#the original version of this comic was on patreon back in the day

[pallisia]

play soulsov ^_^

[davidmariottecomics]

Goodbye IDW! Hello Something New!

Hi there! 

After seven years and some change, today, 12/22/2023, is my last day at IDW Publishing. It's for good reasons. Things just timed out that my last day could be the last work day of the year for IDW and in the new year, I'll be starting a new job elsewhere. I'll still be in comics and once I can talk about the new gig, I'm really stoked to be letting you all know. So, today, I want to say my goodbye to IDW. 

But first, before I get to that, I did have something else notable happen this week. I sent my last tweet!  I'm officially shutting down my Twitter at the end of the year and if you see a Twitter account claiming to be me after January 1st, it's an imposter. If you'd like to keep up with me, however, I've got good news! There are lots of other ways to find me still. Here are a few! 

Check out and bookmark my website! Get access to my blog, plus lots of behind the scenes stuff and new projects at my Patreon!  Subscribe to a newsletter version of my blog for free at Buttondown!  Follow my blog on Tumblr!  Keep up with my main socials: Bluesky and Instagram (I'm @davidmariotte at both)! 

Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about it. This is not my first time saying goodbye. In fact, almost exactly a year ago, I said my farewells to Transformers, one of the hallmarks of my IDW run. I don't want to revisit that too much, so if you want to read about my early days at IDW or that part of my career or a big list of thank yous to my collaborators, you can! And while I've had significant runs with other books, most notably Sonic the Hedgehog which with January's Sonic: Fang the Hunter #1 will mark 100 issues of Sonic at IDW under my editorial eye, or my personally exciting, if shorter runs on stuff like Godzilla, Samurai Jack, the Hasbro Action books, Canto, Scarenthood, The Kill Lock, The October Faction, Wynonna Earp, Brynmore, Atomic Robo, or literally so many other books, I don't want this to just be a retrospective on the work. In fact, I'm largely not interested in talking about the past when I say goodbye this time. 

IDW has afforded me a lot. They've helped me find my place in the industry. They let me do some writing. They let me do a lot of editing. I learned various other skills both through directly on the course of the job and through my own interest because of what I was doing and seeing there. I have made true lifelong friendships. And I have made comics. So leaving feels weird. I'm very bummed to be leaving a place that really has been my home (and for the past couple of years, has quite literally been mostly at my home) for so long. But I am even more excited about what's to come. On my side, I can't announce it just yet, but watch this space for some big news soon (after a couple weeks of much needed vacation). 

Talking about the future I actually can say a little more about, I wanna tell you how excited I am for IDW. Yes, I'm leaving, but IDW remains home to so many people--both at the company and our freelance creators--and so many projects that are close to my heart. Next year is their 25th anniversary. That is an impressive feat in not just the world of comics, but any industry. For the milestone, they've got a lot of cool stuff planned. 

I'm not going to blow up IDW's spot and say anything about what's coming up too early. Just to talk about the things that are already public knowledge, you've got things like the new TMNT: The Last Ronin sequel! The TMNT ongoing on it's road to issue #150! There are cool new originals like Golgotha Motor Mountain! There's the launch of the aforementioned Fang the Hunter which is IDW's first Classic Sonic mini-series and sees 100 unique issues of Sonic at IDW and is just laugh-out-loud funny and full of such good action! And I'll tease this, when the Sonic ongoing is back with issue #69 in May, you'll be in for an absolute treat as that series runs up to #75! 

I know some readers of this blog don't read a ton of American direct market comics. You aren't "Wednesday Warriors" who go to the comic shop every week. You like the comics you like and I've been graced to be a person working on those comics. If you aren't as familiar with how these comics work, let me assure you of a couple things. The books I was editing and many unannounced projects that I set up will still be happening. Because of the timelines of comic production, you'll still see my name in IDW books for a few more months and, at the same time, you'll see new credits creeping in. And if we've done everything right, that'll be about the only thing you'll notice is different, at least at first. As the editors really take the reins and take over, we'll both be in for the treat of the unknown! I'll be reading them with a good sense of professional jealousy. 

Now, there's one other book that has been announced for next year and I wanted to do a special call out for. Godzilla: Valentine's Day Special went to press this week. It's the last IDW book I saw all the way from inception to completion. And, in many ways, it's kind of a really good analogy of a comics editorial career. I think, genuinely, this may be the book that went from conception to reality the fastest in my career. I think it took... less than a week from a half-joking suggestion of doing a Godzilla Valentine's Day book to getting Zoe Tunnell's pitch in and approved by Toho and getting it on the publishing schedule. Usually these things take a bit--people are working on other projects, licensors need time to review things, whatever other bumps happen along the way--but this was like lightning. Everyone just got it instantly. And then Zoe turned in the script and it was great! Things continued, as they do, and then... we got a curveball or two. I won't go into too much detail, but major thanks to Sebastian Piriz and Rebecca Nalty for getting it done and having a book that we were all so proud of that I could send to press this week. And it struck me on that final press day that despite the curveballs we had been thrown, when it came to actually getting it approved, everything was so easy, straightforward, and smooth. When you read it in February, if I've done my job right, maybe you'll remember seeing somewhere that there were some curveballs. But mostly, you'll just have a really good book in your hands. (BTW, you did JUST MISS the final order cutoff on that, so do check in with your shop about still trying to get you a copy!) 

Most of the time, after a book like that goes to press, an editor gets ready to do it again--maybe in a few minutes or days or the next week. For the first time in a long time, I won't be getting ready to do it again at IDW. That's a complicated feeling, but I'm so excited for the future. 

The best metaphor I've been able to come up with for what is happening is it's like I've been working in a one room office constantly for the past seven years. It's got that dull office lighting, you know the kind. Each day, projects come and go across my desk, and as they otherwise disappear into the world, I put up one of those glow-in-the-dark stars as a memory of it. And each day, I work with so many people--my coworkers at IDW who've helped foster my growth, my collaborators as both a writer and editor who have made so many stories with me, all the folks where things never quite lined up but we kept trying, and the readers who are an inherent part of the ecosystem, the reason we make what we do. And so, for each of those people, I put up a little glow in the dark toy. 

Now, for the first time, I'm going to get up and leave the office. As I flick the switch behind me, everything in there that has been soaking up light for years now glows. Some of the glows are slight. Some are so fantastically bright, it feels like they're drawing attention through the walls of the room. Together, they make the room brighter than it was when I left. Now, sometimes, I might sneak in to borrow a toy--make a copy of it for the new office I'm doing the same thing in. Other people will certainly do the same and make they've got their Evan Stanley figure on their shelf. If I ever return for a longer time, I'll be so glad to flick the light back on and let them all absorb even more light to glow an even longer time. If I don't, I rest happy that the glow goes on and forever people will be able to come back and discover some part of it. And I'll start working on a new office soon. 

If I keep going,  I'm a little afraid that I won't be able to stop. So, for now, I'll just say again, thank you. The future is about to be very exciting. Next year is for the creators you love or don't know you love yet, the books that are going to light you up that you've come to expect and the ones that will catch you by total surprise. While there are a lot of things I'm going to miss deeply and books that I'm going to wish I had gotten to do more on, I also have the really exciting experience of getting to see this stuff as a fan of IDW, just like you. And, hey, I hope you'll be a fan of the stuff I do next too! 

As for next steps, like I've said, I'm not going far. I'll still be in comics. I'll share the news when I can.

Before that, I'm getting a little break. Not too long, just a few weeks, and obviously the holidays are part of those, but in my time between my jobs, I'm going to be working on some personal projects. I put together a little tracking list recently and I have something like 40 projects in various stages of gestation right now. Obviously, I'm not going to be working on all of those at once, and chances are, some of them will never see the light of day, but I'm going to be working on trying to bring a couple of them to you in the new year (and beyond). If you're an artist that I've had the pleasure of working with in the past and you think you might be interested in peeping the list and seeing what we could do together, let me know. You can reach me on my website contact page, through my email, or through Discord (feel free to ask if you don't have it!). 

And if you read this blog, you'll see me hyping my last IDW projects up until we run out of what I left behind. Simultaneously, once I've got stuff to start hyping up for my personal projects and for the new gig, you'll see those start to pop up here too! I'll also keep talking about making comics and my thoughts on the state of the world and whatever else it is I blog about here on a regular basis! 

Thanks for reading. Bye-DW! Next week, I'll be doing a little Best of 2023. But for now, onto our regular features. 

What I enjoyed this week: Dungeons & Daddies (Podcast), Reverse 1999 (Video Game), Nancy (Comic), Lego Masters (TV show), Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror (Short story collection), Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video Game), Cunk on Earth (TV show), I'm a Virgo (TV show), The Boy and the Heron (Movie), an easy last week at IDW, all the well-wishes that've already poured in, leaving today to celebrate Christmas with my family and then have some downtime to work on my stuff, signing the paperwork for the new job, not being on Twitter anymore, getting all of our mail out in a timely fashion for the holidays, Chainsaw Man (Manga), I picked up Superman and Hawkgirl, so excited to get caught up on those, and knowing that in leaving this job, there are certain folks I just get to deepen my relationships with as friends, instead of co-workers. 

New Releases this week (12/20/2023): Godzilla: The War for Humanity #3 (Editor) Godzilla Rivals: Jet Jaguar vs. Megalon (Editor)

Announcements: The Cartoonist Cooperative is still doing E-Sim cards for Gaza. You can donate a digital sim card so that residents can get access to the internet and have more functional phones and, in exchange, get some comics or a drawing or whatever else is available from the many participating artists. Additionally, the CC is hosting their mini-comic awards! It's a cool way to maybe get your mini-comic recognized and make some scratch!

You can also give more directly. If you don't have money, and I get it, you can call or fax or email or show up at the offices of your representatives. Keep your eyes open for actions too, whether they're another general strike or demonstrations and marches in your area. Given the nature of the things, they often come together fairly quickly, so do exercise your due diligence. Also, of course, being informed and just giving your time to Palestinian journalists and writers is incredibly valuable. 

While Becca has got some things brewing for next year (and now on a schedule), you should reach out if you'd like to work on comics with them! You can find their gallery on their website and also, y'know, maybe pick up a few things for belated gifts while you're there!

Finally, I called out my Patreon earlier. You can support me (and boy, that would be cool during the time between paychecks because vacation is nice, but living is still expensive) and get not just this blog, but a lot of cool special features like extra posts, comics, infographics, and more! At the $10+ levels, you can also access stuff like a holiday gift guide I made, a podcast pilot for a spicy show with Becca, and a ton more! 

Pic of the Week: Happy holidays from Becca and me! If you wanna full card in your inbox, lemme know! 

[teejaystumbles]

Teejaystumbles’ Dreamling art and fic - ultimate masterpost

Fic

general tumblr writing tag (teejay writes)

AO3 (I’m not going to link to every fic I wrote, there are several, please check out this link to the archive)

Art

general tumblr art tag (teejaystumbles)

Pillowfort (for 18+/NSFW works so be aware before clicking!)

Patreon

deviantArt

My original webcomic Behind the Obsidian Mirror (BL, aztec setting, WIP) can be found in my deviantArt gallery and on my Patreon. I also made an extra tumblr but it’s not up to date.

specific posts for certain events or AUs:

Monsterfucktober Bingo 2023 masterpost (full card)

As the World falls down comic (Labyrinth dream AU) (WIP)

Illustration/Cover

pages 1-2

pages 3-5

pages 6-8

pages 9-11

coming soon

The Storms of Life (1889 canon divergence, complete)

kind of related to ch2 - apparition

ch2 - rescue

ch6 - nightmare 1 (cw blood, claws, injury)

ch6 - nightmare 2

ch8 - waiting in the garden

ch10 - kiss

extra - Hob (cw body horror)

Valentine’s Day - Hob in lingerie

Hob portrait

plant creature Dream + Hob

Flatter the Mountain Tops (dragon AU, complete)

ch1 - Hob+Dream as dragons

ch6 - dragon snuggling

ch7 -  partial transformation

ch9 -  a feather, a reminder…

other Endless dragon sketches

Hob mastering partial transformation

some Hob faces

dragon/human sex (sft version with link to nsft)

more dragon/human sex - Hob being irresponsible (comic)

Ollie/Hob sketches

Hob being lifted up by a dragon

loads of more wonderful art for my dragons can be found on @amielot’s tumblr!!

