finished product a reality. Did i deserve all this? Probably not, but holy hell am i glad it all happened anyway.

okay maybe i should dial this back a bit

And if you’ve played it, thanks to you too! There’s still nothing quite like seeing my work being played by other people out in the wild (specifically, by people i don’t know who most likely weren’t coerced into playing it by my self-aggrandising shenanigans). If you haven’t played it, well, why not give it a try sometime? At the risk of overselling myself here, it’s a good translation for a good game.

[blookmallow]

hey wow look what i found buried in my drafts from 300 years ago

this started as Bits Of Story Notes but then i kinda ran with it and let it become more drawn out prose so now its like. a lil writing blurb 

specifically, about antis and their formations. its kind of a nonspecific narrative voice i didnt want to try to work into particular characters bc then id be limited by which characters know what/who would be willing to tell who what/etc so its not anyone in particular (theres also some names missing bc i havent figured out all the details)

--

“But what IS an Anti? How could something so... sinister come from someone so kind?”

“Well... that’s the trouble of it, you’re looking at it all backwards.”

“Backwards?”

“Well, to start, they come from nothing. It’s no fault of the Origin’s, after all. ...and you speak as if humans are inherently something kind, Antis inherently something cruel. I can promise you that simply isn’t the case.” 

Antis are not literal pieces of their origins - it isn’t so much “my dark side, embodied,” no proper Hyde to one’s Jekyll, as it were. An Anti comes not from within, but without; like a formless, nonsentient parasite locking itself to an unwary host. This occurs at random, of course- anyone could have an Anti. 

Any human, that is. 

Though they’re said to be particularly drawn to those with high propensity for magic.

The nebulous spirit matter from which they come is all around us- no, don’t look, you can’t see it. Not even the Soul Collectors can. But something invisible, no matter how transient and slight, is none the less real. They have no self yet; no mind to think or to consider, no consciousness at all. Only the instinctive drive to become. Antis long to exist before the conception of “longing” exists within them. They form themselves as a sentient, corporeal being through the unconsenting assistance of the Origin. That person becomes a sort of mold, a self and a form from which the Anti creates a kind of reversed mirror image to inhabit itself. 

The very moment of formation is still quite mysterious even to Antis themselves; how exactly it occurs, or why this moment and not that, and each Anti is quite different just as humans are from one another. It is not impossible for two Antis to form in the same way, but the variation is infinite. 

However, it is as of now believed that an Anti comes to fruition upon achieving some kind of inciting incident which serves to shove the dormant spirit into physical reality, such as a moment of intense emotion, contact with magic, a traumatic event - something to release the spirit that has been quietly building itself up. 

“But-...what if it doesn’t? What if there is no incident, the spirit never released-? What would that... do to a person?”

Well... Nobody knows. Possibly it might kill the both of them. Possibly something more sinister may occur, an amalgamate form never meant to be. But we need not worry about that. One could hardly imagine a person who never has a moment of intensity in their entire life. It is most likely the case that the spirit, upon having built itself up long enough, eventually will release on its own, anyhow.

Now, some Antis have an immediate fixation on their origin, some are an immediate destructive force, some are scared and confused by their own sudden existence, and... some just want to get as far away from them as quickly as possible. It’s not entirely fair to compare them to parasites - their formation is not harmful to the Origin, after all. But it is said that they are never quite the same afterward. 

Damian Nightfall - yes, that one -  formed from shadows one night when young Skye Blue had a particularly violent nightmare; he was suddenly awoken in the middle of the night and overwhelmed with dread in the darkness of his room. He had never been afraid of the dark before. He had sensed a growing anxiety every time the lights went out for weeks beforehand, but never told anyone; it felt silly and irrational to him- why would I be scared now? Why, I’ll be turning thirteen soon! I ought not to be afraid of dark rooms. 

But he was, anyway. 

He watched in confused horror as his own shadow turned into a dripping, crawling darkness that slowly gained mass and moved sluggishly across the floor on its own terms.

the thing on the floor immediately fixated on him, and while it was only half-formed and still an amorphous shambling mass of shadow, it lunged out of the darkness to attempt to strangle the boy the moment it had anything resembling hands

Miss Shuri immediately felt the intense distress - and the threat to Skye’s life, as it most definitely was - and appeared at once to cast the Anti out. But she refrained from killing him, though she could have, because a soul collector never kills if it can be avoided - and Damian was really only a child then. 

