#though i will say i didn't like. love love bart's writing in this issue

[bobbinalong]

not to be excited about max getting trapped in a place without time BUT. this might mean more bart, right? cuz no way is he sitting out his rescue.

[mamawasatesttube]

Need your full opinion on the recent smot issue

overall, i was... pretty disappointed in it, honestly. spoilers below!

i have always found kenny porter's writing to be kinda heavyhanded, and smot has been no exception, but i was pretty willing to go with the flow because heavyhanded or not at least it seemed to be a fun story. with the hints and buildup in #3 i was worried we were essentially setting up for a reprise of knockout arc from sb94, with kon aiding and abetting someone shitty while being manipulated into thinking they were misunderstood and wanted to do better, and i had misgivings about that idea, but...

...but honestly like. this isn't actually better. i feel like porter is really, REALLY hammering in this idea that kon hasn't actually matured, that he's still the same kid from sb94 just trying to relive his glory days, which is just. like. did adventure comics/superboy (2011) mean nothing to you kenny? (i know they did. i know.) it's also just a disappointing angle to take on his MANY issues with being in a new universe that literally forgot him. of all the things he could be struggling with, i don't think naivety is a particularly interesting OR in character one to focus so hard on.

it's also just REALLY been getting me that we're supposed to believe that everyone on earth didn't notice he vanished for 2 weeks, and yet ALSO that they do genuinely care for him. smot is set before house of metallo arc in action comics, which means we know at the end of it kon still comes back to be generic background superman #3 or whatever; i find that pretty jarring especially with the idea that none of the superfam even noticed he left the planet for two whole weeks. of course, given porter's heavyhanded writing style i know that'll simply be glossed over and ignored, because... subtlety? implication? what are those? it's the same with the entire idea of EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM ON EARTH being solved--that makes no sense and will be summarily never mentioned again, of course. and ditto re: tim, bart, and cassie going on a mission in paris without so much as a text to kon about it. it's all pretty contrived as setup, and the execution continues to feel contrived and unsatisfying to me. smot4 in particular felt like they were Really rubbing in the complete nuking of the pre-flashpoint kon&clark relationship :(

i'm ALSO really just not happy with the ridiculously centrist take of "what if the guys fighting back against the genocidal imperialists were JUST AS BAD AS THEM? OR WORSE?" but i mean. the bar is on the fucking floor and dc just loves to bring industrial excavators.

on the plus side, at least there are some cute kon panels in it :) i'll take those where i can even if i'm going :/ at everything else going on. i'm pretty sure the ending will involve the superfam coming to the rescue in issue 6 and kon going WOW... i DO have a place on earth after all... despite none of the actual issues he had at the beginning of the run being remotely resolved. also i won't be surprised if they don't actually condemn the imperialists particularly much. travv and the cosmoteers have been set up as the primary antagonists so... eh.

overall i'd say smot 4 was where the plot stopped really being fun to me. i'd had my hangups and nitpicks with 1-3, but 4 just dropped the ball a LOT. maybe 5 and 6 will be better, but i'm not too optimistic that it won't just entirely fall flat (again, though, i just know i don't actually like the entire setup for kon in rebirth, so i'm biased). still gonna buy em though ofc. gotta get my good good kon covers even if the story isnt very consistent or satisfying!

ETA I FORGOT TO MENTION. CAN THEY STOP CLONING HIM?????? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD how many plots from sb94 are they gonna try to squeeze into the end of this run at the same time (and inevitably do worse than they were originally written). how many

[brown-little-robin]

Can you tell us a little more about Ten?

Absolutely! Thanks for the ask! Here's ten things about Ten, plus two picrews and one comics panel. Look at my boy <333

Spoilers for The Strange Redemption of Thaddeus Thawne below:

Ten is the Inertia from Flash: Fastest Man Alive. He killed Bart Allen. Then Wally West came after him and turned him into a living statue. Ten spent years in the Flash Museum, able to think at real time but not to move.

To survive the isolation, his brain basically shut down. When he's rescued, he has a laundry list of unfortunate side effects. He can't speak anymore. He has paranoia. It's hard to reach him with language, especially at first. His physical coordination is a shot for a while, although he does start to recover that. He needs a significant amount of support in daily life.

Physically, he's 19 years old. Chronologically, he's 27.

It's another clone who frees him from the immobilization. I'm not saying who or how yet, though—that's secret! ;)

He ends up living with Joseph Wilson and Two. He sleeps in the computer lab upstairs, the one known as the "Green Room". (Two gets the Blue Room!)

Ten uses an AAC app to communicate. He writes and texts sometimes, but mostly uses the preprogrammed phrase boards and vocabulary from the app. Three was delighted by Ten's phone and stuck a bunch of stickers on it without asking (THREE HONEY NO...). Ten didn't mind, but he meticulously removed all the stickers except the blue ones.

Ten's favorite color is blue. This is one of the first things that they learn about his personality.

Ten listens to a lot of rock music! His headphones are his favorite possession. He also really likes listening to people talk to him, as long as they're talking to him and not just around him. He has issues with being ignored, understandably enough (had to watch people in the museum). He also hates silence (all those long nights...)

