#that's why i stopped reading batman comics altogether

[vikingpoteto]

you mentioned it'd been awhile since you read that arc with babs talking about killing the joker (last laugh) and the max humor in the situation is that's in issue #3 and Dick is like where does it end Babs we can't kill. And then in issue #6 Dick thinks the Joker killed Tim and Dick beats the Joker to death. like idr Helena or somebody gives the Joker cpr as if somehow starting his heart will uncave in his diaphragm lmao

god, that's frustrating. See, I wouldn't mind that as a plot point if it was intentional or at least addressed. It makes sense that it's easy for Dick (or Bruce, or Tim, or anyone really) to say that they have to be better than that and then not follow through when emotions are high.

I don't mind suspending my disbelief and accepting characters surviving impossible situations if it meant a more interesting story, but the Joker surviving means that Dick doesn't have to examine his actions - and that WOULD make for an interesting arc since Dick is a really passionate and sometimes impulsive person.

I know comics are obsessed with keeping the status quo because changing it would mean they can't keep publishing the same character forever but the Joker went stale about 50 years ago and he brings nothing interesting to the story. The only reason he's alive is plot armor otherwise a random person with a gun would have killed him already. Hell, one of his goons would've, if not for being pushed too far, they would do it for self-defense.

[sunnymusingsao3]

Hello comic fandom fanfic writers! PSA Time (SA/rape mention warning):

Stop using the "hero breaks up a shady alleyway almost-rape" trope as a device for plot or characterization, when the plot does not center around the victim, or when the character focused on is the hero, and once again not the victim.

The threat of sexual violence is not and should never be a throwaway plot device to give your hero something to do that shows off their abilities or heart.

In addition to that: it perpetuates the myth that most rapes are performed by a stranger in a shady back alley (note: the fact that it always happens in a "sketchy part of town" is classist, and the hero asking the victim why they were walking alone in that neighborhood is victim blaming, regardless of the tone of the question).

Look. I get it. Sexual violence is a real plague on our society, and it's extremely common. It makes sense that someone like Batman, for example, might come across it in his line of work. In fact, in canon, he has, though I admit I don't know exact issue numbers off the top of my head. I can also point to a more substantial instance, in that Green Arrow has most definitely encountered a survivor of CSA in his line of work, given his connection to Mia Dearden (a fantastic character, btw). We know this comes up.

I am not asking you to erase the topic altogether. In fact, I'd prefer we didn't ignore sexual violence on the whole, since it is something that needs to be given awareness, in order to create understanding and help aid in prevention.

What I am saying is that, if you decide to breach the subject in your works, do your research and address it in full. Do not use it as a throwaway plot. Do not leave it untagged. Do not give your hero angst feelings about it ("what if I hadn't been fast enough...") that overshadow the victim's feelings, and most importantly: do not leave the victim's voice out of it. In fact, the victim's voice should be the primary voice that we hear in reference to the event, to how they would like to seek justice and healing, and how the experience has made them feel. This is not to say that you can't write about it from the perspective of the hero who stopped it, but if you do that, then make sure that the hero gives up story space to the victim to listen to them speak.

Sexual assault should be discussed in stories. It is good to raise awareness and I, like many survivors, like having the option to read and write about this topic as a form of catharsis, release, or comfort. Telling these stories can be good, when done in such a way that lifts the voices of the survivors and centers them as the focal point or authority on the experiences that they faced.

When survivors are not centered in the story, we immediately face further harm and silencing. It hurts the entire community when rape, almost-rape, or any other type of sexual violence and assault, is treated like it's just a device to further someone else's narrative.

Stop discarding your almost-rape victims in the alleyway that they were attacked in.

[meterokinesis]

Stars as Sharp as Knives

Read it on AO3

Prompt: stabbed

TW: Violence, PTSD, Disassociation

Summary: Tim remembered getting stabbed in vivid detail. The images were horrifying on their own, but together they formed a sick film that played on loop in Tim’s mind. Even after waking up the next morning, and the morning after that, he kept wondering: why am I alive?

Tim remembered getting stabbed in vivid detail.

In a job like this, where you either saved the day or ruined it all, he was used to cuts and scrapes and wounds. He anticipated them even, which the first aid kid he kept in his utility belt could attest to. But getting stabbed that night in the desert was something else.

The sound of steel through flesh. A cruel whisper. Blood, warm and sticky. Sand in his nose and eyes. Cool near-winter wind that ruffled through his hair. Dirt under fingernails. The weight of a body dragged behind him. Brick walls with metal stairs. A soft bed, with downy pillows stained rust.

The images were horrifying on their own, but together they formed a sick film that played on loop in Tim’s mind. Even after waking up the next morning, and the morning after that, he kept wondering: why am I alive?

This was a question he’d been asking himself for longer than he cared to admit. He was alive because no one had managed to kill him yet, and no more. If the universe had its way, he would be dead eight times over. Tim was just lucky, he supposed. But not lucky enough to escape the nightmares.

He remembered while attempting to sleep in the lavish jail cell Ra’s al Ghul concocted for him. He remembered while training with high level assassins, every time they went for a jab at his stomach. He remembered when Tam hugged him, and his reflex was to make sure she didn’t have a knife. He remembered on his first night back in Gotham, when he had to update his medical records to say “Patient has no spleen after a traumatic injury to the abdomen.”

The nightmares were the worst. They played out the scene in gory detail, each time with a new sort of reverence for Tim’s suffering. It wasn’t always the Widower who stabbed him; sometimes it was his father, or Jason, or Damian, or the mugger that killed Bruce’s parents. On bad nights, it was Bruce. On worse nights, it was Stephanie.

The nightmares persisted long after he defeated Ra’s al Ghul at Wayne Enterprises, long after Bruce finally returned and Tim was welcomed home with open arms. No, they lasted for months--every night a sick remembrance.

                                     ____________________

The first time he sparred with Dick after ending Ra’s plot, he used the new skills he picked up at the Cradle. At first they traded blows lazily, wearing down the floor by walking the same steps of a familiar dance. Then Tim dared to spin out--try one little move--and the game was afoot.

Tim didn’t pretend that he was better than Dick--he knew he wasn’t. But he had more range and was the better strategist, so at least their spars were interesting. They danced around the mat, neither submitting. Like all of their practices, it went until someone gave in or passed out. The Waynes never called out.

Dick went for Tim’s shoulder with his escrima sticks, which Tim blocked with his bo staff. By the time he registered the other stick moving toward his stomach, it was too late.

Forgoing all sense of etiquette, Tim roared and swung out with his staff, trying not to relish in the feeling of it connecting with Dick’s head.

“Jesus, Tim, what was that?” Dick’s voice floated from somewhere above. “I know we didn’t specify ‘no headshots’ but it seems like a giv- holyshitareyouokay?” It was then that Tim realized he was sitting on the ground, his head between his knees and his hands protecting his neck. In a way, he looked like the tornado drills they made him do at school, even though Gotham never had tornadoes. His body didn’t feel entirely real, like instead of inhabiting it like always, he was merely borrowing it for a second.

Dick’s voice, no doubt saying something reassuring, murmured in his ear. The words all blended together in a soup of pleasant sounds, one that Tim didn’t even attempt to decipher. Somewhere in the haze, he heard the telltale click of the comms, followed a few minutes later by heavy footfalls.

Bruce’s gruff voice took over for Dick’s soothing one, asking him questions that he didn’t know how to answer. Even if he could, he wasn’t entirely sure his mouth was still a mouth, let alone one that could form words. Instead, his brain gave him a front-row seat for the premiere of his least favorite movie in existence, where Dick stabbed Tim in the abdomen, his face contorted into something evil and totally unlike Dick. The Not-Dick didn’t stop after the first time, of course. Instead the scene rewinded over and over again, like a broken film from a museum about the tragedies of war.

Tim didn’t remember anything past that.

                                      ____________________

Tim woke up in his bed at the Manor, his heartbeat thunderous but slow. He opened bleary eyes to see Bruce sitting in the armchair near his window, reading a copy of the Wendy the Werewolf Stalker comic tie-ins Bart had given him last year for Hanukkah.

“Good morning. Or, should I say, evening. You almost slept for a full day,” Bruce said warmly, closing the book.

Tim didn’t return his tone. “Why are you here?” He demanded, clutching his blankets where they fell on his lap.

“Do you remember what happened last night?” Bruce avoided the question with trained ease, something Tim saw much too often in himself.

“I- Yeah. A little.” He remembered Dick stabbing him, but that couldn’t be Dick, right? They were in the desert, and it would take at least a day to get from the Syrian Desert to Gotham. His hand wandered over to his stomach. No open wounds or bandages, but there was a long scar.

“You disassociated. Do you know what that means?” Bruce asked, and Tim nodded mechanically. “We think that something during sparring practice triggered a trauma response.”

Tim heard the words, but he wasn’t sure his brain was following all the way.

“I’m fine, B. I just freaked out a little. No big deal.”

Bruce leveled his dad-stare at Tim. “Tim, with all due respect, that was not ‘freaking out a little.’ You were curled up in a ball on the mat, refusing to speak to us. When we managed to coax you into a sitting position, you attacked me. We had to put you in a safe hold until you calmed down.”

Tim opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“I think we need to talk about this. I understand if you don’t feel safe yet, you’ve been through a lot over the past year. I love you and I want to be here for you, but if a professional would help, we can do that too. Dick knows this guy in Metropolis-”

“No!” The word was out of Tim’s mouth before he could stop it, followed by a torrent of others. “I don’t need a shrink. I’m fine. Can I leave now? Or are you going to keep me prisoner like he did?”

“Of course not,” Bruce said, his voice heartbreakingly gentle. “This is your home, Tim. You can come and go as you please. However, I think we need to talk about-”

“Cool. Later.” Tim rolled out of bed and tugged on shoes and a jacket as Bruce tried to reason with him. They both knew that he could try to keep Tim here, either with logic or the threat of getting grounded, but neither would work. At his best, Tim was tenacious. At his worst, he was stubborn.

Tim traipsed down the grand staircase as Bruce followed behind him. Damian glowered at him from the sitting room, but at least he didn’t say anything. Dick was nowhere to be found. Tim pushed his way out of the manor, a small smile of satisfaction crossing his face when the door slammed and cut off Bruce’s pleas. It reminded him of every bad teen movie he’d ever watched, except the exhausted dad and pushy mom were replaced by Batman. Wasn’t that every kid’s dream?

                                       ____________________

He wandered through Bristol township, avoiding the spots he knew the paparazzi liked to frequent. Wouldn’t that be a million-dollar picture: Bruce Wayne’s high-school-dropout-turned-CEO son walking through the sea of McMansions in converse, a kid’s tracker bracelet, pyjama pants, and Cass’s purple NorthFace.

He was on some cul-de-sac where every house looked the same when he heard the telltale swish of someone following him. He didn’t turn around, just kept up his leisurely pace. Either they’d announce themselves, or they wouldn’t.

He got his answer when a hand snaked over his chest and a body pressed against his back, stopping him in his tracks.

“Hello, Detective,” Scarab whispered in his ear, and Tim’s veins turned to ice. Her hand cupped his face, and she slid around to his front. Tim didn’t believe in God, but he had no doubt that she was Satan incarnate.

“I have a gift for you,” she purred, her hands tracing his sides and back. He didn’t dare respond. “It’s from your friend.”

Tim swore his heart stopped. Ra’s al Ghul didn’t send gifts, he sent warnings. And threats. And death. Which is why he wasn’t entirely surprised when Scarab drove a knife into his chest with a sort of tender ruthlessness. She guided him to the ground, left a ghost of a kiss on his temple, and stepped out of view.

Tim lay gasping on the pavement, trying not to bleed out. His fingertips brushed the bracelet, weakly holding down to send out a tracking signal. If he was lucky, they’d see it. If not, then he’d die. It was that simple.

The stars here were dimmer than the ones in the desert. It was all the light pollution, he knew. Same stars, but an altogether different sky. There was a metaphor there somewhere, but he had lost too much blood to focus enough to find one.

His eyelids felt heavy, and it took everything in him to keep them open. Bruce would be here soon. He had to be. He was Batman, that’s what he did.

As Tim staggered through each breath, he couldn’t help but remark the irony of it all. He’d spent all this time worried about one old wound that he hadn’t seen the next one coming.

[ao3feed-timdrake]

Tightrope

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2LIAY9P

by Acxa_Kogane

Time passed with baited breath as the gentle wind swept through the void, lightly pressing against Tim's outstretched fingers and playing with his hair. 

The two who stood at the beginning of the rope never took their eyes away from the one that was floating above the shadows.

Then, the careful steps began to slow, and suddenly stopped altogether.

