#two animators and one concept artist and we made a super team

[beebeedibapbeediboop]

Some chara design work for our three weeks animation project: "Circus Tristus" (a 15 seconds video featuring Bozo the clown and Madame Yrma the characters I created)

Hopefully I'll manage to post the video as well

[mrmistopher]

ART FIGHT SUMMARY 2024, SUCKAHS!

Second year of ArtFight and the first year I went all in on it. As opposed to my 4 attacks from 2023, this year I submitted 13! Before that, though, I gotta share others' attacks against me.

First, of course, is the lovely @pixel-exchange of Team Stardust who somehow managed to pump out *4* banger attacks against me this year! We were in a heated revenge war, which he ultimately beat me at, but I don't mind much, with how awesome his stuff was. I love how each turned out. I think my favorite may have been "Alone on the Moon", featuring my astronaut dog gal, Laika.

Second person to attack was @headphones-lifeform of Team Stardust who made this adorable bust of my Star Trek OC, Nurse Telos! He just looks wonderful, mad shoutouts to them!

Third is from a mutual of mine who actually attacked me in 2023; Croconiles from Stardust! (Twitter/Insta) He drew my skunk OC, Stripes, and she turned out heckin' excellent! Love that eyeshadow and the big nose.

Fourth is this hilarious little piece for my boy Werner by fellow Trekkie, @lyroart of Stardust! Love how goofy and weird his expression here is. Perfect for him with how wacky he is.

And lastly, we got this cute wittle pixel art profile for Laika from RevlisFox on Team Stardust. (CharHub) Looks super cute and I could totally imagine having something like this for a little family chart or the like.

Now, to move onto my attacks, firstly I have my revenge war with Pixel-Exchange. Big fan of how the first 2 looked, but the third was admittedly rushed. Still though, mate has some sweet designs.

Second, I have my attacks against LyRo the goat. Drew some of their Star Trek OCs. Calvin had my favorite design (guess why) but I really enjoyed Ena's personality, so I attacked em both!

Next we have my revenge against Headphones. I really liked this design for Niph in particular (guess why) and I really liked the concept for a cave-dwelling crewmate. Felt weird drawing props for once lol.

Next revenge was for Croconiles, with his silly little OC couple, Darby and Animal. Felt like it'd be fun to draw two characters interacting, and I like how they look in my style. Plus I just love the slight texture on his art.

And, the last of my revenges here is one against RevlisFox with this art of a character whose name I forgot. 😰 SORRY the character page got privated, I gotta wait until it's back up again. In any case, this was my final attack this year, and though a simple one, idk I kinda liked how it turned out.

So, moving away from revenges, here's my plain ol' attacks against artists I like!

First are my attacks against Keiiphobix (YT/Insta) of Team Stardust! No joke, one of my new favorite artists on AF. Just wicked good, man! I drew his lil guy, Maurice (ISTG HE IS THE CUTEST FUCKING THING EVERRRRR) and Joy, who is the just spikiest fella ever <3

Next was Callum by PeculiarPossom (Twitter/Etsy) of Team Seafoam! Just a skinny freaky lil possum drummer boy. I can relate to his struggle of being a drummer with no band lol. Fun fact: I was in Canada when I drew this! Shoutout Quebec

After this is art of le bird boy, Matteo, owned by a YouTuber I watch, RedPanda Master! (YT/DA) I initially fell in love with them for their silly lil WoF shitposts, but I thought Matteo was just adorable, and a must-draw! They have some awesome fantasy designs, but a lotta them were too complex for me, so I naturally settled for the easiest and cutest one.

And finally, we come to the end of this longass megapost and arrive at my attack of @asrielwithans on Team Stardust, and no joke this may be my favorite attack I did. Aside from not really capturing the eeriness of Hollypaw, I love how this turned out. I first saw their Warriors fan content last year and I have been obsessed ever since. That Christmas Kids animation has been on loop in my brain for MONTHS. Their stuff is metal, seriously, Warriors fans and animatic fans, go watch it NOW.

Welp.... that's the end of my exhaustive post of my ArtFight activity this year. I definitely shoulda split this up into several smaller posts and I probably shouldn't have rambled so much in between the art but DAMN IT, I love all these artists and I needed to talk about each of em. Seriously, go follow all of them, go comment on their stuff, go share it around. I'm so thankful for the crazy amount of attention I got this year by those who attacked me, and I hope all the artists who I attacked loved seeing art of their characters. Although SeaFoam may have lost this year, I certainly didn't!

[buzzdixonwriter]

Doc Savage

For two generations of young readers — the original pulp fans of the 1930s and 40s followed by the reprint fans of the 1960s and 70s — Doc Savage remains not only an iconic figure but a template for all adventure heroes who came after.

Doc and his team — the ape-like chemist Monk Mayfair, his rival attorney Ham Brooks, construction engineer Renny Renwick, electrical engineer Long Tom Roberts, archeologist / geologist Johnny Littlejohn — inspired such diverse teams as Captain Future and his crew, the Challengers of the Unknown, the Fantastic Four, the crew of the Enterprise, Buckeroo Banzai’s Hong Kong Cavaliers (many of whom, we must be fair to observe, executed the formula fair more successfully than Doc and his crew), and Team Venture.

Doc also proved a direct inspiration (read “rip off”) of several key concepts later popularized by Superman, including “the man of bronze” vs “the man of steel” and first use of an arctic Fortress of Solitude for those times when he just needed a break from adventuring.

There have been radio serials, comic books, movies (one by producer George Pal, another by teen fans in the 1970s), and a heart-breaking number of announced but never made media projects, including a serial (eventually rewritten as Fighting Devil Dogs) and abortive TV projects (including a proposed animated series by Ruby-Spears that went so far afield of the original concept that it’s a blessing it got shelved after early development).

So what makes the character so fascinating?

He represents an ideal embodiment of the ultimate of humanity abilities.  Unlike Superman (born or another planet) or other superheroes (either mutants or enhanced by some form of magic or super-science), Doc’s abilities are the result of his father’s relentless training regimen for him since birth.  He’s a brilliant polymath in all sciences (a legit doctor with and MD plus a plethora of PhDs), a fluent linguist in virtually all languages including ancient Mayan and American Sign Language, a skilled mimic and disguise artist, an expert martial artist and judo master (this at a time when martial arts were virtually unknown in America), plus a pilot / sailing master as well as a world renown philanthropist.

The only thing he isn’t is genuinely human, and from the very beginning there’s an unspoken yet nonetheless present undercurrent in all his adventures that his frantic activity is pretty much a defense against admitting he really has no inner personal life.

Over the next several months (probably years) I’m going to recap the Doc Savage novels as re-published by Bantam Books in the 1960s. Their covers by James Bama probably did more to cement Doc’s iconic appeal than the stories themselves, creating the look that every succeeding interpretation has followed. While Bantam eventually reprinted all the original pulp stories, they didn’t do so in order of publication; I will add that to help you understand the development of the character and series.

© Buzz Dixon

[the-grove]

Powders PokeGang

Okay so I actually am having a really hard time to bringing my team down to 6. Part of the issue is that Gen 9 brought a lot of designs that I like. But there are a lot of older mon I also really really like. So I'm gonna have to make some choices. That being said the first mon on this list is an evolution of my favorite pokemon that made me love it even more so to start off the list

Anhilape (Fighting/ghost)

From an early age our system wan enamored with Mankey, especially Ash's Mankey from the anime. Primeape was a pretty cool evolution of the concept. It was mostly a bigger mankey with bigger muscles but it worked. Monkey's are a favorite animal of mine. In part due to the fact Monkey was a nickname for us growing up. It was associated with our deadname but despite our dislike for that name, Monkey is still a name that bring us joy. Anhilape is a fantastic evolution of primeape, keeping the basic core concepts while also going through a larger transformation then its previous chain. The wild flowing hair, the angry grumpy look(That also kind of looks tired and adorable) the way the fur looks like shaggy wisps. And one of the best details, it lost one of the bands on it's wrist and the other one broke, it's just overflowing with power. Not to mention it's signature move, Rage Fist, is such a fun and powerful concept.

2) Sharpedo (Water/Dark)

I think sharks are cool, I think explosions are cool, it's a shark torpedo. Whats not to love. I love it's aggressive yet adorable face, it's pointy teeth. Sharks are an animal that multiple members of the system love, Princess and I especially. Plus it has such smooth skin. 3) Mimikyu (Ghost Fairy)

Mimikyu is scary and adorable, it's powerful, it's lonely, and misunderstoodd. I love the child like doodle on it's disguise. Mimikyu reminds me a lot of my memories from my source. I would love a plush one that I could hold on days when I feel especially bad. Maybe one day.

4) Grafaiai (Poison/Normal)

Another monkey like pokemon. While called the Toxic Monkey pokemon it's actually has visual inspiration from Lemur(especially the Aye aye) and the Slow Loris. It is also inspired by graffiti artist, hence the wicked cool eyes, and the bright colors on its fingers. It is such an adorable mischievous little creature. Strong Contender for favorite mon. 5) Farigiraf (Normal/Psychic)

Girafarig was a pokemon I hadn't thought too much about. It was cute but never my favorite. It's evolution however is super cool looking while also adorable. The way the heads have combined give it two super cute/cool looks. When the second head is open, you can see the adorable face of the first and it looks Cozy in a Hoodie. When the second head closes its mouth, it looks a bit alien, mysterious and cool. It's a bit spooky but not too spooky. Alright before we get to number 6 I just want to say this last pick was the hardest choice. I had 5 Pokemon I was considering. I could easily see myself switching them out depending on the challenge or what. But I have to have 6 so here we go 6) Infernape (Fire/fighting)

HAD TO DO IT TO EM TRIPLE MONKEY. Okay so Infernape is another one of my favorite pokemon. I am a big fan of Sun Wukong and characters and concepts inspired by him. I also find it interesting how Infernape I feels sort of out of place on the rest of my team which as a darker feel to it. Infernape brings some much needed warmth. So while I do have some favorite types(Ghost, Fire, Fighting, Dark, electric you know spooky types and types that *POP*) my team was picked with not really thinking of typings in mind but rather the individual pokemon without much else in mind. So I want to talk about the 4 honorable mentions that could Have taken Infernapes place. 1) Tinkaton- This new mom is an adorable little menace and I would love to come up with schemes with it. 2) Mr.Mime- I have a love of mimes and clowns so Mr.Mime just seemed fitting, Mr.Mime is actually probably the least likely one to have made it on the final team. That doesn't mean I don't like him, but yeah. 3) Vikavolt- Vikavolt would have been my electric representation on the team and it actually shared a quality with sharpedo. They are both animals that have modern weaponry as a design influence.

4) Gengar- Gengar is the OG Ghost pokemon. I's design is simple yet perfect, chubby little ghost. Would also be on the Menace squad with Tinkaton , Grafaifai and Mimikyu. Probably had the highest chance alongside Tinkaton to make it

-Powder Signing off

[thimbil]

Having some thoughts about the references and inspirations used for the Bad Batch’s designs.

So Boba Fett is my absolute favorite character and Temeura Morrison was perfect casting. I went to see the 2008 TCW movie in theaters because I was so excited to see him again, even if he was animated. You can imagine my disappointment. Whoever was on screen was not Temeura Morrison. You could sort of see a resemblance if you squinted and didn’t think too hard about it. They replaced Temeura with Racially Ambiguous G.I. Joe. If I didn’t know better and someone told me the animated clones are space Italians from the moon of New Jersey I would buy it. One Million Brothers Pizzeria and Italian Bistro. Not that there’s something wrong with being space Italian, I just don’t think it’s the right choice for the Fetts. The design got slightly improved by season 7 but it still bugs the hell out of me.

I did eventually get into the show later and (of course) got invested in the clones. Unfortunately, they were largely sidelined by the Jedi storylines. Out of the two new main characters created for TCW, Ahsoka definitely got more development and focus than Rex. When they announced The Bad Batch, I was excited to see a show specifically devoted to the clones… at least that’s what it said on the tin. We have all seen what lurks beneath those stylish helmets.

Jango Fett, you are NOT the father.

So who is?

Based on interviews with Filoni, it sounds like the Bad Batch was a George Lucas idea. And like all his ideas, it’s super derivative. The original trilogy directly lifted elements from sci fi serials, westerns, and samurai movies, more specifically Kurosawa films like The Hidden Fortress. For The Bad Batch character designs, the influence is obviously American action and adventure movies.

Now let’s get specific. Bad Batch, who’s your daddy?

Hunter

Sylvester Stallone as Rambo in First Blood 1982. That bandana has become an integral part of the iconic action hero look. You see a character wearing one and it’s a visual shorthand for either “this character is a tough guy” like Billy played by Sonny Landham in Predator 1987, or “this character thinks he is/wants to be a tough guy” like Brand played by Josh Brolin in The Goonies 1985 or Edward Frog played by Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys 1987.

Hunter’s model is closest to the original clone base. If you look closely you will see the eyebrows are straighter with a much lower angle to the arch. His nose is also not the same shape as a standard clone like Rex, including a narrower bridge. It’s certainly not Temeura Morrison’s nose. Remember what I said about space Italians? It didn’t take much to push the existing clone design to resemble an specific Italian man instead of a specific Māori man. The 23&Me came back, and Hunter inherited more than the bandana from Sylvester.

Crosshair

The long narrow nose, the sharp cheekbones, the scowl. That’s no clone, that’s just animated Clint Eastwood. Not even Young and Hot Clint Eastwood from Rawhide 1959-1965. With that hair, I’m talking Gran Torino 2008. The man of few words schtick and family friendly toothpick in lieu of cigar are pure Eastwood as The Man With No Name from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns A Fist Full of Dollars 1964, For a Few Dollars More 1965, and The Good the Bad and the Ugly 1966.

In a way, this is full circle because the actor Jeremy Bulloch took inspiration from Clint Eastwood for his performance as Boba Fett in ESB.

Wrecker

In an interview Filoni lists the Hulk as an (obvious) inspiration for Wrecker. Ever seen the old Hulk tv show from 1978? Well take a look at the actor who played him, Lou Ferrigno. Would you look at that. Even has his papa’s nose.

You could make the argument that Wrecker was influenced by The Rock, an appropriately buff ‘n bald Polynesian (Samoan, not Maori) man. But look at him next his Fast and Furious costar Vin Diesel and tell me which one resembles Wrecker’s character model more.

Tech

Tech is a little trickier for me to place. If he has a more direct inspiration it must be something I haven’t seen. That said, his hairline is very Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard 1988. His quippiness and large glasses remind me of Shane Black as Hawkins from Predator 1987. In terms of his face, he looks a but like the result of McClane and Hawkins deciding to settle down and start a family. Although, Tech’s biggest contributors are probably just everyone on TV Trope’s list for Smart People Wear Glasses.

And finally,

Echo

Oh Echo. Considering he wasn’t created for the Bad Batch, he probably wasn’t based on a particular character or movie. But if I had to guess, his situation and appearance remind me a lot of Alex Murphy played by Peter Weller in Robocop 1987. However, Robocop explored the Man or Machine Identity Crisis with more nuance, depth, and dignity. Yikes.