He slithered off somewhere into the woods, and continues to terrorize Skye to this day - though he’s no longer interested in actually killing him. An Anti without an Origin becomes mortal and powerless, as he’s learned all too well. 

And so that was Skye’s first encounter with Damian. He still suffers from frequent nightmares, and cannot sleep in the dark anymore. His shadow, even in bright sunlight, is oddly faded and light - not terribly noticeable, but almost as if there’s less of it somehow.

Miss Iris appeared as a sudden face in the mist of toxic fumes that erupted when Christina had fallen into a patch of mushrooms in the woods

there was a brief moment of grotesque entanglement as Iris’s body formed against her; both confused and trapped against each other, but both struggling to get away, each in disgust of the other 

the moment they became untangled, there was a brief instant of hatred between them, and Iris vanished in smoke. These days, the two are content just to live their lives completely away from each other - neither acknowledges the other’s existence, and both are better off because of it. 

Laelia Thorne’s Origin’s hand was cut off in an accident - and moments later, the severed, still-bleeding hand suddenly began spasming and mutating, growing itself out hideously, red blood pouring out in a bright rush as if it were being purged out - until Laelia was formed.

The poor girl was so horrified, she passed out from the shock. When she finally came to, Laelia was gone. No one believes her, supposing her to have been in a state of hysteria from the traumatic event - but the hand was never found. 

She never saw Laelia again. 

Lex Calamity’s Origin was looking into a mirror one day; feeling a crisis of identity, stressed and alone and feeling lost, when she realized suddenly that her reflection looked somehow wrong.

It wasn’t following her movements anymore, as if it were frozen in wide-eyed horror. She stared back into the mirror, feeling as if she were looking into a stranger’s eyes. A wild impulse to smash the glass to pieces came over her, but she could not bring herself to move.

Tears slowly slipped from the reflection’s eyes - which were rapidly changing color - but not from her own. In a sudden movement, she reached to touch her own face, but the tear was not there. The reflection did not move. 

Inky black spread over the reflection’s blonde hair, consuming it as if a bucket of paint had been dropped over its head, as she could only watch in horror. 

She slowly, slowly reached for the mirror. This time, the reflection moved in sync - but when their hands touched, she felt cold skin instead of glass, and the fingers twisted into hers. 

She screamed and pulled back, inadvertently pulling the reflection out with her, and they both tumbled to the floor.

The reflection scrambled to its feet like a frightened cat and ran.  

They found her, hours later, sobbing on the bathroom floor, shattered glass everywhere. After they heard her story, the sisters took her away to be exorcised of the evil she professed immediately. There was no trace of the demon reflection, and it was never seen again. 

She is to this day desperately afraid of mirrors - and if ever she dares to look, her reflection is distorted and blurry- like some part of it has left. 

Sage Blackburn’s Origin nearly drowned in the sea; She was desperately tangled up in seaweed that suddenly became arms - she saw bright yellow eyes glowing in the dark of the water, and felt someone holding her, pulling her up toward the surface. 

Those eyes were the last thing she was conscious of before she passed out - the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, she says. 

She awoke on the beach, alone, but alive. 

She believes a mermaid came and saved her. She calls her her Muse; she paints pictures of her all the time, trying to remember, and dreams of one day finding her again. She has overcome her fear of the ocean after this event, determined to return to the sea that she loves, and find her Muse again. 

Sage knows nothing of this, and left the girl on the beach, hurrying away to discover her own life. She has told no one of this story; and so no one knows if she saved her Origin out of compassion, or just so that she herself would survive - and Sage wouldn’t tell you if you asked her. 

[-unfinished-]

[roach: origin was very, very sick for a long time - and suddenly coughed up a huge bug that skittered away into the dark (and later, unseen, became Roach). they coughed up a few small, repugnant mushrooms, and immediately felt better. They recovered rapidly and seemed completely unphased by the whole ordeal.]

[gasket keskar: formed in a spark of lightning that destroyed a tree, but did not harm anyone. Origin (Kavi Narang) knows he exists, but has never seen him again - though he is actually interested to meet him again.]