Fins & Fangs AU (vampire!Hob/nixie!Dream)

now with a fic!! Wash these sins on down the river for a life I didn't choose by @karalynlovescake

Story post

story sketches

nix Dream being carried doodle

three stages of monstrification/curse

vampire/nix making out (sft version with link to nsft)

glowing in the rain (angsty)

Hell or High Water (AU with skate merman Hob that tumblr helped create through a poll <3)

sketches 1

sketches 2 - daydreaming on a rock like a good mermaid

first eye contact

sketches 3

sketch with ruby 1

sketch with ruby 2

trying to save a “human”

sketch with ruby 3 - sexy Hob

Hob caught in a net sketch

underwater kisses sketch

Hob playing in kelp forest sketch

sketches 4

Hob pinup

chibi Hob with pet

some Hob faces

anatomy studies (sft version with link to nsft)

dive with me illustration

merman/human illustration (sft version with link to nsft)

Hob caught in a net illustration

Unsustainable (dark!Dream/Hob, Hannibal-inspired AU)

art and premise

drabble

more drabble/thoughts

Single AU/fic art posts

Knight Hob

Cobwebs - sad Hob + kiss

Dryad Dream (cw body horror)

A Hope in Hell

Hob in corset (1789)

There’s an Emerald in the sky (Daniel/Hob)

Spiritstalker (cw blood)

1489 AU - 1 + 2, extra

Jumper (2008) - 1 + 2

Beauty and the Beast (fairytale dream rescue AU)

Moulin Rouge AU

kidnapped Hob (blindfold)

The Hunted (assassin/vigilante AU)

Servant of the Bones AU

Orc Hob

Witch Hob 1 + 2 + 3 + cover art and fic!

Sleep Token song illustrations

Rain (Dreamling)

Apparition (Dreamling - for Storms of Life)

Aqua Regia (Morpheus)

The Offering (Dreamling)

Euclid (Hob - for There’s an Emerald in the Sky)

Take Me Back To Eden (Dreamling - for There’s an Emerald in the Sky)

Higher (Corinthian/Dream)

Aldritch Kemp fanart (Ferdie): sketch, art

Art for others/Masterpost part 2

(I had to cut in half because I reached the tumblr link limit)

[popculturebuffet]

Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Retrospective: The Empire Builder from Callisota: "No Scrooge McDuck once had everything. Now all he has is Money and What Money Can Buy" (Patreon Review for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to my look at The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. After a long hiatus, it's almost over. Just two chapters left.

We've also got one I forgot..was banned. Yeah turns out a year ago Disney contacted rosa, told him this story was was banned and weren't really up to discussing it. As for why... well you can look above and get a pretty good idea. This story features Bombie the Zombie and Foola Zoola, characters Barks created... and characters who are entirely racist carcatures in their original form. Rosa DID do his best to give Foola depth, taking him from a one note villian to someone who didn't want a colonizer taking his land. Bombie.. really coudln't as he was a zombie and all that, but you can see from above why Disney wouldn't be crazy about reprinting Bombie and... I fully agree. As seen above, I can see WHY disney would choose to not want to print this story in it's orignal form as while Rosa did his best to fix the designs... Bombie still dosen't look that great.

The problems are twofold. The first is with Disney itself, who is unwilling to let anyone talk about it, is content to bury the story at at most suggested having people edit Rosa's art, something he's against. And I do get it: letting someone else walk all over something you carefully made.. isn't fair. I dont' agree with him on refusing to edit it due to being asked, as while as he says himself

“The Dream of a Lifetime” has only THREE panels of its 25 pages in which Bombie appears. Rather than ban this entire story forever due actually to only TWO of those three panels, the publishers suggested that I allow them to have Bombie redrawn. I would not allow art-tampering if my name is on the book. (I can tamper with my own art in reprints if I made some error, but I won’t allow changes forced on me.)

Look, I do think they should allow Rosa, if he's able as I know drawing is hard for him these days, to draw it and I do think just saying outright "you have to" instead of opening up an actual talk with him over the issue is scummy. Disney is being dicks and their possible "solution" of just removing the story is stupid. This is an integral part of life and tims and editing it is the better part. (As noted with dream of the life time it's only three panels).

That said while I love Don Rosa.. he should redraw it. He shoudlnt' of had his hand forced, again he deserves more respect and it's clear Disney is fairly hands off when it comes to it's comics. if he can't, then I do understand. But Rosa does have to understand.. this IS necessary. This WAS an error on his part as while he did do his best to make the characters look less racist and in Zoola's case an actual character, and was horrified by this chapter in Barks history in his commentary.. he has to understand times have changed. And while he considers the Don Rosa Library just for adults.. that's simply not the case. Jason Aaron , who wrote the recent Uncle Scrooge and the Infnity Dime, read these stories with his kids. Other people will do the same. And black children.. deserve to not have to see a racist caracture. I'm not saying ther eisn' ta market to have an unedited version with a warning label on it, Scrooge has adult readers, but I am saying these comics , while written smartly and fitting everyone.. are all ages and always will be. I'd rather the story be edited slightly to be updated than gone all together.

Let's be fair though: While I do think Rosa is being stubborn, Disney.. is still the worst and still shoudl've given him a more resonable chat than this. Disney clearly dosen't give one iota of a shit about these stories or how important they are to comics as a whole and while this chapter could use an update, it's callous to chuck it in a bin as some racist artifact when while the art.. again could use a slight touchup, maybe make bombie a full on green zombie like the 2017 cartoon.. the story itself.. isn't racist. Rosa took a racist old tale and made it a story of collonalism and scrooge's worst moment. The worst thing he ever did.. was forcibly take land from the people already living there and that's worth telling and Disney is fucking stupid for not getting that.

Lucky for me I own the story already, but I can't say that for everyone and hopefully at some point Disney gets their head and finger out of their ass and compromises with rosa while he's still around to compromise with.

For now the story itself.. and this is the one I was dreading. Not for all the above, i'd happily forgotten that till I went to get the image then had to dig into it a bit. Thank you reddit. No.. this is the sad one. See when we first met Scrooge.. Barks hadn't quite worked out who he was. He was always a bastard but he wasn't the layered bastard we know, one who will undersell his nephews but also do the right thing in a pinch. As a result he entered the story a frail old recluse donald hadn't met yet with Night on Bear Mountain, and earlier stories had him more as an antagonist before Barks took a shine to him and found out just how well the old man fit the adventure stories that he'd been telling with donald.

One of those early stories... was a massive headache for Rosa. Voodoo Hodoo, the story with the racist carcatures mentioned above, one where Scrooge gleefully admits to tearing down an african villiage and getting cursed as a result.

Like me Rosa had dreaded this part as how the hell would this fit: he coudln't ignore it due to his pride, trying to weave everything in, but it was incredibly hard to parse that with who scrooge became.. till it hit him: USE the fact it was horribly out of character for Scrooge. Have it be the one moment that in rosa's words "he became flintheart glomgold" that one moment of weakeness where he became his worst self for just one day, succumbed to every bad instinct he had did something truly unforgivable... and have it have consequences. Have his worst moment, his one bad day, be the reason his family left and he didn't reunite with them till inviting donald and the boys for christmas all those many decades later. It's why I dreaded this chapter: it's the one where Scrooge gains everything he ever wanted.. and looses what he had in the process. It's one of the hardest chapters to read and it's under the cut.

So we open with Matilda closing her scrapbook. Up to this point her scrap book had been the opening page, tracking her brother's journey.. but now she and her sisters are adults working for their brother, staying at the office while he travels the world and the seven seas building his empire and slowly filling his bin. It's a nice bit of symbolisim considering what's about to happen.

Scrooge returns as you'd expect.. inside a canon as he refused to pay extra shipping to ship himself. He could, as Hortense points out let someone else run the show.. but he refuses. No one else has his grit and while he dosen't say it... no one else simply has his stubborness. When mugged and having his hat shot he runs down the new generation of mcvipers in a flashback simply because they shot up his hat and cost him money. The man DOES need a better work life ballance.. but he isn't wrong. Scrooge is simply at his best when he's doing some of the work himself. His 2017 self does delegate more.. but truly thrives when his nephew and niece and later passel of nephews and daughter he never knew he had remind him of adventure. He dosen't always turn a tidy profit.. but the experince is well worth it and for every loss there's a gain.

This mindset makes a LOT of sense in story: We've seen scrooge struggle and scrape to get this far. Fight every minute as he will not settle for a life he does not deserve nor feels his family dosen't. Every time he seemingly got up the mountain and won... something shoved him back down with only a small handful of cash as progress, enoguh to get to the next adventure. Over that, with Rockerduck and Roosevelt's help, he learned he just.. loved the chase. He's in a comfy enough place where he can still keep going on the chase.. but every small loss isn't a gutting reminder he hasn't gotten anything but experince. He can take risks. He sometimes dosen't because he's a cheap old bastard, but he can adventure.. because he can afford it. Before it was just to survive.. now it's because it's what he WANTS to do. He wants to be richer than god, to keep going keep growing his empire and he was taught the only way to get that far is to do the hardest work yourself and maybe let others come to you for money once you got it.

Case in point Scrooge really didnt' see the need for a larger office staff, leaving only his sisters to run it.. and thus hilariously passes out when he finds they hired Ms Quackfaster. For those more familiar with Ducktales 2017 Quackfaster here is more timid, put upon back when it was entirely okay to abuse your secretary/office assitant. Ah the 40's.. please stay 50 feet away at all times thank you. He goes catatonic at finding out they have a full staff, but Hortsens is unphased throwing a whole cup of coffe in his face and making it clear that A) They couldn't do this with two people ya jackass and B) we're comnig with you.. ya jackass.

The girls have brought quackmore to office manage so they can go globetrotting something scrooge is suprisingly happy with.

Sadly this is about as light hearted as this adventure gets as we head into the congo.. where

The story strangely dosen't say, which is uncarctrastic for Rosa. This story has that racist habit a lot of stories do of just saying "Africa' instead of "what country exactly on the largest continent in the world". Which is not great when he was far more specific when we did the previous jaunt to south africa. Yeah... some oft his story has not aged well and Rosa can and should have done better. He does through research but here just... plunks a very plot importnat villiage int he middle of a giant continent.

Scrooge is intent to impress his sisters.. but instead shows them, and us, how far he's fallen: Scrooge does one of the oldest tricks in the colonalist playbook, offering the cheif a quarter for the land rights since the man genuinely DOSEN'T know he's getting screwed over. This trope is.. awful, that old "Oh stupid indgenious peoples they'll belivie anything. So it's not great.. but it is softend a bit as the chief offered a tiny war drum something sacred to him, something not worth money, but worth a lot to their small community.. and scrooge faked that gesture while really screwing the poor guy over. While the optics are sketchy.. the intent works: Scrooge has sunken so low that rather than make his money square and returning a heartfelt gesture of someones cutlure sincerly.. he tricks the person for his own ends.

The sisters call him out for this... and it's a scene I forgot.. but boy does it hit

Seeing Scrooge fallen this low.. is hard. While it's not the man gut punch of the comic, Don Rosa's not even close to done working the body, it still hits to see how much he's changed. It was to the point I THOUGHT this was a bit abrubt, that while it's been a while since the last chapter, it surely can't of been THAT long.