The exact tropes and references used in The Bad Batch have been done successfully with characters who aren’t even human. Gizmo from Gremlins 2: The New Batch 1990 had a brief stint with the Rambo bandana. I could have picked any number of characters for Defining Feature Is Glasses but here is the most cursed version of Simon of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Suffer as I have. Marc Antony with his beloved Pussyfoot from Looney Tunes has the same tough guy with a soft center vibe as Wrecker and his Lula (also a kind of cat). Hell, in the same show we have Cad Bane sharing Cowboy Clint Eastwood with Crosshair. I actually think Bane makes a better Eastwood which is wild considering Crosshair has Eastwood’s entire face and Bane is blue.

So we’ve established you don’t need your characters to look exactly like their inspirations to match their vibe. So why go through the trouble and cost of creating completely new character designs instead of recycling and altering assets they already had on hand? Just slap on a bandana, toothpick, goggles, and make Wrecker bigger than the others while he does a Hulk pose and you’re done. Based on the general reaction to Howzer it would have been a low effort slam dunk crowd pleaser.

But they didn’t do that.

So here’s the thing. I like the tropes used in The Bad Batch. I am a fan of action adventure movies from the 80s-90s, the sillier the better. I am part of the Bad Batch’s target audience. Considering what I know about Disney and Lucasfilm, I went in with low expectations. I genuinely don’t hate the idea of seeing references to these actors and media in The Bad Batch. I don’t think basing these characters on tropes was a bad idea. If anything it’s a solid starting point for building the characters.

The trouble is nothing got built on the foundation. The plot is directionless, the pacing is wacky, and the characters have nearly no emotional depth or defining character arcs. They just sort of exist without reacting much while the story happens around them. But I can excuse all of that. You don’t stay a fan of Star Wars as long as I have not being able to cherrypick and fill in the gaps. This show has a deeper issue that shouldn’t be ignored.

Why do the animated clones bear at best only a passing resemblance to their live action actor? In interviews, Filoni wouldn’t shut up but the technological advancements in the animation for season 7. So if they are updating things, why not try to make the clones a closer match to their source material? Why did they have to look like completely different people in The Bad Batch to be “unique”? Looking like Temeura Morrison would have no bearing on their special abilities and TCW proved you can have identical looking characters and still have them be distinct. In fact, that’s a powerful theme and the source of tragedy for the clones’ narrative overall.

Here’s Filoni’s early concept art of Crosshair, Wrecker, Tech, and Hunter. (Interesting but irrelevant: Wrecker seems to have a cog tattoo similar to Jesse’s instead of a scar. Wouldn’t it have been funny if they kept that so when they met in season 7 one if them could say something like “Hey we’re twins!” That’s a little clone humor. Just for you guys 😘)

None of these drawings look like the clones in TCW, much less Temeura Morrison. Let’s be generous. Maybe Filoni struggles with drawing a real person’s likeness, as many people do. But he had to hand this off to other artists down the line whose job specifically involves making a stylized character resemble their actor. Yet the final designs missed the mark almost as much as this initial concept. Starting to seem as if the clones looking more like Temeura Morrison was never even on the table. It wasn’t a lack of creativity, skill or technical limitations on the part of the creative team. I don’t think there is an innocent explanation. They went out of their way to make the final product exactly how we got it.

This goes beyond homage. They could have made the same pop culture references and character tropes without completely stripping Temeura Morrison from the role he originated. It was a very purposeful choice to replace him with more immediately familiar actors from established franchises and films. It wouldn’t shock me if Filoni, Lucas, and anyone else calling the shots didn’t even think hard or care enough about the decision to immediately recognize a problem. And I don’t think they believed anyone else would either. At least no one whose opinion they cared about. Those faces are comfortingly familiar and proven bankable. They are what we’re all used to seeing after all. They’re white.

Lack of imagination, bad intentions, or simple ignorance doesn’t really matter in the end. The result is the same. Call it what it is. They replaced a man of color with a bunch of white guys. That’s by the book garden variety run of the mill whitewashing. There’s no debate worth having about it. For a fanbase that loves to nitpick things like whether or not it’s in character for Han to shoot first or Jeans Guy in the Mandalorian, we sure are quick to find excuses for clones who look nothing like their template. Why is that? If you don’t see the problem, congratulations. Your ass is showing. Pull your jeans up.

[true-blue-megamind]

FAN THEORY SUPPOSITION SUNDAY: The Warden

SPOILER WARNING!  It’s still a thing, and, if you haven’t yet, you still need to watch Megamind.  (If you have seen it already, however, you need to see it again.  Because it’s awesome.)

Yes, yes, the post is three days late this time.  Real life has to take priority and such. So sue me.  (Don’t really do that.  LOL!)

For that same reason—or more accurately because this week has exhausted me—I will attempt to make this post shorter than usual.  We’ll see how that goes.  My money is on “not well.”  LOL.

Anyway, today we’re going to look at a subject that often divides the Megamind fandom: the Warden and his relationship with Megamind. There are several fan theories—I mean, suppositions—surrounding this, but I’m going to be focusing on a few of the main ones.

The first of these is that the Warden was actually a father figure to Megamind when he was young, allowing him to be raised in jail not out of cruelty or disinterest, but because it was the only way to keep him safe from shadowy government agencies that otherwise would have performed all sorts of experiments on the blue alien.  This both accounts for why a child would be allowed to grow up in what is clearly a high-security prison for dangerous adult criminals—something that, admittedly, needs some sort of explanation—and fits with widely accepted sci-fi and comic book tropes. (From Area 51 to mysterious “Men in Black” type organizations, fiction is full of government agencies created to study extraterrestrial life and technology.)  Some even go so far as to suggest that the Warden may have tried to adopt Megamind officially, but was blocked from doing so by these same entities. On top of this, such an idea also offers room to re-imagine the Warden as a much more interesting, complex, and sympathetic character.  Indeed, there has been some excellent fan fiction written about this pseudo-parental relationship.

Art: Fathers And Sons Day by tabbydragon

There is some evidence to support this.  The first is that, although the Warden behaves harshly toward Megamind in the “jail-break” scene near the beginning of the film, Megamind himself seems to be trying to engage in a playful exchange: pranking the older man, wishing him a good morning, and even teasing him.  While some say that this is simply Megamind’s personality as well as his determination to always appear indominable, others suggest that, perhaps, the blue man is trying to recapture a lost amiability between himself and the prison Warden.  It is possible that, when he was younger and less villainous, Megamind might have exchanged friendly jokes and greetings with the man in charge of the jail he called home.  It has even been suggested that the Warden is so hard on the blue man at the beginning of the film not because he hates Megamind, but because Megamind’s life choices have hurt and alienated his father figure. This idea finds some support in the facts that, when Megamind leaves jail to confront Titan, the Warden wished him good luck, and at the end of the movie, that same man seems genuinely happy as he watches the television broadcast of his one-time prisoner being named Defender of Metro City.  Finally, there is some evidence from the comics which, although not truly considered canon, as I’ve mentioned before, do offer some material for fan theories.  In the “episode” entitled Bad Minion! Bad! Megamind runs into the Warden in a bar, and the latter offers the former advice.  There is certainly a somewhat fatherly feel to the scene.

The second theory is exactly the opposite: that the Warden either did not care for or outright disliked the former supervillain.  Unfortunately, as fun as the Warden/Father Figure concept is, this second, darker idea has far stronger evidence to support it in the film itself.  (Try not to hate me, everyone.)  These clues range from the obvious to the subtle, but there are quite a few of them to be found.

During the first scene in which we see Warden interact with Megamind, he doesn’t behave like an angry, disappointed father—at least not a good one.  He isn’t merely surly toward Megamind; he is absolutely nasty. The Warden verbally condemns the alien, telling him that he’ll “always be a villain,” and essentially steals what he believes is a gift for the blue man, even taunting him by saying: “I think I’ll keep it!”  This hardly seems like the actions of someone who once felt any sort of affection for the extraterrestrial.  That same portion of the movie holds another clue as well: the screens monitoring Megamind’s brain activity.  Indeed, in original concept art for the film, the system appears both more invasive and more nightmarish.  It seems that, far from protecting Megamind, the Warden may have actually allowed him to be experimented upon.

Next, there is the newspaper article at the beginning of the title sequence, which bears the headline “Hometown Boy Makes Bad.” It’s hard to see what the paper says, of course, even if you bother to really notice it, but luckily for us Liz (Demishock) wrote a wonderfully thorough blog post which, among other things, provides a transcript of the “news story.”  In it, the Warden is quoted as referring to young Megamind as a born villain as well as abnormal.  

You don't know this kid. I've watched the little criminal since he was in diapers. This kid is just a bad seed. I've got experienced, hardened criminals in here who are afraid of him - I mean, have you seen the size of his head?…  It's not like he's a normal kid… I mean, have you gotten a good look at his gigantic blue head? I don't know where you come from, but where I come it's just not right.

Granted, there seems to be some truth to what the Warden is saying, as the article also mentions that Megamind, who can hardly have been more than seven years old at the time, has basically been put into solitary confinement for the safety of other prisoners following an unnamed incident, adding that the other inmates “refused to point fingers for fear of retaliation.”  (This fits with the fan theory that young Megamind would have had to both fight and develop a fearsome reputation in order to protect himself. You can read more about that in the post How Strong is Megamind?) However, the Warden seems to dwell a lot on the fact that Megamind looks alien, and he displays an obvious dislike for the young boy.

Finally, there is evidence hidden in the school scene, although it’s easy to miss. In an amazing two-part video series, Megamind: A City of Deception. YouTuber The Theorizer illustrates several hidden clues about Megamind’s early life and how it it led him to embrace villainy.  (I will very likely write another post going into more detail about that at a later date.)  One thing that The Theorizer discovered is a seemingly innocuous detail in the background during the popcorn scene.  Take a moment to examine the images below.  Look closely at the blackboard and you’ll see a paper cut out of a school bus.  Look even more closely at that and you’ll find something odd: the bus is full of crayon-drawn children except for one figure: an adult male, riding in the back of the bus, who looks suspiciously like the Warden as he appears at the beginning of the film. 

In a movie where so much attention is given to small things—I mean, seriously, the animation team actually went through the trouble to write a news story for a paper that was on the screen less than ten seconds—this cannot possibly be a coincidence.  (You can learn more about the artists’ amazing dedication to detail in my post What’s Hidden in the Animation?)  Although it is vaguely possible that Megamind, painfully aware of how much his appearance was despised, chose to draw the Warden’s face instead of his own, most fans believe there is a darker reason for this oddity.  

Think about it: the Li’l Gifted School for Li’l Gifted Kids is built close by a jail with a strangely similar name: Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted.   It’s clearly a small academy, yet the only two known aliens in the city—who, by the way, have extremely different social backgrounds—both just happen to attend there.  And now the prison warden appears to be somehow involved with the elementary school?  It’s bizarre.  Add to this the fact that the young alien adopted by a privileged family—a boy who possessed super-strength and laser vision—seemed inclined to be a bully, (as is made obvious by the kickball scene,) and a disturbing fan theory emerges.  Adults realized that Wayne Smith, the child who would eventually become Metro Man, might prove dangerous if left unchecked, and came up with a plan to turn him into a hero instead.  Wayne was showered with praise, conditioning him to seek public approval, but a superhero needs a nemesis.  The strange-looking, unwanted blue boy who’d already been labeled a criminal would have seemed like the obvious choice.  If this is true, then Megamind was purposefully, albeit covertly, groomed to become a supervillain from a young age, and the Warden played a major role in doing that.

So there you have it.  Two competing fan theories concerning the Warden’s connection with Megamind.  Both have some evidence supporting them, and there are fans who are firmly dedicated to one or the other.  Which is true?  Did the Warden care for Megamind like a son but distance himself when the boy turned to villainy?  Or did he judge and despise Megamind but come around to liking him when he finally realized what sort of person the blue man was deep down?  The fact is that those questions can be argued for hours on end.  No matter which of these suppositions you prefer, however, the mere fact that even a minor supporting character is complex enough to offer room for this debate speaks to the impressive amount of work and devotion that went into creating this amazing animated film.

[carriagelamp]

Since it’s Pride Month, I decided this year I wanted to raid the library for a bunch of different queer books to read. Mostly graphic novels in this case, because I’ve had a hard time settling into much reading lately... thought hopefully now that it’s summer and I finally have my second shot I’ll be able to relax a bit more and dig into some heavier novels again. For now, enjoy some light, queer reads that I indulged in this June.

A Wolf Called Wander

A beautiful novel I had been hearing lots about. This story follows the young wolf Swift, who grows up knowing that he and his pack are the mountains, and the mountains are them. It’s in those mountains that he grows and learns and loves… until disaster strikes and he finds himself viciously torn apart from his family and forced out of the mountains that have always meant home to him. Forced to survive on his own. Swift then begins a gruelling journey that makes him face injury, starvation, and the everpresent danger of humans as he seeks a new place he can call home, and new people with whom he can form a pack.

This is all based on the true story of a tagged wolf known as OR-7, following the unbelievable route he took through Oregon and northern California! It was a very neat read, and I’d definitely recommend it if you enjoy stories told from an animal’s perspective because this book is a master class in it.

Bloom

I decided for June to try to read a handful of different queer books, and this was one of the first graphic novels I picked up. It is a super sweet story and the art is lovely. It’s about Ari, a boy who has just graduated high school and is now desperate to move away from his small town and his family’s struggling bakery, to join his band in the city where they hope to make it big. An agreement is finally reached: Ari’s father will let him leave, if he can find someone who can replace him in the bakery, which is how Ari meets Hector, someone who sees artistry and peace in baking. For anyone that’s read Check, Please, it gives off those types of vibes!

Boule et Bill: Bill est Maboul

Another book of Dupuis comics, because I can’t get enough of them! This one I just stumbled across and ended up reading on a whim but it was very cute. Geared younger than the others I’ve read, but still quite funny. It’s the charming hijinks of a young boy, his dog, and the family they live with. Each page or so is a different stand alone joke, a bit like Calvin and Hobbes except expanded beyond a single strip.

Chicken Run: Chicken Pies for the Soul

This was a ridiculous urge I got and had to follow. I recently rewatched Chicken Run (which is, of course, one of the best movies ever made) and felt the need to see if it had ever been novelized. Well, I found something better than a novelization! This is a chapter book with “advice” and stories written by the various characters, post-movie. It really does a good job with grasping the different characters’ voices and making something simple and funny out of it. It was very cute (and available on The Internet Archive if anyone else feels like reading something ridiculous!)

Doodleville

I picked this up on a whim and honestly, I shouldn’t have bothered. It was not very impressive. Very mediocre, awkward feeling artwork, and a story that only slightly manages to redeem it. The concept was kind of neat, and I did like how the ending came about, the rest was rather… plodding. I did not like the main character at all, her friends felt very Intentionally Quirky Aren’t We Cute :3 in a way that just tries too hard, and… yeah. Meh. It technically gets the “queer graphic novel flag” but it’s so in-passing that it feels rather excessive to give it that.

If you are interested, it’s about a world were doodles actually exist as living creatures that can be drawn into existence (the rather unsettling implications of which is never fully explored). This is all well and good, until the main character draws a monster and takes it with her to her art club... where it begins ravanging not only her doodles, but those of her friends. Together they need to work together to figure out how to stop this menace.

FRNCK v4

Phenomenal. I adore the FRNCK series, and book four wrapped up the first “cycle”, revealing several of the big secrets dogging the series so far, and changing how things are going to be able to run in the future.