When Ten is upset, he often goes to the back yard and gets fabulously dirty. The sensory input helps remind him that he's real.

I almost forgot—he learns to quilt! Ten will easily spend hours and hours quilting. He likes the mathematical challenge of it, the arranging of patterns, the planning and the execution of the plan. He's smart and strong, and quilting is a good brain workout that also gets his body moving.

He's my boy and I love him <333

[dankusner]

’Cago reader — southby ’92...

One of my favorite things is seeing an artist self-destruct onstage.

My favoritest recent example was at last year’s South by Southwest conference in Austin, when Michelle Shocked stumbled through a keynote speech of offensive stridency.

The erratic singer-songwriter, who followed up the almost perfectly realized folk album Short Sharp Shocked with a bozo excursion into jumping R & B, Captain Swing, told the assembled what her latest left turn was going to be: an album that would expose rock ‘n’ roll’s roots in “blackface minstrelsy.”

Her talk was rambling and so disconnected as to be almost incoherent, but its main points seemed to be first that rock ‘n’ roll was all stolen from black sources, and second that it had compounded this crime by trafficking in gross racial stereotypes. I’m not being sexist to say (Shocked trumpets it herself) that she got much of this reductive self-righteousness from her husband, Bart Bull, a talented but humorless and somewhat wacko former Spin writer whose articles tended to be about how Bart Bull was the only white man alive who really truly appreciated black music. It’s a complex issue, but let me say two things. It’s not like this is a discovery made by Shocked and Bull: Bands like Fishbone (which Shock singled out for criticism) derive their force from the confrontational way they address just this heritage.

It takes an almost willful mental blindness not to acknowledge this. Second, the calculation that would take a potentially interesting issue–which resonates not just in rock ‘n’ roll but in all of popular culture–and turn it into a campaign to boost a flagging career bespeaks to me something approaching artistic bankruptcy. Speaking of which, Shocked’s new record, Arkansas Traveler, contains one likable song, a rather clunky but pleasant ode to multicultural LA. The rest of it, her salute to the black roots of folk and rock ‘n’ roll, has all the right notes in all the right places, all the right sidepeople playing all the right roles. But it’s kind of ironic that this stalwart explorer into the realm of black music couldn’t muster the requisite amount of that crazy little thing called soul. Oops. These shows were supposed to include Uncle Tupelo and some remnants of the Band, but they’re no longer on the bill. Now Shocked plays with Taj Mahal and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23, 7.30 PM (the Thursday show is sold out), Park West, 322 W. Armitage; 929-5959.

Isn't that sumpin'? One of the low notes of old Hollywood . It's hard to believe this horribly racist "minstrel" performing was still around even then …but they were in much closer proximity to vaudeville (where minstrel shows were as common place as tap dancing and jugglers) than we are today, and we are lucky to be looking back from the other side of the civil rights movement. You should see the big number where she and Mickey Rooney are both in black face, though Judy's been toned up (as a more tropical make-up, or possibly mulatto) black, while all the other performers (and mickey) are very dark. They sing and dance their feet off to a HUGE (did I say H-U-G-E) production number extravaganza all to the tune of "Waitin' for the Rob't E. Lee" It’s a real old timer! That's the old song that goes "…way down on levee, in old Alabamy, there's Daddy, and Mammie, and Efram, and Sammie …it's the good ship Robert E. Lee comin' to carry the cotton away." The second chorus starts “See them shufflin’ along, here that music and song.” The likes of Stephen Sondheim cited this song as one of his favorite songs (that he didn't write). Barbara Cook performs it in a medley on that CD tribute to Sondheim at Carnegie Hall. I think one half of the program is dedicated to songs he loves, but didn’t write (which also includes one I love …Hard Hearted Hannah, The Vamp of Savannah …the meanest gal in town, leather is tough, Hannah’s heart is tougher, she’s really made to see men suffer.” Later on in the song “…I saw her by the seashore with a great big pan, there was Hannah throwin’ water on a drownin’ man! She’s hard hearted Hannah, the vamp of Savannah Ga !” Gotta love it. One thing about Judy …she definitely gave it her all, no matter what da’ shit was.

Starting off-key - South by Southwest opens to a rambling Michelle Shocked

Dallas Morning News, The (TX) (Published as The Dallas Morning News) - March 14, 1992

Author/Byline: Michael Corcoran, Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News, THE

Edition: HOME FINAL

Section: TODAY

Page: 5C

Column: POP MUSIC

Readability: 11-12 grade level (Lexile: 1210)

AUSTIN -- The South By Southwest music and media conference got off to a dubious start Thursday when advertised opening greeter

Willie Nelson didn't show up. Even worse, however, Michelle Shocked did make it.

SXSW director Roland Swenson explained that Mr. Nelson was on his bus somewhere between Laredo and Austin but would arrive in

time to play a few songs at the Columbia Records' showcase at Auditorium Shores later that night.

There could be no explanation for Ms. Shock's relentless ramble, in which she compared the conference, attended by more than 3,000

people in the music business, to a minstrel show. During one tedious analogy (the gist: Hammer, good; Vanilla Ice, bad), the Gilmer,

Texas, native suddenly spun out of a sentence and said, "My mind is a blank.' She spent much of her 25-minute speech proving just that.