Thinking back though... this was set up most of the story. Scrooge's dark side has always been part of his character, especially in the comics: Even in the better days ahead in the prime of the barks and rosa eras.. he's still rageful, barely pays his family or workers, petty and often wont' do things he easily could simply to be a selfish dick. Christmas for Shacktown has him refuse to help pay for christmas for orphans even when Donald put in the hard work to get 25 dollars.. which is, to my shock 294 dollars and 17 cents in today money. So yeah donald gathered nearly 300 dollars in charity.. that scrooge refused to repay. I'd say he's the worst evil billonare in fiction but his competition is pretty stiff

Point is part of Scrooge's charm is he COULD be an asshole... it thankfully got toned down with time and Ducktales and ESPECIALLY 2017 Ducktales toned it the fuck down, the latter having what I consdier to be my faviorite version, but he's still some form of bastard, and his need to grow as a person or suprising bits of depth and humanity are what make him so fascinating. He's a dick.. but he has a lot of layers to him and a moral code.

This chapter shows just what thin ice that code is on: how it wouldn't take too much for him to tip over the line and become an even worse glomgold. While that darkness isn't there in the early chapters, as younger scrooge is both a tad more naive and way more kind and trusting it slowly builds: in Raider of the Copper Hill he nearly goes mad with power at just the THOUGHT of his newfound fortune and only having to sell his newfound wealth immediatly for pennies snaps him out of it. The Terror of Transval breaks his trust in most people completely, thanks flinty. In King of The Klondike while still sympathetic you can see his harder shell having fully formed, how he avoids other people, is rude to just about everyone and later in the next chapter, is fairly cold to people.It's been bubbling faster and faster: In the billionare of dismal downs, he snaps at the townspeople threanting to leave them all homeless out of petty spite. And finally in the previous chapter, he kicks those boy scouts out rather rudely, which bites him in the ass when they assume he's a foreign spy. The last part is just them being dummies, but there's this harsh sharp edge we simply don't fully notice forming.. because it's who scrooge is even after he takes about ten percent off. The guy is mean.

But Barks uses this opportunity to show why he's a hero.. by showing him, for one shameful moment, as a villian. As a pure monster who gladly tricks an indigenous person out of their land and his response to being called out on it by his anchors, the thing noticably able to snap him out of his worst insincts... is to say "i'm done playing fair."

Scrooge is often honest.. because he's got people around to curb his worst insincts. His family keep him grounded: having the goal of helping provide for them kept him honest, his dad kept pushing him away from his worst instincts and his sisters and mom kept doing the same.

The problem is.. slowly but surely.. he's just about lost everyone: His mentors are long gone or in the white house. He dosen't trust anyone enough to have actual friends. And as for his family.. h'es slowly lost them: His Uncles have passed by now, he lost his mom and found out in the worst way possible, and he just lost his dad. He has his sisters.. but like Donald and the Boys later, he's on an uneven enough playing field with them to ignore them if he wants. After all he provided for them, he gave them a home in america, what fucks should he give they don't care. Their the last tether he has to his humanity and he's kept them at arms length, keeping them at home whlie he journied and letting himself get more and more corrupt. Without the humanizing aspects of his goal to gain wealth, having saved his ancestral castle, given his sisters a good life and become rich, all that's left is gaining more and more money whatever it takes. Scrooge may be unscrupoious on a good day.. but he has enough honor to do the right thing, to be honest about his money. Without that is just the monster barely contianed under the surface and the last thing locking it out.. is about to go away.

So Scrooge confronts the Voodoo Part of the tribe, which while... once again about as researched as Tintin in Africa, is one of the better parts. Again Barks casual racisim.. shows a bit. It's something I didn't notice on previous readings but is kinda.. obvious now as the man just didn't bother ot put in the research he did for white legends and locations. He's not always racist, he put true effort into researching the dreamtime for the Dreamtime Duck of Never Never, but it's clear when it comes to africa he didn't really give a shit.

That said while he has issues I WILL give Rosa credit for how he redid Foola. The racist aspects are gone aside from fangs for teeth.. and characterzation wise he's treated not as some cheap villian.. but as a man who puts on scare tactics because he's used to men like scrooge: Greedy white assholes who try to take everything they can from his sacred land. Foola is unimpressed by this colonizing asshole and it's a part of the story that, unlike most of the other villiage stuff, holds up very well: Barks clearly respects Vodoo even going on one of his signature "old man yells at cloud" rants about how "traditional" zombies are nothing like the ones we know now. Foola is only in the story for a short while but makes a hell of an impression, being one of the few characters to truly best scrooge

Now Scrooge probably woudln't of takent his well in any form at any time. The diffrence is the scrooge later could at least be talked down by the nephews or would've barged back in solo to fight Foola. He also never would've done the racist offering a quarter shit to him or the chief. This scrooge.. does easily the worst thing Scrooge McDuck has EVER done in any medium.

I love the heavy shadows over his face in this scene, just the pure.. evil radiating off scrooge for a moment. Anger, malice.. we've seen it.. but we've never seen him as a complete and utter monster destroying people's lives and homes all for his greed and every minute of it is painful, seeing just how... Broken matilda is by it. You can see just how sad she is to see her brother not only tear her apart for no good reason but tear innocent people apart.. while Hortense.. prepares to pack.

Somehow scrooge manages to do MORE horrible shit, pretending to be someone else to get foola to sign the contract. Foola swears his revenge... and Scrooge returns not to his sisters forgiving him and gladly taking the money as he expected... but a letter

While dishonesty is kinda underselling it, it's a truly painful moment. It's also an awesome one as the whole time Scrooge has ignored what they've had to say.. and now he can't. All he can do is gripe about WHY he's sunk this low: that if the world isn't honest why shoud he be? It's a problem that feels extra relevant these days: if the world is a dumpster fire... why shouldn't I be one too? If nothing we do matters, what does anything matter?

I'd forgotten this scene.. but damn it hits. The one thing that gets through to him.. is his dad. He can lie to himself.. but he can't lie to his dad. And the answer to that hypothetical above was simple: to be true to yourself, to respect yourself enough not to sink to tohers levels.

This does convince scrooge to go reunite with his family.. but first he has bigger issues. Foola's back..a nd he's brougth bombie. And bombie's design isn't great, but Barks reimagines him well: more as an unstoppable juggernaught than a mildly racist zombie. Thankfully Rosa also needed to retcon something else: Scrooge looked like a young donald in the flashback, something that didn't really stack up with later versions, so in not ignoring this story, Rosa found a clever way to deal with that; his earlier disguise looked like donald, so bombie only goes after him when he has a hat on.

The next section is kinda weak, if understadanbly so: Rosa had to cover DECADES of Scrooge's life this time around, so we follow him as he doe ssome buisnessy buieness buienss and outwits bombie, along the way picking up a candy striped ruby. IT's all pretty standard though the climax of it.. is fucking amazing. Bombie follows Scrooge to the titanic. Where Scrooge dosen't notice the boat sinking because he's busy with bombie. It's a sequence I just kinda eyed over in past readings but in this one.. hot damn is it fun.

After he beats bombie we then get a montage as Scrooge makes a global empire, mostly nods to various barks stories I don't think i've read yet, like the gilded man of el dorado.. who then runs in fear as he forgets who he's dealing with. Nothing bad but it feels like it's there more to cover all the gaps in scrooge's history left before the finale than tell a story for the most part. There is one exception though: after he gets shoved off a cliff.. he finds he's picked up a new ability, one of his most famous

Also props to rosa for explaining the "how he can swim through coins" thing: As ducktales 2017 put it it's a hard won skill and just diving in would kill anyone else. Rosa like barks takes this seriously, as while this world has fantastical stuff in it he grounds it in the logical explanation, ones that don't feel like nitpicky fan wankery, but a logical reason why Scrooge can do the thing people know him for.

Turns out Bombie wasn't lost in the titanic... which makes sense: If James Cameron the Bravest Pioneer didn't find him while taking underwater footage of it, he must've been gone. The Chief of an Island scrooge is negotating with takes the ruby in exchange for binding Bombie for 30 years and Scrooge is sur ehe'll NEVER see him again.

Some time ,more finagaling and proftering later, Scrooge FINALLY returns home to a warm reception.. an ddickilsh bashes the mayor with the key to the city

Sadly his return to his office.. means our ending. And it's one of the hardest things i've had to write about. And I had to write about frasier mowing down the ACLU a few weeks back.

No this ending is simple but crushing: His sisters decided to let bygones be bygones, enough time had passed. Sadly.. Scrooge taking the long way round.. meant he just.. dosen't care. He brushes them off, storms into his office and when Hortense storms in.. he angrily tells them they didn't care when he was abroad all that time supporting them before. What he misses.. is that things changed. Two, when he started his trip, small children with no real agency seeing their brother off versus two grown women who simply want him to acknowledge them.. is diffrent. They don't need him anymore.. and Hortense tells him if he shoes them away NOW, it's over. And sadly.. Scrooge pushes them away. While before it was due to his darkest hour.. this time.. it's just due to who he is. Scrooge is a prideful old bastard who can't accept weakness and sees his emotoinal ties as just that. IT's why it takes him so long to actually admit, and rarely to their faces, he cares about Donald and the nephews.. and his sisters need and deserve that. THey deserve to be acknowleged. Donald and the Boys did.

Speaking of Donald he and Della were here and whiel Della was only a character enough at this point to get a cameo Donald... gets the last shot in.

Bout sums up their relationship really.. but it's also oddly sweet.. donald kicks scrooge's ass, literally and desrevedly.. because he made his momma cry.

Scrooge has a chance, to reconcile, to fix this.. but sadly instead...

God that last panel, his sisters sadly resigned to letting him go as the Bin towers over everything, showing off just how lonely he is and forever will be. Even if this story as a whole has a happy ending, this ending... guts you.

And somehow.. I found a way it guts me even more on a second reading. This.. is the last time Scrooge talks to hortense that we're aware of. He DOES see Matilda again, a story we'll certainly get to someday, and one of Rosa's finest.. but it's heavily implied Hortense and Quackmore are gone by the time Donald and Della are adults as we never see them and unlike Della, we never got an explination in the comics. Scrooge's last time seeing his sister was a terrible argument and him turning his back on his family out of pride. He lost so much time with her, her children and his family.. all for nothing.

The Richest Duck in the World is a good story.. if an uneven one. Parts of it are mildly racist, with Rosa again not having cared enough to do actual research this time and that's damming from a guy who prides himself on it, and it drags for a bit as Rosa has to stitch together decades of noodle incidents in Barks work. The titanic scene is great but most of it is pretty much fanservice and while I am a fan of Barks work, i'm not the super student Rosa is, so I don't get nearly as much out of it. I'm fine with fanservice, but the rest of the comic does a better job threading it in naturally.

That said while the chapter is uneven.. the parts it nails.. it really NAILS. Scrooge's darkest hour is truly chilling, a monsterous act that is truly horrifying to watch and the ending just hits like a truck. While we get a SLIGHT breather with Donald kicking his ass, it ends on a gut punch that reminds us Scrooge.. lost his family. The very thing he set out to help... he lost.