If you haven’t seen me talk about it before, FRNCK is a graphic novel (a franco-belgian bande dessinée) about a young orphan, Franck, who’s chafing under the constant parade of uninterested foster parents that visit the orphanage he lives in. Determined to learn about his mysterious abandonment instead, he flees the orphanage… but finds himself tumbling through time, landing among a family of cave-people who rather reluctantly take him in and ensure this modern boy doesn’t die in the strange, dangerous new surroundings he finds himself in. You can get these ones in English as e-books, so if you want a really kickass graphic novel series to read please try these.

Haikyu!!

I’ve heard so much about Haikyu!! that I finally gave in and picked up the first book from the library. And I gotta say, it’s well worth the hype! This series really does capture the best parts of a good sports manga -- which is to say the team is filled with interesting, enjoyable character who all need to learn to pull together, boost each other’s strengths, and cover for each other’s weaknesses. Love me some found family tropes and this series oozes it in the best possible way. And then you also get some very cool action scenes as it makes high school volleyball seem like the most intense thing on earth. I can’t wait to continue it

Queer Eye

I haven’t been keeping up with Queer Eye but I was watching it ravenously when it first came out, and this seemed like a very cathartic book to read… and it really was. It had the same gentle, loving encouragement as the show. It doesn’t expect you to change your entire life, but to learn to embrace who you are, and take small steps to enhance those things. There a segment written (presumably) by each member of the Fab Five, explaining the mentality behind what they do on the show and how you can grow in those areas too. It’s very zen.

Spinning

I got this graphic novel out at the same time as Bloom, but it was the one that interested me less of the two... though that’s just because I have less interest in “real world” slice of life as a genre and this one is meant to be autobiographical. If you’re into that, you’ll probably love this because it really is stunning. Very pretty, and the format and pacing is all really well done. It’s a coming of age story for Tillie as she grows up dealing with a crosscountry move, complicated friendships, a burgeoning attraction to girls, and attending competitive figure skating classes.

This Place: 150 Years Retold

A stunning and heart-wrenching graphic novel told by a collection of different First Nation’s authors/artists, recounting oral histories about the 150 years since the colonialist formation of the country known as “Canada”. In other words, this is a post-apocalypse story, but one that really happened and that entire peoples are still fighting to survive. It’s very eye opening and beautifully told. Very strongly recommend the read, especially if you’re at all interested in history.

Torchwood: Serenity

Whoops, not technically a book. I had thought these were technically audiobooks at first, but rather they’re audio dramas that were played on the radio. Still, I decided to include one because I’ve been listening to them like a person possessed and they’re too fun not to at least mention. Let me indulge in my obsessions.

If you don’t know Torchwood, it’s a BBC series that spins-off from Doctor Who, focusing on the enigmatic and flirtatious Captain Jack Harkness, who is running the covert organization known as Torchwood, which is tasked to protect humanity from and prepare them for alien contact. It’s goofy and campy but also more adult and heavy than Doctor Who tends to get, so it is (in my opinion) a really fascinating series. Though it also has content warnings coming out the wazoo so maybe make sure it’s for you before delving in.

Serenity specifically is possibly one of the best Torchwood stories I’ve ever experienced. The Torchwood team concludes that there’s an undercover alien hiding in the idyllic gated community Serenity Plaza, and so that means it’s up to Jack and Ianto to go undercover as a happily married couple and flush out the alien without being discovered first. Even if it means being sickly sweet together, pretending to care about the local neighbourhood barbecues, and actually caring a bit too much about the Best Front Lawn competition. What is truly magical about this one, is that it manages to make it a Fake Dating AU despite the fact that Jack and Ianto are actually dating in canon. But they’re both used to dating as a pair of alien hunters with insanely dysfunctional lives, and who now need to figure out how to deal with domesticity. It is marvellous.

Wilderlore: The Accidental Apprentice

A middle grade novel that felt a bit like a cross between Harry Potter and Pokemon. It’s about orphan Barclay Thorne who wants nothing more than to be accepted in the rule-bound village of Dullshire, and live up to his apprenticeship as a mushroom farmer. He certainly wants nothing to do with the fearsome Beasts who live beyond the village, deep in the Woods or the sinister Lorekeepers that bond with them. It was, after all, a Beast that had killed his parents all those years ago. But when he finds himself at the very edge of the forest, hunting for an elusive mushroom, he is suddenly unable to avoid any of that. Not when a wild girl and her bonded dragon appear to summon a horrible Beast and end up getting Barclay bonded to it instead. Now, if Barclay ever wants to be welcomed back into his home, he has no choice but to venture into the Woods and find a way to sever the bond imprisoning him to the massive, monstrous wolf now imprinted on his body as a living tattoo.

I honestly can’t decide how I felt about this one. I feel like it’d be a really fun read for maybe a grade 5 to 7 student? I was a bit more meh about it. It was fine, but it was very hard not to draw unfavourable parallels to Harry Potter. But for a kid who’s never read Harry Potter? Or even an adult that has but is looking for something different to scratch that itch, this might be a good book to try. I’ll probably try reading the second book when it comes out.

[davidmann95]

So... Morrison’s 10 part interview on All-Star Superman, along with all other older Newsarama articles, just seem to have ceased to exist. One does not simply live without having those interviews available to reread... Can I find them anywhere else?

Rejoice! I finally borrowed a computer I could put my flash drive into, and emailed myself my copy of the Morrison interview. Here it is below the cut, copied and pasted direct from the source way back when, available again at last:

Three years, 12 issues, Eisners and countless accolades later, All Star Superman is finally finished. The out-of-continuity look at Superman’s struggle with his inevitable death was widely embraced by fans and pros as one of the best stories to feature the Man of Steel, and was a showcase for the talents of the creative team of Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant.

Now, Newsarama is proud to present an exclusive look back with Morrison at the series that took Superman to, pun intended, new heights. We had a lot of questions about the series...and Morrison delivered with an in-depth look into the themes, characters and ideas throughout the 12 issues. In fact, there was so much that we’re running this as an unprecedented 10-part series over the next two weeks – sort of an unofficial All Star Superman companion. It’s everything about All Star Superman you ever wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

And of course there’s plenty of SPOILERS, so back away if you haven’t read the entire series.

Newsarama: Grant, tell us a little about the origin of the project.

Grant Morrison: Some of it has its roots in the DC One Million project from 1999. So much so, that some readers have come to consider this a prequel to DC One Million, which is fine if it shifts a few more copies! I’ve tried to give my own DC books an overarching continuity intended to make them all read as a more coherent body of work when I’m done.

Luthor’s “enlightenment” – when he peaks on super–senses and sees the world as it appears through Superman’s eyes – was an element I’d included in the Superman Now pitch I prepared along with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer and Mark Waid back in 1999. There were one or two of ideas of mine that I wanted to preserve from Superman Now and Luthor’s heart–stopping moment of understanding was a favorite part of the original ending for that story, so I decided to use it again here.

My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the “shamanic” meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.

I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to “reboot” Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short...

Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did...in the persona and voice of Superman!

We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.

My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.

I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman, whose name I didn’t save but who has entered into my own personal mythology (a picture has from that time has survived showing me and Mark Waid posing alongside this guy and a couple of young readers dressed as Superboy and Supergirl – it’s in the “Gallery” section at my website for anybody who can be bothered looking. This is the guy who lit the fuse that led to All Star Superman).

After the 1999 pitch was rejected, I didn’t expect to be doing any further work on Superman but sometime in 2002, while I was going into my last year on New X–Men, Dan DiDio called and asked if I wanted to come back to DC to work on a Superman book with Jim Lee.

Jim was flexing his artistic muscles again to great effect, and he wanted to do 12 issues on Superman to complement the work he was doing with Jeph Loeb on “Batman: Hush.” At the time, I wasn’t able to make my own commitments dovetail with Jim’s availability, but by then I’d become obsessed with the idea of doing a big Superman story and I’d already started working out the details.

Jim, of course, went on to do his 12 Superman issues as “For Tomorrow” with Brian Azzarello, so I found myself looking for an artist for what was rapidly turning into my own Man of Steel magnum opus, and I already knew the book had to be drawn by my friend and collaborator, Frank Quitely.

We were already talking about We3 and Superman seemed like a good meaty project to get our teeth into when that was done. I completely scaled up my expectations of what might be possible once Frank was on board and decided to make this thing as ambitious as possible.

Usually, I prefer to write poppy, throwaway “live performance” type superhero books, but this time, I felt compelled to make something for the ages – a big definitive statement about superheroes and life and all that, not only drawn by my favorite artist but starring the first and greatest superhero of them all.

The fact that it could be a non–continuity recreation made the idea even more attractive and more achievable. I also felt ready for it, in a way I don’t think I would have been in 1999; I finally felt “grown–up” enough to do Superman justice.

I plotted the whole story in 2002 and drew tiny colored sketches for all 12 covers. The entire book was very tightly constructed before we started – except that I’d left the ending open for the inevitable better and more focused ideas I knew would arise as the project grew into its own shape...and I left an empty space for issue 10. That one was intended from the start to be the single issue of the 12–issue run that would condense and amplify the themes of all the others. #10 was set aside to be the one–off story that would sum up anything anyone needed to know about Superman in 22 pages.

Not quite as concise an origin as Superman’s, but that’s how we got started.

NRAMA: When you were devising the series, what challenges did you have in building up this version of the Superman universe?

GM: I couldn’t say there were any particular challenges. It was fun. Nobody was telling me what I could or couldn’t do with the characters. I didn’t have to worry about upsetting continuity or annoying people who care about stuff like that.

I don’t have a lot of old comics, so my knowledge of Superman was based on memory, some tattered “70s books from the remains of my teenage collection, a bunch of DC “Best Of...” reprint editions and two brilliant little handbooks – “Superman in Action Comics” Volumes 1 and 2 – which reprint every single Action Comics cover from 1938 to 1988.

I read various accounts of Superman’s creation and development as a brand. I read every Superman story and watched every Superman movie I could lay my hands on, from the Golden Age to the present day. From the Socialist scrapper Superman of the Depression years, through the Super–Cop of the 40s, the mythic Hyper–Dad of the 50s and 60s, the questioning, liberal Superman of the early 70s, the bland “superhero” of the late 70s, the confident yuppie of the 80s, the over–compensating Chippendale Superman of the 90s etc. I read takes on Superman by Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Geoff Johns, Denny O’Neil, Jeph Loeb, Alan Moore, Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Joe Casey, Steve Seagle, Garth Ennis, Jim Steranko and many others.

I looked at the Fleischer cartoons, the Chris Reeve movies and the animated series, and read Alvin Schwartz’s (he wrote the first ever Bizarro story among many others) fascinating book – “An Unlikely Prophet” – where he talks about his notion of Superman as a tulpa, (a Tibetan word for a living thought form which has an independent existence beyond its creator) and claims he actually met the Man of Steel in the back of a taxi.

I immersed myself in Superman and I tried to find in all of these very diverse approaches the essential “Superman–ness” that powered the engine. I then extracted, purified and refined that essence and drained it into All Star’s tank, recreating characters as my own dream versions, without the baggage of strict continuity.

In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.

Batman is obviously much cooler, but that’s because he’s a very energetic and adolescent fantasy character: a handsome billionaire playboy in black leather with a butler at this beck and call, better cars and gadgetry than James Bond, a horde of fetish femme fatales baying around his heels and no boss. That guy’s Superman day and night.

Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard–working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That’s actually a much more adult fantasy than the one Batman’s peddling but it also makes Superman a little harder to sell. He’s much more of a working class superhero, which is why we ended the whole book with the image of a laboring Superman.

He’s Everyman operating on a sci–fi Paul Bunyan scale. His worries and emotional problems are the same as ours... except that when he falls out with his girlfriend, the world trembles.

Newsarama: Grant, what are some of your favorite moments from the 12 issues?

Grant Morrison: The first shot of Superman flying over the sun. The Cosmic Anvil. Samson and Atlas. The kiss on the moon. The first three pages of the Olsen story which, I think, add up to the best character intro I’ve ever written.

Everything Lex Luthor says in issue #5. Everything Clark does. The whole says/does Luthor/Superman dynamic as played out through Frank Quitely’s absolute mastery and understanding of how space, movement and expression combine to tell a story.

Superboy and his dog on the moon – that perfect teenage moment of infinite possibility, introspection and hope for the future. He’s every young man on the verge of adulthood, Krypto is every dog with his boy (it seemed a shame to us that Krypto’s most memorable moment prior to this was his death scene in “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow.” Quitely’s scampering, leaping, eager and alive little creature is how I’d prefer to imagine Krypto the Superdog and conjures finer and more subtle emotions).

Bizarro–Home, with all of Earth’s continental and ocean shapes but reversed. The page with the first appearance of Zibarro that Frank has designed so the eye is pulled down in a swirling motion into the drain at the heart of the image, to make us feel that we’re being flushed in a cloacal spiral down into a nihilistic, existential sink. Frank gave me that page as a gift, and it became weirdly emblematic of a strange, dark time in both our lives.

The story with Bar–El and Lilo has a genuine chill off ammonia and antiseptic off it, which makes it my least favorite issue of the series, although I know a lot of people who love it. It’s about dying relatives, obligations, the overlit overheated corridors between terminal wards, the thin metallic odors of chemicals, bad food and fear. Preparation for the Phantom Zone.

Superman hugging the poor, hopeless girl on the roof and telling us all we’re stronger than we think we are.

Joe Shuster drawing us all into the story forever and never–ending.

Nasthalthia Luthor. Frank and Jamie’s final tour of the Fortress, referencing every previous issue on the way, in two pages.

All of issue #10 (there’s a single typo in there where the time on the last page was screwed up – but when we fix that detail for the trade I’ll be able to regard this as the most perfectly composed superhero story I’ve ever written).

I don’t think I’ve ever had a smoother, more seamless collaborative process.

NRAMA: The story is very complete unto itself, but are there any new or classic characters you’d like to explore further? If so, which ones and why?

GM: I’d happily write more Atlas and Samson. I really like Krull, the Dino–Czar’s wayward son, and his Stalinist underground empire of “Subterranosauri.” I could write a Superman Squad comic forever. I’d love to write the “Son of Superman” sequel about Lois and Clark’s super test tube baby.

But...I think All Star is already complete, without sequels. You read that last issue and it works because you know you’re never going to see All Star Superman again. You’ll be able to pick up Superman books, but they won’t be about this guy and they won’t feel the same. He really is going away. Our Superman is actually “dying” in that sense, and that adds the whole series a deeper poignancy.

NRAMA: Aside from the Bizarro League, you never really introduce other DC superheroes into the story. Why did you make this choice?

GM: I wanted the story to be about the mythic Superman at the end of his time. It’s clear from the references that he has or more likely has had a few super–powered allies, but that they’re no longer around or relevant any more.

For the context of this story I wanted the super–friends to be peripheral, like they were in the old comics. The Flash? Green Lantern? They represent Superman’s “old army buddies,” or your dad’s school friends. Guys you’ve sort of heard of, who used to be more important in the old man’s life than they are now.

NRAMA: Some readers were confused as to how the “Twelve Labors” broke down, though others have pointed out that Superman’s actions are more reflective of the Stations of the Cross (I note there’s a “Station Café” in the background of issue #12). Could you break down the Twelve Labors, or, if the cross theory is true, how the storyline reflects the Stations?