Her lack of coherence was underlined when she recounted a recent Fishbone concert in Los Angeles. Ms. Shocked said that as a

predominantly white audience went bonkers to the punk-funk music of the black band, she felt "both horribly alienated and powerfully

integrated.' Her point was as waylaid as Willie's bus.

The main purpose of conventions like SXSW is to make contacts and sell yourself and your product. Ms. Shocked made it all too obvious

that her reason for speaking was to make the industy aware of her new Arkansas Traveler album. Whatever theme there was -- tied

loosely to the LP, which is Ms. Shocked's '90s take on field recordings -- she also spent a lot of time plugging a pamphlet written by her

fiance, Bart Bull.

Ms. Shocked will be at Farm Aid V Saturday doing what she does best -- which is not public speaking.

The musical portion of SXSW began Wednesday night with the Austin Music Awards. Winners who performed were musician of the year,

Eric Johnson, best female vocalist, Kelly Willis, and best "none-of-the-above' band, Bed Livers. There to accept awards were best

songwriter Butch Hancock, band of the year, the Arc Angels, and best new band, the Best-O-Sonics.

Caption: PHOTO(S): Michelle ShockedPHOTO LOCATION: NR.

Dateline: AUSTIN

Record: DAL1251587

Copyright: Copyright 1992 The Dallas Morning News Company

[jewishaxelwalker]

Hi. I've been trying to read all issues with Owen in them recently, and I was wanting to know if you have any sibling headcanons for Owen, Bart, and Thad (or just Owen and Thad). I loved Johns's GL run but FUCK if he didn't just butcher everything Impulse-related. Anyways, I feel as though the "oh shit you're my brother" meetings that never happened would've been glorious, and I wanna write shit but I have no idea how they would act around each other.

Please trust me when I say that you don’t want to get me started on talking about GJ and non-sucking-Hal-Jordan’s-dick comics, I’ve got enough venom within me to fuel a 300-episode podcast. But to be fair to poor Owen, I don’t think anyone really knew what to do with him, which is why he was able to bounce between being a villain, hero, and anti-hero, while remaining best friends with Supergirl and somehow only running into any Flash like…once. Owen Mercer’s wasted potential is both one of the things I’m saddest about in regards to mid-2000s comics, and one of the rejected names for my hypothetical band.

Breaking down Owen’s personality to the core basics, he’s a dork with a chip on his shoulder and a strong desire to Belong. He (like both Bart and Thad) wasn’t raised by his biological parents and (unlike Bart and Thad) we don’t actually know what his pre-Identity Crisis family situation was like. The desire to Belong could come from an unfulfilling relationship with his adoptive parents, or it could come from growing up feeling just a bit off. Because of this, he’d probably get along really well with Thad, whose own parent situation was…awful, until he got to experience life as Bart, which is to say, life with Max and Helen. They could also bond over how hard it is to do good, when a lifetime of instinct and literal programming say no, bad is easier. Bad gets results. Circumvent the law, bend the rules to suit your own needs.

Their dual relationship with Bart would be both casual and strained. Owen is used to putting up with Axel and Kara namely, he’s used to putting up with someone who has absolutely no goddamn filter, and someone who is wildly more powerful than him and also like…really good at this whole superheroing thing. Owen’s dorkiness would be a good bonding point for him and Bart (it’s canon that Owen likes movies, both old and new, and even worked in a movie theater before he met Digger and dove headfirst into a life of crime, and it’s also canon that Bart’s other best friend, Preston, is a movie buff and so he knows how to speak the lingo), might even act as the only bonding point at first, until they discover their mutual affinity for Super-people. Keep in mind, Bart only looks 16, while Owen actually lived all 19 of the years he’s been alive, even if the time periods he lived them in are questionable at best. 

The relationship between the three brothers would be strained, at first. Owen and Thad would definitely get along better, but once Owen found more things in common with Bart, Thad would most likely distance himself. Bart’s taking away someone important to him yet again, why even bother fighting it? But what he didn’t count on was how perceptive Owen is. He’s not an animal or a superhero identity, he doesn’t pick favorites, and he can be shared. 

“That’s the thing about big brothers, squirt, we’re this weird middle ground between parent and pet.”

“I am several hundred years older than you!”

“You’re also several hundred millimeters shorter than me, so cork it and go hug our brother before I pick you up and hang you on the back of a door.”

They’re agreed that, even though Bart is the genetic original, he’s their youngest brother. They’ve also agreed to never tell him this.

“Ah, playing the ol’ Slytherin and their Hufflepuff gambit, I see.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Ask Craydl, I gave him the first four Harry Potter books on tape last time.”

“Please stop poisoning my AI.”

My favorite way to write the speed bros, personally, is in non-power AUs where Owen grew up with them. I’ve written Owen as both the older brother and the younger brother, but I kinda lean harder towards the former. I’m literally counting the days until I finally get the time and inspiration to finish this one AU I started back in 2017. It involves Pokemon Go, and Axel is there. Someday.