Words: 2493, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: Major Character Death

Categories: Gen

Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Alfred Pennyworth, Damian Wayne

Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Alfred Pennyworth, Alfred Pennyworth & Jason Todd

Additional Tags: Feels, Sad with a Happy Ending, batbros, Depression, Thoughts of suicide (kinda), Tim Drake is Red Robin, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd is a good brother, Tim is my baby why am I hurting him, babybird, platonic, Character Death, (s), Everybody Dies, I'm Sorry

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2LIAY9P

[justiceleaque]

hey if its possible could u like? summarize the preboot -> new 52 -> rebirth transition in simple terms for me?? im sorry to ask this but im just getting into comics and i dont get it like. at all. ive tried reading wikipedia and comicvine and stuff but its just going over my head completely. thank you!!

k listen up

we have pre-flashpoint continuity. that’s the main dcu continuity up until 2011. heroes are established, they have families and relationships and all that good stuff but it’s all getting too complicated for new readers. there’s too much history for a new peeper to jump in and understand without putting in the work required so DC decides to help with that

“help”

““““help”“““

flashpoint happens and after certain events, everyone gets rebooted into what we call the new 52. established heroes are generally younger now and don’t have the families or bonds they did before. certain characters are re-written or omitted altogether. the dcu storyline and events start anew as if nothing happened before

a few years before the new 52 stopped, an event called convergence happens. brainiac decides to pick certain words from different universes and pit them against each other for survival. that works out approximately as well as you think it does (it doesn’t), and pre-flashpoint clark kent and lois lane end up finding shelter in the new 52 universe (it’s implied their pre-flashpoint earth is gone now)

that means that we now have new 52 superman AND pre-flashpoint superman hanging around at the same time, same place

that’s cool

it isn’t

well it’s cool for me, DC doesn’t like it though

pre-flashpoint clark doesn’t make his presence known. lois is pregnant and gives birth to their son, so he sticks with his family or saves the day away from the spotlight

i would too can you imagine batman all up in my business like “why are there two of you. i can barely deal with one of you”

shit happens and new 52 superman dies. note: i’m sad

that brings us into rebirth. rebirth is the new 52 continuing, but DC is now trying to fix things. it’s not a reboot, it’s just a new era

the clark that’s left (pre-flashpoint one) is more or less forced to make his presence known because the world needs a superman (and Bald McRichman also known as lex luthor to a few select briefly tries to become superman too. sit your ass down)

at some point pre-flashpoint and n52 clark become one

don’t question it

there are other things going on right now that i’m not even aware of because i’m lazy but that’s the main gist of it all. i hope it helps even a little bit. not following the events when they happened was hell for some people, but i was lucky to be there when every fuckery unfolded before my very eyes

[blackbatpurplecat]

My Thoughts on Batman #50

Originally, I had not planned on writing a review on the latest Batman disaster, eh I of course mean issue. Many people have already said many things about it so it’s impossible for me to say anything new. But a few lovely kittybats have asked me for my opinion so here we are.

So what’s the shameless clickbait’s story: I have no idea how much time has passed since the rushed proposal and now but while beating up Kite Man, Batman and Catwoman spontaneously set up a rushed wedding for the same night. Quelle surprise. They don’t want to invite any of their loved ones except for one witness each and a drunk as fuck judge. You know, everyone’s dream wedding. This is like drunk Las Vegas levels of romantic.

Batman goes to a bar to get a drunk judge. Not even very subtly but for everyone to see because he’s “the master of disguise.” And Catwoman gets Holly out of Arkham. Because for whATEVER THE FUCK REASON, Selina is STILL friends with the mass murdering psychopath who doesn’t give a fuck about Selina, was okay with Selina dying for her and also tried to kill the man Selina allegedly loves.

Bruce comes home to prepare with Alfred. Selina brings her deranged mass murderer to Wayne Manor to help her put on her cat funeral dress. The toxic fumes from the sewers Selina had dragged the dress through have apparently finally kicked in because it’s not black/white anymore but black/lilac.

Both pairs leave their walk-in closets at the same time, see each other, Bruce and Selina kiss, and then each pair goes to another room to have a last moment of whatever. I mean they’re ready, they could just leave then and there! Grab the limo and go, what’s so hard about that?!

In the most touching moment of the issue, Bruce asks Alfred to be his witness. Then father and son hug. They don’t even use that many words, it’s just a simple understanding of mutual love. It’s beautiful. Though while I smiled at those panels, I wish a moment between the groom and the groom’s father was not the loveliest display of affection in a fucking WEDDING issue but who cares.

Meanwhile, Selina and Holly talk. Holly says that she’s never seen Batman so happy and that she’s always thought Batman can’t be happy to be who he is. On the way to the rooftop they want to get married on (because that’s ALL there is to those two characters. fuck you, King), Selina seems concerned. She’s written a letter to Bruce to express her feelings for him but hasn’t finished it yet. Then she asks Holly if she thinks that Catwoman’s a hero. Holly says “yeah sure” while looking absolutely sincere and caring and NOT suspicious AT ALL.

Seriously WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! Why not write I AM EVIL on her forehead as if we wouldn’t already know how fucked up Holly is. After EVERYTHING, why are we supposed to think that Holly is Selina’s friend?! Why does Selina still think she’s her friend?!

But I digress.

So while Selina is apparently wondering if she’s worthy of the BIG HERO BATMAN, Bruce asks Alfred if he can be happy. Alfred answers “yeah sure.” I mean it’s not as if Bruce has ever been happy before, right? He only has a loving father, a big family, good friends and colleagues. No one of them makes him feel any happiness ever.

We cut back to Selina who’s crying on a different rooftop. She’s finished her letter to Bruce in which she explains why she can’t marry him, and put it in the Batcave for him to read later. Later as in after she’s torn out his heart. She throws away her ridiculous cat ears veil and jumps off. Then we cut back to the “wedding.” Bruce, Alfred, and the drunk judge have been waiting for a long while. By the way, I have NO idea where Bruce had stored the judge while he was getting ready! Was he in the Batmobile’s trunk? Chained to the rooftop? We’ll never know.

Alfred tries to explain away Selina being late but Bruce knows she won’t come. He throws away his tie and jumps off, leaving Alfred yet again to deal with everything. But this time, it’s understandable. That man, who doesn’t trust easily, has just been stood up at the altar by the woman he loves.

I know they’ll probably reconcile eventually in the distant future because COMICS but in reality, that relationship would be fucked beyond repair. You leave me at the altar without a word? You are fucking dead to me and I don’t EVER want to see or hear from you again.

We then see Holly at Arkham Asylum. Selina had apparently locked her back up, that’s why Holly is walking around now (WTF?!). Holly enters a cell or the basement or whatever that place is and kneels before Bane and his homies, consisting of Riddler, Joker, Hugo Strange, Scarface (and the Hand up his ass), Flashpoint Batman a.k.a. Thomas Wayne and characters I don’t care to look up.

It’s revealed that everything has been Bane’s plan! I’m not 100% sure how far back this revelation goes but I’m guessing to the beginning. Bane had recruited Batman’s enemies and allies(?) to carry out an impossible to foresee chain of events that would result in Batman being emotionally broken. Everything was set up so Batman would get Selina out of Arkham to fight Bane and from there, Bane had hoped things would unfold just the way he wanted...? What is this, the DCEU?

So Thomas Wayne talked Bruce into the rushed proposal - what if Bruce had not fallen for it? Joker told Selina to break up with Batman - she seemed more than sure of herself and why should she care what JOKER says?! Holly told Selina she makes Bruce happy - and THAT made Selina question everything?!

It’s dumb. As always.

What I haven’t really mentioned so far are the letters Bruce and Selina had written to each other for after the wedding. I thought that’s what vows are for but what do I know. King once again refers to apparently the only issues he’s ever read about Batman and Catwoman and shows us ONCE AGAIN his poor writing skills:

So Bruce remembers how they met in Batman #1 (1940). How The Cat was just another criminal until he saw her eyes. He saw that her green eyes were actually blue and orange and red and purple and yellow and I have absolutely no idea what drugs Bruce was on that day. And because Selina’s green eyes were blue, he knew she was different, a mystery to be solved. But she’s not a mystery to be solved. And because she’s not a mystery to be solved, he realized HE can’t be solved, can be more than the boy who lost his parents, can be the man who loves her. Alright. Cool essay on eyes, Bruce. Your color theory was a bit off but you proved you’ve heard of it. Now you wanna tell her what you love about Selina’s character? Or why you love her? No? Okay.

Selina remembers how they met in Batman: Year One #1 (1987). How an undercover Bruce tried to save Holly and how Selina beat him up for it. (I still don’t know how Selina knows that was him) She thought he was just another asshole (for saving your asshole friend... Selina, I believe you are the asshole here) until she saw his eyes. She saw that his blue eyes were actually white and yellow and green. What the fuck?! Had Scarecrow farted that day and the fumes were all over Gotham?! Are they all high all the time?! And because his blue eyes weren’t really blue, she knew he was different, a perfect hero without flaws. But he’s not a perfect hero without flaws, he’s still the boy in pain who despite the pain, goes out to save everyone. He’s still a child and that makes him a hero and Selina realized if she married that heroic child, Bruce would be happy and stop trying to save the weak and innocent. She can’t do that to Gotham. So as a heroic sacrifice, she’ll break his heart and not show up to the wedding so he can be super fucking miserable to be in better shape to save people. Selina, even I wouldn’t want to marry you after you pulled this dumb shit.

Yes, we’re back to that old and fucking idiotic idea that Batman can never be happy; that Batman has to be a miserable, depressed, sad fuck to be Batman. Whoop dee doo. That certainly has NEVER been brought up in the comics. Let’s ignore that Batman goes out to save people DESPITE being depressed, not BECAUSE. That he’s turned sadness into something good. And that being married to the love of his life does not magically cure depression. That being happy is just another motivator to go out and save people. Yup, let’s ignore logic altogether.

So without considering everything behind the scenes, it’s an okay issue. It’s nothing special, it’s not outstandingly written but rather hacky (because it’s King). It has pretty art (because it’s Jones) and it’s basically an art gallery. We get many absolutely gorgeous pieces, MUCH better than most variant covers, of Batman and Catwoman. Some are original, some reference old stories. I was very happy to see some purple Catwoman art there!

All in all, Batman #50 was dull.

---

Now on to the clusterfuck behind the scenes:

You all already know that I’ve never liked Tom King’s writing. He has nice ideas but his execution is utterly awful. He doesn’t understand the characters he’s writing, he doesn’t get their motivations, he’s turned Selina into a stupid Mary Sue, he has no consistent time line etc etc. There’s a lot wrong with King’s run but BatCat fans were so starved for more BatCat that they were willing to overlook the dumbness and just enjoy the BatCat interaction. Even though Bruce and Selina very rarely interacted or even shared panels in that 50 issues run.

Ironically, I want to use King’s words here to describe him and his style:

He thinks he knows something deep. Profound. But he doesn’t know a damn thing.

Then DC and King proudly announced that #50 would be the big WEDDING ISSUE, the thing everyone’s waited for. I was suspicious. But NO WE MEAN IT YOU ARE INVITED TO THE WEDDING HERE YOU HAVE A WEDDING ALBUM AND HERE IS THE DRESS AND THE BACHELORETTE PARTY AND WE SEND TOM KING TO TALK ABOUT BATCAT’S LOVE ON TV AND THE ISSUE WILL HAVE 5000 VARIANT COVERS MARK THE DATE JULY 4TH THE WEDDING WEDDING WEDDING NOT A TRICK THIS TIME

The closer the date came, the more I was willing to think “hm maybe they’ll actually do it, they even gave Catwoman her solo run back, I’m sure Selina being married to Bruce will give Jones many ideas to write about, we’ll get a married woman in her own solo title and a married Batman, and why would they get so many artists to draw variant covers if it’s not happening, it would be SUCH a HUGE dick move if they canceled it at the last second”

But then DC did what they do best - disappoint. They themselves spoiled the ending a few days before the issue came out. While artists were still showing off their wedding pieces, while comic book stores were preparing events with decoration and cake and costumes, while people were putting #50 on their pre-order list, DC pulled the rug out from under EVERYONE’s feet.

It was ALL a big setup. A marketing stunt to boost sales. And unfortunately, it was successful. Doesn’t matter how many fans were disappointed and hurt, how many fans canceled their pre-orders - the numbers were big and black and that was what mattered.

After the big spoiler, King headed to Twitter, trying to do some damage control. I AM SO ANGRY PLEASE DON’T BE DISAPPOINTED THERE ARE STILL 50 MORE ISSUES TO COME PLEASE BUY MORE OF MY COMICS I PROMISE MY STORY ARC IS TOTALLY CELEBRATING BATCAT’S LOVE JUST STAY AND BUY MY COMICS

You ever heard of the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf? King, DC, you blew it. You blew it BIG time! I even dare to say you’ve never blown it like this before! Sure, you’ve disappointed and treated us like shit before but this time, people actually believed you. New readers who had not been burned by you trusted you and old readers desperately wanted to trust you because we all love that iconic couple.