[malkin erebus: formed in an explosion which destroyed Origin (Cyril Flintwitch)’s home and killed their mother. malkin did not intend to do this, and feels terrible for it, having never intended harm. cyril has permanent mental scars and has never been well since, though their paranoia and anxiety has improved recently - as well as their relationship with malkin. malkin is at times infatuated with cyril - and has had a very tumultuous history with them - but is learning to respect boundaries, and is accepting the responsibility for the things he has done.]

[crow hackett: unknown] 

[crank: unknown]

[zyx: formed from the dust under Origin (Cody Jemson)’s bed. lives there still. unsettling, but not actually harmful. yet.]

[siren hemlock: unknown]

[davidmann95]

Who do you think should eventually follow up Bendis on Superman? Also on a related note, did you check out Supergirl this week?

No Supergirl for me; I’m not interested in Marc Andreyko’s work from what I’ve seen and heard, and while Kevin Maguire remains a class-A talent, his immediate comment of “oh thank god” on the announcement of Joss Whedon taking over Justice League - given the context - was by contrast so distinctly classless that I’ve been soured on the dude since then. I have heard good things though, so I expect I’ll check it out of the library someday or something, especially since I’m hearing about some quality Krypto content being part of the package.

The prospect of who might follow Bendis up after a hopefully extended tenure is a very different question than who could come next after Rebirth was - there my hope was that solid underrated talent on the sides like Tim Seeley or Marguerite Bennett could seize the books, since that’d be a logical follow-up to the they-get-this-for-being-the-good-’ol-workhorses mediocrity of the Jurgens/Tomasi era that’d also be a tremendous improvement over it. Now though with Marvel’s big acquisition on top with art by the likes of Reis, Paquette, and Sook, whoever comes next is going to have profoundly different expectations to live up to. It’s pretty much going to have to be a fan-favorite or big name on the writing side (which I’ll be focusing on per your question; there’s a million artists who could absolutely kill on Superman). 

Tom King’s an obvious answer once his Batman run finishes in two years since he’s mentioned Superman is his white whale, but he’s about to do the big Superman story with Andy Kubert in the Wal-Mart giants, and he recently suggested in a podcast he might not wanna do another ongoing superbook after Batman given the scope that’s taken, or maybe at least not for a good long while. I surely wouldn’t complain about continuing in the mighty Marvel manner and having Hickman follow Bendis, and Tom Taylor would also be a very reasonable choice given his love for the character and the goodwill he’s built up among fandom in such a short time after such a bumpy start. Heck, I’d be curious what James Tynion IV would do as he increasinglymakes a fan out of me. 

Assuming Bendis’ division of Superman and Action Comics holds for at least a bit after he leaves, with Superman remaining cosmic and character-focused and Action Comics staying relatively street-level and supporting cast-heavy with Superman as a more iconic presence (I’d consider any of the four writers I listed so far ideal for either or both), there are some immediate names that pop out for each. With Superman, the big in-house talent I’d be curious to see take a crack at it would actually be Scott Snyder: Unchained wasn’t as good as you want it to be but demonstrated a solid grasp of Superman, Lois, and Lex, and given Unchained was sort of the last gasp of a more restrained Snyder before he went wild with the second half of his Batman run, All-Star Batman, Metal, and now Justice League, I suspect he’d do much stranger and more engaging things a second time around with Clark. Magdalene Visaggio while an unlikely pick would I think be a fascinating one (or Steve Orlando if we’re willing to go for people on the weird side of DC who deserve it, or maybe Gerard Way. Or him AND Gerard Way, given how well Milk Wars turned out), and while neither is likely given the one’s position and the other finally getting gigs worthy of him, Jason Aaron and Al Ewing would both be perfect poaches from Marvel. 

Meanwhile, I’ve been wondering for awhile now what Christopher Priest on Superman would look like and think Action Comics right now could be a perfect place for him. Otherwise if Matt Fraction having wanted to do a Jimmy Olsen book is true he could hopefully be persuaded to take it as a comparable assignment, and if either were interested, I think it’d be the perfect place for Ellis or Ennis to put their stamp on Superman’s world.

Oh, and if Morrison decides fuck it after doing that Sideways annual with Superman the way doing Dark Knights Rising: Wild Hunt apparently threw him back into wanting to do a monthly book, give him whatever he wants.