GM: The 12 Labors of Superman were never intended as an isomorphic mapping onto the 12 Labors of Hercules, or for that matter, the specific Stations of the Cross, of which there are 14, I believe. I didn’t even want to do one Labor per issue, so it deliberately breaks down quite erratically through the series for reasons I’ll go into (later).

Yes, there are correspondences, but that’s mostly because we tried to create for our Superman the contemporary “superhero” version of an archetypal solar hero journey, which naturally echoes numerous myths, legends and religious parables.

At the same time, we didn’t want to do an update or a direct copy of any myth you’d seen before, so it won’t work if you try to find one specific mythological or religious “plan” to hang the series on; James Joyce’s honorable and heroic refutation of the rule aside, there’s nothing more dead and dull than an attempt to retell the Odyssey or the Norse sagas scene by scene, but in a modern and/or superhero setting.

For future historians and mythologizers, however, the 12 Labors of Superman may be enumerated as follows:

1. Superman saves the first manned mission to the sun.
2. Superman brews the Super–Elixir.
3. Superman answers the Unanswerable Question.
4. Superman chains the Chronovore. 
5. Superman saves Earth from Bizarro–Home.
6. Superman returns from the Underverse.
7. Superman creates Life.
8. Superman liberates Kandor/cures cancer.
9. Superman defeats Solaris.
10. Superman conquers Death.
11. Superman builds an artificial Heart for the Sun.
12.Superman leaves the recipe/formula to make Superman 2.

And one final feat, which typically no–one really notices, is that Lex Luthor delivers his own version of the unified field haiku – explaining the underlying principles of the universe in fourteen syllables – which the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. G–Type philosopher from issue 4 had dedicated his entire life to composing!

You may notice also that the Labors take place over a year – with the solar hero’s descent into the darkness and cold of the Underverse occurring at midwinter/Christmas time (that’s also the only point in the story where we ever see Metropolis at night).

It can also be seen as the sun’s journey over the course of a day – we open in blazing sunshine but halfway through the book, at the end of issue #5, in fact, the solar hero dips below the horizon and begins the night–journey through the hours of darkness and death, before his triumphant resurrection at dawn. That’s why issue 5 ends with the boat to the Underworld and 6 begins with the moon. Clark Kent is crossing the threshold into the subconscious world of memory, shadows, death and deep emotions.

Although they can often have bizarre resonances, specific elements, like the Station Café, are usually put there by Frank Quitely, and are not necessarily secret Dan Brown–style keys to unlocking the mysteries. I think there might be a Station Café opposite the studio where Frank Quitely works and the “SAPIEN” sign on another storefront is a reference to Frank’s studio mate, Dave Sapien. At least he’s not filling the background with dirty words like he used to, given any opportunity

NRAMA: For that matter, do the Twelve Labors matter at all? They seem so purposely ill–defined. They seem more like misdirection or a MacGuffin than anything that needs to be clearly delineated.

GM: They matter, of course, but the 12 Labors idea is there to show that, as with all myth, the systematic ordering of current events into stories, tales, or legends occurs after the fact.

I’m trying to suggest that only in the future will these particular 12 feats, out of all the others ever, be mythologized as 12 Labors. I suppose I was trying to say something about how people impose meaning upon events in retrospect, and that’s how myth is born. It’s hindsight that provides narrative, structure, meaning and significance to the simple unfolding of events. It’s the backward glance that adds all the capital letters to the list above.

Even Superman isn”t sure how many Labors he’s performed when we see him mulling it over in issue 10. 
When you watched it happening, it seemed to be Superman just doing his thing. In the future it’s become THE 12 LABORS OF SUPERMAN!

NRAMA: And on a completely ridiculous note: All–Star Superman is perhaps the most difficult–to–abbreviate comic title since Preacher: Tall in the Saddle. Did you realize this going in?

GM: Going into what? Going into ASS itself? In the sense of how did I feel as I slowly entered ASS for the first time?

It never crossed my mind...

Newsarama: I’d like to know a little more about Leo Quintum and his role in the story. He seems like a bit of an outgrowth of the likes of Project Cadmus and Emil Hamilton, but in a more fantastical, Willy Wonka sense.

Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.

I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.

Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.

Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.

What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.

And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.

In one way, Quintum could be seen to represent the creative team, simultaneously re–empowering a pure myth with the honest fire of Art...while at the same time shooting a jolt of juice through a concept that sells more “S” logo underpants and towels than it does comic books. All tastes catered!

I have to say that the Willy Wonka thing never crossed my mind until I saw people online make the comparison, which seems quite obvious now. Quintum dresses how I would dress if I was the world’s coolest super–scientist. What’s up with that?

NRAMA: Was Zibarro inspired by the Bizarro World story where the Bizarro–Neanderthal becomes this unappreciated Casanova–type?

GM: Don’t know that one, but it sounds like a scenario I could definitely endorse!

Zibarro started out as a daft name sicked–up by my subconscious mind, which flowered within moments into the must–write idea of an Imperfect Bizarro. What would an imperfect version of an already imperfect being be like?

Zibarro.

NRAMA: I’d like to know more about Zibarro – what’s the significance of his chronicling Bizarro World through poetry?

GM: It’s up to you. I see Zibarro partly as the sensitive teenager inside us all. He’s moody, horribly self–aware and uncomfortable, yet filled with thoughts of omnipotence and agency. He’s the absolute center of his tiny, disorganized universe. He’s playing the role of sensitive, empathic poet but at the same time, he’s completely self–absorbed.

When he says to Superman “Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so different. So unique. So unlike everyone else?” he doesn’t even wait for Superman’s reply. He doesn’t care about anyone’s feelings but his own, ultimately.

NRAMA: The character is very close to Superman, so what does it say that a nonpowered version on a savage world would focus his energy through that medium? Also, does Zibarro’s existence show how Superman is able to elevate even the backwards Bizarros through his very nature?

GM: All of the above. And maybe he writes his totally subjective poetry as a reflection of Clark Kent’s objective reporter role. The suppressed, lyrical, wounded side of Superman perhaps? The Super–Morrissey? Bizarro With The Thorn In His Side?

But he’s also Bizarro–Home’s “mistake” (or so it seems to him, even though he’s as natural an expression of the place as any of the other Bizarro creatures who grow like mold across the surface of their living planet). He feels excluded, a despised outsider, and yet that position is what defines his cherished self–image. He expresses himself through poetry because to him the regular Bizarro language is barbaric, barely articulate and guttural. And they all think he’s talking crap anyway.

It seemed to make sense that an interesting opposite of Bizarro speech might be flowery “woe is me” school Poetry Society odes to the sunset in a misunderstood heart. He’s still a Bizarro though, which makes him ineffectual. His tragedy is that he knows he’s fated to be useless and pointless but craves so much more.

NRAMA: Zibarro also represents a recurrent theme in the story, of Superman constantly facing alternate versions of himself – Bar–El, Samson and Atlas, the Superman Squad, even Luthor by the end. Notably, Hercules is absent, though Superman’s doing his Twelve Labors. With the mythological adventurers in particular, was this designed to equate Superman with their legend, to show how his character is greater than theirs, or both?

GM: In a way, I suppose. He did arm–wrestle them both, proving once and for all Superman’s stronger than anybody! And remember, these characters, along with Hercules, used to appear regularly in Superman books as his rivals. I thought they made better rivals than, say, Majestic or Ultraman because people who don’t read comics have heard of Hercules, Samson and Atlas and understand what they represent.

For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground.

Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon (the original panel description was of something more like the famous shot of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf from “From Here To Eternity.” Frank’s final choice of composition is much more classically pulp–romantic and iconic than my down and dirty rumble in the moondirt would have been, I’m glad to say).

Newsarama: Tell us about some of the thinking behind the new antagonists you created for this series (at least the ones you want to talk about...): First up: Krull and the Subterranosaurs...

Grant Morrison: We wanted to create some throwaway new characters which would be designed to look as if they were convincing long–term elements of the Superman legend.

We were trying to create a few foes who had a classic feel and a solid backstory that could be explored again or in depth. Even if we never went back to these characters, we wanted them to seem rich enough to carry their own stories.

With Krull, we figured a superhuman character like Superman can always use a powerful “sub–human” opponent: a beast, a monster, a savage with the power to destroy civilization. For years I’ve had the idea that the familiar “gray aliens” might “actually” be evolved biped dinosaur descendants, the offspring of smart–thinking lizards which made their way to the warm regions at the Earth’s core.

I imagined these brutes developing their own technology, their own civilization, and then finally coming to the surface to declare bloody war on the mammalian usurpers! It seemed like we could develop this idea into the Krull backstory and suggest a whole epic conflict in a few panels.

Dom Regan, the Glasgow artist and DC colorist, saw the original green skin Jamie Grant had done for Krull, and suggested we make him red instead. Jamie reset his color filters and that was the moment Krull suddenly looked like a real Superman foe.

The red skin marked him out as unique, different and dangerous, even among his own species. It had echoes of Jack Kirby’s Devil Dinosaur that played right into the heart of the concept. A good design became a great design and the whole story of who Krull was – his twisted relationship with his father the Dino–Czar, his monstrous ambitions – came together in that first picture.

The society was fleshed out in the script even though we see only one panel of it – a gloomy, heavy, “Soviet” underworld of walled iron cities, cold blood and deadly intrigue. War–Barges that could sail on the oceans of heated steam at the center of the Earth. A Stalinist authoritarian lizard world where missing person cases were being taken to work and die as slaves in hellish underworld conditions.

NRAMA: Mechano–Man?

GM: An attempt to pre–imagine a classic, archetypal Superman foe, which started with another simple premise – how about a giant robot villain? But not just any giant robot – this is a rampaging machine with a raging little man inside.

Giving him a bitter, angry, scrawny loser as a pilot turned Mechano–Man into a much more extreme and pathological expression of the Man of Steel/Mild–Mannered Reporter dynamic, and added a few interesting layers onto an 8–panel appearance.

NRAMA: The Chronovore – a very disturbing creation, that one.

GM: The Chronovore was mentioned in passing in DC 1,000,000 and would have been the monster in my aborted Hypercrisis series idea. It took a long time to get the right design for the beast because it’s meant to be a 5–D being that we only ever see in 4–D sections. It had to work as a convincing representation of something much bigger that we’re seeing only where it interpenetrates our 4–D space-time continuum.

Imagine you’re walking along with a song in your teenage heart, then suddenly the Chronovore appears, takes bite out of your life, and you arrive at your girlfriend’s house aged 76, clutching a cell phone and a wilted bouquet.

NRAMA: One more obscure run that I was happy to see referenced in this was the use of Nasty from the old Mike Sekowsky Supergirl stories. What made you want to use this character?

GM: I remembered her from the old comics, and felt her fashion–y look could be updated very easily into the kind of fetish club thing I’ve always been partial to.

She seemed a cool and sexy addition to the Luthor plot. The set–up, where Lex has a fairly normal sister who hates how her wayward brother is such a bad influence on her brilliant daughter, is explosive with character potential.

They need to bring Nasty back to mainstream continuity. Geoff! They all want it and you know you never let them down!

NRAMA: Speaking of Mike Sekowsky, I’m curious about his influence on your work. I have an odd fascination with all the ideas and stories he was tossing around in the late 1960s and early 1970s – Jason’s Quest, Manhunter 2070, the I–Ching tales – and many of the characters he worked on, from the B”Wana Beast to the Inferior Five to Yankee Doodle (in Doom Patrol), have shown up in your work. The Bizarro Zoo in issue #10 is even slightly reminiscent of the Beast’s merged animals.

GM: Those were all comics that were around when I was a normal kid, prior to the obsessive collecting fan phase of my isolated teenage years. They clearly inspired me in some way, as you say, but certainly not consciously. I’d never have considered myself a particular fan of Mike Sekowsky’s work, but as you say, I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into the DC Universe work I’ve done. Hmm. Interesting.

While I’m at it, I should also say something about Samson and Atlas, halfway between old characters and new.

Samson, Atlas and Hercules were classical mainstays of old Superman covers, tangling with Superman in all those Silver Age stories that happened before he learned from his friends at Marvel that it was possible to fight other superheroes for fun and profit, so I decided to completely “re–vamp” the characters in the manner of superhero franchises. Marvel has the definitive Hercules for me, so I left him out of the mix and concentrated on Atlas and Samson.

Atlas was re–imagined as a mighty but restless and reckless young prince of the New Mythos – a society of mega–beings playing out their archetypal dramas between New Elysium and Hadia, with ordinary people caught in the middle – and Superman.

Essentially good–hearted, Atlas would have been the newbie in a “team” with Skyfather Xaoz!, Heroina, Marzak and the others. He has a bullish, adolescent approach to life. He drinks and plunges himself into ill–advised adventures to ease his naturally gloomy “weighed down by the world” temperament.

You can see it all now. The backstory suggested an unseen, Empyrean New Gods–type series from a parallel universe. What if, when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel in 1971, he’d followed up his sci–fi Viking Gods saga at Marvel, with a dimension–spanning epic rooted in Greek mythology? New Gods meets Eternals drawn by Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson? That was Atlas.

Samson, I decided would be a callback to the British newspaper strip “Garth.” Although you may already be imagining a daily strip about the exploits of time–tossed The Boys writer, Garth Ennis, it was actually about a blonde Adonis type who bounced around the ages having mildly horny, racy adventures.

(Go look him up then return the wiser before reading on, so I don’t have to explain anymore about this bastard – he’s often described as “the British Superman,” but oh...my arse! I hated meathead, personality–singularity Garth...but we all grew up with his meandering, inexplicable yet incredibly–drawn adventures and some of it was quite good when you were a little lad because he was always shagging ON PANEL with the likes of a bare–breasted cave girl or gauze–draped Helen of Troy.

(Unlike Superman, you see, the top British strongman liked to get naked. Lots naked. Naked in every time period he could get naked in, which was all of them thanks to the miracle of his bullshit powers.

(Imagine Doctor Who buff, dumb and naked all the time – Russell, I’ve had an idea!!!! – and that’s Garth in a nutshell.

(Sorry, I know I’m going on and the average attention span of anyone reading stuff on the Internet amounts to no more than a few paragraphs, but basically, Garth was always getting naked. In public, in family newspapers. Bollock naked. Let’s face it, patriotic Americans, have you ever seen Superman’s arse?

Newsarama Note: Well, there was Baby Kal-El in the 1978 film...

(Brits, hands up who still remember the man, and have you ever not seen Garth’s arse? Do you not, in fact, have a very clear image of it in your head, as drawn by Martin Asbury perhaps? In mine, Garth’s pulling aside a flimsy curtain to gaze at the pyramids with Cleopatra buck naked in foreground ogling his rock hard glutes...).

Anyway, Samson, I decided, was the Hebrew version of Garth and he would have his own mad comic that was like an American version of Garth. I saw the Bible hero plucked from the desert sands by time–travelling buffoons in search of a savior. Introduced to all the worst aspects of future culture and, using his stolen, erratic Chrono–Mobile, Samson became a time–(and space) traveling Soldier of Fortune, writing wrongs, humping princesses, accumulating and losing treasure etc. Like a science fiction Conan. Meets Garth.

Fortunately, you’ll never see any of these men ever again.