What makes this entire affair worse than everything else is the huge buildup. You assured us #50 would be the game changer, you put so much effort into fooling us, so much money to set up a ploy. Fans are deeply disappointed because they had thought this was FINALLY the real deal after all those years. I mean BatCat have been married before. Many times. But it was always either AU stories or you rebooted it. And it had never been hyped up like this before.

Personally, I’m tired of being right. I’m tired of the same old spiel over and over. I wanted it to be real for everyone who got excited over it but what I had feared would happen happened. I’m kinda glad I never got into King’s run because that meant I wasn’t that badly hurt. But I saw the reactions of other fans and my heart goes out to all of them.

DC and King could have simply published a comic with a huge FUCK YOU splash page as centerfold. And the worst part is THAT WAS IT! The hype is dead, hope and trust are gone. Even IF Bruce and Selina eventually get married in #100, the pure happiness and excitement will never come back. It’ll be tainted, we will all be wary, no one will dare to get their hopes up again. Now everyone feels like I felt after the proposal issue; it was the big first time and it was bad. The first time can never be recreated and that wedding craze can never be recreated either.

And we don’t have any reason to feel safe. Again, even IF the wedding happens in the last issue (and I’m sure it would be the last issue as the BIG FINALE because no one wants to write or read about badass characters being married, marriage is boring after all), DC will eventually get another writer. Who tells me the next writer won’t break them up again? Who tells me King will actually let them get married in the first place? He’s lied to us before, why still have faith in him?

So after #50, we’ll get more issues of a depressed Batman who will hunt down Bane and make up with Selina (even though I doubt she deserves it). Maybe we’ll see the Batfamily’s reaction to the fucked up wedding (judging by King’s tropes, it’ll happen over burgers), each member’s relationship with Selina will be strained, maybe Holly gets her ass kicked, I don’t know.

And frankly, I don’t care. I don’t want to read the same bullshit I’ve been reading for years just written more poorly (because it’s King). I wanted to see Bruce and Selina together. I didn’t get it so who gives a fuck anymore.

I’m only excited for the TRUE Bruce x Selina wedding that’s coming up in Chris Dee’s Cat-Tales fanfic. I know she won’t disappoint her readers.

[the-desolated-quill]

Avengers: Infinity War - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

Sometimes I think back to when the MCU first started. How excited I was that the Avengers were finally on the big screen. The attention to detail in regards to world building and character dynamics. There was no limit to the possibilities involved here. Us geeks were living the dream. Compare that to the MCU now. A bloated, cynical sequel factory churning out blander and blander movies each year, over-saturating the medium with what is, essentially, glorified B movies. Whenever I think about the MCU nowadays, I recall that scene near the end of The Dark Knight when the Joker says to Batman; “I think you and I are destined to do this forever.” That’s how I feel about Marvel movies now. I just feel this permanent sense of ennui. It’s like being trapped in a loveless marriage. Once there was passion and fireworks, but now the spark has gone out of the relationship and I’m silently praying for some kind of respite that will never come.

Avengers: Infinity War is a landmark movie in more ways than one. It represents the culmination of 10 years worth of collaborative filmmaking, it’s quite possibly the most ambitious crossover to date, but it also in many ways signifies just what a stupid, dull, incoherent mess this shared universe has turned into.

As you can probably tell by now, I didn’t exactly go into this film with high expectations. Going through the MCU in recent years has been like walking through a scorching desert without end. Black Panther provided a kind of temporary oasis, full of palm trees, beautiful lagoons and a luxury spa, but sadly I had to leave this paradise behind to brave the desert wastes once again. And having experienced that moment of sheer bliss in that oasis, the harshness of the desert sands feel all the more unbearable. But even then, as I took my seat in the cinema, I foolishly had a small glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, Infinity War wouldn’t be so bad. It’s directed by the Russo Brothers after all. They made the brilliant Captain America: The Winter Soldier and pleasantly surprised me with Captain America: Civil War. I remember going into Civil War with the same pessimistic feeling, and while it wasn’t a perfect movie by any means, it was a lot better than it had any right to be. If anyone could make Infinity War work, surely it would be them, right?

Sadly it seems we’ve finally found the Russos’ breaking point. Avengers: Infinity War was utterly tedious to sit through. I was bored to tears. Not only was I struggling to make sense of what was going on half the time, I didn’t care about what was going on neither.

Let’s start with the most glaring and obvious problem. The characters. There are WAY too many of them. I swear you could easily have gotten a whole trilogy out of this. In fact I honestly would have preferred that. It would have given the story more room to breathe. Instead everything is just crammed into one overly long film that constantly jumps to different locations every couple of minutes as though the filmmakers have some form of ADHD, and none of the characters are allowed to get any kind of development. In fact they’re not characters at all. They’re chess pieces. They show up on screen, do what the script requires them to do, and then disappear once their purpose has been fulfilled.

There were some moments that could have been more impactful, like scenes involving Thanos and Gamora, Vision and Scarlet Witch, or Loki and Thor, but they don’t have nearly the emotional resonance they should have because they’re essentially fighting for space in this gigantic clusterfuck. Other characters, like Captain America and Black Panther, are forced to become these dull, shallow caricatures because the story just doesn’t have any room for them to really shine or come into their own. The focus isn’t on telling an engaging story or developing the characters, but instead on these massive, computer generated action scenes that I simply don’t give a shit about (in fact the final fight in Wakanda reminded me rather horribly of the battle on Naboo in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace). Not to mention, due to how poorly this whole arc with the Infinity Stones has been handled over the course of these movies, Infinity War spends most of its time explaining to the audience just what the fuck is going on and reminding everyone where all the characters are at. Doctor Strange in particular seems to only be there to provide exposition. (Quick side note, the Eye of Agamotto is an Infinity Stone? I’m sorry, have Marvel Studios ever even so much as glanced at a Doctor Strange comic before?!)

Oh yes. After all my ranting over the years about what a racist piece of shit the Doctor Strange movie is and how I stubbornly refuse to watch it despite being a huge fan of the comics, you’re no doubt wondering what I thought of the Sorcerer Supreme considering this is the first time I’ve properly got to see him in action. He’s... fine, I guess. Benedict Cumberbatch was about as good as I expected him to be, given what he has to work with here. Aside from a bit near the end, they don’t go nearly as psychedelic or as imaginative with the magic as I would have liked them to. All Strange ever seemed to do was just use these glowing disc things or this energy whip. Also the Cloak of Levitation seems to have a mind of its own. I don’t get the purpose behind that at all. But do you know what the biggest problem is with Doctor Strange? The same problem as most of the other male characters. They all sound exactly the fucking same. This is something a few people on Tumblr have commented on before, and it’s really noticeable in this film. The dialogue is practically interchangeable to the point where characters like Strange, Iron Man and Star Lord start to just blur together. There’s no two ways around it. This is just bad writing.

The crappiness isn’t limited to the protagonists neither. No, the villain Thanos is just as shit, although that didn’t come as much of a surprise. He’s meant to be the supposed Big Bad of the MCU, and yet there’s been no buildup whatsoever. In these 19 Marvel movies, Thanos has only appeared twice, both in post credit scenes. We have no idea who the fuck he is or what he’s doing. So the Russos have to shove in a hackneyed backstory and motivation for the fucker, and good God is it bad. Like... insultingly bad. Marvel often like to brag about how they planned all of this from the beginning, but Infinity War proves otherwise. His whole plot doesn’t make any sense and was clearly just pulled out of some hack screenwriter’s nether regions, we don’t fully understand what’s driving him to do something so mind bogglingly daft in the first place, and any attempts to wring any emotion out of us and make us empathise with the prat just end up falling flat on their face. I know Marvel have always had a villain problem, but this is just embarrassing now.

And then there’s the ending. Holy fuck do I hate the ending! Marvel have done some bad shit before, but this has got to be the most insulting thing I think I’ve ever seen from them. Without giving too much away, critics and fans (aka idiots) have been using buzzwords like ‘shocking’ and ‘gamechanging’ to describe the ending, but that’s objectively bollocks. For one thing, the Russos have had ‘gamechanging’ moments in their movies before and they never seem to stick (think back to SHIELD being destroyed in Winter Soldier or Iron Man’s dubious morality in Civil War), but the big pisstake for me is that Marvel have already announced their next set of movies. So we know what happens at the end of Infinity War isn’t permanent... and yet they still expect us to be emotionally devastated by it. Fuck off!

I’ve said a few times in the past that Marvel need to take a break. I’m now going to go one further. Marvel need to stop making movies altogether. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe needs to end. 

I’m sorry, but I’m just so bloody sick of this. I’m sick of these cut and paste movies with no thought or effort being put into them. I’m sick of Marvel’s cynical greed and utter contempt for their audience. I’m sick of fans and critics kissing their arses and saying that MCU movies are the best when they’re so clearly fucking not. Ever since Doctor Strange came out, I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody is actually watching these movies. They’re basically the cinematic equivalent of dangling your keys in front of a toddlers face. Just show a few pretty colours, some punch-ups and bad jokes, and that should keep the plebs quiet for a couple of hours. But if you were to actually engage your brain, these movies quickly fall apart. I mean just look at the sheer bloody number of news articles discussing what happened leading up to Infinity War and posing theories as to why certain characters behaved the way that they did in the movie. Shouldn’t that give just a little bit of a hint? if your story has become so stupid and convoluted that people have to read news articles and stuff to make any sense of the fucking thing, maybe you’re doing something wrong.

No. That’s it. I’m done. I’m not watching anymore of these bloody movies. Infinity War sucked donkey balls and I never want to see it or any other MCU movie ever again.

[fyeahbatcat]

Batman Annual 2: A Romantic Opus About the Transcendence of Love

This past Wednesday, DC Comics released the highly anticipated Batman Annual #2, by Tom King with art by Lee Weeks and Michael Lark. The issue, which promised to “see the early days of the Bat and the Cat”, went far above and beyond a mere Batman and Catwoman date night tale. A story that is less dense in plot but rich in narrative with truly amazing art and breathtaking coloring, the Annual is an emotional game changer that easily inserts itself as one of the greatest Batman and Catwoman stories of all time and opens the door for much broader implications for the future of Bat and Cat.

The Rebirth of the Bat and the Cat

After more than half a decade spent on the back-burner (the way back-burner) writer Tom King has spent much of his eighteen month tenure as the Batman head-writer reestablishing the relationship between Batman and Catwoman. He made it clear that the relationship would be a major focal point in the Batman books, rather than the standard obligatory romantic subplot when he made the surprising decision to have Batman propose to Catwoman earlier this year. Perhaps even more surprisingly Catwoman accepted Batman’s proposal after a long wait. 

The relationship between Batman and Catwoman is long and ever changing. It began in Batman #1 in 1940 as flirtatious frenemies and was established as a canon relationship during the Bronze Age under the tutelage of Len Wein. The relationship broke out of the comics in the 1990s and went on to become one of DC Comics’ most recognized and popular relationships. Having been featured in two live-action television shows, three movies, countless animated series, and thousands of comics the romance between Gotham’s hard line crime-fighter and most infamous femme fatale endeared themselves to fans and writers alike and the relationship was allowed to be pushed forward. In 2003 during the Hush storyline by Jeph Loeb, in a demonstration of trust Batman revealed his identity to Catwoman for the first time. During the time that followed the relationship received more focus and development than in previous eras. However, by the time the Pre-Flashpoint era ended in 2011 things ended between Batman and Catwoman in the finale of the Gotham City Sirens series where it usually ended: in limbo. 

Unfortunately, the succeeding era, New 52, saw a baffling destruction of DC’s legacies. Legacies were eliminated, histories were changed, and some characters were erased altogether. Romance was hit particularly hard and nearly every DC relationship was eradicated. Superman and Lois Lane’s fifteen year marriage was wiped out and Lois was virtually exiled from the Superman universe. Green Arrow and Black Canary became strangers and remained that way much to the ire of fans. Although Wonder Woman’s original love interest, Steve Trevor, returned to the comics more prominently than he had been in the previous era, Wonder Woman was quickly shuffled into a relationship with Superman. 

In an embarrassing episode in 2013 DC made their new stance on romance abundantly clear when Batwoman writers, W. Haden Black and J.H. Williams III, abruptly resigned from the critically acclaimed, best-selling series after DC refused to allow the titular character to marry her longtime partner and other instances of editorial interference. DC Comics was accused of homophobia and many fans vowed to stop reading the comics. Responding to the controversy, Co-Publisher Dan Didio, said in no uncertain terms that marriage was forbidden at DC Comics. 

They put on a cape and cowl for a reason. They’re committed to defending others — at the sacrifice of all their own personal instincts. That’s something we reinforce. If you look at every one of the characters in the Batman family, their personal lives kind of suck…Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, and Kathy Kane — it’s wonderful that they try to establish personal lives, but it’s also just as important that they put it aside as they know what they are accomplishing as the hero takes precedence over everything else. That is our mandate, that is our edict, that is our stand with our characters.