[a-nerds-ponderings-blog]

SUPERHERO LOW-DOWN

February 26 - March 12

SUPERGIRL

Season 2: Episode 14 - HOmecoming

When Jeremiah Danvers is rescued from Cadmus, Alex and Kara are thrilled to have their father back. The Danvers' arrange a family dinner to celebrate but things go awry when a suspicious Mon-El starts to question Jeremiah about his sudden return.

So how many people were actually surprised by the twist of this episode. Sadly they made it very obvious as to what was going to happen and we had to watch the Danvers girls get their hearts broken. This added to the buildup for next week’s episode when Jeremiah stole the files revealing the aliens on Earth. It was almost a lesson in; if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. That may be cynical a way of looking at the world, but in the world of television, it usually comes with a price. This episode helped to move the story along, but did not leave much for the audience to guess about.

Season 2: Episode 15 - Exodus

As Alex searches for Jeremiah and Kara investigates a series of alien kidnappings, the sisters realize they must break the rules to foil a new Cadmus plot. In an effort to get Snapper to run a story that would help her stop Cadmus, Kara agrees to set up an interview between Snapper and Supergirl.

Talk about the Danvers’ sisters justifying breaking the rules. But there seemed to be no consequences for Alex. It was almost as if it was expected and things were fine. Kara at least lost her job, but she seemed alright with that. So what message is this giving the audience? It is ok to break the rules so long as it’s for a good cause? Probably not a good thing for a superhero show to be portraying. Though having said that, what does Oliver do on a regular basis? The periodical round-up of aliens from Cadmus was heartbreaking to watch. It makes you think of another time when people of different race or ethnic background were segregated and persecuted for who they were. It was also heartbreaking with the Danvers’ sisters nearing the end, with the ship. It was hard to tell whether or not they would actually make it through. We have a week break until the next episode. All in all, this was a good way to push Cadmus’ portrayal of how far they would go. And it is also a bit of a reveal that Lena Luthor is quite possibly as innocent as she says she is, but there are those in Lex Corp who are not as loyal to her as we thought. That should come up in later episodes.

NEXT WEEK (1 week break)

Season 2: Episode 16 - Star-Crossed (Part 1)

A new villain comes to National City, putting Supergirl on high alert. Meanwhile, Winn's girlfriend, Lyra, gets Winn in trouble with the law. Maggie attempts to help Winn but old loyalties get in the way. The Music Meister attacks Supergirl.

THE FLASH

Season 3: Episode 14 - Attack on Central City

When Grodd and his army of gorillas bring the battle to Earth-1, The Flash and team must find a way to stop them before they destroy Central City. Gypsy returns to join the fight. Jesse Quick decides she wants to stay with Wally on Earth-1

It was really intriguing to see Harry and H.R. interacting, they really brought some comedy to the show. Seeing Gypsy again was great, especially her interactions with Cisco. Poor guy always goes for the bad girls. It will be interesting to have Jesse on the show again as a regular. As for the story, it was interesting, but didn’t really grab me. Some people adore the Grodd episodes, but they tend to bore me. It is just my opinion, but it seems for the time being, they have changed the future for Iris. Though, Barry’s decision not to check the timeline makes you wonder if they actually did it.

Season 3: Episode 15 - The Wrath of Savitar

While training with Barry, Wally starts to have visions of Savitar, which he hides from the team. A dangerous secret threatens Barry and Iris’ happiness.

Never Keep Secrets, especially in television. This episode demonstrates that several times, with the engagement, with Wally’s visions, and with the Philosopher’s stone.  There is no point in keeping them because they always come out in the end. It almost becomes cringe-worthy to see a character hiding something from someone because it will all come out. Having said that, this was a great episode for development of Wally’s character, as well as for Julian. We learn of his fears of Savitar. Unknowingly, Wally makes such a sacrifice in releasing Savitar and we get a very emotional ending to this episode. The hardest person to see react was Joe. Here is hoping that things pick up.