Newsarama: How have your perceptions of Superman and his supporting characters evolved since the Superman 2000 pitch you did with Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer? The Superman notions seem almost identical, but Luthor is very different here than in that pitch, and so is Clark Kent. Did you use some aspects of your original pitch, or have you just changed his mind on how to portray these characters since?

Grant Morrison: A little of both. I wanted to approach All Star Superman as something new, but there were a couple of specific aspects from the Superman 2000 pitch (as I mentioned earlier, it was actually called Superman Now, at least in my notebooks, which is where the bulk of the material came from) that I felt were definitely worth keeping and exploring.

I can’t remember much about Luthor from Superman Now, except for the ending. By the time I got to All Star Superman, I’d developed a few new insights into Luthor’s character that seemed to flesh him out more. Luthor’s really human and charismatic and hateful all the same time. He’s the brilliant, deluded egotist in all of us. The key for me was the idea that he draws his eyebrows on. The weird vanity of that told me everything I needed to know about Luthor.

I thought the real key to him was the fact that, brilliant as he is, Luthor is nowhere near as brilliant as he wants to be or thinks he is. For Luthor, no praise, no success, no achievement is ever enough, because there’s a big hungry hole in his soul. His need for acknowledgement and validation is superhuman in scale. Superman needs no thanks; he does what he does because he’s made that way. Luthor constantly rails against his own sense of failure and inadequacy...and Superman’s to blame, of course.

I’ve recently been re–thinking Luthor again for a different project, and there’s always a new aspect of the character to unearth and develop.

NRAMA: This story makes Superman and Lois’ relationship seem much more romantic and epic than usual, but this one also makes Superman more of the pursuer. Lois seems like more of an equal, but also more wary of his affections, particularly in the black–and–white sequence in issue #2.

She becomes this great beacon of support for him over the course of the series, but there is a sense that she’s a bit jaded from years of trickery and uncomfortable with letting him in now that he’s being honest. How, overall, do you see the relationship between Superman and Lois?

GM: The black-and-white panels shows Lois paranoid and under the influence of an alien chemical, but yes, she’s articulating many of her very real concerns in that scene.

I wanted her to finally respond to all those years of being tricked and duped and led to believe Superman and Clark Kent were two different people. I wanted her to get her revenge by finally refusing to accept the truth.

It also exposed that brilliant central paradox in the Superman/Lois relationship. The perfect man who never tells a lie has to lie to the woman he loves to keep her safe. And he lives with that every day. It’s that little human kink that really drives their relationship.

NRAMA: Jimmy Olsen is extremely cool in this series – it’s the old “Mr. Action” idea taken to a new level. It’s often easy to write Jimmy as a victim or sycophant, but in this series, he comes off as someone worthy of being “Superman’s Pal” – he implicitly trusts Superman, and will take any risk to get his story. Do you see this version of Jimmy as sort of a natural evolution of the version often seen in the comics?

GM: It was a total rethink based on the aspects of Olsen I liked, and playing down the whole wet–behind–the–ears “cub reporter” thing. I borrowed a little from the “Mr. Action” idea of a more daredevil, pro–active Jimmy, added a little bit of Nathan Barley, some Abercrombie & Fitch style, a bit of Tintin, and a cool Quitely haircut.

Jimmy was renowned for his “disguises” and bizarre transformations (my favorite is the transvestite Olsen epic “Miss Jimmy Olsen” from Jimmy Olsen #95, which gets a nod on the first page of our Jimmy story we did), so I wanted to take that aspect of his appeal and make it part of his job.

I don’t like victim Jimmy or dumb Jimmy, because those takes on the character don’t make any sense in their context. It seemed more interesting see what a young man would be like who could convincingly be Superman’s “pal.” Someone whose company a Superman might actually enjoy. That meant making Jimmy a much bigger character: swaggering but ingenuous. Innocent yet worldly. Enthusiastic but not stupid.

My favorite Jimmy moment is in issue #7 when he comes up with the way to defeat the Bizarro invasion by using the seas of the Bizarro planet itself as giant mirrors to reflect toxic – to Bizarros – sunlight onto the night side of the Earth. He knows Superman can actually take crazy lateral thinking like this and put it into practice.

NRAMA: Perry White has a few small–but–key scenes, particularly his address to his staff in issue #1 and standing up to Luthor in issue #12. I’d like to hear more about your thoughts on this character.

GM: As with the others, my feelings are there on the page. Perry is Clark’s boss and need only be that and not much more to play his role perfectly well within the stories. He’s a good reminder that Superman has a job and a boss, unlike that good–for–nothing work-shy bastard Batman. Perry’s another of the series’ older male role models of integrity and steadfastness, like Pa Kent.

NRAMA: There’s a sense in the Daily Planet scenes and with Lois’s spotlight issues that everyone knows Clark is Superman, but they play along to humor him. The Clark disguise comes off as very obvious in this story. Do you feel that the Planet staff knows the truth, or are just in a very deep case of denial, like Lex?

GM: If I had to say for sure, I think Jimmy Olsen worked it out a long time ago, and simply presumes that if Superman has a good reason for what he’s doing, that’s good enough for Jimmy.

Lois has guessed, but refuses to acknowledge it because it exposes her darkest flaw – she could never love Clark Kent the way she loves Superman.

NRAMA: Also, the Planet staff seems awfully nonchalant at Luthor’s threats. Are they simply used to being attacked by now?

GM: Yes. They’re a tough group. They also know that Superman makes a point of looking out for them, so they naturally try to keep Luthor talking. They know he loves to talk about himself and about Superman. In that scene, he’s almost forgotten he even has powers, he’s so busy arguing and making points. He keeps doing ordinary things instead of extraordinary things.

NRAMA: The running gag of Clark subtly using his powers to protect unknowing people is well done, but I have to admit I was confused by the sequence near the end of issue #1. Was that an el–train, and if so, why was it so close to the ground?

GM: It’s a MagLev hover–train. Look again, and you’ll see it’s not supported by anything. Hover–trains help ease congestion in busy city streets! Metropolis is the City of Tomorrow, after all.

NRAMA: And there’s the death of Pa Kent. Why do you feel it’s particularly important to have Pa and not both of the Kents pass away?

GM: I imagined they had both passed away fairly early in Superman’s career, but Ma went a few years after Pa. Also, because the book was about men or man, it seemed important to stress the father/son relationships. That circle of life, the king is dead, long live the king thing that Superman is ultimately too big and too timeless to succumb to.

NRAMA: There is a real touch of Elliott S! Maggin’s novels in your depiction of Luthor – someone who is just so obsessive–compulsive about showing up Superman that he accomplishes nothing in his own life. He comes across as a showman, from his rehearsed speech in issue #1 to his garish costume in the last two issues, and it becomes painfully apparent that he wants to usurp Superman because he just can’t be happy with himself. What defeats him is actually a beautiful gift, getting to see the world as Superman does, and finally understanding his enemy.

That’s all a lead–in to: What previous stories that defined Luthor for you, and how did you define his character? What appeals to you about writing him?

GM: The Marks Waid and Millar were big fans of the Maggin books, and may have persuaded me to read at least the first one but I’m ashamed to say can’t remember anything about it, other than the vague recollection of a very humane, humanist take on Superman that seemed in general accord with the pacifist, hedonistic, between–the–wars spirit of the ‘90s when I read it. It was the ‘90s; I had other things on my mind and in my mind.

I like Maggin’s “Must There Be A Superman?” from Superman #247, which ultimately poses questions traditional superhero comic books are not equipped to answer and is one of the first paving stones in the Yellow Brick Road that leads to Watchmen and beyond, to The Authority, The Ultimates etc. Everyone still awake, still reading this, should make themselves familiar with “Must There Be A Superman?” – it’s a milestone in the development of the superhero concept.

However, the story that most defines Luthor for me turns out to be, as usual, a Len Wein piece with Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson– Superman #248. This blew me away when I was a kid. Lex Luthor cares about humanity? He’s sorry we all got blown up? The villain loves us too? It’s only Superman he really hates? Genius. Big, cool adult stuff.

The divine Len makes Lex almost too human, but it was amazing to see this kind of depth in a character I’d taken for granted as a music hall villain.

I also love the brutish Satanic, Crowley–esque, Golden Age Luthor in the brilliant “Powerstone” Action Comics #47 (the opening of All Star #11 is a shameless lift from “Powerstone”, as I soon realised when I went back to look. Blame my...er...photographic memory...cough).

And I like the Silver Age Luthor who only hates Superman because he thinks it’s Superboy’s fault he went bald. That was the most genuinely human motivation for Luthor’s career of villainy of all; it was Superman’s fault he went bald! I can get behind that.

In the Silver Age, baldness, like obesity, old age and poverty, was seen quite rightly as a crippling disease and a challenge which Superman and his supporting cast would be compelled to overcome at every opportunity! Suburban “50s America versus Communist degeneracy? You tell me.

I like elements of the Marv Wolfman/John Byrne ultra–cruel and rapacious businessman, although he somewhat lacks the human dimension (ultimately there’s something brilliant about Luthor being a failed inventor, a product of Smallville/Dullsville – the genius who went unnoticed in his lifetime, and resorted to death robots in chilly basements and cellars. Luthor as geek versus world). I thought Alan Moore’s ruthlessly self–assured “consultant” Luthor in Swamp Thing was an inspired take on the character as was Mark Waid’s rage–driven prodigy from Birthright.

I tried to fold them all into one portrayal. I see him as a very human character – Superman is us at our best, Luthor is us when we’re being mean, vindictive, petty, deluded and angry. Among other things. It’s like a bipolar manic/depressive personality – with optimistic, loving Superman smiling at one end of the scale and paranoid, petty Luthor cringing on the other.

I think any writer of Superman has to love these two enemies equally. We have to recognize them both as potentials within ourselves. I think it’s important to find yourself agreeing with Luthor a bit about Superman’s “smug superiority” – we all of us, except for Superman, know what it’s like to have mean–spirited thoughts like that about someone else’s happiness. It’s essential to find yourself rooting for Lex, at least a little bit, when he goes up against a man–god armed only with his bloody–minded arrogance and cleverness.

Even if you just wish you could just give him a hug and help him channel his energies in the right direction, Luthor speaks for something in all of us, I like to think.

However he’s played, Luthor is the male power fantasy gone wrong and turned sour. You’ve got everything you want but it’s not enough because someone has more, someone is better, someone is cleverer or more handsome.

 Newsarama: Grant, a recurring theme throughout the book is the effect of small kindness – how even the likes of Steve Lombard are capable of decency. And Superman gets the key to saving himself by doing something that any human being could do, offering sympathy to a person about to end it all.

Grant Morrison: Completely...the person you help today could be the person who saves your life tomorrow.

NRAMA: The character actions that make the biggest difference, from Zibarro’s sacrifice to Pa’s influence on Superman, are really things that any normal, non-powered person could do if they embrace the best part of their humanity. The last page of issue #12 teases the idea that Superman’s powers could be given to all mankind, but it seems as though the greatest gift he has given them is his humanity. How do you view Superman’s fate in the context of where humanity could go as a species?

GM: I see Superman in this series as an Enlightenment figure, a Renaissance idea of the ideal man, perfect in mind, body and intention.

A key text in all of this is Pico’s ‘Oration On The Dignity of Man’ (15c), generally regarded as the ‘manifesto’ of Renaissance thought, in which Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola laid out the fundamentals of what we tend to refer to as ’Humanist’ thinking.

(The ‘Oratorio’ also turns up in my British superhero series Zenith from 1987, which may indicate how long I’ve been working towards a Pico/Superman team-up!)

At its most basic, the ‘Oratorio’ is telling us that human beings have the unique ability, even the responsibility, to live up to their ‘ideals’. It would be unusual for a dog to aspire to be a horse, a bird to bark like a dog, or a horse to want to wear a diving suit and explore the Barrier Reef, but people have a particular gift for and inclination towards imitation, mimicry and self-transformation. We fly by watching birds and then making metal carriers that can outdo birds, we travel underwater by imitating fish, we constantly look to role models and behavioral templates for guidance, even when those role models are fictional TV or, comic, novel or movie heroes, just like the soft, quick, shapeshifty little things we are. We can alter the clothes we wear, the temperature around us, and change even our own bodies, in order to colonize or occupy previously hostile environments. We are, in short, a distinctively malleable and adaptable bunch.

So, Pico is saying, if we live by imitation, does it not make sense that we might choose to imitate the angels, the gods, the very highest form of being that we can imagine? Instead of indulging the most brutish, vicious, greedy and ignorant aspects of the human experience, we can, with a little applied effort, elevate the better part of our natures and work to express those elements through our behavior. To do so would probably make us all feel a whole lot better too. Doing good deeds and making other people happy makes you feel totally brilliant, let’s face it.

So we can choose to the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. It’s entirely up to us, particularly in the privileged West, how we choose to imagine ourselves and conduct our lives.

We live in the stories we tell ourselves. It’s really simple. We can continue to tell ourselves and our children that the species we belong to is a crawling, diseased, viral cancer smear, only fit for extinction, and let’s see where that leads us.

We can continue to project our self-loathing and narcissistic terror of personal mortality onto our culture, our civilization, our planet, until we wreck the promise of the world for future generations in a fit of sheer self-induced panic...

...or we can own up to the scientific fact that we are all physically connected as parts of a single giant organism, imagine better ways to live and grow...and then put them into practice. We can stop pissing about, start building starships, and get on with the business of being adults.

The ’Oratorio’ is nothing less than the Shazam!, the Kimota! for Western Culture and we would do well to remember it in our currently trying times.

The key theme of the ‘Dark Age’ of comics was loss and recovery of wonder - McGregor’s Killraven trawling through the apocalyptic wreckage of culture in his search for poetry, meaning and fellowship, Captain Mantra, amnesiac in Robert Mayer’s Superfolks, Alan Moore’s Mike Maxwell trudging through the black and white streets of Thatcher’s Britain, with the magic word of transformation burning on the tip of his tongue.

My own work has been an ongoing attempt to repeat the magic word over and over until we all become the kind of superheroes we’d all like to be. Ha hah ha.

 Newsarama: The structure of the 12 issues involves both Superman’s 12 labors and his impending death. Do you feel the threat of his demise brings out the best in Superman’s already–high character, or did you intend it more as a window for the audience to understand how he sees the world?

Grant Morrison: In trying to do the “big,” ultimate Superman story, we wanted to hit on all the major beats that define the character – the “death of Superman” story has been told again and again and had to be incorporated into any definitive take. Superman’s death and rebirth fit the sun god myth we were establishing, and, as you say, it added a very terminal ticking clock to the story.

NRAMA: When we talked earlier this year, we discussed the neurotic quality of the Silver Age stories. Looking at the series as a whole, you consistently invert this formula. Superman is faced with all these crises that could be seen as personifying his neuroses, but for the most part he handles them with a level head and comes across as being very at peace with himself. You talked about your discussion with an in–character Superman fan at a convention years ago, but I am curious as to how you determined Superman’s mindset.

GM: I felt we had to live up to the big ideas behind Superman. I don’t take my daft job lightly. It’s all I’ve got.

As the project got going, I wasn’t thinking about Silver Ages or Dark Ages or anything about the comics I’d read, so much as the big shared idea of “Superman” and that “S” logo I see on T–shirts everywhere I go, on girls and boys. That communal Superman. I wanted us to get the precise energy of Platonic Superman down on the page.