Batman and Catwoman absolutely languished during this time. Their relationship which had previously been loving and trusting was reduced to an insulting cross between virtual strangers and friends with benefits. For five years DC Comics seemingly did everything they could think of to avoid the relationship and fans took notice. In 2015 after a series of failed relaunches, a two year sales low, and an increasing market lag behind Marvel it became clear that New 52 had failed to attract and sustain the audience that DC had hoped for in 2011. With the DCEU taking off, mediocrity was no longer an option. In 2016 DC announced Rebirth, yet another relaunch, this time promising for a return to the old and in many ways it did. Superman and Lois Lane’s marriage was restored and a son, Jon, came in addition. Steve Trevor was once again a prominent supporting character in Wonder Woman as well as her main love interest. Even Midniter and Apollo made a comeback. 

Batman and Catwoman did not reunite as instantaneously as many had hoped. They were featured in a series of poorly timed variant covers at the start of Rebirth but Catwoman had yet to make any appearances. Relatively new DC writer, Tom King, was announced as the Batman main writer and at New York Comic Con he teased that Catwoman was to become the co-lead of Batman. Catwoman’s eventual debut in Batman #9 as a mass murderer facing the death penalty did not warrant a positive response and diminished the hopes of many fans that Rebirth would be a kinder era to Catwoman and Batman and Catwoman’s relationship. Although it was expected by many that this newest revelation was likely a red herring, after five years of New 52 their patience was wearing thin. 

Meanwhile Batman and Catwoman teamed up to invade Bane’s sanctuary to kidnap Psycho Pirate, an encounter that cumulated in the Rooftops arc. Catwoman’s innocence was finally revealed, and for the first time since Heart of Hush was published nearly a decade prior Batman and Catwoman declared their love for each other. While the jury is still out on King’s execution he has undeniably reestablished Batman and Catwoman as a canon romance. His tale is of two lonely, damaged orphans who see and accept the best and the worst in each other who despite their shared traumas find hope and happiness with each other. 

All of them can laugh. Mother. Father. Him. The whole world. They can see me in this idiocy and they can laugh and laugh and laugh. But you. Selina. Cat. You wouldn’t. Because you know. You know what this is…And you, Cat. You know. Because if you’ve made that choice, you can see it in another. You can see it in me. I can see it in you.

- Bruce Wayne to Selina Kyle in Batman #12

King’s interpretation of Batman and Catwoman’s relationship differs from almost every other writer’s interpretation because he doesn’t bog the relationship down with the will they/won’t they trope and hyper focus on juvenile sexual tension at the expense of substantial development. Rather than portray Batman and Catwoman as opposites that attract, he understands that they’re similar. 

They’re missing pieces in a puzzle and they understand each other in ways that other people can’t. “I need you,” Batman says before proposing to Catwoman for the first time in main canon history. 

Batman Annual #2

To appreciate the Annual is to appreciate Tom King’s Bat and Cat. The former half of the issue reiterates King’s consistent interpretation throughout his Batman run. Batman and Catwoman are orphans who see and understand each other in ways that other people don’t and are bonded by their trauma. 

Where King separates himself from other writers and takes his interpretation even further is in the second act of the book. An aged and married Bruce and Selina are living a happy albeit seemingly unextraordinary life retired from crime-fighting, and they even have an adult daughter who is operating as Batwoman. Things take a quick, heartbreaking turn when Bruce is inflicted by a nondescript illness. He’s dying and there’s plainly nothing to be done. Mortality is unavoidable. Bruce lived an extraordinary life and died a natural, ordinary, human death. 

The tragic part of Bruce’s death isn’t even the fact that he dies. What’s sad about it is how much Bruce and Selina don’t want to leave each other and how they try to stay strong for one another. Even though he is dying Bruce’s only concern is that after he passes Selina will be okay, and that she won’t be lonely. They both muse using magic and time travel to try to cheat death just so they can stay together. 

There are those who abhor what King has done to the Batman books by portraying a Bruce that is more vulnerable and driven by things other than crime fighting. Everyone has a favorite version and preference, but it’s baffling as to why anyone would think that something like marriage would take something away from who Batman is as a character or why anyone would think that Bruce is better off as a loner. To quote another blogger, “Geez, what do these people want for Bruce, anyway? For him to die alone and clinically depressed, his body marred and broken from decades of fighting Gotham’s never-ending crime wave?”

I always use the animated Batman Beyond as a litmus test for how Bruce ends up (Does this version of Bruce Wayne end up like Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond?). In Batman Beyond he ends up a lonely, bitter old curmudgeon who all of his former partners despise and avoid. This is not the ending that Bruce deserves. The Annual portrays a Bruce who breaks the wheel of this portrayal. He dies a natural, wholly unremarkable death surrounded by love after living a long, happy life. It’s what he deserves. It’s the best ending any of us can hope for.

So how did a comic where nothing remarkable happens plot wise illicit such a strong emotional response from readers? It’s because of it’s simplicity that makes it so impactful. For nearly 80 years fans have been told that a simple, happy life for Bruce was asking too much. To finally get to see it happen feels like an affirmation. There is, however, more than enough evidence to indicate that this story is not a telling of Bruce and Selina’s ultimate ending but that this story features a Bruce and Selina of a presumably different universe. 

C’mon guys. Tom King made us wait four months just to find out if Selina said ‘yes.’ Did you really think he’d just tell us their entire life story in one issue? 

An Alternate Universe? 

There is an abundance of evidence within the Annual and the fact that it has been published concurrently with other major DC time altering events to deduce that this story is an AU in some form or another. 

The biggest clue to indicate this is a comment Bruce makes after learning that he his illness is terminal. He tells Selina to find Barry Allen (The Flash) and find another version of him that never marries to take care of her after he’s gone.  Probably the most well known modern Flash story is Flashpoint, where Barry Allen alters events and timelines by traveling back in time and changing history.  This allusion was intentional.  

One of the biggest themes of Rebirth has a whole is the idea of merging times and universes. Remember how New 52 Superman was killed off and replaced with a different version of himself? This is also coinciding with Doomsday Clock where Doctor Manhattan has essentially been experimenting with different realities and universes resulting in a merge of timelines, which published just one week before the Annual. This is not a coincidence.

The second clue is the appearance of Helena Wayne. 

As you we are all probably aware Helena Wayne is Bruce and Selina’s canonical daughter from Earth-2 who operates as the Huntress during in the Pre-Crisis and New 52 eras. Helena was last seen in Earth-2 Society, which ended publication in September, taking up the Batman mantle. Helena Wayne has never been part of the main universe, although many have hoped that she one day would be. This could just be a glimpse of things to come, but the appearance of any characters that are not from the main universe should raise red flags. Which brings me to the next clue. 

When Bruce is on his death bed he is seen surrounded by his loved ones. Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, Duke Thomas, even Gotham Girl are all there. Damian Wayne is noticeably absent.  Damian was a pretty big factor in Bruce’s decision to seek happiness as he wanted to set a better example for his son as mentioned in The Button, which was also written by Tom King. Bruce even mentions to Thomas that he has a son (singular). He made it a point to single out Damian so it’s very doubtful that Damian being excluded would’ve gone unnoticed here.

In addition to Damian being nowhere in sight: don’t you think it’s a little bit weird that Damian isn’t there, but Carrie Kelly is?

Carrie Kelly, a prominent character in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight AU series, is a famously non-canonical character. As stated before the appearance of characters that are not from the main universe should indicate that things are not likely what they appear, especially when they are there in the absence of main universe characters. 

Annual issues are really a grab bag of canon. Sometimes they have an impact on the main stories going forward; sometimes they’re standalone stories. It all depends on what the writer wants to do with it. King has been mum about revealing what the Annual will mean for the future of the Batman books, but he did imply that some parts of the Annual will impact the story in the main universe. 

What Does This All Mean?

I seemed to have struck quite a few nerves when I pointed out that the Annual issue features an AU version of Bruce and Selina. I suppose some people were disappointed to realize this and felt like I was ruining the experience. With that said: the Annual issue features an AU version of Bruce and Selina. I do not say this to hurt anyone. I say this because well, for one thing that’s what the evidence indicates. Secondly, to ignore this misses the point of what the Annual is supposed to mean. 

To just accept that the Annual is just a quaint glimpse into the future where Bruce and Selina grow old together in some ways reduces the story to fluff that happens for no other reason than to make the readers feel good, which is the conclusion drawn by a few of the negative reviews. We as readers want to take comfort in knowing what the ultimate ending will be but that misses the point of the Annual entirely. Much of what King has done during his time on the Batman books is vitiate what we’ve come to accept as the status quo in regard to Batman and Catwoman’s relationship and the Batman books in general. 

Here’s what King said about changing the role of romance in the Batman books:

EW: In comics, there’s this general idea that superheroes shouldn’t be happy. We’ve seen this in Spider-Man, Bat-family, and other places. How did you pitch this story to DC Comics? Was there any pushback?

TK: No, because what you’re talking about is looking at happiness as the end of conflict, right? This idea that if a character is content, then there’s nothing dramatic about them and you don’t want a cliffhanger and you don’t want to turn the page. That’s my whole point as an artist — I’m trying to get you to turn a page. But what makes Batman unique is that happiness is, instead of being the end of conflict, the source of conflict. It’s something you haven’t seen before. You throw sadness, you throw depression, you throw horror at Batman, he’s like, “yeah, yawn, I’ve done that.” You throw happiness at him? That’s something that riles him, that’s something that he’s not used to. That’s throwing gas on a fire, and that’s always how I pitched it. This is not the end of something. This is the beginning of something.

Notably when King was asked how he would picture Batman and Catwoman’s marriage he gave a sincere response drawing inspiration from his own marriage rather than relying on the usual excuses for why the relationship wouldn’t work out that writers seem to default to. Compare that to Scott Snyder who said that Batman’s story would always be a tragedy or Dan Didio who said that superheros should be unhappy and issued a departmental ban on marriage.

Batman and Catwoman’s relationship has only marginally progressed in fifteen years. So many writers have hit the exact same rut when attempting to develop the relationship. No matter what the story, no matter who the writer, for one reason or another the relationship just doesn’t work out in the end and they’ve had to invent reasons for why. Batman is too immature. The Joker turns Catwoman evil. Because…reasons. We’ve accepted this as just how things are supposed to be for almost 80 years. If creators are unable to see the relationship beyond everything that’s already been done, then the relationship will never go anywhere. 

The Annual is intended to show us the type of life and relationship that Bruce and Selina can have if everyone abolishes their ideas of the relationship they’re expected to have. King is subverting the expectation of what everyone says their relationship must be like. “Batman and Catwoman can’t be together.” “Batman is only dedicated to his mission.” “Catwoman isn’t suited for married life; she’ll just get bored.” He is showing us that this type of life is possible for them. They can have a long happy life together, and the barriers that have prevented that in the past are simple imaginary.

The point King is trying to make is that even though this isn’t necessarily Prime Earth Batman and Catwoman’s story it still can be.

“I’m not sure it’s 100 percent out of canon,” King said. “…To me and to my Batman, this is a story that’s certainly possible. It’s something I think that could and may come true.” 

Even if this isn’t main universe Bruce and Selina’s story per se that doesn’t mean that it won’t be. This still very well might be their future. That door is not only still open; it’s probably been opened for the first time ever. 

The Timeline

Going by what was indicated in the Annual and by Rebirth’s theme of timeline and universe meshing my prediction is that it will be revealed that the current Catwoman of the main universe is actually from a different timeline or universe or something of the sort. For those who are perplexed by the idea of Selina being from a different universe I’ll remind you that the current Superman and Lois Lane are both versions from a different timeline.    

Some initial reactions to this prediction were quite negative with many believing that this somehow changes things. My question is why? In many ways this would seem symbolic of the longevity and range of Batman and Catwoman’s relationship. They have been and continue to be featured in every form of media for nearly eight decades, including a myriad of alternate universes. They were married on Earth-2 which is a version of them that DC Comics thought was within the realm of possibility but couldn’t quite commit to in the main universe. 

The fact that Bruce is confident that Selina would be happy with another version of himself shows that these versions of fundamentally the same and their feelings for each other never change. Bruce and Selina’s feelings for each other are authentic and that wouldn’t change. It shows that their love for each other transcends all time and space. 

In short Batman Annual #2 is likely to be remembered as one of the greatest Batman and Catwoman stories of all time. The positive response from fans and critics proves to DC Comics that there is a market for this relationship and they can strive for more than what’s already been done. The massive commercial success will hopefully convince the editors that the direction Tom King has taken the book and the characters has been long overdue. Beyond the romantic narrative the Annual opens a world of exciting opportunities for the Batman books. What will occur is yet to be seen and Tom King isn’t saying, so we’ll have to wait to find out. 