NEXT WEEK

Season 3: Episode 16 - Into the Speed Force

Desperate to stop Savitar and save his friends, Barry turns to the speed force for answers. H.R. gives Jesse some advice

LEGENDS OF TOMORROW

Season 2: Episode 13 - Land of the Lost

After capturing Rip, he forces the Waverider to crash, leaving the Legends stuck 70 million years in the past. Ray leads Amaya and Nate to recover a vital piece of the ship. In an effort to get the “good” Rip back, Rory suggests they enter Rip’s mind, but what Sara and Jaxx discover in his subconscious is not pleasant and they must fight evil versions of themselves. Meanwhile, Nate and Amaya continue to get closer, but it could cause serious ramifications

Welcome to Jurassic Park… I mean welcome back Legends. It was interesting that we had two stories in one episode, with the trio out in the wild with dinosaurs, and then Sarah and the team working to bring back Rip’s mind. It was interesting to see Gideon as a human, and the way Rip portrayed everyone in his mind. It was a really well-done episode and a really great way to bring Rip back to the Waverider. We also get a glimpse into cause and effect with some of the legends. Some are insignificant to the timeline and that is why they were recruited, but others, such as Amaya, must return to their timelines in order to be the cause of important parts of history. This reminds us of the dangers of time travel. All in all, this was a great episode. It was very interested to see inside Rip’s mind, and the fabricated people he had wandering about. But it is good to have him back as Captain Hunter.

NEXT WEEK

Season 2: Episode 14 - Moonshot

When the Legends track Commander Steel to NASA Headquarters in 1970, they learn where Nate’s grandfather hid the last fragment of the Spear of Destiny. The team notices a time aberration during the Apollo 13 mission and believes that the Legion of Doom might be involved. As the Legends journey into space to intercept Apollo 13, the Waverider suffers massive internal damage and Ray’s life is left in jeopardy when he is stranded on the moon. Meanwhile, tension grows between Rip and Sara as to who is the leader of the team.

ARROW

season 5: Episode 15 - Fighting Fire With Fire

Oliver faces his biggest challenge yet as mayor. Felicity continues down her dark path with Helix. After Vigilante attacks Oliver while he’s acting as the mayor, Diggle leads the team in a mission to stop Vigilante once and for all.

So once again the Green Arrow has been thrown under the bus. But this was a good move on Oliver’s part. The speech he gave as mayor was really well-done and gave a good reason for covering up the Arrow’s murder of a detective. Felicity takes a turn to the “dark side” when she decides to join up with Helix, and isn’t very quiet about it. After the things she had done in the last few episodes, this turn was expected. The work she did with Thea and then the work in Russia, tells us that she is capable of some very dark things, and I think we are about to see a new side to Felicity’s character.

NEXT WEEK

Season 5: Episode 16 - Checkmate

Oliver gets closer to the truth about Prometheus. Meanwhile, Helix refuses to continue helping Felicity until she does a favor for them

LEGION

Season 1: Episode 4 - Chapter 4

David's in trouble, while his friends search for answers

Wow, talk about a trip into the psychology of memory. This show is somewhat difficult to follow at times, but as a psychology graduate, I find it rather fascinating. I wish I could jump into my memories and watch them unfold like they do here with David. It is interesting to see certain facts about his life change, like not having a dog, or is it Bennie or Lennie that is his friend. We learn a bit about David’s history and that he is not as innocent as we thought in the beginning. All of this, along with some fascinating characters, made this a very well-done episode.

Season 1: Episode 5 – Chapter 5

David faces a new threat

This show gets weirder and weirder, but in such an amazingly good way. We really start to see the blur between the mutant abilities and the schizophrenic symptoms in this episode. The idea that David is Benny, Lennie, King, and whatever that last one was, is extremely interesting, but creepy at the same time. It will be interesting to watch this season over again once it is finished. It will be interesting to see the things again once we know the answers. As I said, this is a weird show, but entertaining as hell.

NEXT WEEK

Season 1: Episode 6 – Chapter 6

David goes back to where it all started.

 MARVEL’S IRON FIST

NEXT WEEK

Drops on Netflix March 17, 2016

Until next time...

Thanks for watching

[jayfromriverside-blog]

Comics I read this week: 9/9-9/13

Hey all, here’s a smattering of some of the books I read this week. Some interesting issues out this week, but also some disappointments:

Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #23

There were two driving forces behind my moral development as a child: Batman and the Power Rangers. It was more than a little disappointing to grow up and find out that you couldn’t just punch bad people and that solved things, but when Boom Studios started this Power Rangers comic, it reminded me of why I loved the Power Rangers in the first place.

I would definitely recommend this series to anyone who was a fan of the Rangers at any point, or who is looking for a good new Action book, but it comes with a caveat: This series is not easy to jump into, for 2 main reasons.