The “S” hieroglyph, the super–sigil, stands for the very best kind of man we can imagine, so the subject dictated the methodical, perfectionist approach. As I’ve mentioned before, I keep this aspect of my job fresh for myself by changing my writing style to suit the project, the character or the artist.

With something like Batman R.I.P., I’m aiming for a frenzied Goth Pulp-Noir; punk-psych, expressionist shadows and jagged nightmare scene shifts, inspired by Batman’s roots and by the snapping, fluttering of his uncanny cape. Final Crisis was written, with the Norse Ragnarok and Biblical Revelations in mind, as a story about events more than characters. A doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in.

The subject matter drives the execution. And then, of course, the artists add their own vision and nuance. With All Star Superman, “Frank” and I were able to spend a lot of time together talking it through, and we agreed it had to be about grids, structure, storybook panel layouts, an elegance of form, a clarity of delivery. “Classical” in every sense of the word. The medium, the message, the story, the character, all working together as one simple equation.

Frank Quitely, a Glasgow Art School boy, completely understood without much explanation, the deep structural underpinnings of the series and how to embody them in his layouts. There’s a scene in issue # 8, set on the Bizarro world, where we see Le Roj handing Superman his rocket plans. Look at the arrangement of the figures of Zibarro, Le Roj, Superman and Bizaro–Superman and you’ll see one attempt to make us of Renaissance compositions.

The sense of sunlit Zen calm we tried to get into All Star is how I imagine it might feel to think the way Superman thinks all the time - a thought process that is direct, clean, precise, mathematical, ordered. A mind capable of fantastical imagination but grounded in the everyday of his farm upbringing with nice decent folks. Rich with humour and tears and deep human significance, yet tuned to a higher key. We tried to hum along for a little while, that’s all.

In honor of the character’s primal position in the development of the superhero narrative, I hoped we could create an “ultimate” hero story, starring the ultimate superhero.

Basically, I suppose I felt Superman deserved the utmost application of our craft and intelligence in order to truly do him justice.

Otherwise, I couldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t watched my big, brilliant dad decline into incoherence and death. I couldn’t have written it if I’d never had my heart broken, or mended. I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t known what it felt like to be idolized, misunderstood, hated for no clear reason, loved for all my faults, forgotten, remembered...

Writing All Star Superman was, in retrospect, also a way of keeping my mind in the clean sunshine while plumbing the murkiest depths of the imagination with that old pair of c****s Darkseid and Doctor Hurt. Good riddance.

 Newsarama: This is touched on in other questions, but how much of the Silver/Bronze Age backstory matters here? What do you see as Superman's life prior to All-Star Superman? (What was going on with this Superman while the Byrne revamp took hold?)

Grant Morrison: When I introduced the series in an interview online, I suggested that All Star Superman could be read as the adventures of the ‘original’ Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman, returning after 20 plus years of adventures we never got to see because we were watching John Byrne‘s New Superman on the other channel. If ‘Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?’ and the Byrne reboot had never happened, where would that guy be now?

This was more to provide a sense, probably limited and ill-considered, of what the tone of the book might be like. I never intended All Star Superman as a direct continuation of the Weisinger or Julius Schwartz-era Superman stories. The idea was always to create another new version of Superman using all my favorite elements of past stories, not something ‘Age’ specific.

I didn’t collect Superman comics until the ‘70s and I’m not interested enough in pastiche or nostalgia to spend 6 years of my life playing post-modern games with Superman. All Star isn’t written, drawn or colored to look or read like a Silver Age comic book.

All Star Superman is not intended as arch commentary on continuity or how trends in storytelling have changed over the decades. It’s not retro or meta or anything other than its own simple self; a piece of drawing and writing that is intended by its makers to capture the spirit of its subject to the best of their capabilities, wisdom and talent.

Which is to say, we wanted our Superman story be about life, not about comics or superheroes, current events or politics. It’s about how it feels, specifically to be a man...in our dreams! Hopefully that means our 12 issues are also capable of wide interpretation.

So as much as we may have used a few recognizable Silver Age elements like Van-Zee and Sylv(i)a and the Bottle City of Kandor, the ensemble Daily Planet cast embodies all the generations of Superman. Perry White is from 1940, Steve Lombard is from the Schwartz-era ‘70s, Ron Troupe - the only black man in Metropolis - appeared in 1991. Cat Grant is from 1987 and so on.

P.R.O.J.E.C.T. refers back to Jack Kirby’s DNA Project from his ‘70s Jimmy Olsen stories, as well as to The Cadmus Project from ’90s Superboy and Superman stories. Doomsday is ‘90s. Kal Kent, Solaris and the Infant Universe of Qwewq all come from my own work on Superman in the same decade. Pa Kent’s heart attack is from ‘Superman the Movie‘. We didn’t use Brainiac because he’d been the big bad in Earth 2 but if we had, we’d have used Brainiac’s Kryptonian origin from the animated series and so on.

I also used quite a few elements of John Byrne’s approach. Byrne made a lot of good decisions when he rebooted the whole franchise in 1986 and I wanted to incorporate as much as I could of those too.

Our Superman in All Star was never Superboy, for instance. All Star Superman landed on Earth as a normal, if slightly stronger and fitter infant, and only began to manifest powers in adolescence when he’d finally soaked up enough yellow solar radiation to trigger his metamorphosis.

The Byrne logic seemed to me a better way to explain how his powers had developed across the decades, from the skyscraper leaps of the early days to the speed-of-light space flight of the high Silver Age. And more importantly, it made the Superman myth more poignant - the story of a farm boy who turned into an alien as he reached adolescence. I felt that was something that really enriched Superman. He grew away from his home, his family, his adopted species as he became Superman. His teenage years are a record of his transformation from normal boy to super-being.

As you say, there are more than just Silver Age influences in the book. Basically we tried to create a perfect synthesis of every Superman era. So much so, that it should just be taken as representative of an ‘age’ all its own.

In the end, however, I do think that the Silver Age type stories, with their focus on human problems and foibles, have a much wider appeal than a lot of the work which followed. They’re more like fables or folk tales than the later ‘comic book superhero’ stories of Superman when he became just another colorful costume in the crowd...and perhaps that’s why All Star seemed to resemble those books more than it does a typical modern Marvel or DC comic. It was our intention to present a more universal, mainstream Superman.

NRAMA: In your depiction of Krypton and the Kryptonians, you show the complexity of Superman’s relationship between humanity and Earth even further. Krypton has that scientific paradise quality to it, but the Kryptonians are also portrayed as slightly aloof and detached, even Jor-El. But from Bar-El to the people of Kandor, they’re touched by Superman’s goodness. What do you see as the fundamental difference between Kryptonians and Earthlings, and how has Superman’s character been shaped by each?

GM: My version of Krypton was, again, synthesized from a number of different approaches over the decades. 
In mythic terms, if Superman is the story of a young king, found and raised by common people, then Krypton is the far distant kingdom he lost. It’s the secret bloodline, the aristocratic heritage that makes him special, and a hero. At the same time, Krypton is something that must be left behind for Superman to become who he is - i.e. one of us. Krypton gives him his scientific clarity of mind, Earth makes his heart blaze.

I liked the very early Jerry Siegel descriptions where Krypton is a planet of advanced supermen and women (I already played with that a little in Marvel Boy where Noh-Varr was written to be the Marvel Superboy basically). To that, I added the rich, science fiction detailing of the Silver Age Krypton stories and the slightly detached coolness that characterized John Byrne’s Krypton, which I re-interpreted through the lens of Dzogchen Buddhist thought, probably the most pragmatic, chilly and rational philosophic system on the planet and the closest, I felt, to how Kryptonians might see things.

We also took some time to redesign the crazy, multicolored Kryptonian flag (you can see our version in Kandor in issue #10). The flag, as originally imagined, seemed like the last thing Kryptonians would endorse, so we took the multicolored-rays-around-a-circle design and recreated it - the central circle is now red, representing Krypton’s star, Rao, while the rays, rather than arbitrary colors, become representations of the spectrum of visible light pouring from Rao into the inky black of space. In this way, the flag, that bizarre emblem of nationalism becomes a scientific hieroglyph.

Showing Krypton and Kryptonians was also important as a way of stressing why Superman wears that costume and why it makes absolute sense that he looks the way he does. I don’t see the red and blue suit as a flag or as rewoven baby blankets. There’s no need for Superman to dress the way he does but it made sense to think of his outfit as his ‘national costume‘.

The way I see it, the standard superhero outfit, the familiar Superman suit with the pants on the outside, is what everyone wore on Krypton, give or take a few fashion accessories like hoods and headbands, chest crests and variant colors. In fact, all other superheroes are just copying the fashions on Krypton, lost planet of the super-people.

Superman wears his ’action-suit’ the way a patriotic Scotsman would wear a kilt. It’s a sign of his pride in his alien heritage.

 Newsarama: Although All–Star Superman ties in with DC One Million, you style of writing has changed dramatically since then.  How do you feel about One Million now?

Grant Morrison: I just read it again and liked it a lot. Comics were definitely happier, breezier and more confident in their own strengths before Hollywood and the Internet turned the business of writing superhero stories into the production of low budget storyboards or, worse, into conformist, fruitless attempts to impress or entertain a small group of people who appear to hate comics and their creators.

NRAMA: Obviously, this book is the most explicit SF–Christ story since Behold the Man, only...happy.  Superman/Christ parallels have existed for decades, but this story makes it absolutely explicit, from laying his hands on the sick and dying to...well, most of issue #12.  You’ve dealt with Christ themes before, particularly in The Mystery Play, but outside of the comics, how do you see Superman as a Christ figure for the “real” world?

GM: The “Superman as Christ” thing is a little too reductive for me, and tends to overlook the fact that Superman is by no means a pacifist in the Christ sense. Superman would never turn the other cheek; Superman punches out the bully. Superman is a fighter.

When did Christ ever batter the Devil through a mountain?

The thing I disliked about the Superman Returns movie was the American Christ angle, which reduced Superman to a sniveling, masochistic wreck, crawling around on the floor, taking a kicking from everyone. This approach had an odd and slightly disturbing S&M flavor, which didn’t play well to the character’s strengths at all and seemed to derive entirely from a kind of Catholic vision of the suffering, martyred Jesus.

It’s not that he’s based on Jesus, but simply that a lot of the mythical sun god elements that have been layered onto the Christ story also appear in the story of Superman. I suppose I see Superman more as pagan sci–fi. He’s a secular messiah, a science redeemer with tough guy muscles and a very direct and clear morality.

NRAMA: Continuing the religious themes, in issue #10, you have Superman literally giving birth to himself, both philosophically and as a character – a nice little meta–moment showing how Superman inspires a world where he is only fiction.  How did that idea come about?

GM: It came from the challenge we’d set ourselves: as I said, issue #10 had been left as a blank space into which the single most coherent condensation of all our ideas about Superman were destined to fit.

I wanted to do a “day in the life” story. So much of All Star had been about this threat to Superman himself, so we wanted to show him going about a typical day saving people and doing good.

Then came the title “Neverending,” which comes from the opening announcement – “Faster than a speeding bullet!...” of the Superman radio show from 1940, and seemed to me to be as good a title for a Superman story as any I could think of. It seemed to distil everything about Superman’s battle and his legend into a single word. And the story structure itself was designed to loop endlessly, so it went well with that.

 On top of that went the idea of the Last Will and Testament of Superman. A dying god writing his will seemed like an interesting structure to use. Then came the idea to fit all of human history into that single 24 hours. And then to show the development of the Superman idea through human culture from the earliest Australian Aboriginal notions of super–beings ‘descended” from the sky, through the complex philosophical system of Hinduism, onto the Renaissance concept of the ideal man, via the refinements of Nietzche and finally, down to that smiling, hopeful Joe Shuster sketch; the final embodiment of humanity’s glorious, uplifting notion of the superman become reduced to a drawing, a story for kids, a worthless comic book.

And also what that could mean in a holographic fractal universe, where the smallest part contains and reflects the whole.

Of course the next panel in that sequence is happening in the real world and would show you, the reader, sitting with the latest Superman issue in your hands, deep within the Infant Universe of Qwewq in the Fortress of Solitude, today, wherever you are. In “Neverending,” the reader becomes wrapped in a self–referential loop of story and reality. If you actually, seriously think about what is happening at this point in the story, if you meditate upon the curious entanglement of the real and the fictional, you will become enlightened in this life apparently. According to some texts.

NRAMA: On a personal level, you’ve explored all types of religions and philosophies in your work.  What is your take on religion and how it influences humanity, and the Christian take on Jesus Christ in particular?

GM: I think religion per se, is a ghastly blight on the progress of the human species towards the stars.  At the same time, it, or something like it, has been an undeniable source of comfort, meaning and hope for the majority of poor bastards who have ever lived on Earth, so I’m not trying to write it off completely. I just wish that more people were educated to a standard where they could understand what religion is and how it works. Yes, it got us through the night for a while, but ultimately, it’s one of those ugly, stupid arse–over–backwards things we could probably do without now, here on the Planet of the Apes.

Religion is to spirituality what porn is to sex. It’s what the Hollywood 3–act story template is to real creative writing.

Religion creates a structure which places “special,” privileged people (priests) between ordinary people and the divine, as if there could even be any separation: as if every moment, every thought, every action was not already an expression of dynamic ‘divinity” at work.

As I’ve said before, the solid world is just the part of heaven we’re privileged to touch and play with. You don’t need a priest or a holy man to talk to “god” on your behalf: just close your eyes and say hello. “God” is no more, no less, than the sum total of all matter, all energy, all consciousness, as experienced or conceptualized from a timeless perspective where everything ever seems to present all at once. “God” is in everything, all the time and can be found there by looking carefully. The entire universe, including the scary, evil bits, is a thought “God” is thinking, right now.

As far as I can figure it out from my own reading and my own experience of how the spiritual world works, Jesus was, as they say, way cool: a man who achieved a state of consciousness, which nowadays would get him a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy (in the days of the Emperor Tiberius, he was crucified for his ideas, today he’d be laughed at, mocked or medicated).

This “holistic” mode of consciousness (which Luthor experiences briefly at the end of All Star Superman) announces itself as a heartbreaking connection, a oneness, with everything that exists...but you don’t have to be Superman to know what that feeling is like. There are a ton of meditation techniques which can take you to this place. I don’t see it as anything supernatural or religious, in fact, I think it’s nothing more than a developmental level of human consciousness, like the ability to see perspective – which children of 4 cannot do but children of 6 can.

Everyone who’s familiar with this upgrade will tell you the same thing: it feels as if “alien” or “angelic” voices – far more intelligent, coherent and kindly than the voices you normally hear in your head – are explaining the structure of time and space and your place in it. 
This identification with a timeless supermind containing and resolving within itself all possible thoughts and contradictions, is what many people, unsurprisingly, mistake for an encounter with “God.”  However, given that this totality must logically include and resolve all possible thoughts and concepts, it can also be interpreted as an actual encounter with God, so I’m not here to give anyone a hard time over interpretation.

Some people have the experience and believe the God of their particular culture has chosen them personally to have a chat with. These people may become born–again Christians, fundamentalist Muslims, devotees of Shiva, or misunderstood lunatics. Some “contactees” interpret the voices they hear erroneously as communications from an otherworldly, alien intelligence, hence the proliferation of “abduction” accounts in recent decades, which share most of their basic details with similar accounts, from earlier centuries, of people being taken away by “fairies” or “little people”.