Reflecting on the Annual I’m reminded of a quote from Kiersten White’s The Chaos of Stars that have been used in a number of fandom edits, that I myself used once. I’ll quote it here because no matter what will come to be I think it fits very well: 

I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

[jamieisjoshing]

13 March 1992

“I spy with my little eye something beginning with N” “Nose?” “How could I see my nose, it’s pitch black” I didn’t answer. “…” “I don’t know.” “The answer’s nothing. I can see nothing, you idiot.” We had been held up in the back seat on what felt like the thousandth hour of a cross country road trip to hell. It was the start of Spring Break and dad had thought that instead of spending the long holiday at home, it would be better for us to go and visit our gramma in New Jersey. I’ve never been much of a fan, especially as the other option was us going to Epcot like everyone else had. “Get a couple of hotdogs in you and you’ll forget all about Florida.” Dad promised on multiple occasions. I wouldn’t. As previously stated, my best friend Duncan had already gloated about his family having already gotten their tickets and how they would be staying for the entire week, kicking around Horizons and World of Motion. “I’ll take pictures for you.” He said as we waited for the bus. “Why?” I asked, “you know I’ll be there.” I replied. And that was the beginning of having to keep up with a lie. “Where are you staying?” He asked “The Yacht Club.” I said coolly. “We should meet up then.” He said “Actually, we’re going to go drive to see my aunt Carol first. She lives out in Port Charlotte” He didn’t believe me, which was understandable as I was lying. Not about aunt Carol, but about going to see her. When I attempted to convince my parents that going to Epcot would be educational, I was met with all of the ways that it would not only not be educational, but exactly how it would be far too expensive. I sulked up to the point that we started packing the car and then that sulking became pure anger for the situation. Outside, the sky had gone from burnt orange to inky black. The only thing visible for miles was whatever was in the range of the headlights. 10:32 glared back at me in dull green light from the dashboard. Was it only ten? No longer on a road, we were on a tunnel of pure, inescapable darkness. We hadn’t even seen any other cars in what felt like ages. The miles and miles of road went from the familiar stand-alone stores like Kmart to the altogether alien of an Al’s Grocers or Mica’s Pizzas. London Calling warbled meekly through the speakers as we sped through the wind whipped darkness. Dad considered himself a rebel, but I’ve never seen a punk who couldn’t make it through Cujo without flinching. “Where are we?” I asked, peering through the window. It had only gotten darker out and the once visible outline of the trees began to blend into the background, making it seem more and more like something from a storybook. “We’re nearly there.” Dad answered, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. “Just…sit back.” Part of me felt on edge, the endless hours of being cooped up in the backseat had finally started eating into me. “I need batteries” I replied, only to have it come out as more of a whine than anything else. “Why do you need batteries?” Dad asked, his voice rising slightly. “These are dead” I replied, flicking the switch from on to off and back again. Mom sighed. “I thought we told you to pack extra” Mom shot “Where’s your bag?” She turned her head to look at me or the void space where a dark green JanSport might be, had I bothered to place it into the car. Racking my brain, I was only able to come to one conclusion. “I…forgot it.” I muttered. I knew where it was, clear as day. It was still on the living room couch, stuffed with batteries, comics, and a flashlight for reading. I had snuck a roll of Oreo’s in one of the side pockets, stuffing them neatly in a roll of socks. I knew what was coming next “You have to be more careful, bud.” Dad said, “you’re nearly a teenager.” Technically, I had packed it. I had just forgotten to bring it. I wouldn’t say that though. She answered with her usual, emphatic “hmpf” and that was that. She turned around to face the abyss in front of her. The car fell silent again as some song about a stalker hit its peak. We drove, no longer playing the kinds of games that were meant to pass time, but actually just wasted it, the shadowy outline of everything slowly becoming hypnotically metronomic. “That was Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’, and if you’re hearing this, you are officially up past your bedtime.” The voice on the radio spoke. It was another hour or so before I was jostled awake by the car coming to an abrupt stop. Outside, large plastic letters advertised “Gas and Sip” on which the G-I-P seemed to have long gone out, so the place was literally called the asS diner. The parking lot was dotted with 18-wheelers and cargo trucks, all of whose decals had faded away, so all that was really distinguishable about them were the bottom portion of what could’ve been a diamond or a triangle or…maybe it was an M. “Go get you and your brother something to eat.” Dad said. He handed Maya a handful of wadded up ones “And put ten on pump three.” “Can I keep the change?” Maya asked Dad gave her a wary look before turning back to the car and starting to take the gas cap off. “Come on, loser.” Maya grabbed me by the sleeve of my shirt and we walked quietly towards the diner. Inside, the halogen lights flickered and dimmed at every turn. The tic-tac linoleum floors held the same stickiness as every movie theatre floor I had ever seen, pulling at my shoes with every step. Wh-uick Wh-uick Wh-uick We made it to the counter, where a lady in a grease splattered apron stood watching the matchbox tv that hung in the corner. David Letterman was talking to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore about their dogs and the lady at the counter found it to be the most hilarious thing “What’ll it be?” She asked, not turning to look at us. “Do you have chicken nuggets?” I asked “We are not getting chicken nuggets.” Maya said, her voice firm. “I want chicken nuggets.” I replied Annoyed, the waitress, who’s name tag read “Ann” tapped the counter with the edge of her pen where a scrap of paper had been tapped down at its edges. Ass only served three things. Hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and fries. “We’ll have four cheese burgers…with four Cokes” Maya said, “and can you put ten on pump three?” She slid the money across the counter. The waitress, who’s name tag read “Ann,” looked harshly at us both as if we were being interrogated before taking the money and giving Maya her change. “Four burgers with cheese.” She shouted through a pass-through in the wall. The face of a man wedged itself into view before letting out what I assume was a grunt of understanding before it disappeared again. “Find a table.” Maya said before tossing the placard to me. “Where’re you going?” I questioned “The restroom.” She replied, “just go and wait for the food.” With that, she turned and disappeared down the hall. I found a space near one of the oversized windows and pulled my Gameboy out of my jacket pocket in the hopes that it might have magically recharged itself in the time I left it to sit. It hadn’t. A clock hung on the wall, its occasional tick drowning out Letterman. 12:03 shown in eerily slanted letters that looked like they had been painted on. The line-up of the Late-Night show in the diner consisted of an elderly couple eating pie, a younger couple, also eating pie, two truckers who looked comically like what you might expect a trucker to look like, and a guy who looked like he’d been pulled out of an episode of COPS; large, bulging eyes, weird hair, covered in dirt. He kept fidgeting for no reason, his feet tapping against the bottom of the stool like a rabbit’s foot. He wore the puffiest, heaviest coat I’ve ever seen, even though it was crazy hot outside, even for summer. I tried to not think about it, focusing solely on the space where someone had carved their initials on the diner wall, above a jukebox that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. ZK Wuz Here The waitress, whose name tag read “Ann” slid a tray of burgers onto the table before setting the drinks out. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was until right up to this point. The burgers at asS tasted like burgers. Nothing made them one way or another the best thing that I have ever eaten. The bread was great, but the ketchup was watery. The cheese was melty, but the meat was dry. At 12:03 in the morning, food is food. Hastily, before Maya had come back, I started to devour the burger I claimed, tearing clean through the wrapper and scarfing greedily at it. I didn’t look up until I heard someone slide into the booth across from me. Half expecting Maya to be looking at me, disappointment clear on her face, I was surprised to find the guy who looked like he was from an episode of COPS sitting across from me. It wasn’t until he was this close that I could fully appreciate just how uncomical and awkward his appearance was. His eyes didn’t just bulge out of his head, they hung from it. They looked like those googly eyes you’d be forced to put on something like a clothes pin or a cotton ball to give it human-like features so that someone might say in passing, “this isn’t a cotton ball, this is a goddamn snowman. You get an A in art class, Kandinsky.” His hair was a mop of blond that had been streaked with blues and greens and barrettes and clips of every colour. His face was covered in literal, not figurative, sharpie drawings. “How’re you?” He asked, his voice a snake-like whisper. I didn’t answer, choosing to stare at him, mouth open, food half chewed. “What you playin’?” He asked “Listen,” I said with a start, “I don’t know you, but please leave me alone.” He stared at me for a moment, his creepy eyes looking as if they’d tilt out of his head and smash on the table, sending bits of creepy eye goo everywhere. It’d probably smell like bubble-gum and ass and for good measure, it’d be acidic enough to burn straight through the table, straight down to the basement. “I’m just asking a simple question.” He said, “no need to freak out.” “I’m playing Batman” I said. “Sweet,” He hissed, “can I play?” “Batteries are dead.” I answered resignedly He extended his hand as if to say, “let me see,” before sliding it away from me. “What I always find,” he said, removing the battery cover, “is that patience is a virtue.” He fiddled around with the batteries, moving them into different places. He took a paperclip from his pocket and wedge it in for good measure, before turning the entire thing over and staring at it like a proud father might look at their kid riding a bike and flipped the switch to ON. With that, the game sprung to life. “Good as new.” He said, smiling as if he’d just pulled off the greatest magic trick before returning the game, “So, where are you from?” “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” I said “But, I’m not a stranger,” he said, “we were just talking. I fixed your game.” “That was more of a nicety.” “A nicety?” He asked another chuckle finding its way out of his mouth, “how old are you.” I looked around, hoping that Maya might be walking out of the restroom, her usual surly big sister face on. She’d see the creeper, cross the room, and stab him in the side of the head with one of her bony ass fingers, say something bad ass and then he’d leave. What I did find was that on the outside of what I’m assuming is the only restroom’s door, a notice to “wash your damn hands” had been taped. I could feel a little piece of me die. “Listen, I just want to be left alone, yeah?” “I just wanted to tal-” He started. My armpits started to tingle, and I could tell that on some level I was close to vomiting or crying or both and then I felt the part of me that wanted nothing more than to walk back to the car, climb into the backseat, and go back home. And so, I started to cry. He stared at me for a moment before laughing to himself. He raised his hands in defeat and slowly stood before walking out of the diner. Even though I couldn’t see him, part of me could feel him staring in through the windows, his eerily large eyes boring into me. “Why are you crying?” A voice asked I looked up to see Maya standing next to me, her glasses in her hands. “Just tired.” I said She whispered something that sounded exactly like, “you a fucking bitch” “Where are mom and dad?” She asked without taking her eyes off the space directly behind me. “They haven’t come in yet.” I said, my mouth still full of burger. “Ellie, where’s the car?” She asked I turned to find the space by the gas pumps void of anyone, especially not a station wagon with a bunch of luggage strapped to the roof. “Shit.” I muttered as I pushed past Maya. We ran through the double doors and into the night. The air was sharp and musty, the taste of dirt and the moments just before rain caked itself thick on everything. “What the hell.” Maya asked as she too looked around, confused. I could feel my heart in my throat, goosebumps crept across my arm and neck and I immediately felt as if I was going to be sick. We stood outside, looking up and down the road for any sign of anything, but there was nothing. No cars. No lights. No sound of something far off in the distance. Nothing.

[lawful-evil-novelist]

Batman Villains, their Development, and the Problems Therein

Earlier this year I talked about how giving Joker character development might be beneficial for the comics to prevent their most recognizable villain from growing too stale. In that essay, I also brought up that villains in the Batman universe that do change and develop, aside from a few characters, usually get worse as a result of this development.  Now to clarify, I have no problem with characters getting worse as a result of mental illness, it’s actually something that does happen and I’ll grant that, but when every character gets worse and almost none of them get better, there is a definite problem.

Now my usual example of characters getting worse is usually the storyline “Johnny Can’t Read” in which Jon gets a chance to teach again, is furious that none of the students can even remotely spell correctly, and then makes it so no one in Gotham can read as revenge.  In the end of the story (Spoilers) he is convinced by Dick Grayson to help restore everyone’s ability to read and then proceeds to retract almost completely into the Scarecrow persona.

Now I think this storyline is...good but has issues.  My first is that Jon’s revenge is to ruin everyone’s ability to read, but what convinces him to restore this is a reminder that he cares about people having a proper education.  Let me put it this way: Jon seeks revenge because he’s a teacher, and helps mend the revenge he gained because he’s a teacher.  Makes perfect sense right?  And secondly, why would the reminder that he cares about people’s education make him retract into the persona that doesn’t care about people.  Again, makes zero senses.  The writers don’t want the Scarecrow to stop existing because Jon recovers, so they make him get worse to make sure Scarecrow stays Scarecrow.  A logical conclusion to the arc is ignored because Jon needs to remain in the narrow box given to his character.  He cannot get better because, as far as the writers are concerned, Scarecrow, and any derivative thereof, cannot exist if Jon recovers.