Though this is the better series, it’s not the first Power Rangers comic that Boom Studios currently has going, and unfortunately the first series goes further in depth on the larger Rangers Universe

The stories from each of the 2 Rangers books often reference or call back to elements from each other. This often means that keeping track of plot elements or continuity can get confusing between the 2 books if you’re not following along closely.

If you’re still interested in hopping into these comics, here would be the reading order I would suggest: start with this series (Go Go) for issues #1-20, as it covers the origins of the Rangers and their first year. Then start the mainline book, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. After you’re all caught up there, you should be good to jump back into Go Go without any issues, and can even hop between series with toooooo much confusion. 

Into the actual meat of this week’s issue: while the mainline series is much more focused on a grander Sci-Fi narrative, this series has a lot of the “monster-of-the-week” feel of the show. That’s definitely on display in this issue, where action and monster bashing take center stage. But what this comic has over the show is character depth and long-term story telling. The characters in this comic feel fleshed out and are evolving like real people, and while it’s definitely still fun, it doesn’t skimp out on the drama either. 

If you’re looking for a fun throwback to childhood with a little more emotional oomph for your mature soul, definitely give this book a go.

Justice League Odyssey #13

I’m genuinely surprised every time a new edition of this book comes out, cause I’m half expecting it to be quietly cancelled every other week. But hey, I’m not gonna complain, cause as much as the changes in art have been less than great, I’m still excited to see the Justice League Z-Team struggle with cosmic cleanup duty out in the Ghost Sector.

For anyone who hasn’t read this book and doesn’t feel like starting from the beginning, you could get away with hopping on now. It would be safe to say that the first 12 issues were the first arc of this comic, and that #13 is setting the groundwork for the second big arc. With the destruction of the Source Wall way back in No Justice, the Ghost Sector has been left as almost a wild-West out in deep space. If you’re a fan of Dex-Starr, Jessica Cruz and some other cosmic outcast characters, I’d hop on now and see if this book is for you.

For anyone currently reading this book, some minor opinions and SPOILERS AHEAD:

So Jess stayed dead for way shorter than even I thought. But hey, revival at the hands of the Omega Radiation that killed her only to be imbued with Omega Beam shooting fists seems almost poetic. I’m interested to see what the new cast of outcasts has to bring to the table in terms of opposing Darkseid and assaulting the Ghost Sector, especially now that our original team has been almost entirely converted into NEW New Gods. But it’s a welcome evolution of Jessica’s character to see her taking charge and leading a team, and more Dex-Starr in my life is always appreciated. 

On a less story focused note, the art in this new ark is good so far, but man, fuck whoever did the flashback sequence with Cyborg. On a page with his face popping up at least 5 or 6 times head on, you couldn’t remember or decide if his cybernetic side was on the left or the right? It flip flops every panel so that it’s facing away from the reader. It’s overall a minor thing, but c’mon, it’s not hard to keep that straight.

The Flash #78

I’m just tired at this point. 

The Flash’s mythos being re-written to have such an emphasis on the forces is just... really boring. The force users are pretty one-note characters and though Barry’s musings on life and trying to outrun Death are interesting, the rest of the chapter and this story arc haven’t been nearly as much. The art isn’t bad, but it’s not enough to save this title. If you’re gonna stick around for the Flash ride, have fun, let me know when it gets interesting again.

Young Justice #8

I think I mentioned it last week, but similar to Justice League Odyssey and the Terrifics, I think it’s a great idea for writers to take some of the smaller teams in the DCU out of the greater narrative and put them (effectively) in their own worlds. Better yet, Brian Michael Bendis seems to be having a ton of fun taking this young team on a multiverse-exploring adventure. 

While his work with Alias and Daredevil are some of my favorite books, I think Bendis does his best work when writing younger heroes. He seems to understand how to write entertaining young characters while making them believable, and most importantly not making them grating. 

If you need anymore convincing to get this series, and you maybe don’t fully trust Bendis after the pretty terrible years he’s had of late, then John Timms’ art should swing you. Timms has managed to strike a great balance between cartoonish modeling and dynamic action paneling which is difficult enough, but he’s also been switching up his art styles as the team goes from world to world. The guy is on top of his game right now and it’s perfectly complimenting Bendis’ universe-hopping story.