Some, who like to describe themselves as magicians, will recognize the “alien” voice as the “Holy Guardian Angel”.

In timeless, spaceless consciousness, the singular human mind blurs into a direct experience of the totality of all consciousness that has ever been or will ever be. It feels like talking with God but I see that as an aspect of science, not religion.

As Peter Barnes wrote in “The Ruling Class”, “I know I must be God because when I pray to Him, I find I’m talking to myself.”

 Newsarama: When we spoke earlier this year, you talked about some of your ideas for future All Star stories. Are you moving forward on those, or have you started working on different ideas since then?

Grant Morrison: I haven’t had time to think about them for a while. I did have the stories worked out, and I’d like to do more, but right now it feels like Frank and Jamie and I have said all there is to be said. I don’t know if I’m ready to do All Star Superman with anyone else right now. I have other plans.

NRAMA: You end the book with Superman having uplifted humanity – having inspired them through his sacrifice and great deeds, and with the potential to pass his powers on to humanity still there. Do you plan to explore this concept further, or would you prefer to leave it open–ended?

GM: I may go back to the Son of Superman in some way. At the same time, it’s best left open–ended. I like the idea that Superman gets to have his cake and eat it; he becomes golden and mythical and lives forever as a dream. Yet, he also is able to sire a child who will carry his legacy into the future. He kicks ass in both the spiritual and the temporal spheres!

 NRAMA: The notion of transcendence – always a big part of your work. But the debate about All Star Superman is whether or not it "transcends its genre." Superman becomes transcendent within the series itself, and inspires the beings on Qwewq, but does the work aspire to more than that? Is it simply the greatest version of a Superman story, and that’s enough?

GM: That would certainly be enough if it were true.

It’s a pretty high–level attempt by some smart people to do the Superman concept some justice, is all I can say. It’s intended to work as a set of sci–fi fables that can be read by children and adults alike. I’d like to think you can go to it if you’re feeling suicidal, if you miss your dad, if you’ve had to take care of a difficult, ailing relative, if you’ve ever lost control and needed a good friend to put you straight, if you love your pets, if you wish your partner could see the real you...All Star is about how Superman deals with all of that.

It’s a big old Paul Bunyan style mythologizing of human - and in particular male - experience. In that sense I’d like to think All Star Superman does transcend genre in that it’s intended to be read on its own terms and needs absolutely no understanding of genre conventions or history around it to grasp what’s going on.

In today’s world, in today’s media climate designed to foster the fear our leaders like us to feel because it makes us easier to push around. In a world where limp, wimpy men are forced to talk tough and act ‘badass’ even though we all know they’re shitting it inside. In a world where the measure of our moral strength has come to lie in the extremity of the images we’re able to look at and stomach. In a world, I’m reliably told, that’s going to the dogs, the real mischief, the real punk rock rebellion, is a snarling, ‘fuck you’ positivity and optimism. Violent optimism in the face of all evidence to the contrary is the Alpha form of outrage these days. It really freaks people out.

I have a desire not to see my culture and my fellow human beings fall helplessly into step with a middle class media narrative that promises only planetary catastrophe, as engineered by an intrinsically evil and corrupt species which, in fact, deserves everything it gets.

Is this relentless, downbeat insistence that the future has been cancelled really the best we can come up with? Are we so fucked up we get off on terrifying our children? It’s not funny or ironic anymore and that’s why we wrote All Star Superman the way we did. Everything has changed. ‘Dark’ entertainment now looks like hysterical, adolescent, ‘Zibarro’ crap. That’s what my Final Crisis series is about too.

NRAMA (aka Tim Callahan): Continuing with the theme of transcendence: The words "ineffectual" and "surrender" are repeated throughout the book. Discuss.

GM: Discuss yourself, Callahan! I know you have the facilities and I should think it’s all rather obvious. 


NRAMA: What was the inspiration for the image of Superman in the sun at the end? (I confess this question comes as the result of much unsuccessful Googling)

GM: I didn’t have any specific reference in mind - just that one we‘ve all sort of got in our heads. I drew the figure as a sketch, intended to be reminiscent of William Blake’s cosmic figures, Russian Constructivist Soviet Socialist Worker type posters, and Leonardo’s ‘Proportions of the Human Figure‘. The position of the legs hints at the Buddhist swastika, the clockwise sun symbol. It was to me, the essence of that working class superheroic ideal I mentioned, condensed into a final image of mythic Superman, - our eternal, internal, guiding, selfless, tireless, loving superstar. The daft All Star Superman title of the comic is literalized in this last picture. It’s the ‘fearful symmetry’ of the Enlightenment project - an image of genius, toil, and our need to make things, to fashion art and artifacts, as a form of superhuman, divine imitation.

It was Superman as this fusion of Renaissance/Enlightenment ideas about Man and Cosmos, an impossible union of Blake and Newton. A Pop Art ‘Vitruvian Man‘. The inspiration for the first letter of the new future alphabet!

As you can see, we spent a lot of time thinking about all this and purifying it down to our own version of the gold. I’m glad it’s over.

NRAMA: Finally: What, above all else, would you like people to take away from All Star Superman?

GM: That we spent a lot of time thinking about this!

No. What I hope is that people take from it the unlikelihood that a piece of paper, with little ink drawings of figures, with little written words, can make you cry, can make your heart soar, can make you scared, sad, or thrilled. How mental is that?

That piece of paper is inert material, the corpse of some tree, pulped and poured, then given new meaning and new life when the real hours and real emotions that the writer and the artist, the colorist, the letter the editor translated onto the physical page, meet with the real hours and emotions of a reader, of all readers at once, across time, generations and distance.

And think about how that experience, the simple experience of interacting with a paper comic book, along with hundreds of thousands of others across time and space, is an actual doorway onto the beating heart of the imminent, timeless world of “Myth” as defined above. Not just a drawing of it but an actual doorway into timelessness and the immortal world where we are all one together.

My grief over the loss of my dad can be Superman’s grief, can trigger your own grief, for your own dad, for all our dads. The timeless grief that’s felt by Muslims and Christians and Agnostics alike. My personal moments of great and romantic love, untainted by the everyday, can become Superman’s and may resonate with your own experience of these simple human feelings.

In the one Mythic moment we’re all united, kissing our Lover for the First time, the Last time, the Only time, honoring our dear Dad under a blood red sky, against a darkening backdrop, with Mum telling us it’ll all be okay in the end.

If we were able to capture even a hint of that place and share it with our readers, that would be good enough for me.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really THAT Bad?

Cats has been a divisive show ever since it opened in 1981. Some people hate it for being a plotless spectacle that focuses more on the visuals than on music and story, while others love it for those same reasons, as well as for being utterly campy and fun. I’m firmly in the latter category, to the point I can’t  really comprehend the opposition to the film. Stuff like the jab at this film in The Critic or the mockery of it in Hey Arnold just seem weird to me; what is it about this fun, silly musical about cats that makes people’s blood boil so much?

Perhaps all these people saw into the future where the film was released.

Cats had a long, troubled history getting from stage to screen. In the 90s, Amblimation was set to make an animated version of the movie, set during the Blitz of WWII. Unfortunately, the inability of writers to find a way to turn this episodic showcase of random singing cats into a cohesive narrative combined with the failure of Amblimations films caused the project to dissolve, leaving behind nothing but some really cool concept art. 

But see, this perfectly demonstrates the problem with adapting Cats: the musical is a spectacle, a showcase, it’s all about the dancing, costumes, and the songs. It doesn’t have a story to speak of, instead contenting itself with showing us a bunch of different cats and having them sing about themselves for a bit before moving on to the next cat. Sure, there’s a bit of continuity and whatnot, but this really isn’t the sort of show that’s trying to deliver a deep narrative. It just wants you to have a good time, nothing more, nothing less.

No one told any of this to Tom Hooper, apparently. This director of the grounded, gritty, realistic adaptation of Les Mis was tapped to utilize this same style in a musical about magical singing cats, all while not even knowing what catnip is or how animation works. Hooper was apparently constantly butting heads with the VFX team due to his lack of understanding of how animating works. He tried to get the team to watch videos of cats performaing the stuff he wanted and forced them to give 90 hour work weeks, cementing Tom Hooprt as one of the biggest douchebags imaginable. On top of all this, the guy tried to weave this plotless showcase of felines into a cohesive narrative, and tapped a bunch of talent of various degrees of questionability to play parts. And what was the result?

An absolute disaster. The film was savaged by critics, with most positives being that the film was so bad it’s good. The film (of course) won a bunch of Razzies, and was the subject of mockery and memes before, after, and during its run in theaters. Hell, as soon as the trailer dropped, the film was mocked to death. Not helping was the rushed VFX which, again, was due to the team being under pressure from a draconian idiot who had no idea what he was doing. The film received an unprecedented bug fix, so to speak, in the form of an updated version with slightly better VFX that was shipped to theaters after the initial negative reaction. This obviously did nothing to help the movie’s reputation, of course. Hell, even in my initial review, I wasn’t super keen on the film. Most damning of all, though, was Andrew Lloyd Webber himself calling the film ridiculous, and even said "The problem with the film was that Tom Hooper decided that he didn’t want anybody involved in it who was involved in the original show."

But after ruminating on it, and after watching the film once more, I’ve decided to ask the usual question: Is it really that bad? It’s weird to ask this about a film that’s so new; I usually wait for hindsight to kick in, and look at older films considered bad. But even now, Cats is building up a reputation as a campy cult classic, with such figures as Martin “LittleKuriboh” Billamy watching the film with alarming frequency. And after reading the nightmarish behind the scenes and considering everything… yeah, I think this film deserves a re-evaluation.

This is going to be a little different, though: I’m sort of going to go through the film part by part, since this film has an interesting issue where, generally speaking, the first half is where the worst problems are, and the second half is where things start to pick up. So let’s get the bad out of the way first, then move onto the good.

THE BAD

So, I’m actually not going to pick on the VFX too much, and not just because of the horrible treatment of the VFX artists. In all honesty, the weird human/cat people, while not even remotely as cool as the insane costumes of the stage show, eventually stop being super distracting and kind of just become something you accept. Like, I’m not gonna pretend like this work is amazing, but I dunno, I think it gets harped on too much. There is some stuff that stands out as noticeably bad, though, and we’ll get to that.

A consistent problem with the film that I can’t even try to defend is the problem with the scaling. It’s seriously hard to tell how big these cats are supposed to be in relation to anything else. They honestly seem to change size from scene to scene. It’s seriously weird and baffling and there’s never any way to get a good sense of scale. Even when the cats are alongside mice and roaches, it just boggles the mind what size anything is actually supposed to be.

Mr. Mistoffelees, one of the most flamboyant and enjoyable characters of the stage show, is one of the biggest character issues with the film. Gone is the tricky, confident magician who prances and dances, and here is a meek, sniveling twerp who can barely do anything without tripping over himself. This is because the actor who plays him had a terrible audition that left him miserable due to a lack of singing and dance background. So, rather than find someone who could, you know, sing and dance, they decided to rewrite Mr. Mistoffelees into comic relief, which is just an insulting slap in the face. The cherry on top of course is how they straightwash the character and excise his homoerotic tension with Rum Tum Tugger, instead making him completely and totally straight and giving him a thing for Victoria. Out of everyone in the entire film, they did Mr. Mistoffelees the dirtiest.

Now, let’s get onto the actual “plot.” The film actually starts out fairly well, with some cool shots, good dancing, and some setup for Macavity, whose intro has a neat little nod to the fact he’s based on Moriarty. The issues don’t really start showing up until we reach the first of the Jellicle choices… Jennyanydots.

Jennyanydots is portrayed by Rebel Wilson, which is the first issue. Rebel Wilson is probably one of the worst actresses ever. She is just a horrendously, relentlessly unfunny human being, and she brings that exact quality to her role here. For her song, the vocal talent is secondary to the cringeworthy comedy Wilson puts on display. And yet, somehow, Wilson isn’t the worst part of the scene. No, that would be the horrendous CGI human-faced mice and roaches, which look like they came out of a PS3 game.

This horrendous spectacle is followed up with the appearance of Rum Tum Tugger, portrayed by Jason Derulo. I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I do think Derulo has the necessary egotistical celebrity swagger to play Rum Tum Tugger (especially when you consider he responded to negative criticisms of the film by calling the movie  “one of the greatest pieces of art ever made”) and his design is actually one of the better ones in the film, but on the other hand, his singing and the musical choice for his song are not very impressive and really just doesn’t work all too well. It’s at least something of a step up from Rebel Wilson and her CGI abominations, but that’s not really saying much, is it?

Next up we have Bustopher Jones, played by James Corden and, if I’m being totally honest… he’s not quite as awful as he could be. Corden is basically the male equivalent to Rebel Wilson, but at least while he’s singing he manages to be somewhat amusing, whimsical, and enjoyable even. The problem comes when he throws in jokes, including one where he claims to be self-conscious about his weight… a joke that occurs in the middle of his song where he is bragging about how fat he is. Talk about sending mixed messages. I wish I didn’t have to be so harsh on Bustopher, but sadly he is bogged down by really bad shtick.

Bustopher Jones also highlights a problem with the cats in this first half. These minor roles – Jennyanydots, Rum Tum Tugger, and Bustopher Jones – are all being played by relatively big celebrities, and as such they’re going to want a lot of time to sing. As a result, songs that were ensemble numbers on stage become more one-man songs here, with Bustopher Jones being the most egregious example, turning this positive fat character into a walking James Corden fat joke as he sings his own praises rather than having his praises sung.

Following him up we have Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer, who are usually fun characters with a fun little pseudo-villain song, but alas, they manage to screw that up by using a slow, jazzy version of the song originally used in earlier London productions rather than the more up-tempo version from later productions, making the song sound awkward and forgettable. Topping it all off is the bargain bin Mr. M popping in at the end for some wacky shenanigans, but at this point, the movie takes a turn towards…

THE GOOD

So as soon as Dame Judi Dench shows up as Old Deuteronomy, the film gets a sort of inverse of what happened at the start. Where the film starts somewhat awkward and promising, it slowly gets stupider and stupider when Rebel Wilson, Jason Derulo, and James Corden botch their scenes in the ways described above. Here, things start a bit shaky and unsure, but Dench is a sign things are about to pick up. What makes her so enjoyable is how, despite how utterly silly things are, she treats her role with the dignity and gravitas of something out of Shakespeare. The only thing as good as an actor in a silly movie like this going full-on ham and cheese is an actor treating their role dead serious and injecting it with such class and dignity you can’t help but enjoy it. Thankfully, Dench isn’t the only person to take her role seriously.

Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella technically appears briefly in the earlier portions of the film, but here we get to hear her belt out “Memory,” and by god does she do a fantastic job. The raw emotion and passion she injects into Grizabella is phenomenal, and it’s even more powerful when it comes back for its reprise in the finale. Victoria gets a sort of response song to “Memory,” called “Beautiful Ghosts,” and it’s a decent song in its own right, but you can tell it was a more modern composition and it just doesn’t gel super well with the rest of the songs. Still, all this is good stuff, and the “Memory”/”Beautiful Ghosts” scene is a nice, refreshing bit of emotion after the incredibly weird and silly extended dance number that is the Jellicle Ball.