Thankfully.. this isn't the end. While this is the climax.. i'ts not the ending. So

Next Time: We end this trek as Scrooge gets to know his nephews and has to deal with an old foe. Till then thanks for reading

[okanra]

It’s been quite sometime since the last time I post something here, quite eventful as well, the event kinda slapped me awake lol, but continuing the previous topic with all the “fun research” is gonna take more time to clean up the drafts (I already wrote the outline since January and the updated version in March 1st) so I’ll post it some time this month. But before that, read the next chapter in my current webseries project! It has more than 30 pages, started out in August 2022 and has finished in March this year. During the production stage of this series a lot had happened so it took 7 months for it to actually be completed 💩

That being said I also opened a Patreon in last year’s August/September! 🎉 The Patreon mostly will be used to support me during the production stage of this weberies because right now I can only spend some hours of my sleeping time to draw it. I work a lot in real life, but every single second that I’m free I currently spend it all on this personal project. And it uh, requires more brain power than I originally thought (sometimes, I can’t help thinking that I should have drawn pure fanarts and nsfw stuff and call it a day instead lol). So if you’re interest in this project and want to support me so I can pump it out faster, consider looking at http://www.patreon.com/kahnguyen (for some reasons the links don’t work in this post so I gotta type it out manually)

And now, without further ado, let’s jump into

“The Iron Woman”

Oh yeah I almost forgot! If you’re new here and are interested in getting to know more about it, links to the webseries is pinned on my page along with the previous comics📌 This webseries is a compilation of many short stories that fit into one world, one alternate (and subverted) universe and timeline, and focuses on one plot. Below is some of the preparations I made when this chapter was properly written in August 2022.

Finish the reading the brief introduction? Let’s dive back into the comic. If anyone saw some errors, no, no you didn’t see anything 😌

NEXT UPDATE

[conventionalwisdomcomic]

Weekly Digimon Comic: Digimon Tamers - episode 3.5

...and then I remembered that this is technically the SECOND time we've seen Gargomon in a Digimon anime, since Terriermon was also in The Movie as a partner for Willis... WHO IS AMERICAN. So, yeah, I'm not sure how well the joke actually works, but I'd already started drawing it SO HERE WE GO.

Also, I couldn't think of a way to turn this thought into a comic, but it's a bit funny for me to watch the Gargomon fight unedited and remember back in the day seeing people online talk about how the Saban version had to be edited because the original was "way to violent and disturbing" ...and then remember how much worse stuff is in LATER episodes that Saban/Fox Kids totally let slide. Good times.

ALSO, I will now take this mentioning of Terriermon as an opportunity to link to my silly Momentai video. I apologize for nothing.

Conventional Wisdom / Patreon

[artharakka]

33, 40, 45 for the oc ask meme?

Woah I finally have a proper day off without having anything scheduled! So some more oc ask doodles it is because I still have a bunch of these in my askbox ✨🧡

33. Your shyest OC?

Rhiam. Though often during any kind of intense moments like in fights Rhiam gets into some kind of flow state where they just act on intuition (because they don't have time to overthink).

45. A character you no longer use?

Oh so many! But at the same time I don't know? Because I tend to have some active stories and characters I rotate in my mind and some stories are kind of abandoned (for now), but time to time I pick some old characters from them and reuse them in some new setting. Here's one that I haven't been tempted to recycle though:

I don't even remember did I name her anything besides Queen. She was a cold monarch in the first version of my oldest proper story and one of the story's main antagonists. She was replaced with other kind of antagonists over time as the story developed. She wasn't very deeply developed since I was like... 14? when I made the story. She was obsessed with keeping the power in her hands which drove her to severe paranoia that made her blame the story's protagonist's love interest of stealing the magical crown jewel and the protagonist was to find the real culprit. Her son Lumi, on the other hand, who was just a side character in the original story, became a more important character in the later versions of the story. He was also forgotten for a time but lately I resurrected a version of him to my space ttrpg that I've sometimes posted on my Patreon. So, some version of this queen also still lives as Lumi's mother.

40. Any fond memories linked to your characters?

So many to so many! Majority of my ocs I've created or introduced to shared projects of me, @iijadraws & @artist-rat so creating ocs and stories is mostly a communal activity with friends for me 🧡 There are the protagonists of our graphic novel (currently on back burner), Kasimira, Sonja, and Idla, that are very dear as we started the project in 2016 when we were getting to know each other. Currently I'm cherishing Rhiam's ttrpg campaign Heartland which artist-rat is DMing as during it we have been getting back to hanging out just the three of us after life got in the way (there were happy things as well, but time consuming). But there are two characters that came to mind first when thinking about fond memories:

Pujo ("Mugwort") and Paju ("Willow") are twin characters of me and @artist-rat (Paju is mine, Pujo Rat's). We created them when we weren't in that good place (at least I was in the pits of depression and burnout). And also after we hadn't seen each other in half a year after I was studying in Canada. They are not us, but there's also something that makes them the most "us" characters we have. They have had rough times and a bit broken family, but they are always there for each other. I projected my depression heavily on Paju, and kind of started to resent them because I started to resent myself. But my friends loved Paju (and me) despite their flaws and depression and so I also started to gain my own self esteem ❤. For us they embody the kind of comfort there is in a not-that-grand commuter town apartment that has been made in to a home despite the bland facade. Or going to get takeout late in the evening, but it's still warm and light because of the northern summer's barely setting sun. They started as Skyrim characters, but have since been adapted to many settings. A couple of years ago I started to draw small slice of life comics about them, but I got busy with graduating etc. I've been thinging of starting that kind of a project about them again though.

[askironwill]

Hello everyone! Long time no update. As most of you probably realized quite a long time ago this project has ended. I just never felt the need at the time to outright say this. There are many reasons I originally stopped, but in the end it was mostly just because I lost interest in the format and the characters. Even when the fandom was in its hay day, Iron Will was never really that popular of a character, but he piqued my interest for a time. I'm sure I would have done a little bit more with the blog had it had more interaction, but I'm still proud of all the fans and followers I did get. I've been meaning to post this for a while, but I just kept putting off for one reason or another. I really don't like to leave things open-ended and I figured I'd at least let you know where I've been up to and where you could find me still if any of you are still interested in what art shenanigans I get up to. I'll leave some links below to my personal galleries and media sites. Spookitty Website Picarto Twitter DeviantArt Fur Affinity (Potentially NSFW!) Tumblr Patreon Besides doing this, I also spent several years working on an MLP fan game which you can play here! Beware, it also has a NSFW version and the content fluctuates between versions. Ultimately it was shelved after some legal concerns, so it only made it so far as an very extensive intro sequence and introduction to the characters. I've also released many of the assets on my personal Patreon for all the fans to use if they'd like! I'm still working in game dev so things are going pretty well so far. Let's hope it stays that way! In the future I'd love to come back to making comics, original or fan-related in my free time. I've always loved creating things, but more importantly I've always enjoyed creating things for people to enjoy! Interacting with people through my art has always been my favorite aspect of creating things. Once again, I just wanna say I really appreciate all of you. It was you who made this project fun. Take care, everyone! XoXo Spookitty ᓚᘏᗢ

[toxicity-spreads-thr-boba]

****Your Boyfriend Game is AN ADULT VISUAL NOVEL!! This fan art is SFW, and eventually there will be a SFW version of the official product!********   So, on Feb. 19, early morning I got an email from Patreon. Fuboo shared some official YB comic.(Patreon only, so I don’t think I could share it?) It was about TK covering for your shift in day two. Poor TK had to deal with those “boomers” and their transphobic remarks. At least your boyfriend has your co-worker’s back! (Well, in my version of this comic that is lol) I wanted to have Peter/YB defend them because he knows that they deal with enough bullshit. I eventually got to draw a digital version of this.(See the original hand drawn of this fan art or not :)   Note: 1st time drawing TK (LOL, their design is difficult to draw) I still can’t draw backgrounds lol xwx  I put a 2nd version without the BG in case it’s difficult to see. Note 2: I don’t know how tall is TK when compared to YB/Peter. I know Peter’s 6′5, but was TK’s height ever mentioned? And.... if anyone out there feels like making a fan dub of this, then you have permission to :D Share a link if you do! I would love to hear it!

[caretaker-au]

About the Future

Did you know? After all this time, we finally only have four more coffee arts to complete! It’s true that we never promised they’d be ready in a timely fashion, but your patience has been remarkable in any case. Thank you all for letting us get to things as we were able.

Speaking of things that are almost done, The Caretaker of the Ruins only has a few chapters left to go. It’s been a long journey, but we’re almost there at last.

So what’s next? The other day I made a free public post on Patreon about that, but it felt weird not mentioning it here, so I’m going to link it. Check it out here! 

The short version is that Minty and I are pretty deep into making an original comic (we scrapped the last idea for a much better one) and we are planning to publish it on a free site other than Tumblr or Patreon (we'll share more info on that later). If you are keen on lending us your support or showing your appreciation, check out our newly restructured pay-what-you-want donation tiers. To be clear, the smallest tier ($2) gets access to the same content as the highest tier to allow our Patrons the most amount of freedom.

In any case, we’re working pretty diligently in spite of life’s various hurdles and we’re excited to show you more! We’re well and truly back on the horse.

[popculturebuffet]

Beetlemania: Ted Kord (A review of Blue Beetle V5 #1 and 2 and Blue Beetle V6 # 1 and 2) (Patreon Review and Comissioned by Brotoman.Exe and WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy beetlemaniacs, and welcome back to beetlemania, my look at those proud boys in blue just in time for the film.. well the day after it came out because my schedule has been in freefall.

Today we look at the man, the myth, and the guy who built his own giant dope as hell bug ship, Ted Kord, the second blue beetle.

To get to the blue part of the blue and the gold though, we have to talk about what happened to Dan. While fox published Blue Beetle into the 50's, dan fell victim to what most heroes a the time did: The Superhero Bust. Post WWII until the mid 50's, kids just werne't checking out superhero comics, preferring western and romance comics. As a result most superheros vanished and only super popular ones like Batman and Superman carried on and even the world's finest were hitting a wall. As a result Fox Comics went out of buisness and sold it's stock to Charlton comics Charlton DID try to make a go of things with dan, twice. First they reprinted golden age stories as a backup before giving him his own title in the mid 50's, ironically a likely result of superhero comics becoming hot again thanks to Dan's future owners DC Comics, before being taken over by Mr. Muscles. Now already just with THAT TITLE alone, I was curious.. but then I looked into it on wikipedia and who boy. Okay first off he was created by Superman Co-Creator Jerry Siegel.

Okay so brace yourselves for this breif detour: So Mr. Muscles is a former wrestler, who still wears a neat belt, has a kid sidekick and female version and fights with the power of being in peak physical condition, much like captain american if he could choke slam you. I also like the angle to him that he promotes physical improvment to the point that a guy who tries to KILL HIM WITH TIGERS, is instead given a chance ot better himself. Those parts.. all honestly work and i'm shocked this character has never been revamped especially since he REALLY would've fit well with the wrestling boom of the mid-late 80s around the same time the charlton cast got added to the dc universe.

But the most bonkers part is his origin....

Yes folks, Mr Muscles beat Polio, a disease that cut countless people down before Jonas Salk's polio vacine started to help just three years before this comic THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL. Take that science! Again he'd probably need his origin touched up as "I didn't need a vacine I just beat this disease through will" isn't the uplifting message it was in 1955. Sadly the world just wasn't ready for him, and both Mr. Muscles and Dan Garret sat on the shelf.

So we enter the mid-60s. After dc plateaued with it's stories, Marvel breaks in with stories that treat it's characters like real people. Sometimes their real people who will fake being their own hepcat twin brother to fool their friends because they can't just tell them who they are because shut up, sometimes they'l lfight communists every week and sometimes they'll have their college roomate wind up as a dictator with his own country, but still people who have mostly realistic emotions and what not. So sensing another chance to cash in Charlton tried one more time to bring back Dan. The stories seem good, with Dan getting a new love intrest Cheri, an egyptian archelogy professor and a new job as an archelogist, an origin I honestly feel works better given the scarab and was carried over. The series breathed new life into the character.. but not new sales and once again the beetle was gone. However with a new boom going on they decided rather than let the beetle gather dust again to try a new approach: They combined the approaches of both companies: they'd give someone new the blue beetle identity.. and have one of marvel's top guys give him that sense of realisim.