This happens again in the Becky Albright arc.  Jon is given a chance to get better, introduced to a woman who, despite their similarly poor lots in life, chose instead to become a better person, a stronger person.  Jon doesn’t learn from Becky’s strength and kindness, despite identifying and relating to her, in fact her strength doesn’t even register to him.  Jon can’t learn from Becky, or anyone for that matter, because the writers won’t let him.

Writers go out of their way to humanize Gotham Rogues without giving them positive development that makes those humanizing characteristics more prominent.  Harley’s daughter Lucy, Joker’s wife Jeanne, Ivy’s care for children and women despite her own self-hatred and hatred for humanity, these are nothing more than grabs to make writers pity the character without making them get any better.  I bring up Lucy as an example because people love using that set of panels from Injustice where Harley reveals she has a daughter as an example of how great she is and here’s the problem with those panels and with Lucy: Lucy is there purely to humanize a woman who, a year prior, willingly and happily aided the Joker in killing a pregnant woman and destroying Metropolis with a nuclear bomb and her only defense of this action is revealed in Injustice 2, when she claims that “it wasn’t supposed to work”.

And you know what?  I don’t care if R’as is being portrayed as in the wrong in this scene, he’s fucking right.  It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t supposed to work, it didn’t matter that Superman was supposed to save the day, Harley still willingly killed a pregnant woman and destroyed a city.  Intentions do not erase what she did, and intentions don’t erase that she went along with a plan that still had a chance of working (and this is ignoring the fact that what she say blatantly goes against what Joker says in the first Injustice comic).  Humanizing her without letting her show real remorse, without letting her own up to her actions and admit that she and Joker are responsible for the deaths of thousands and that there’s nothing she can do to change that, that’s not sound character design, it’s why those panels are taken out of context so often, because in context they are saying “look how human this murderer is, she doesn’t regret anything she did, but oh she has a kid”.  It doesn’t work because you have given us no reason to believe she feels bad about what she did, because she doesn’t, and she gets away with it, we the audience ignore that Harley’s a murderer, we ignore the context in which these attempts to humanize her are because these humanizing moments overshadow the fact that she is still a murderer who is unwilling to own up to her actions.

I should note that right after being called out in the panel above, Harley headbutts R’as in the face.

I’m not saying I don’t love Harley or Ivy or Jon being humanized, far from it.  I think Batman’s strength is in that his villains are not monsters, but flawed humans.  My problem is that these characters that are supposed to be flawed humans are not allowed to learn from their mistakes, and sometimes aren’t even allowed to admit that they made mistakes.

Think of how much more rewarding Year One’s ending would’ve been if his mother had said she wanted to keep Jon but it wasn’t up to her, or how the entire debacle with Karen could’ve been avoided altogether if Jon’s father had openly admitted he didn’t know Jon even existed and expressed sympathy.  Imagine how much more gratifying it would’ve been for Jon to have experienced family love for the first time and been able to change and grow as a human being.

Imagine how much more human Ivy would seem if she learned to have faith in humanity again.  Imagine how much more gratifying it would be for Harley to admit she’s done bad things and that she feels guilt for what she did.

Characters growing and changing doesn’t need to be positive, especially not for villains, but a satisfying character arc is when a character grows and changes, and a character growing and changing in a positive way is not removing the character from play, it’s giving them dynamic.  And giving character growth does not mean you need to erase the bad things that they did. In the words of Toni Morrison: “You can’t let the past strangle you if you’re going to go forward.  But nevertheless, the past is not going anywhere.”

As with our own lives, the lives of our characters must keep the past in mind, it isn’t going anywhere, and they cannot truly call themselves changed if they don’t own up to the mistakes of their pasts.  In comics, which are long and contain a lot of plotlines with the same characters again and again, characters, good and evil, must grow and change in both positive and negative ways without discrediting the things they’ve done, or the stories and their characters will grow stale, and people will lose interest.

Does this mean all growth should be positive?  Not at all, but at some point we need to sit down and consider that just because a character is a villain does not mean they need to remain that, but it also doesn’t mean discrediting that they were once a villain.  Batman villains are known for being complex and human, so isn’t it about time they start acting like it?

[tessatechaitea]

Superman #22

Jon needs to learn to eat his Popsicles faster.

Some weird shit is going down in Hamilton County and I just figured out what it is! Rorschach's disintegrated atoms probably came to rest in the soil! So now it's all, "I'm not trapped out on the farm with you. You're trapped out on the farm with this cow's disgusting milk and a weird house in the swamp. Oh, and me!" This issue begins with Lois Lane reminding me of a traumatic moment in my life.

I get it, Pat and Pete. You guys are sadistic assholes who don't want anybody to forget the murder of Goldie. Unless you're going to bring Goldie back from the dead, can you just stop reminding me of the death of my best friend? I mean the death of Goldie!

Since Batman is locked in a freezer covered in rotting cow's milk, Lois Lane is the only capable investigator left in Hamilton County. She heads out to solve the Mystery of the Whatever The Hell Is Going The Fuck On. If anybody can solve it and possibly fall out of a helicopter while doing so and have to be rescued by Superman, it's Lois Lane! During her investigation, Lois stumbles upon a bank of monitors set up in the basement of the Hamilton Town Hall. On every monitor are images of Jon at different points across his life. Even at times before they were living in Hamilton County! Is this is a new mystery or can I just stick it under the general heading of the Whatever The Hell Is Going The Fuck On Mystery? See, it was pretty smart to name it so loosely, right?! You were probably thinking, "That title would never sell a single Goddamned Nancy Drew novel, you stupid cunt." Whoa, whoa! Why so hostile, imaginary reader? Sheesh! Bring it down a notch. That King Arthur movie still looks fucking stupid.

Is this a modern retelling where King Arthur's a hipster living in a gentrified neighborhood in Portland and pulls Excalibur out of a Marantz 6370Q turntable? It would explain the "from nothing comes a king" tagline.

Lois is discovered discovering the town's secret of knowing her family's secret. She rushes home to find the leaders of the town in her living room acting ominously. That was the opposite of hyperbole! I don't know the word for that because I rarely ever find it useful! Lois escapes the weird town elders by slipping on her Batman Doomsday Glove and blasting the fuck out of them. Then the Batmobile pulls up to rescue her and she gets away. The Batmobile suggests killing the fuck out of the people chasing her and Lois is all, "Hells yeah, bitches!" So then missiles blast a bunch of town folk and the Lois Lane runs one of them over and somewhere Superman and Batman weep heroically. I'm guessing Lois Lane realized these town elders weren't really human, what with the being able to survive giant squid attacks and being able to be seemingly everywhere at once. Otherwise, Lois Lane had better find a good lawyer who knows their way around a murder in self-defense trial. Lois Lane is finally stopped by Mr. Cobb the Dairy Farmer. That confrontation will have to happen in a later issue because it's time for the big surprise reveal of what Superman found in the House of Mystery in Deadman's Swamp! He stumbles upon a huge ship underground. Deep within it, he finds Batman, Robin, some criminal clowns, Frankenstein, and Lady Frankenstein all stuck in a bunch of vacuum tubes. Unless they're Bacta Tanks. I guess they didn't get every piece of Candice the Alien when they blew her up a number of issues ago. I'm pretty sure that was made explicit during that issue but hell if I can remember that far back! It's not like I remember she was called Kroog and she was capable of reforming from even a single misplaced bit of herself. Based on the black goo everywhere, it's possible a whole bunch of Kroog (or Kroog as a whole bunch of parts of itself?) have created a Kroog haven here on Earth. It's also possible it's different aliens altogether. The Ranking! You know what? Fuck ranking comic books. If you can't tell I liked a comic book, what does it matter? That's never been the point of this blog and I only stapled it into place on the finished product because people seem to expect that kind of thing. Maybe live with the ambiguity and uncertainty of whether or not I actually liked a comic book I read and made fun of! Maybe don't rely so much on other people's stupid opinions (even if those stupid opinions are coming from a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader). Maybe just enjoy this diatribes for what they are: a huge waste of everybody's time!

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1223

Monday, July 30, 2018

 Many comings and goings here recently. I had a visit with a friend from Victoria, BC over the weekend. Treated him to a fishing trip and he had a blast. My niece is moving to Bahrain tomorrow after being home from Japan for 8 months. I will miss her but we will keep in touch via social media. Penny is off on a road trip today to visit family up north and friends in Huntsville and Barrie, Ontario. She'll be back in time to welcome dear friends from Calgary, Alberta arriving next weekend while they are here visiting family. I'm not going anywhere soon but that's the way this homebody likes it.

 Detective Comics #985 - Bryan Hill (writer) Philippe Briones (art) Adriano Lucas (colours) Sal Cipriano (letters). I like the short and sweet origin story for this new super villain Karma. We find out why he's terrorizing Gotham City and what his demands are. This is a really good challenge for Batman and his allies.

 Moon Knight #197 - Max Bemis (writer) Jacen Burrows (pencils) Guillermo Ortego (inks) Matt Milla (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). It's a sit down dinner with a select group of extreme sadists. I question the "Teen+" rating for this issue. It definitely should have been rated "Parental Advisory". I mean, even I got a little queasy reading each guest's story. I kept waiting for the host to announce that they were going to kill someone for the main course. Yuck.

 Infinity Wars Prime - Gerry Duggan (writer) Mike Deodato Jr. (art) Frank Martin (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). This story starts off promising enough with Loki in a library reading old stories about himself. This leads to Loki going to the Quarry of Creation to find some missing parts to one of his stories. I felt like I was missing a lot as I continued to read since I did not follow the Infinity Countdown and related tie-in books. I was left wondering what the fork was going on when Adam Warlock pays a visit to Doctor Strange. By the time the inevitable super villain was introduced I was feeling so lost that I decided to skip this war altogether. Other readers may be intrigued enough with the mysterious character with the infinity goggles to want to see what happens to the stones. I was completely shocked by the one death in this issue though.

 Justice League Dark #1 - James Tynion IV (writer) Alvaro Martinez Bueno (pencils) Raul Fernandez (inks) Brad Anderson (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). When Peter Milligan (writer) first introduced this team to the racks in 2011 I did read some of their adventures but I stopped before that run came to an end in 2015. I guess the team was disbanded but now there's a threat to magic in the DCU and all the mystical members have to join together to survive. This time they will be lead by Wonder Woman. Zatanna and Swampthing are front and center in this issue but there are plenty of other magic users waiting in the wings. I like the new Man-Bat but I'm not a fan of Zee's braid.

 Saga #54 - Fiona Staples (art) Brian K. Vaughn (writer) Fonografiks (letters). Many shocks this issue, the least of which is the announcement that Saga in going on a year long hiatus. Brian Michael Bendis (writer) walking away from Miles Morales bummed me out and this news also makes me sad. Having Hazel narrate this stunning issue prepares me for the major changes coming when this title hits the racks again next summer. I hope the creative team enjoys their much deserved break and look forward to the continuation of Hazel's story.

 Mr. & Mrs. X #1 - Kelly Thompson (writer) Oscar Bazaldua (art) Frank D'Armata (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). Love & Marriage part 1. I did not read the heavily hyped wedding issue where Kitty and Piotr followed in the footsteps of Batman and Catwoman so I don't know why they didn't tie the knot. Somewhere in there though Rogue and Gambit decided to take their on and off relationship and really get it on Marvin Gaye style. So we are gathered here to witness the wedding and part of the honeymoon until they are called to duty and have to retrieve something out in space. I like that Kelly toned down the southern drawl for Rogue and the Cajun inflections for Gambit so that their dialogue didn't get too annoying in my head. I loved the art and wish that Storm would wear her hair like that all the time. Very stylish and classy. Good job Oscar. Remy and Anna Marie make a cute couple and a surprise appearance on the last page will make for a fun threesome.

 Silencer #7 - Dan Abnett (writer) Viktor Bogdanovic (pencils) Viktor Bogdanovic & Jonathan Glapion (inks) Mike Spicer (colours) Tom Napolitano (letters). Honor's mission to make sure Talia al Ghul stays dead takes her and her family into the friendly skies. Unbeknownst to her Cradle and Grave are on the same flight. I like how the inevitable fight shows off what her super suit can do. I know she won't be successful in killing Talia for good and gone but it will be fun to see her try.

 Doomsday Clock #6 - Geoff Johns (writer) Gary Frank (art) Brad Anderson (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). We're at the halfway mark and this is my favourite issue yet. It's an all villains issue. I like how the Marionette and the Mime's origin story is woven in. This mature version of the Joker is much more interesting and I can't wait to find out what he does with the incapacitated Batman.

 Multiple Man #2 - Matthew Rosenberg (writer) Andy MacDonald (art) Tamra Bonvillain (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). This story is confusing enough with the time travelling but adding in the many Jamie Madroxes makes it even more confusing. I was almost willing to continue reading more issues when someone who knows stuff showed up but she was only there for a cameo. Layla was my favourite X-Factor member.