I don’t want to spoil this issue too much, but the team find themselves on Earth-3, the home of the Crime Syndicate, and face off against evil versions of themselves. While this issue was wall-to-wall action from the start, it managed to have some good character moments peppered throughout, and it looks like it might the start of the next micro-arc. This book has been great so far and only looks like it’s going to get better.

Batman Universe #3

I feel like I can’t judge this book fairly. 

I love pop-art, I’m a sucker for a good Batman story, and lighthearted superhero stories are exactly what I need to breakup the self-serious tones of a lot of the other superhero books I read. This book by Bendis and Nick Derington hits every single one of those beats. 

If you’re looking for a self-serious Batman book you’re looking in the wrong place; but if you’re looking for a book where Batman jokes with Green Lantern about how much he likes dinosaurs before being transported through time, then you’ve got a lot of fun ahead of you.

On a side note, DC put a huge amount of faith in Bendis giving him this series, Action Comics, Superman, Naomi and Young Justice. Aside from the main Superman book, which has been horrendous in every sense of the word, he’s been writing some of the best stuff he’s done in years. Not quite on par with his Daredevil or Ultimate Spider-Man runs, but still some really great stuff.

Detective Comics #1011

Last we left the Caped Crusader, he and a bunch of his billionaire friends were stranded on an island, with Bruce teamed up with a pair of crotchety WWII fighter pilots and his rich friends held captive by Deadshot. Basically we’re in a “Deadliest Game” scenario with Batman and Deadshot hunting each other on a remote island. It’s kind of like all the parts of “Arrow” that people have told me are actually good. I don’t know, I haven’t watched that show, it looks like hot garbage. 

Anyway, this 2-issue story was always just a stop-gap while Mr. Freeze (or the writers) figured out how to use the new technology boost from Lex Luthor. While I always appreciate a visit from Deadshot, as he’s one of Batman’s more under appreciated villains in my opinion, this story was pretty paint by numbers. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun, just that it was always the stuff coming next that felt more compelling. 

Event Leviathan #4

This book has been pretty interesting so far, but seems to have the fanbase pretty divided. I’ve seen a lot of comments on the latest issue claiming that nothing has actually happened in this story so far, and that we’re just watching Bendis spin his gears in search of a story. Maybe I’m a sucker for a good noir, but I would say that this story has had its share of action at the start, but unlike a lot of comics, it’s a slow burn story. I’m not nervous yet, as Bendis has experience with noir and has shown he can do it well.

I’m not saying that this book doesn’t have its problems: the art, while objectively impressive, is hard to parse out the details in some of the darker scenes with all of the texture filters thrown over it. Similarly, though I have faith that Bendis has an idea where this story is going, the last issue didn’t really make a ton of sense (until a little later in this issue, but at the time it wasn’t wholly believable).

Batman #78

It seems that so many people have soured on Tom King at this point that I’m in the minority saying that I’m still enjoying his run on Batman. I’m not saying it hasn’t been without its faults, I was gutted just like everyone else when issue 50 came out and tore a chance at tangible change in the Bat-universe out from under us fans. But King’s writing and storytelling, though self-indulgent at times, has been largely good and in clear pursuit of a single goal: to tell the story of Batman being broken, like he’s never been broken before. 

As fans we need to remember that the man was handed the reins to 100 issues of Batman and said he was going to tell 1 story. Not an event that would inform the rest of his run, but 1 singular story told over 100 issues. It was a herculean task and it was always going to be a slow burn, but we’re in the endgame now with City of Bane in full swing and Batman just beginning to look up from the pit he’s fallen in. He’s been physically and emotionally broken, shamed himself in front of his family and been discredited amongst his peers, and ultimately forced out of his own city. So let’s see the way back.

Ok, so this wasn’t a bad issue, but it wasn’t the right issue. I’m a huge fan of how Tom King has written Bat/Cat, and when combined with Clay Manpi’s art and paneling this issue feels like I’m watching a classic James Bond movie. But while watching Bat/Cat reconcile their issues that originally tore them apart was long overdue and felt great, this was not the right time for this issue. 

After being left on the cliffhanger of Damion being captured and ALFRED POTENTIALLY KILLED, seeing Bat and Cat talking at an island retreat was just too far removed and casual. This has probably been the biggest issue I’ve personally had with King’s run: timing. But it seems like it’s all kicking off in the next few issues, so let’s see where this all finally ends.