Enter Steve Ditko, soon to be objectivst, loveable curmudgeon and co-creator of spider-man. Understandably angry Stan kept taking all the credit for the wall crawler and less understandably angry lee was a liberal, Ditko walked out of marvel and Charlton snapped him up and put him to work on a similar but still distinct new version of the blue beetle. They started with backups, just to be safe, before giving Ted his own title that... somehow only lasted 5 issues. Still it's a bafflingly un-republished classic that introduced one of the greatest superheroes of all so let's give it a look under the cut, along with what dc did with a similar premise

Blue Beetle Bugs the Squids: While another writer is credited.. it was simply a front: Ditko actually wrote and scripted the stories here, he simply didn't want a writing credit for some reason.

So we open with a high class party. The spread is bland, sauerkraut and boiled goose. There's no way these people will ever cut loose.. but more importanlty there's some man in squid suits with suction cups climbing the building.. suction cups on their ARMS.

The suits do look neat, not as squidy as i'd hope, I love me a good squid. Their beady eyes, their cupped mouths the fact they can murder you. Good boys. But their still a nice design.

They crash the party to rob it, but before the mystery men can burst in to stop this a diffrent costumed hero crashes the party

Ted's quip game is STRONG here, I can't show you them all, image limits, but Ditko's comedy and action writing is up to bat as ted acrobatically handles the much larger group. IT's very spidey-esque, without feeling EXACTLY like peter: Ted has no powers and thus his movements are more human level acrobatic, using a lot of throws and a lot of hand stands. It's a great level of art.

The Squids try to bug out with beetle following in the bug, his flying machine and something so iconic the blue beetle film makes sure to use it even with ted not physically present. But before we can get to that say.. do you have problems being short? Well charlton comics ad pages have a solution for you.

I can now see how randy newman thought short people got no reason to live, he was brainwashed by the liftee corportation! Someone deprogram randy newman!

we also get this ad for the charlton action heroes. We get a white guy doing judo, captain atom in his best red, blue , dark blue and silver armed ensemble, peacemaker: he'll eat every dick on the beach clean for liberty and of course the classic character Peter Cannon Thunderbolt. I have no idea who this guy is and don't care to. Why he's here and not Mr. Muscles, only god and charlton editorial knows.

Annnd looking it up he's bascially got the same gimick of human perfection with some added "White guy learning asian wisdoM' uncomfort. : Also I just noticed he's basically wearing socks.

Anyways beetle chases after teh squids in the bug which here looks more like a cricket than an actual beetle, something later designs would iron out.

We then see Ted Kord's personal life. It's largely what it'd be for most of his career: working as a researcher at a lab at his father's company, sometimes Ted's own company, though things.. aren't happy. Lt. Max Fisher is trying to figure out what happened to Dan Garret on Pago Island, and Ted can't tell him for reasons we'll get into next issue.. reasons he refuses to tell his girlfriend and fellow lab tech tracey.

He has reasons for keeping Max from knowing though: there's a secret there that could threaten the world, again more for the next issue. For now he's going to enjoy being blue beetle for as long as he can. I get the sense the detective subplot was added to throw in some drama to Ted's life, spider-man style. There' some elments of peter here: the dictomy of brooding civlian, carefree hero, the science background, the quips, the secret id driving a wedge between him and his loved ones.. but what I like is Ditko takes steps to make sure ted is his own man: he dosen't have powers, relying on techno wizardy, acrobatics and his own brain, has a steady love intrest from the word go and as we'll see next issue DOSEN'T keep his id a secret from those he loves for long if it'll keep hurting them. It's clear from the next issue Ditko either realized going the broody rout woudln't work forever or he was simply swerving his audeince expecing "Spider-man but blue and without powers". Either way it's nicely done.

So we cut to Todd Van III, a socilate suggesting a yacht party to raise money for .. something. Naturally given this guy we've never heard of has a lot of focus, he's the big bad behind the squids, having spent his inhereitance to show he can make his own money to his dead dad. That'll show his ghost! He also plans to make himself out to be a hero: since th eparty's a masquerade he swaps places with a minon so said minion will play him and stand up to the squids, who then slink away to the lower decks with the money.

This ends up backfiring as Ted was montoring the scene the whole time. It's nicely set up too: this time he's ready since the yacht party is too big a target for the squids to pass up.. and thus he notices how weird it is the squids AREN'T on his radar.

So we get a really fun action scene as the yacht, c leared of guests but not of squids, gets sieged by ted, who uses the bug in some really fun ways, including giving them a second to sweat it out before pouncing. It's cool stuff. Todd has decided to blow this pop stand... literally. He plans to blow up the yacht and everyone involved to get away. Unfortuantely for him the squids find out and escape while Ted is able to chase todd, and get the very moist back of money back. We get a REALLY fun fight scene as Ted keeps quipping about how todd REALLY wants to go to prison.

IT's a really great bit and really sells who ted is. In the end Beetle wins, the squids go to jail and he wonders what's next. Before that though I have to say..t his is a REALLY fun story. The dialouge is hilarious, the mystery for next issue is very well set up, and the squids are fun badies. Their not exactly a threat, but their not really here for that: there here more to give ted someone to show off against. To show what the beetle can do and to show he dosen't have any powers like dan. For a first issue it's a lot of fun

This issue also introduces the Question. The question is vic sage, a tv reporter by day who fearlessly speaks against corruption despite a good chunk of the board at his station wanting him gone. You can see a LITTLE of ditko's budding objectivism peak in, him blaming people with gambling problems for enabling mobsters, but otherwise it's also a great story. It's a really solid first issue and given it introduces such important characters i'm baffled dc hasn't reprinted these since the 2000's. It's great stuff. And there's more of it coming up next

The End is A Beginning By this point steve apparently got less shy about taking the writing credit as this one credits him rightfully as writer and artist.

Ted's stressed as Lt. Fisher keeps pressing him and Tracey hasn't showed up for work. So after Fisher leaves he decides to do some blue beetling to clear his head.

He flies over Pago Island, remphasising for new readers it has some terrible secret.. but it also has a guest. Ted's worried so he checks in.. and finds Tracey. Turns out she was here all day searching..

I... fucking love this scene. Ted sees his loved one is hurting.. and decides to come clean, despite the risk. Because it's the right thing to do. It's something I REALLY wish more superhero works did after this. Nowadays this sort of thing is way more common and deconstruing the secret keeping way more often, but it still took it's sweet time and even then we have things like miraculous ladybug where they just.. outright keep the ids secret because shut up. Here ted sees his girlfriend in distress and simply agrees to tell her.

So we cut back a few months: Ted was working with his Uncle Jarvis, with Tracey running his lab while he did as Jarvis preferred ted work only at his lab. Ted was curious, only getting in pieces, and while he was innocent enough to not ask big questions he still wanted to know what was going on. Jarvis agreed to tell him.. but then exploded.. literally. The lab explodes, Jarvis is apparently dead as he's the only one there.

Naturally though it's not that simple as Ted finds a box not destroyed in the fire.. and to his horror finds out the experiment was actually to create some cool looking artifical super solders. Before now their weakness was being slow.. but Ted accidently solved that. So he goes to Dan. In this continuity their old college buddies, and he figures Dan can find it with his archelogy. Dan tries to go alone so he can beetle it up if needed but Ted insists on going with because.. of course he does. He gave his uncle the keys. As for the whole being dead thing Ted rightly dosen't buy it and has to be sure. What I also love is that Ditko makes sure we get Tracey's perspective: she thought Ted was distraught because his uncle died, and she was supscious he was lying about being alone on pago island because she KNEW he left his house with someone else.

Naturally Jarvis not only has his atomic men capture them but gets monologuging. This case I get though: he has NO idea ther'es a superhero among the two guys he just captured, thus he has no reason to fear them.

dan naturally goes into action, secret identity be dammned and we get one hell of a fight. It alsos hows Dan's own fighting style: throws and more up close brawling once again to Ted's later acrobatics. Sadly... given ther'es only ONE blue beetle in present day.. you can probably guess how this ends.. in tears.. and expoding robot men

dan's body was soon lost for an explosion and while Ted managed to make it out, the police were left supscious.. but now he's given good reason. While Ted COULD at least reveal the pago island stuff without outing himself or dan as the blue beetle, though the latter might be necessary, he can't trust that anyone find the robots now jarvis is dead (his control center also conveintly overloaded), as no one man can be responsible for that kind of power.

So after some soul searching Dan used some of his dad's old experiments, his dad having left indefintely on his own vauge quest, and thus.. a legend was born

Turns out though the Androids themselves aren't gone and we get a breif but awesome fight. This is the real test: Ted is out powered, out gunned and barely survives.. but he manages to outwit them, dumping the two that emerged into a crevice.. but barely. It really cements who ted is: he's not a brawler, he can't use brute force: all he has is gadgets (something emphasized more in the dc version) and his greatest weapon: his brain. Like spider-man he has to think his way out over stronge foes but unlike spidey his brain is all he has.. and he uses it well. he then has the bug cover the crevices to be sure. Tracey vows to help him no matter what and the two embrace.. as under the island more robots are made... and the future is uncertain.

This issue is even better, giving ted a really fantastic origin story one that's been kept in most versions of him since, it's that good. DC would use it, brave and the bold would base an episode around it, and even the movie is using pieces of it, simply turning Jarvis into his sister rather than his uncle and , like brave and the bold, having the scarab be the basis. The art is fantastic, the fights as usual are great, and the stuff with Tracey is top notch character work, making her feel more like a person and less like an object.

Out From the Ashes!

So after only a few issues the blue beetle folded. Again. He'd appear breifly in AMERICOMICS. Because Merica, which finds a nice way to reconcile his golden age adventures with his silver age ones: reincarnation. It makes sense given both the egyptian themes present in the second run and the scarab itself not being defined as an alien just yet. Also as one last note the term Kahji Dah pops up here. Remember it, it'll be important later.

Anyways with that the beetle set on the sidelines again till the mid 80s. In 1983 DC Bought Charlton Comics, and it's characters, seeing the potetial Charlton had squandered just letting Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby creations sit on a shelf somewhere. At the same time Marv Wolfman, editor at dc and writer of the new teen titans (I covered his run with george perez in full last year and STILL feeling winded from it), had pitched a crossover: history of the dc universe!... which was set to completely reshape said history for a new generation, with Wolfman feeling the various parallel earths of dc had gotten a bit much, and with DC lagging behind marvel they felt a refresh was needed. They changed the name to...

Something I intend to cover eventually. When i'm not sure (I'd be happy to do it on comissoin). For those not familiar with it, Crisis was a massive 12 issue crossover, and while marvel beat them to the punch with secret wars as the first crossover, crisis was still the first proper linewide crossover: every book was effected in some way, and many would never be the same for better or worse. The book brought in EVERY altenate earth dc had, had most die horribly, and merged the remainder.

It was in these pages our boy Ted made his dc debut, and once the dust was settled he and the other charlton characters were put front and center in the new universe and most given another shot at a title or mini series with Captain Atom and Blue Beetle being the first to get ongoings, likely since Steve Ditko had worked on both, with the Question, after a guest stint in Beetle's own book, getting one and peacemaker getting a mini series and a key role in checkmate.. the latter of which I only know because he showed up for an overly long crossover between Checkmate and Suicide Squad, before largely disappearing until...

Giving him a starring role in the suicide squad book thanks to his movie apperance and his own mini series recently.

The four along would also be adapted into the Watchmen, another book i've covered, as DC wanted to reuse the chalton characters after and watchmen was a bit too.. permeant.

And so in 1986 ted bravely and boldly enterted the dc universe proper with Blue Beetle #1.

Writing the book was Lein Wein, comics legend responsible for co-creating Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, and Nightcrawler, and of course KRAKOA THE ISLAND THAT WALKS LIKE A MAN AND WAS A MUTANT NATION TILL RECENTLY. IT'S COMPLICATED. Lesser known though was his run on Spider-Man. What i've read of it is pretty dang good, and it's clear even after a healthy run with the wallcrawler Lein still wasn't quite done doing this type of story and jumped aboard when DC asked him.