 Action Comics #1001 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Patrick Gleason (art) Alejandro Sanchez (colours) Josh Reed (letters). One of my favourite things about Brian's writing is his nice flowing dialogue and there's plenty of it in this issue. We find out who is setting fires all over Metropolis as a new super villain is introduced. Her name is Red Cloud and she is as fatal as a sarin gas attack.

 Amazing Spider-Man #2/LGY #803 - Nick Spencer (writer) Ryan Ottley (pencils) Cliff Rathburn (inks) Laura Martin (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Back to Basics part 2. Boy, talk about getting back to basics. We start off with a little fight with Man Mountain Marco and the Ringer and then another fight with the Black Ant and Taskmaster. Gee, Stan the Man and Steve Ditko used to do this sort of stuff every issue too. What is really tickling my fancy are the changes going on in Peter Parker's life. For one thing Stan and Steve never showed Peter and Mary Jane waking up in bed together. Then there's the surprise on the last page. Who is that masked man?

 Marvel 2-In-One #8/LGY #108 - Chip Zdarsky (writer) Ramon K. Perez (art) Frederico Blee (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). Ben and Johnny are powerless now and stranded in a universe where Spider-Man is a despot. It's very dramatic when Johnny finds out that Ben didn't tell him that Reed, Sue and the kids are dead. I don't believe that for a second. Who's going to be in the new Fantastic Four comic book if that's true? Chip is doing an excellent job writing this.

 X-23 #2 - Mariko Tamaki (writer) Juann Cabal (art) Nolan Woodard (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). The Stepford Cuckoos suffer a death in the family and they go cuckoo for real. This leads to Gabby being captured and Laura needing to come to the rescue. This book gets my highest recommendation.

 The Sentry #2 - Jeff Lemire (writer) Kim Jacinto & Joshua Cassara (art) Rain Beredo (colours) VC's Travis Lanham (letters). I was not prepared to like this as much as I do now. Jeff has made this character a lot more interesting with the crazy situations and supporting cast. This book and Moon Knight are weirdly psychological.

 Wakanda Forever: X-Men #1 - Nnedi Okorafor (writer) Ray Anthony-Height & Alberto Alburquerque (pencils) Ray Anthony-Height, Ray Anthony-Height, Juan Vlasco & Keith Champagne (inks) Erick Arciniega (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). It's Storm, Rogue and Nightcrawler's turn to team up with the Dora Milaje to fight Malice and her doomsday weapon Mimic-27. So just three X-Men then. Colossus isn't in this like he is on the cover. This issue leaves Mimic-27 more powerful than ever so we'll see what the Avengers can do when Wakanda Forever: Avengers #1 hits the racks August 22. I'm going to guess that T'Challa is going to set the lovestruck Malice straight and Mimic-27 will be blowed up real good with the help of, oh I don't know, Captain America and maybe She-Hulk.

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion. 5 Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery. “Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants Read Next 8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get. We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.” SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b> Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together. In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time. essay > And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.” “CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “ div > 4 All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests. “I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.” When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim? What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner? div > You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board. It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world. 3 It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare? I think about this every day. Every day. div > Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body. It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless. I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks. div > Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy. If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up! 2 Being Special Is Free That’s right, I said it. You’re welcome. It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd … … for Toddslaughter. div > Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth. One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing. Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster. div > OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile. I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it! div > Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online. You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars. div > 1 Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think. You’re welcome again. div > Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest. BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness. div > Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately. BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES! div > Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “ We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference. Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b> Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b> Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b> For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b> You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b> Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/30/5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/

[comic-watch]

Batman #36 Writer: Tom King Artists: Clay Mann Cover Artist: Clay Mann  Colorist: Jordie Bellaire  Publisher: DC Comics

A story unlike we have ever seen where Batman and Superman Contemplate each other’s Friendship, and their place in each others Lives outside of the Superhero world. The Bro-mance between Superman and Batman is explored in this Romantic Comedy.

What You Need to Know: Batman has Asked Catwoman to marry Him, and she has said yes. On a trip to the Desert, Batman and Catwoman found among the League of Shadows Hollie Robinson. She was responsible for multiple murders that Selina Kyle took the blame for.

To be married to Bruce, Selina needed to clear her name. The trip was to ask Hollie to stand up and take responsibility for those murders and let Selina and Bruce be happy together.

Along the way Selina got into a Sword fight with Talia Al Ghul, they beat up some tongue-less Ninjas, and Damien got to bond with Dick Grayson.

What You’ll Find Out: Superman and Lois are having a discussion on whether he should call Batman, and congratulate him on his proposal to Catwoman. Superman is a bit reluctant. Lois is instructing him on how this is the right thing to do. Trust me the irony is not lost on Clark, who says “I’m Busy”, as he stops a speeding train. Lois is not so convinced.

Next, we see Batman having a very similar discussion with Catwoman. “I thought you said he was your closest friend?” Selina asked.

Batman states “Gordon is my closest Friend.”

“But he doesn’t even know your name.” Selina deftly catches him with.

In Classic Stoic Batman fashion he replies”…Fine. Alfred is my Closest Friend.”

  It’s a funny thing to see two heroes that have saved the world so many times, just be so incredibly bad at being friends.

Lois and Selina each talk to their respective partners and explain how the would eventually like to meet the other. Catwoman goes so far to explain that she already knows his Alter -ego. Lois, the reporter that she is, already suspects as much and urges Clark to set up a meeting.  Superman cuts the conversation short with an emergency call to action, but we know that Lois has pretty much won the argument.

Selina however, is busy navigating through Batman’s excuses and explains to him that he is Afraid. She asks if Bruce is ashamed of her, and we get a similar explanation for both Batman and Superman.

  What Just Happened?

While fighting some sort of Energy based man Superman, continues his conversation with Lois regarding why he will not call Batman. Ironically enough Batman and Catwoman are having the same conversation in the Batcave.

Lois convinces Clark ( well she tells him really) to call Bruce “Tonight. No Excuses. I don’t care how many Worlds are Crisising.” Batman is a bit more adept at staving off Selina’s argument.

It is here where Batman and Superman’s paths finally Converge while following a lead to a shipment of stolen Plutonium. Catwoman and Lois are along for the ride.

While on their stakeout Batman gushes to Catwoman, on how Superman grew up, and as a result how he really looks up to him. He tells her how “I didn’t have a choice but to be who I am. He had every choice, and became who he is”  he says about Superman.

Meanwhile, Superman explains in a similar fashion, just how much he thinks of Batman to Lois. “I have powers. I had to do this. All he has are his wits and his will. And he chooses to do this.”

Eventually, their Paths cross in on the same floor of the Building that Superman tracked his lead to, and Batman and Catwoman theirs. Lois takes this opportunity to officially meet Catwoman ( She is just the greatest to watch!)

The Elevator opens, and we see that Bruce and Clark have reaffirmed their friendship, and they shout each other’s Battle cry as they attack the villain that they each have been chasing, but are working together. Having handily dealt with the bad Guys, Clark asks “So, You all want to get something to eat?”

Rating: 7/10

Final Thought: A Fun example of the work that Tom King has been doing to make Batman more Human. He has taken him from the Stoic and hardhearted Vigilante to someone who experiences the awkwardness of social conventions, just like most of us.While this has a very convenient plot, that brings both the heroes together in a loose manner, I definitely enjoyed it. The pacing and the Repartee between Lois and Clark and Selina and Batman were not all that different, yet it captured the tone altogether. This is a very enjoyable run of Batman to read. While it does not give much in the way of plot, it is a dialogue driven book, that I enjoyed. I think that in a vacuum, this might be a bit hard to pick up, but I as a reader cannot wait to see how this Double Date will turn out.

  Batman and Superman in a Bro-mantic Rom-Com where they explaining things to their wives. Batman #36 Writer: Tom King Artists: Clay Mann Cover Artist: Clay Mann  Colorist: Jordie Bellaire  Publisher: DC Comics…

[everythingsfantastic-blog]

The Best Films of 2016, by Derek Leidig

I kind of hate writing about movies. I am not a film critic, with no aim to be (Lights Camera, Jackson! stole my shtick anyway). I once dropped a college course for asking me to write a review of Rebel Without a Cause.  I can talk about this until you are blue in the face, but writing is another matter entirely.

Firstly, my brain breaks down at the synopsis part. Maybe it was me bombing on a college placement writing test because I couldn’t read an article and write a concise synopsis—my English teacher in high school taught us how to read, think and write, not just chew, swallow and boot. Second, having worked on films and all the toil and compromise that goes with it, as well as being somewhat removed from my younger film school dickishness, I don’t take joy in ripping the shit out of things at length(although Passengers, your time is coming.)

I have wanted to put together a list like this every year, but I have only done it once or twice, because its a lot of work and I rarely know what it is I truly love in the moment. I also quickly realized that a simple, “top ten” would not work, as this had been a stellar year. I also don’t see the point in specific numeric rankings, because I’m frankly bad with numbers. Waiting until the Oscars to post this  is not because of any special hot takes about any awards, but I needed the time and I didn’t get my screeners this year (or any other).

For everything I saw, there was something I wanted to see but did not (yet), so this is a at best a work in progress. Time and opportunity kept me from Silence, Certain Women, The Witch, Swiss Army Man, Train to Busan, The Wailing, The Treasure, The Neon Demon, A Bigger Splash, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Triple 9, Patterson, The Childhood of a Leader, The Love Witch, Patterson, I, Daniel Blake, Neruda , a whole battalion of documentaries and yes, Gods of Egypt. And all the others I forgot.

2016, shit year it, was also when I decided to stop watching trailers pretty much altogether, something I will get into, self-righteously, at some other date. It has been transformative. It is as if someone was playing a game, then stopped, then started playing another, different game and enjoys it even more. If only there were an over-used term for that phenomenon.

So, proud to love all below, even if to varying degrees. Gives me hope that 2017 will contain way too many films and thus will

BECAUSE

I liked these fine, but really loved them specifically for…

OTHER PEOPLE

For Molly Shannon. I saw her on TV the other day and actually was relieved that she was feeling better.

MORRIS FROM AMERICA

For Keith Robinson driving his son home from Berlin.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

For being pretty and for Michael Shannon doin’ stuff.

CHRISTINE

No, not that one. This one is another horror story about Christine Chubbuck, a Florida news reporter who shot herself in the head live on-air in 1974. I liked other films more, but boy if Rebecca Hall doesn’t dominate the world in this— her eyebrows alone.I couldn’t quite get into the unofficial non-fiction counterpart, Kate Plays Christine, however. Maybe I’l give it another chance sometime.

WEINER DOG

For bringing me back into the Todd Solondz camp after a long absence, and for reminding me when someone asks me for a recommendation, why I also say, “If you think you won’t like it, you won’t. But don’t blame me.” It is slow, uneven, and terrible for humanity (and dogs) and it actually makes diarrhea operatic. It’s the movie that had me laugh the hardest, because frankly I am awful.

THE ACCOUNTANT

For reading ahead of time, a blog post that stated: “The Accountant is Ben Affleck’s best Batman movie.” In that mind-frame, I loved the stupid thing.

THE COMFORT FOODS OF 2016 (THE ONES I SAW THE MOST)

DEADPOOL

A blockbuster that made lemonade. I can see the budget cuts, the studio apprehension, the let’s-figure-out-a-structure every time I watch it, but it works like a motherfucker. Good luck on the sequel.

POPSTAR: NEVER STOP NEVER STOPPING

Funnier than you. My only complaint is that I liked Hot Rod more. Which is a dick thing to say.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

Age of Ultron with breathing room. I don’t know how they make any of this comic book movies  make sense, but they do. Sure, it might kill the industry, but that fight scene was TWENTY FUCKING MINUTES LONG.

THE NICE GUYS

It does not stick the landing, but like the The Departed, I will watch this over and over to find more jokes. It will take decades. Russell Crowe is also the most unlikely winner of spit-take of the century.

AND IN NO ORDER

KRISHA

They finally made a horror film about Thanksgiving. A one-location wonder, where you, the viewer, are trapped in house, on Thanksgiving, with that aunt we don’t talk about. And she probably wasn’t a Trump voter either.

JACKIE

For me, this one probably had the largest span between initial interest and ultimate reaction. It’s not a history lesson, although there is much to be learned. It is also wisely not a straight biopic, instead focusing on a small pivotal few weeks in Jackie Kennedy’s life. From the faded Kodakchrome (Super-16mm) palette to the career-best work of Natalie Portman, I loved the whole damn thing. And to think this is director THIRD American release this year (after The Club and Neruda).

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME

How does this even work? Bros and philosophy. And baseball. And Austin. And LP’s.

MOONLIGHT

This might be the best in the lot. Or at least the one I feel the most grateful that it successfully ran the awards gauntlet and thus found an audience. Masterful stuff.