So once again we have a spidey alum bringing a wallcrawling energy to Ted, let's see how it bears out.

We open with some brave chicago firefighters tryign to put out a penthouse blaze... and failing. Goly firehouse 51 was a lot less competent before Chief Boden ran it huh.

Anyways Chief Red Haired Guy is dismayed to see a familiar face, The Blue Beetle, who he thought retired. Apparently Ted took some time off between picking up the mask and now, a nice way to explain why he hadn't been in any recent dc history prior to the crisis in-universe. What they never explain is WHY Chief Carrot Top hates Ted. No really this guy is j jonah jameson levels of dismayed ted is back, gets weirdly mad at him later, they never tell us WHY this guy hates ted. Maybe it's in an issue past where i've read in this book, I don't know, but it is hilarious, you have to give it that.

At any rate ted swings in on a line he has that comes out of the bug and he can call for help. It showed up in the previous adventures. Ted then tries to help someone in the fire.. only to get a cup of punch to the face instead. Turns out this is our villian..

Yeah the idea of firefist is a good one, and we'll get to why he keeps starting fires besides it being his desire later as well as why it burns so hot. But that outfit.. where do I even begin. the armor parts MOSTLY look neat, my only complaint being that his eyes shoudln't be visable, especially since he has a whole thing about wanting no one to see his face, trying to barbeque ted over it. The idea of an armored man with undousable fire who is determined to murder all firefighters is brilliant. The problem is the rest of the outfit. The pure white underpinning, the inexplicable utility belt no doubt caring firefist shark repeleant, the GIANT bulge

And the fucking logo. He looks like a dollar store shredder knockoff. I like paris cullen's cartoony art on this book, it fits well and he makes ted look great but I have NO IDEA what he was thinking on this costume.

It's honestly what i've realized on a second read took me out of the book the first time I tried reading it. Since dc had all the issues and no intention of reprinting the series (and as of this writing despite the movie STILL hasn't, though they have reprinted Jamie's series after too damn long which is nice), I bought the first two.. and wasn't really impressed. It felt like it was trying way too hard to be spider-man. I see now it's not really that bad, it has some good stuff i'll get to, I just let the problems stack up because one of the first things I saw was this guy. And on second read like I said he's not a terrible villian he just has a bad costume. And he's far from the first supervillian to start out with a bad costume before getting an upgrade later. I'd honestly love to see him fight Jamie if he hasn't already: just upgrade the flames to make hima threat to the scarab and your good.

At any rate firefist gets away though Ted escapes via the zip line thing I mentioned the sky wire, and uses it to save the last firefighter left in the building. The sequence is tense cool and really shows what ted can do. Granted I woudln't of also opened with him getting punched in the face but I do get it: they didn't HAVE to talk ted up since he had a prominent-ish role in crisis on infinite earths.. but for people just turning into bb it's a weird choice.

The Fire Comissiner wants answers and wants Beetle to come int o the fire house.. what. Ted does tell him about firefist but skedadles as fire chief grumpus vows revenge.. well he dosen't but wouldn't i tbe neat if he did.

Ted is a LITTLE bummed that was a bumpy return.. but what I like is he dosen't stay glum for long. He instead comforts himself with the fact that he at least prevented some damage. We then get a rundown of things as he pilots the bug underwater and into his secret lair. We also find out something I think is neat as Ted unmasks: the beetle mask has a lock on it that he can undo with his glove. It's clever, giving good reason why someone can't just yank the top off and find out who the blue beetle is and fits who ted is. Wein is the one who really codified that ted is a man of gadgets: while Ditko's Ted used more acrobatics, this is a ted who uses sceince and skills and it's something that would stick from here on out. And I .. really like it. It's a way to set him apart from both spider-man and batman, his most obvious comparisions being both a bug based hero with a load of quips having a load of fun doing this and a gadget based viglante. Peter is smart and WILL use his science knowhow and strategic genius to down foes, it's part of his charm, but dosen't really pack a ton of gadgets in most runs, only doing so when he has enough backing to afford gadgets or in the Insomniac universe, while

It's more criminology: most of his gadgets are based around crime solving and are down to earth. He CAN have something custom whipped up if the need arises, but prefers more practical solutions. It's seen in their modes of transportation: batman has a car, a boat and a plane, all speclaized just in case he needs one, and while all conspicious all black, fast and able to get in and out quick. Ted by contrast has the bug which while not exactly slow, is flashier, multipurpose (both plane and sub) and designed to more make an impact and look real cool. It's in how they treat the job: To ted this is something that needs doing and honors a friend, but something he also has FUN doing most of the time or can snark at to cope when he really REALLY isn't. For batman it's a sacred mission that has to be handled with the utmost seriousness while he wears a bat costume.

We get a recap of ted's origin, which is mostly untouched. The only diffrences are a change in design for the robots, Dan is switched from a college friend to Ted's old teacher and the fact this time out ted got to control the narrative, so while Lt. Fisher is still suspcious, we'll get to that, Dan is thought to have died mysteriously.. and in a nice touch the beetle cave has a memorial set up for him, the newspaper reporting his death with two candles next to it and Ted hoping to do him proud. It's a great way to speed through the origin without trivalizing what it means or what ted's lost.

Ted rides an elevator up to the proper levels of Kord Omniversal, his company which he runs as CEO. This is it's research part. He meets with his secretary, Angela, who has really neat looking big pink glasses and is nice.. but is hiding something. To get this out of the way now she's subtly stealing tech from the company for her uncle whose forcing her to. It's a subplot that dosen't get paid of here so i'm mostly glossing over it, but I apprciate these first two issues setting up later ones already. I also love this bit of ted going through the stack of messages she has for him.

It suits him so well. I also like his hat. I want that hat. Mail me that hat.

Ted heads to the lab where we meet Melody and Jermiah. Melody is ted's love intrest.. and a fairly eh one. Sh'es mostly just "Perky' and "Into ted" in the issues i've read. There really isn't a lot to her. With Tracey it was fine because A) it was two issues and b) It was 1965, love intrests rarely got fleshed out and her feeling as fleshed out as she did for the time was nice. It dosen't really help that ted later has chemistry with both Barbra Gordon (though sadly it never went anywhere), Power Girl and Booster Gold. I personally like Karen, but i'm not against tedbabs or the blue and the gold. What i'm saying is ted is just so likeable and charming that like Spider-Man he is shippable as fuck and Melody just dosen't do enough to stand out against what came after. Update: As I was writing this review I looked ahead at future issues via the dc database (their wiki).. and found out there IS an intresting subplot where Melody is mad Ted keeps vanishing.. that being said it's still frustrating as Ted has no real reason not ot tell her WHY he's vanishing and still dosen't quite fix the character. It IS neat though.

As for Jerry he's an old friend of Ted's dad's and a wacky guy, doing get rich quick schemes reguarly and having been fired from STAR Labs for it. For those not familiar with it, STAR is dc's go to super science outfit, with branches all over the country, and has heavily shown up in Superman the Animated Series and was home base for Team Flash in the CW Flash.

Ted then has the team analyzie the wreckage to figure out what Firefist is using without saying that. I do like that Ted uses his resources cleverly and being boss, and on good terms with both Melody and Jerimiah, they don't question it. That said.. I would've preferred it if the two just.. knew who he was. There's no real reason to hide it at this point and they don't give us a good one: Melody and Ted are doing super well and Jermiah is an old friend of Ted's dad and clearly likes the kid. Jerry MAYBE could tell kord sr, but there's no reason given Ted's dad can't know either. It'd be more fun for him to not have to hide it and see how they grapple with this as well as how they help Ted hide he's the beetle from the rest of the world. Loop his secretary in too. It isn't helped by hindsight: as noted above the flash show demonstrated how cool it is for a hero to have his own support staff, while as we'll see with Jamie while he still has a secret identity, his family and two best friends learn VERY early on and his book is better for it, something the movie seems to stick to judging from the trailers.

We cut to Pago Island where we meet Conrad Caprapax, aka one of the movie's villians.. and our second subplot that dosen't payoff here. In this case it's understandable. To get it out of the way this issue ALSO sets up Lt. Max Fisher looking into Pago Island, recyling that plot from volume 5. I figured the two plots would eventually dovetail, and since i had only read the first ten issues my first time trying this book, I looked it up and confrimed: the two plots do indeed payoff eventually in issue 14 and at the same time.

We then get to setup for future issues #4, or three chronologically, as Ted helps his good friend Murray Takamoto over at star. It's a neat setup too: Murray's an old college buddy and Ted often does consulting work for him. It's a nice way to setup plots. In this case a red headed stranger wants to steal some promethum star labs plans to transport to kord omniversal. The guy turns out to be Dr. Alchemy, longtime dc villian and honestly a fun choice to go up against the more traditionally scientific ted. I love this setup. He later tries to flatten the tires on the delivery but we find out his magic is shorting out, hence the promethium need. Oh well possible stories for another day.

With our various b-plots mostly out of the way we can focus on the main story again. Ted's chilling with Murray and chatting over coffe whcih his a bit fun if also a LITTLE bit stitled, but I get comics back then weren't the most natural and prefered over the tom, 80's sitcom style talking between characters, and it still feels natural enough.

Ted heads off when he gets a ding on his watch, as he was montoring for fires.. and Firefist has stepped up his game this time SETTING A FIREHOUSE ON FIRE. Ted is prepared though using fire foam on him from the bug before fighting the guy and actually has the upper hand this time. It shows off ted's smarts with this time his acrobatics. The roof caves in.. but we get an absoltuely DOPE shot of ted sliding down the fire pole.

Sadly this dosen't last and we end with Ted pinned under flaming wreckage while firefist gloats.

This City is Not For Burning

Man Len REALLY loved his melodramatic titles.

Anyways Blue Beetle is trapped in a burning building and we get a moment that's a clear homage to a spidey classic: This be my destiny aka that image of spidey under a ton of rubble he barley escapes from through willpower alone. Here it's diffrent ENOUGH for me to consider Len.. isn't just ripping it off: Ted has no power, the heat is a diffrent kind of complication and he has to use what he has on hand, a pipe and whatever else to escape. It's a well done scene all thigns considered and ted BARELY escapes. Fire Cheif Petty Grudge decides to call it even if Beetle can stop this guy. He's still mad Ted won't fill out his forms.. which is fair.

We then get firefists origin.. and I meant what I said earlier. While his costume is messy... his origin is both great and genuinely heartwrenching.

My guess is they assumed he was dead.. but I still can't blame him for being mad they abandoned him. Granted it still dosen't justify putting on a costume for revenge but frankly if no one did that superhero comics would be kinda boring wouldn't they. I also like the ambiguity: we geninely DON'T know if that firefighter didn't care to save the victim his friend went in for.... or simply missed the guy and assumed he was dead. It's a true tragedy and i'ts clear the ptsd and circumstance warped this poor guy into the arsonist we see now.

So with that Melody and Jerry find out the substance is apparently greek fire, a substance used to burn ships and find all the places the ingredignts could've come from before clocking out. ONce ted gets back and notices via the computer that everyone's gone he heads home for a shower and folks... and he's not alone.

I.. am endlessly baffled and amused by this whole thing. Does ted like being choked and Melody just simply didn't think to ask consent because it was the 1980s, or did Melody REALLY just think "Tee-Hee you know what would really be fun, suprising my boyfriend in his dark apartment alone when he's the head of a major company and thus a target for robbers or kidnappers. The fact that as the lights go back out Lt. Fisher is watching the apartment just proves my point. He already has a stalker, he dosen't need it simulated.. unless that's what he's into and again you gotta set that stuff up first.

A few subplots later ted gets the info and goes out after firefist but while he finds the stuff to make it, the guy's already gone. He did burn his newspaper in a rage thoug hso ted has meldoy read it to him.

This.. really hurts my brain. Ted is careless as hell with his identity here. Which again would be fine if the people he was careless to found out.. but instead we get a subplot of melody being mad he disappears.. and it somehow gets worse as she not only emotoinally cheats on him but CALLS IN HIS DAD TO DEAL WITH HIS ABSENCES WITHOUT TALKING TO HIM ABOUT IT. When as far as I could tellt he company.. was fine. Ted was just missing meetings but he still did all his work on time. Girl chicago , as far as I can tell has the ONE superhero. Company 51 is still under old managment, we're not there yet.

Anyways Firefist publicly targets a firefighting museum with ted giving chase as we get an add for the dc roleplaying game from back then.. and now I want to play that. if you knwo where the docs are online or have a copy let me know.

Anyways Beetle fights him and it's a decent enough fight.. with ted trying water for some reason even though greek fire is famous for being waterproof

Ted eventually wins by tarring up the mask and then takes off the mask... with firefist seemingly comitting suicide over his burns. A tragic end. Blue BEetle plugs firefigghting and the issue ends.

This two parter.. is a decent intro to ted. It shows off his skills, what his wealth can do, and firefist, while looking like bargin basement moltar, is a good first opponent: powerful enough to give Ted a workout, but nothing to major off the bat and with a tragic ending.

The books flaws are more character wise: Ted's well done, as his his secretary, but everyone else feels kinda.. eh. Len wanted the vibe of spider-man and the repor but forgot the audience needs to feel it too. I also could've done with using more tactics with ted: while him bounding around was nice as always, part of what made the ditko one so loveable was Ted was SMART: he could outhink his foes not just out manuver them. We see bits and pieces but with ted having a full secret lab and a fortune this time we really don't see him use it. The final fight is decent.. but he dosen't say try to figure out how to counteract greek fire or at least use some gadgets.

It was fine in the ditko era he didn't whip up specific gadgets because the situations didn't call for them; The squids were tricky but he had the means to deal with them. They were just guys in suits at the end of the day, same as him, but without the skill and the bug did the rest of the lifting and while he COUDL'VE for the androids with time, he simply didn't. Here he's dealing with firefist for two days, gets full analysis of what he can do.. and does NOTHING with the info but track the guy. Say what you wil about ted curbing from spidey.. but this bit, the thinking after getting his face caved in and being ready next time, is the one bit that was crucial and that ditko rightly carried over. As it stands this is just okay and i'ts a shame this is, as of this writing one of the ONLY two solos ted's had. It's not horrible and might even get better with time, i'll certainly look into it but the more I wrote about it the more it became clear why I just.. never really took to this run: it's good god ideas.. but just does not a whole lot intresting wtih them.

Fortunately Ted would get another big break midway into his series.

But more on that next time as we find out whatever happened to ted kord.. and see the rise of a new boy in blue. Thanks for reading.

[cats-artbag]

.:From story to thumbnail (SwapOut):.

@eaudecrow​ @chatxkilluaxnoir​

I’m so sorry I’m getting to these so late, my brain wanted to organize the thoughts regarding to this topic first, but I decided to start typing it out and will try my best to explain my process to you!

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I had an idea one day which was something like “US!Pap dressing up as UT!Pap” that became “A skelebro impersonating the other”, which resulted in this phone doodle in April 2016 (and then later considered a sans version)

Then I wanted to make it into a story, so I began to think of some sort of a beginning, and an end, which are kinda easier to think of than the middle part. In fact I’m probably still thinking of how to make the middle better haha

I knew from the start that I wanted to do a crossover between Underswap and Undertale, and have a skelebro from one universe impersonate the other. And for trippy, inter-universal travel to happen, I had to think of a reason for Swap to activate his time machine, which is usually a last resort.

So here I figured out and established a setting that I wanted to start off in:

Starts in Genocide route in UnderSwap/Undertale where Frisk/Chara doesn’t return. US!Papyrus lost his US!Sans to Frisk. He killed them but now he's moping around, waiting for them to RESET... but nobody came. (Well... he did say if Frisk truly was their friend, they wouldn't come back.) There's no RESET. US!Sans never comes back home. No one does.

Which left me with this summary for the story:

“US!Papyrus snaps in his timeline and accidentally travels to UT where he ______.”

At this point I didn’t know how I’d end it, but I knew I’d loosely follow a route in Undertale where he’d end up [REDACTED], so it wasn’t like I was working completely from scratch in the first place for this story. I was never good at making things up from scratch, so working off of something that already exists i.e. doing fanart makes it easier. At the same time, I didn’t want to be unoriginal, which is hard haha ;;

Since he was going to the classic UT universe, I knew he’d have to interact with the characters there along the way before he finally reached the end.

So while keeping all that in mind, I finished typing a first draft of the entire story.

Yes, I typed the ENTIRE script for the comic before I started drawing anything.

Which, honestly? ...I think you’re supposed to do??

But when you’re young and just starting off comics, it’s easy to be impatient and to want to just work off the top of your head as you draw your comic...

I literally can’t do that though, as proven by my old comics that I never got around to drawing more than 2 pages of before I didn’t know where I was going. It’s also why I’m terrified of attempting the kinds of tumblr comics that swerve based on asks from people haha! I really admire the people who are able to do so.

I actually typed all these early thoughts here when I posted the first SwapOut page

Anyway after typing the first draft of the script, I finally let myself start the thumbnails. My script was divided into how much I thought would fit in a comic page as I typed, so I drew a thumbnail based on each divided section.

For example :

(these thumbnails are usually posted in the $2 tier on my patreon!)

The way I type my scripts is not standard at all, so if I know how I’ll draw them, I type their actions with their dialogue mashed together x’D But usually I’ll just type the dialogue by itself and keep going, spacing them out for each page. Also it’s good to arrange them so it helps the page flow naturally reading from left to right. (same with drawing as well!)

After that, I kinda use the thumbnail directly as a sketch nowadays (cos i’m a lazybones) and go straight into doing lines (or a more detailed sketch if the thumbnail is too rough/vague)

And that’s pretty much it! It took me a while to choose a page for an example haha but I think this is one of my favourites

As for Chapter 5, all the new pages were actually the scenes with Swap blasting his blaster! They weren’t originally planned in the script but I wanted to add more to the comic rather than him just enter the void and get out haha

I think a page probably takes me two days if I already have the thumbnail ready and I’m working on it straight without breaks, but I’ve been doing more of those which honestly makes my life on this a little easier (less grumpy and more relaxed yes please)

Again sorry this took so long to reply to! I’m also thinking of doing a more detailed tutorial thing for my Patreon but I feel like I already explained most of it here haha ;; Maybe more red flow line examples of my pages? idk

Asks are always welcome! I just suck at replying to them aha ;;

[sineala]

On Being Fannish

An answer to a question I got on Patreon last month.

A question I recently received:

I saw your Tumblr post about The Eagle and I went back to your AO3 page to see the other fandoms you’d written in. I’m curious as to whether there’s a fandom you’ve written in that you didn’t particularly follow or like the canon? And why (can be more than 1 answer) For me I think about Due South. I tried to get into to show but it wasn’t happening. But I was engrossed in the works (and fanzines).

And my answer:

Thank you for asking this! I think there's a few different ways I could answer this question, and I'm going to try all of them.

The larger, more general big-picture question, for me, is: what qualities about a fandom make me feel fannish about it? This is something I have actually thought about enough over the years to have a decent answer for. One big plus is if the fandom has a lot of canon -- I mean, I'm in Marvel Comics fandom now, and my first fandom was Star Trek, so when I say I like fandoms with a lot of canon, I mean a lot of canon. I like to have lots of facts and little details to be able to play around with; that's the kind of thing that gets my writing brain going. Single TV shows without extended universes are probably just enough canon, but I would be happier with more. Single books are not usually enough canon to make my fannish brain light up, but book series can. Single movies are not usually enough.

Similarly, I also really like when a fandom has multiple versions in different media -- like, if it's a book series and a TV show and a movie and a comic, or whatever. I like being able to compare and contrast different versions of plots and characters, and, yes, I do find the Marvel multiverse absolutely delightful. But, say, I probably wouldn't have been into The Eagle as long as I was if there hadn't been so much other ancillary canon -- not only was there the movie, there was also the book The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, and the 1970s BBC miniseries that also adapted the book, and there were the rest of Sutcliff's novels, many of which were set in the same universe (The Dolphin Ring Cycle), and then that even ties into, well, being a giant classical history and language nerd and getting to be fannish, more or less, about Ancient Rome. (I learned Latin so I could write a Roman AU. No, really.) If The Eagle had just been a movie and nothing else, with no other related things, I probably wouldn't have been very interested.

There's also another important quality that I like to see in fandoms I really get fannish about, creatively fannish, and this is going to sound deeply weird when I say it, but this is the best way I can think of to phrase it: they have to be mediocre. They can't be bad, exactly, because if they are bad then I'm not going to like them at all, but they can't be too good, because if they're too good, I can't really do anything with them. Take Babylon 5 as an example. I happen to love Babylon 5. I watched it when I was originally airing, I've watched it multiple times in reruns, I own copies of the scripts and a bunch of the tie-in novels and all the DVDs. You get the idea. I used to be glued to the  Lurker's Guide and rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated. And as a fan, I love it, but I can't really create anything about it. It's too good. It's a sprawling, epic, five-year arc, from before arc-based TV was cool, with what I consider to be amazing characters and a gripping plot. But there's no room. What kind of story could I possibly tell? Sure, maybe I could write a couple of vignettes. I'm pretty sure I have. But I can't tell a B5 story that's equal to the glory of B5. B5 already did that. And it wrapped up the arc on the way out. There's not really much left to do.

And I know we say that no one hates comics like comics fans do, but when I say comics are mediocre I mean that with affection. Sure, there are so many amazing stories that I love with my entire heart. But there are also things I wish they had done differently, and gaps that canon never explored -- and that, that's the kind of thing that gets my fannish brain going, if I can look at canon and think, okay, this but more. And then I can do that. There's room to play around! If I want to rewrite Civil War but add more UST between Steve and Tony, I can do that! Everyone can do that!

And then there's the more specific version of the question: what fandoms do I like the fandom for but not the canon? I have been in a lot of fandoms over the years, and I'm willing to read in fandoms I don't know as long as the fic is good, so that often means I've read a lot of fic in big slash fandoms without being into the canon all that much. I've read a bunch of Teen Wolf slash, I've never seen the show in my life, and I'm not likely to start. I only made it through Season 1 of Merlin but I still read the fic sometimes. I have zero interest in hockey but sometimes I read the Hockey RPF AUs. I've read a bunch of SGA fic but am kind of meh about the actual show. You get the idea. Sometimes I read a bunch of fic and get a new fandom. Sometimes I just get the fic.

And then there's your actual question: have I written in fandoms where I didn't like the canon? I'd have to say generally not. My fandom journey is a little weird because I spent about ten years lurking and not writing anything and not really able to finish anything -- this started back in the late 90s when the big Western slash fandoms were The Sentinel, Due South, Highlander, X-Files, and maybe Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and it felt like everyone in fandom was in some combination of the above. And in all those fandoms, I liked the canon (I think I would change my mind about TS if I rewatched it now, though) and I liked the fandom -- I just didn't write any fic because I couldn't figure out how to start and finish a story. So the fact that I have barely any dS stories doesn't mean I hated dS; it means I just wasn't writing anything back when I was really into dS. And then one day a switch flipped in my brain, or something, and I wrote a 90,000-word Professionals story and it just went on from there.

I do love Due South in particular, though; it was the fandom I met my wife in, because we both shipped Fraser/Kowalski and liked to hang out on AOL Instant Messenger and talk about fandom. And then fourteen years later we got married.

I hope that answers your question!

[hanakogames]

Patreon 2020 Summary

Just to take a look at what I’ve posted this year on the patreon...