THE LOBSTER

Of course John C. Reilly is in it.

ARRIVAL

This is one hit me hard. Maybe because I saw it in December and I kept thinking that the real-life incoming new government’s response to “the Arrival” would not be patient or curious. I’m glad this found an audience. I’m glad that Forrest Whitaker is still on movie posters. I’m glad it introduced me to composer Max Richter, whose music I now use as a lullaby. I’m not glad the Academy felt that Meryl Streep needed to be recognized again as a national treasure instead of Amy Adams.

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL

The first of his two releases this year (LOVING is damn good too) and a film that apparently would turn into a giant flesh-eating monster if it played in too many theaters at once (Thanks, Warner Brothers, you saved us). This was the film that made me decide not to watch trailers anymore. I saw this pretty much dry, on recommendation and I am glad I did. Kirsten Dunst has put together a pretty damn great body of work, i must say.

EDGE OF SEVENTEEN

I love the thought that there are going to be (young) people who are going to watch this like SAY ANYTHING… over the next decade and beyond.

LA LA LAND

The greatest of all films of all of times of ever. Or maybe less than that.  Wished I had seen it on a bigger screen. Launcher of crap op-eds.

HELL OR HIGH WATER

My kind of movie. I want to see this again and soon. I’m glad it is still in the conversation. As much as I love Jeff Bridges, I would have liked to have seen Ben Foster get the same awards attention.

GREEN ROOM

My friend watches a horror film every day during the month of October. I watched this one, although I didn’t know it was a horror film. This is expert stuff.

AMERICAN HONEY

It’s almost 3 hours, so watch it in chunks as I did. I booked Arnold’s FISH TANK years ago, and was so glad I did. This build the same magic from scraps.

TONI EARDMANN

I want to see this again because (like ELLE) I simply did not see the same movie that the critics did. But I did like what I saw enough that I will put in the additional three hours. Was it a two hour windup to a  series of punchlines? I will find out.  At some point. I also did not see nearly enough foreign films in 2016.

SING STREET

Worth it. It’s right there on Netflix. Worth it.

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE

Somewhere, someplace, somehow it is Ricky Baker’s birthday.

THE FITS

A little girl and her brother are in a community center. It’s an hour and ten minutes. All you need to know. Holy shit is this strong.

THE HANDMAIDEN

A period piece by Park-fuckin-Oldboy-Chan-Wook that cooks with gas. And oh, so very very naughty.

20th CENTURY WOMEN

One of the things I don’t like about awards season is the ”quality glut” Too much good stuff all at once, jammed at end of the year, fighting for gold attention to further their life span in theaters.

Everything about this clicks, from cast to setting to time period (1979—NO cell phones). And that soundtrack. I want all movies to contain at least some Bowie, Rudy Vallee, Suicide, Fred Astaire and/or the Buzzcocks. I secretly hope that they decide to re-release this one.

THE RED TURTLE/KUBO & THE TWO STRINGS

Two animated films better than ZOOTOPIA, by eight Yao Mings and three Robert Waldows (search—you are already on the internet). KUBO is a one of those things where every shot is, “how the hell?” mixed with a great story. See it. THE RED TURTLE is a Belgian film given Studio Ghibli”s blessing. It’s about a man who is stranded on an island and during his many attempts to leave…something happens. Beautiful, grown-up and like, way existential, the film is better than most of us really deserves.

SO NOW THEN

My answer to the question, “What’s the best film of the year?” is usually, “I haven’t seen it yet”. It makes me sound above it all and it keeps me from having to think, but the truth is I usually don’t know until some time has past. For example, I now know that Mad Max:Fury Road was the best film of 2015, because I watched it about ten more times in 2016 (and wept, frequently). Some years I know that Let The Right One In or In the Loop i is  the greatest  damn thing I ever damn saw. So right now, the best film of this year was when I watched Walkabout, from 1971 for the first time in 10 years. I done cheated.

Somehow, I didn’t see ROGUE ONE.

[lawful-evil-novelist]

Why Joker Getting Character Development Might be a Good Thing

Disclaimer: This is a long rant/essay primarily based on opinion and I am a bitter salt pile so if you disagree in any way that’s fine, this is just my personal take on things and you are free to disagree.

One of the few things that tends to irk me about DC Comics, particularly Batman, is that villains are not permitted arcs or development, save for a select few “choice” villains, and even these villains are severely restricted in what options are available to them in terms of character development.  Selina Kyle is allowed development, but only if it revolves around Batman or a member of the Bat Family.  Harley Quinn always has development in the comics, but it always follows a predictable pattern.  Even in Bombshells, to some extent, Harley grows independent of the Joker in some manner.

Harleen Quinzel is not Harley Quinn until she meets the Joker, and she cannot be with Pamela Isley until she learns to let him go.

And I think this is a problem we see with all villains in the DC canon but I think it’s especially prominent in Batman villains.  The Gotham Rogues Gallery is not allowed to stray outside of the very narrow boxes set out for them, and development they are allowed must remain inside these boxes.  Characters like Harley, Selina, Pamela, and Edward are allowed to dip into antihero territory, but only in predictable ways that the writers know the audience is comfortable with.

And I think this makes it so their most recognizable villains feel stale and overused.  They don’t stray far from their usual traits because they aren’t allowed to change in any way.

And for anyone’s money, I think we all know the biggest culprit of this lack of development and incessant use in spite of it.

Now I’m no Joker fan; I think the character is boring, overused, and frankly, an asshole.  But here’s the thing: he doesn’t need to be. Of all the plots they’ve stuffed Joker into, I’m surprised they’ve never tried to give him an actual arc.  He’s usually the bearer of an arc, usually one for Batman and is always the main bearer of Harley’s arcs, which I find particularly annoying because Harley’s development ends up centering around a man and it becomes often her only motivation to change.

Joker does not change, no matter the story. Even characters like Harvey Dent and Jonathan Crane change slightly, though the change often skews negative and they tend to get worse as a result (a different problem for a different day. Even as we laud Lego Batman’s Joker, we need to keep in mind that he does not change in that story.  The context makes it clear he has always been obsessed with Batman, and always will be, and the events of the movie do not alter his obsession, and in the end, it is used in Bruce’s favor.

This, in large part, is why Joker feels stale and overused, besides that he is forced into stories where other villains belong.  And though he is regularly used, he is not used to his full potential.  Writers pick him thinking he’s an easy write but he isn’t.

Now I’m not going to stand on a pulpit and list all the symptoms of ASPD to convince all of you Joker has it because, let’s face it, you’ve all heard it before and at this point it’s just part of the culture, but I don’t think that ASPD is an accurate summation because it has some caveats.  ASPD does not apply to conditions where the patient has another Cluster B disorder, and Joker’s “symptoms” as it were, fit closer to BPD than ASPD and a big portion of that is how he interacts with the world and how he himself acts, and in any case, I’m not here to give a sermon on how he has BPD instead of ASPD either. Diagnosing Joker doesn’t get us any closer to my point and it doesn’t make him any easier to write.

And my point is this: Joker doesn’t just need to be used less, though he certainly does.  What Joker desperately, desperately needs is to change and grow as a character.  Why? Well aside from not having the most boring thing that has ever dried your brain to a fine powder.  Joker is hard to write, I’m not going to sit here and tell comic writers or fanfic writers that giving him a character arc is easy because it isn’t.  Joker is a tough character to write.  He is simultaneously a man who is too far gone to care that anyone is getting hurt or killed in his jokes and a man who has lost everything and now desperately wants to die.  That isn’t easy to write and I think people tend to trivialize just how hard it is.

Or they do stupid shit like make him tear off his own face like that is exactly how a suicidally depressed person self-mutilates.

Yeah that’s totally an inoffensive portrayal of self-harm.

There’s probably a resounding question of why I should care.  Joker’s a manipulative, abusive asshole he shouldn’t be allowed redemption, right?  Well, I think there is a point where you need to look back and wonder: why is Joker so boring compared to the other rogues?  Because he really is painfully boring in comparison.

I think it’s because he doesn’t feel like a real person.  With Ed, Harley, Jon, Pam, Selina, we relate to them because they have personalities that feel organic and feel human.  We relate to Jon because we have all been scared children in situations we could not escape, we relate to Pam because we have all had scars that did not heal correctly, we relate to Ed because we have all been told at one time or another that we were not worth the time or effort to be loved.  None of us have been Joker.  None of us know, much less understand, what’s going on in his head. We know Jon is angry at the world, and we know it is because when he was suffering and scared no one did anything to stop it.  We know Pam is angry too, and we know she is angry because when she needed help to heal, help was not given.  We know Ed is overcompensating, and we know he is doing so because he desperately wants to prove that he is worthy of love.  We know and understand these characters and their motivations, they are human.

They are also not extremely offensive portrayals of mental illness and are seldom used as such.  If it sounds like I’m bitter about that face thing in New 52, it’s because I am, moving on.

When people call Joker a monster, it is accurate in that he is not humanized.  Even his very explicit wish to die is usually telegraphed by other characters.  The only time he mentions it is in probably the most human we’ve seen Joker in any comic: The Killing Joke.

And frankly this is one of my favorite comics involving the Joker because while I still didn’t relate to him, he still felt human to me.  And further, he recognizes, in this moment, that he has gone too far. This is something I think is important to recognize about Joker: he still has standards, he still knows there is a point of no return, he just doesn’t care.  And he doesn’t care because he wants to die.

But I don’t think Joker’s wish to die should be fulfilled, though I would like to see it explored, I’d actually really like to see Joker come to terms with the person he’s become, because he clearly hasn’t.  If he is so desperate to die that he purposely pushes at everyone’s threshold in an attempt to be killed, even Harley’s.

Harley even recognizes it. Can you imagine reading a comic where the main conflict is not dealing with someone who is mentally ill but someone who is mentally ill coming to terms with the fact that, no matter what, they can never be the same person as the one they were before their mental illness occurred?  That would be interesting!  In fact, I’m not even sure we’ve explored this with Bruce.  The only people who have come to terms with living with a mental illness and never being able to return to the people they were beforehand are Jon and Pam, and this acceptance is always before they ever become rogues, because they know what they went through and the changes they underwent as a result are how they’re coping, and that they can’t just pretend it never happened because that doesn’t change the fact that it did.

And keep in mind coming to terms with being unable to return to the time before the onset of mental illness is not the same as rejecting that time altogether, because that’s what Ed does and we know this is a coping mechanism and we know it isn’t healthy.  Ed does not like the person that came before the Riddler, Harley and Joker want to return to it so desperately they’re rejecting themselves now, and Jon and Pam, while not happy with the way they are now, know they cannot go back.  And the irony is that they both know they need to move forwards, and almost never do. Jon and Pam are frequently static in the comics, because the status quo is god and we must have a fear-obsessed delusional psychiatrist and a man-hating plant lady on the evil side because there is no way two people that have come to terms with themselves and are at best chaotic neutral types can ever do anything good and if they do it is with the aid of someone else because they are helpless to change on their own despite being intelligent human beings.

And if you are wondering, I am bitter about this too and it’s making me get off track.

The thing is, Joker has never been in a situation where his hand has been forced.  He has never been made to do something he doesn’t want to do and he has never had a single moment where, when the chips were down, he had a chance to definitively say: “I don’t want to die.  I want to be in control.  I want to do better.  I want to live.”

And I think he hasn’t because comic writers have never placed him in situations like that for whatever reason.  I think, and this is just speculation, that they are afraid that there is no situation you can put Joker in where he would, without a shadow of a doubt, say “I don’t want to die.”  There is an underlying feeling that Joker has no situation where he will look inward and realize that it is his fault he’s the way he is and he is the one that needs to change.

But no human is that stubborn or immovable, no human is so averse to change that they will never do so.  Somewhere out there, there is a situation where Joker would willingly change or even turn his life around, I can dare to dream of a world where instead of the Joker we have the Jokester because of character development instead of an alternate universe.

Especially since Jokester was summarily given the shaft in the Countdown series and we can add that to the third thing in this rant I am extremely bitter about.

Here’s the thing, there is something admirable about comics that address suicidal depression in a respectful and serious manner, there is a reason the Deadpool comic addressing it is so well-loved.

And the thing is, there are Gotham Rogues who suffer from depression, whether suicidal or not, and Joker is one of them.  It is perfectly fine to address suicidal depression with a character your audience will never see again, but I feel like it might also be accepted, or even welcomed, to have a character who suffers from suicidal depression address that it isn’t just a one-shot character, but one you always see.  Joker works for this too because it brings something up: you can be happy and still suffer from depression, these things are not incompatible.

I think Joker developing as a character is almost, in its own way, vital to the character as a trope. In continuities as long and extensive as Batman’s, characters need to grow and change to keep them from growing stale or feeling overused.

Though it might help to not use the characters so fucking much.

And that is the end of my bitter angry rant on the subject.