Many in-development screenshots of both Cute Bite and the still-not-totally-announced new age detective game.

Panels from the story-comic from Twinkle Toes Skating

Alternate Iris Academy uniform designs by an artist we didn't end up using

A scene that I cut from the script of England Exchange after I inherited it

A discussion of spivak ('e') pronouns, where I first learned them, and how they ended up in Magical Diary

Larger versions of LLTQ character headshots

My original programmer-art doodles for the Cute Knight Kingdom monsters sent to the artist as explanation

Sketches of Barbara and Minnie's may day ball outfits by the Horse Hall artist

Discussion of Lavinia's route in A Little Lily Princess (this is the post that patreon tried to flag because 'yuri' was too naughty for them)

Demonstration of what Black Closet case design files look like, plus pictures of the early on-paper design bits

Some scenes excerpted from LLTQ and Wolf Hall scripts that were written but are impossible to reach in actual play because of conflicting requirements

Discussion of several silly game ideas that popped into my head that aren't actually being produced

An ancient (well, pre-2006) chatlog excerpt between me and Spiky back when I was first coming up with the plot of Fatal Hearts

Discussion and pictures of the evolution of the Date Warp UI, including the "bright steampunk" version that was never used

A discussion of the character of Musette and how she wandered into the plot of Magical Diary

Sketches from the ending artwork for Cute Knight Kingdom

Sketches for what became the trading card art for Date Warp

Monster lineart from Cute Knight Deluxe 

Color rough progress art for Sword Daughter

A whole bunch of discussion, notes, and concept art for the "dark monstergirl yuri" project which was being prototyped as "Lest Monster I Become" before I gave up on it again.

Character art sketches from A Little Lily Princess

CG sketches from The Confines of the Crown

Original vs final art for bits of Fatal Hearts, including the main character's design

Concept progress development for many England Exchange CGs

Concept art sketches for some of the characters from the abandoned yuri asylum project

Science Girls sprite animations

Sources for all the Poetry Club quotes in Wolf Hall

Some pencil sketches of early Black Closet character designs

[hermitcraftheadcanons]

Hello Internet, welcome to GAME THEORY, where instead of putting a joke here I want to ask you a question. It's time to talk UNDERTALE.

Now I don't think I've ever gotten this many requests to cover a theory, (no requests times no requests is still no requests.) Anyway, across my tumblr dashboard, NO ONE has asked for this. And honestly, I'm disappointed. True loyal theorists will know that Undertale is my favorite game of all time.

Undertale is a game where every character, from goat mom to grind fodder has a sympathetic design and a unique personality, motivations, goals, fears. Whether you're saving or slaughtering them, the game makes you feel something every time you enter an encounter. But to me, one character stood out amongst all the rest. SANS. A skeleton named after the font, Comic Sans. ANYWAYS, Sans is, well, there's a lot of mystery around this guy. And before we get into it, let me put up a very special spoiler warning: UNDERTALE is a game best experienced blind. So if you haven't played it, pause your reading of this and come back after you've finished. I PROMISE YOU, I PROMISE you won't regret it. Alright, so everyone out of the pool and ready for the adult swim? Good. Because I'm feeling pretty determined to get to the bottom of Sans' mystery. So just to recap for those of you who haven't played the game and ignored the SPOILER WARNING, or just need a refresher, Sans is one of the two skeletal brothers who appears in the game. His partner is Papyrus, a loud, goofy trap lover also named after a font. But in the world of Undertale their origins are a big question mark. All you really know is what's given to us by a shopkeeper in Snowdin, who explains that Sans and Papyrus, quote, “just showed up one day and asserted themselves.” Weird, right? What's more is that, well, Papyrus is just kinda the goofy sidekick. Sans is much more complex.

He likes fart jokes, but he's also incredibly powerful and deadly serious. Not only is his boss battle the hardest in the game, he's one of the only characters who has knowledge and power over space and time. He can take shortcuts around the world through ridiculous routes. Even is walking through walls. He also acknowledges that he's only one of infinite versions of himself, making self-aware commentary of the various timelines that you've played through in the game. He can even count the number of times he's killed you. He acts like an arbiter of this world, passing out judgements on the player's actions in the game, even explaining the secrets of EXP and LOVE, or EXECUTION POINTS and LEVELS OF VIOLENCE, just to clarify. In short, he just doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the world of monsters. But then, what, or who, is he? Well, the idea that he doesn't belong in the underworld seems to be correct.

The evidence seems to point to the fact that he WAS, in fact, formerly a surface dweller. In the true pacifist ending of the game, as the group looks out onto the horizon, Papyrus asks Sans about the giant ball in the sky. Sans says, quote, “we call that the sun.” This is important because A, the usage of the word WE, and knowledge of the sun shows that Sans has a kinship or knowledge with other humans, and B, that despite he and Papyrus both being skeletons, or, supposedly, brothers, and apparently appeared in underworld at the same time, they CLEARLY have two very different histories. Why would Papyrus not know the name of the sun but Sans would?

We get further clues to Sans' origins as we hear him say multiple times he wants to "go home" or "go back." He says as much during his dinner date scene at the Mettaton hotel. He notices that the player wants to go home and says, quote, "I know the feeling." He then continues, "maybe sometimes it's better to take what's given to you." As though he ended up in the underworld by accident. AND in a genocide run during his boss fight he says, quote, "look, I gave up trying to go back a long time ago." End quote. And before you say he means going back to the surface world, that's clearly not the full story. His very next line of dialogue is, "and getting to the surface doesn't really appeal anymore either." Key word here is “EITHER.” Yes, he seems to hail from the surface and wants to go back, but based on his dialogue he no longer considers it his home. It's as though the surface world he once knew is gone, as though he's from a different time. It's pretty intriguing. So we're left with a being that appeared out of nowhere, presumably from being from the human surface, but from a different time period, who seemingly has the power to teleport. That's a lot of questions and not a lot of answers.

But here's where things get REALLY interesting. Sans has a hidden workshop that takes a fair amount of searching to find. You could say it takes a lot of DETERMINATION to unlock. Anyways, obligatory determination references aside, as you start to look for this easter egg Sans gives you a key to his room and says "it's time you learn the truth." After some searching you find the workshop which contains items that leave even more questions. A photo album featuring Sans and a bunch of smiling people you don't recognize, a badge, blueprints with illegible handwriting, and a broken machine hidden behind a curtain. In the latest update, one more detail was added. A hand-drawn picture of 3 smiling faces with the words “don't forget.”

So, what does it all mean? Well a lot of Undertale theorists have been linking these details to a feature to a character named W.D Gaster. A ghostly character who never truly appears in the game. Honestly, covering him is a theory all unto itself, and probably one best saved for another day. Even still, none of the Gaster theories I've seen have been able to explain all the details. In particular, the photo album, and the badge. And that's what kept nagging me as I researched Undertale. A badge? That one in particular really stuck out to me. Why would such an oddly specific item to be hidden in the huge easter egg of a room? Something that supposedly reveals the truth about Sans? Badges just aren't important in Undertale. Then it hit me. What if this badge isn't from Undertale? What if this badge is from a completely different series? And was, in fact, the most important badge in the history of gaming? One of the Iskall patreon badges.

Now, for those of you wondering what I'm talking about, the Iskall Patreon Badges are a pivotal item from Iskall’s patreon. You know, the one on Hermitcraft. Anyway, the Iskall Patreon Badges are a really important part of Iskall’s character. So I asked myself; what if the badge in Sans' drawer was ONE OF THOSE EXACT badges? Well first off, it made Undertale connected to my favorite youtuber, thereby making it even COOLER, but that's still a pretty big logical leap. I needed more. Let me tell you, as I started looking, more and more pieces started to fit into place.

In Hermitcraft Season 6, there are three Architechs. (This was before Stress joined in season 7.) These 3 were Iskall, Grian and MumboJumbo. And what does Sans happen to have in his other drawer? A photo album with pictures of Sans with people you don't recognize. Of course you don't know them, they're not characters present in Undertale. And note the word that's used here, PEOPLE you don't recognize. Not underworld monsters. So that's 2 items oddly linked to the Hermitcraft series.

But then, how do the blueprints and broken machine fit in? Well, in the final stretch of Hermitcraft, Iskall is the only one who hasn’t died since the Demise game, so he sells his own body to the highest bidder. Except, it comes with a cost. Everyone is poor. As a result, and with the help of ImpulseSV, the Architechs (minus Mumbo,) are forced to finally kill Iskall, ending his streak since the beginning of demise. I watched this episode in 2020 and I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first saw this scene, I cried. It's DEVASTATING.

Iskall says goodbye to his friends, his co-workers, this character you've grown to love and care about is suddenly promising to sacrifice his life. For all he knows, there is no possibility of him being able to come back after his Demise. It's this incredibly dark departure in the final moments of what was otherwise a fun, quirky, and colorful Season 6.

So what does all of this have to do with Undertale? A LOT, actually. But the first thing you need to know is that the hermits are known for their, let's say, unique written linguistic style.

That would explain the illegible handwriting on the blueprints. And the machine? I think a broken infinity portal is behind that curtain. Now that may seem like a stretch, but it actually explains a lot.

If Sans wound up in Undertale via whacky infinity portal hyjinx, it could provide a reason for why he's a skeleton. He used the machine as organic matter and suffered the consequences. Not killing him, but turning at least a part of him into a pile of bones. That could also explain why Sans has given up hope for going home. Remember the infinity portal is a time machine. By being in the underworld, he's not only in a different place, but based on how he talks, he's also in a different time, with no hope of travelling back to the time he came from. This could theoretically happen. It turned Scar into a wizard and completely disintegrated Welsknight, so the rules are… Flimsy at best.

But the crossovers between Hermitcraft and Undertale continue. In Grian’s episode, (EDIT IN TIMESTAMP) he mentions he’s amazed that Iskall only escaped his demise with a lost arm. He says Iskall had “a lot of determination to not die for real,” and that he’s going to continue to study this. Seems awfully similar to the same experiments happening in Undertale around the trait of determination, no? Especially since so much has shown that Sans was a key player in those experiments.

But I'm sure you also want physical evidence right? Well don't worry, because I have plenty. Take a look at Iskall and Sans side by side. Iskall’s left eye is replaced with a diamond loupe. Sans’ left eye glows blue when he’s mad. Both have extremely chill yet are known for their jokes and, dare I say, laugh.

In short, we have some incredibly strong proof that the Hermitcraft Cinematic Universe, (HCU) is somehow connected to the Undertale world, which brings us back to our initial question, WHO IS SANS?

Well, what if we took it one final step and said that Sans happened to be Iskall from Hermitcraft? Sent through the Infinity Portal at the end of season 6 to go to Season 7, carrying an Iskall Patreon Badge and his photo album. Not only do all the items in the workshop suddenly fit, but so does Sans’ behavior.

Remember, Sans can seemingly travel extremely quickly. And Iskall just happens to have an elytra, a device that allows people to travel hundreds of metres extremely quickly. This even explains why Sans bleeds when you finally hit him. He is, or at least, WAS, a human.

Oh and finally, Sans shares two out of five letters with the name Iskall. That's just a fun one. I thought it was worth mentioning.

But if there was any doubt, we have to look no further than the creator's previous work. Toby Fox, the man behind Undertale is actually DocM77, the creator of every hermit (besides Scar.) Now, if Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, is also DocM77, creator of Iskall, we know they will most definitely share a universe. Which brings us back to Undertale. 2 faces, with “don't forget” written on it? It's Iskall, trying to remember his 2 friends. In short, Undertale is a continuation of Toby’s version of Hermitcraft Season 6, with Iskall never being able to get home, adopting the name Sans. The pieces all just seem to fit. Now all we need is an appearance from Ethoslab and we’ve got ourselves a true sequel.

But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! THANKS FOR WATCHING!