The movie doesn’t stop pulling punches; shortly after Grizabella we are given Gus the theater cat, an elderly actor whose number is all about reminiscing of the old days of theater and his many stellar roles from days gone by. Naturally, the only actor who could possibly perform this role properly is Sir Ian McKellan. I am completely unironic when I say this: This is to McKellan what Patrick Stewart’s performance of Xavier in Logan is. This sounds ridiculous, but think of it: Gus is an aging thespian, clearly a bit senile and desiring to be reborn because he has reached the end of the line, and McKellan fills him with this genuine, incredibly honest performance that really makes you feel emotional. It’s powerful. It feels so personal and resonant, like McKellan has inserted some of his own feelings into his performance, which may very well be the case. Oh, and after his song Macavity kidnaps him with a big autograph book and apparates away while saying his name, which gets me every time.

And now, my friends, the lord and savior arrives: Skimbleshanks.

This is, hands down, the best scene in the entire film. Everything comes together here: the music is absolutely fantastic, the dancing is choreographed extremely well, and it’s clear that everyone involved is having a blast. This is a concentrated essence of what Cats should be, and it’s really a shame Hooper didn’t understand that this is the energy needed for the entire production. The most crucial element, of course, is Steven McRae, who not only has a lovely singing voice and looks dapper as all hell in his red suspenders, but is a tap dancing maniac. This man has feet of fire, and his tapping adds a whole new layer of fun to the song. Overall, this is a perfect scene, and probably one of my favorite scenes in any film ever. For a brief four minutes, everything about this film works. I literally have no idea why this cat wants to be reincarnated, he is straight balling in this life.

But the hits don’t stop! Right after this song, Taylor Swift descends from the ceiling, and we get “Macavity.” In the stage productions, this is a song sung by Bombalurina to describe how nasty Macavity is, since she’s traditionally a good cat; here, she’s reimagined as a villain, and so this song is basically her acting as Macavity’s hype man, singing his dastardly praises, and best of all, Macavity joins in at the end! I’m certainly not a Taylor Swift fan, but she really kills it here, and definitely makes this one of the best songs in the movie with her hilariously forced accent and insane energy. It’s just a shame that from here on out Macavity ditches his villainous pimp coat and is now a nude Idris Elba, but I suppose this is equivalent exchange for Skimbleshanks being so amazing.

While not as incredible as the previous two songs and not quite as good as the stage version due to the removal of the latent homoeroticism, Mr. Mistoffelees’s song is actually okay. It’s nice that he gets to sing his own praises here, but it’s just nothing compared to the stage version, even if it has a fun little finale and it actually is genuinely heartwarming when Old Deuteronomy returns and sings along. It’s a sweet moment that almost makes up for how much Mr. M has sucked the whole movie. Oh, also, all of the Jellicle choices Macavity kidnapped fight back against their captor Growltiger, with Skimbleshanks aggressively tapdancing at him and Gus using his acting skills to make him fall into the Thames. This is so goofy that it wraps back around to being awesome.

The movie winds down in the goofiest way possible after the gorgeous reprise of “Memory,” with Macavity being caught on a big sculpture and apparently running out of magic, leaving him stranded like a regular cat. Then we get one final fourth-wall breaking song where Judi Dench directly addresses the camera that has the music swell up to the point where it seems like the song is ending numerous times without actually ending, and each time is funnier than the last. Really, what better way could you end such a silly film than with this?

Now, a general thing that’s great about the film is the choreography. The dancing in the movie is spectacular. I don’t really have a bad thing to say about it. And, in a broad sense, the music is good too, even if the singers aren’t always perfect, the backing tracks are great, and there’s a lot of fun in the tracks in the latter half of the movie. McRae and Taylor Swift’s contributions in particular are great, and Hudson’s version of “Memory” is incredibly powerful, as is McKellan’s take on Gus’ song.

Is It Really THAT Bad?

No.

Look, it’s hard to be like “Wow this is a fantastic masterpiece of film” or anything like that, because the movie has blatant and evident problems. But this is literally the reason I made this review series; I’m asking if the movie is really as bad as people say, and in this case, no, there’s too much genuinely enjoyable in the film for me to say it’s deserving of several Razzies and a spot on the Bottom 100 of IMDB that places it above Master of Disguise and The Emoji Movie. Like, seriously? This is worse than the 90 minute commercial starring the abusive dick who called a bomb threat on his girlfriend? Hell, this movie is rated worse than Artemis Fowl, which is definitely a contender for the worst film ever made (and amusingly enough also features Judi Dench in it). Artemis Fowl has next to no redeeming qualities in it, and it certainly doesn’t have Skimbleshanks, whereas Cats has several fun scenes and also has Skimbleshanks.

I definitely think there’s more of an argument for this film being so bad it’s good or camp at best, but it’s definitely more enjoyable than you’d think it would be. If you can learn to live with the weird CGI, it’s a fun, goofy romp that you might find yourself feeling for at times. After my second watch, I have to say… I’ve started to unironically enjoy this movie. It might even be one of my favorites of all time. I can’t even deny that it has a lot of stuff I don’t like, and it falls flat in a lot of ways the 1998 film soars, and it screwed up some of my favorite characters… but there are so many moments where the fun and heart of Cats shines through brighter than it has any right to, and all the failures of Hooper and Universal seem distant for a just a few minutes.

So yeah, is this movie good all around? No way. But is it fun, does it have value, and is there more redeeming qualities than the critics let on? Oh yes there is.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh Episode 30 Season 4: The Dead Joey Shuffle

Lets ignore everything happening on planet Earth right now and talk about old ass anime, shall we? Yes, my sky turned a horrible end of the world yellow/orange color for an entire day because of a LOT of fire in my state. But thankfully, the winds have changed, the sky is blue...and I can write about Yugioh again.

Last we left off, Tristan, Tea, and Yami stumbled across two fresh corpses. Now, when Joey died a season or two ago (I honestly can’t remember when), we had my favorite storyboarder at the helm just sweeping emotion all over the field and the intense weeping for Joey Wheeler lasted for like 30 minutes. Yugi freaked out in the puzzle headspace for like half an episode and nearly gave up playing cards again, Yami punched a wall and then put a duel disk on Joey’s arm like a funerary send off to the afterlife, Tea started losing her mind and begged Yugi to drop out of the tourney so Yugi wouldn’t die, and Pharaoh was like “yo Tea, Yugi can’t talk right now can we do this later????” And then Tristan, out of nowhere, just started shaking Joey and screaming at him to wake up (and I think he punched him in the face and it got censored? Yo that episode is wild.) Joey got plugged to some Kaiba Corp med bay that had like 2 dozen weird sensors attached to his chest and feet to keep him alive. Serenity was like hyperventilating in the back, just a LOT of stuff was happening all at once.

But this time, with an ordinary animation team, these three kids are so distracted by the other corpse, that they only cry just a little bit before being like “woah what?”

And like this is their second time. Maybe they’ve gotten used to Joey being dead? Maybe they got it all out of their system and are now a lot more accustomed to the fact that they all must die. Several times.

Confronted with this Agatha Christie brand debacle, Tristan makes an incredible reach that is also completely correct. Like this is such an amazing incredible reach.

Hire Tristan as your detective, hot damn. There are like 7.8 billion Orichalcos-possessed people on this planet right now trying to kill Joey Wheeler and Tristan actually called the right one.

Yami never tells us who he blames, but it’s OK, because the show immediately cuts over to Dartz’ silicon valley fortress to tell us without telling us. So while this animation team isn’t as insanely extra as our previous animation teams, they still know how to edit their cuts to work alongside their dialogue just fine.

(read more under the cut)

Lets take a little while to just take this in. Someone took a while to make it, so rather than look at it for half a second before it passes--please lets count the number of floating streets in this scene.

3.

So before when I talked about the history of San Francisco, I mentioned the old Embarcadero, which was a double decker street wrapped around the peninsula. (we still see parts of this double decker set up on parts of the highway to this day.) But what if--they actually have no idea that the Embarcadero was a thing before it fell down in an earthquake?

What if they just...wanted San Francisco to be vaguely cyberpunk in this universe and that floating freeway was supposed to be futuristic and not just an 80′s throwback?

Because there’s 3 streets stacked on top of eachother right here and yo there is no where in the city built like this. This is a Gotham situation where the poors live on the lower levels and the rich just kind of hang out on the top. We have too many Earthquakes in reality to ever support this setup but Yugioh...wow. They went for it.

Also, our art deco architecture isn’t quite in this style as Dartz’ mansion. Mind you, this isn’t full deco, and the structure has more of an ancient world vibe. But...while San Fransisco does have a lot of deco, it’s just different (sorry you’re not really here for the architecture but youknow, I’m an artist so I do think a lot about why concept artists may have gone where they went)

++++++++++RANT ABOUT SF DECO VS COMIC BOOK DECO FEEL FREE TO SKIP++++++++++++++

So I’m not going to dare say this is a mistake on the Yugioh team by any means, since Deco is Deco and who knows when Dartz built that building. But like I’ve seen the SF skyline many times in this show and it’s got some funky shapes in it that are just sooo off to me. They keep drawing a more Futurist New York. Truth is, we don’t have that many skyscrapers in SF.

Most of the pictures you see of scaling buildings are of this one area around the financial district--everything else is...pretty short. So in those photos they very carefully crop out all the really squat as hell buildings on either side of it, to give the impression that our city is super tall, much like a dating app.

And, as far as Art Deco Gotham-esque skyscrapers go, we got ones like this guy:

Where at a glance it’s like...that’s barely deco (and barely that impressive. This is 1/3 the height of the Empire State building.) Compared to a lot of cities in America, our skyscrapers aren’t as...clearly deco from far away? We don’t have the huge ass humps and long ass gilded lines of the Empire State building or the Chrysler building. You only really get those details when you zoom in.

Our other skyscrapers are kinda understated or modern in comparison. And the reason why we just don’t have many deco skyscrapers is because...our ground ain’t good for building skyscrapers at all, so it took us kind of a while to build up.

Like we got this tower that we built recently (the first skyscraper they built in SF in a good while) and they decided to name it the “The Millennium Tower” which...I know...good job, team, clearly you wanted to get cursed. Well the tower started leaning about 3 or 4 years ago, like well over a foot from it’s original spot, it’s just tilting and sinking away, and people are freaking out because it’s surrounded by other tall buildings so they’re like “damn it we’re gonna dominoes.” The people in charge were like “well...we don’t know why it’s leaning...but I’m sure it’s fine” and it’s like “the ground. It was the ground...you dumbasses” not to mention that it’s clearly cursed by at least one angry Egyptian Ghost but...what do you do?

I would absolutely watch the Yugioh spinoff season about the Millennium Tower and the SF tycoons that got possessed by a ghost and have to play card games to keep their tower from squishing all of San Francisco. Yo you should hire me, Yugioh, I got IDEAS.

Man...Yugioh predicting the future, how did they call the ill fate of The Millennium Tower????

But anyway, most skyscrapers in SF are kind of boring because they have to be sturdy as hell. But, they have some neat modern shapes (like the Transamerica Pyramid--in the shape of A PYRAMID that hasn’t shown it’s face once this entire Egyptian influenced anime)

I mean, come on Yugioh, it’s right there.

Also the hell is this weird UFO on this picture I lifted off of google?

Like I think it’s 4 jets? 

I may have lifted this from an alien website, so forgive me, q-anon for lifting your image, I’m trying to talk about architecture in my Yugioh blog.

In fact the only building I (and google) can think of that is both really tall and deco-ey is this one:

And it’s a Marriot hotel built in the late 80′s. And honestly, it looks way more 1980′s Las Vegas than it does Deco. (It honestly looks like photobashing but made real, this is a weird building.)

And I could be wrong and overlooking a very important structure, but most of the city’s really cool art deco buildings are in the form of theaters, libraries, churches, schools, and houses--which are only a few stories tall. They’re gorgeous buildings with cool and different silhouettes, it’s just not very big.

Like I believe this is an old high school?

also a lot of our “art deco” has no idea if it’s victorian, deco, or art noveau so they’ll just hit all of it to see what sticks. It’s a lot more eclectic than other places where Deco is typically more...straight-lined. I kinda hate defining art styles as masculine or feminine but honestly it’s the quickest way to really hit home the difference between a Bruce Timm art deco that you’d see in a comic book, (which is very New York inspired) and what we have in San Fransisco which is really decorative and decadent.

The Yugioh SF just has no curvy nonsense and that really sticks out to me.

Ornate swirls get shoved Everywhere. Willy nilly. Just everywhere randomly. And it sits next to other structures that are modern and simplistic. It’s very San Francisco to have this old world next to new world.

And it makes sense. SF is the other side of the continent from New York, and about as far West as you can go from the movement going on in Europe. So...we made our own take and tl;dr the art deco in our city doesn’t look like Gotham at all.

And, while it’s not as grand or dark or iconic, it’s a good thing. It’s what helps make San Fransisco look really unique compared to other American cities--the fact that we're...short and eclectic. Our district with the skyscrapers is where it’s kinda boring, actually--the good stuff is when you get away from that. Where every little building has a spunky wild personality.

But in a show like this you gotta make it seem more grand and less homely so--they scaled up the buildings a lot more than we really have and homogenized all the stylings into one (and they axed every Victorian swirl because they don’t want to draw that). They really just turned SF into comic book New York--especially since I’ve only seen like...one steep hill since we got here.

It’s fine, and it makes complete sense why they did it, (I’m more confused as to why most of California is a Nevada desert so I can easily forgive a San Francisco without the right Deco) it’s just a very different energy.

and honestly...it’s an energy influenced by the tone of the show. Everything has a very dark blue-gray palate, and it’s because it’s literally the end of the world, Joey has died, everyone is sad...maybe it would be out of place to have a building that looks like it sparks joy? The harsh and cold lines do add to the gravity of the situation.

Maybe I would have done the same thing? In the end, the legibility of your story matters more than the accuracy of your story--especially when it comes to TV. Which is somewhat a controversial statement, and there’s exceptions when it comes to cultural stuff. But while the culture of San Fransisco was erased (a culture that they did draw in the beginning of the season! they did show alcatraz, a trolly, and the golden gate!), it is at a point in the show where...all of humanity is being erased anyway. Could also be symbolic? Maybe?

+++++++++++++END OF THE ART DECO RANT+++++++++++++

So anyway, stepping away from lovely buildings and into this gross ass abandoned park, Yami decides he’s gotta get himself to this gaudy ass Batman building ASAP.

He can ride a horse but he absolutely will not ride a motorcycle. Or touch Joey Wheeler’s dead body.

Which is wild because apparently there’s a Yugioh spinoff where all they do is ride motorcycles??? But from what I heard, Yami is not in it. Which is the most wild thing.

So uh...you know how much I love art details, lets take a long look at this one.

AH no.

Nope nope nope nope.

I hate this logo. It looks like an emperor penguin’s eyebrow thingies. Like a face with just four huge eyebrows.

Not sure why we randomly have a new logo. It’s nearly the end of the season, we’ve already shown the Orichalcos logo so many times. Was this episode made earlier in development than the rest? Is that why there were like - I dunno, put this random logo here... Maybe we’ll figure out the rest of the logo later?

I don’t know. This weird logo feels so out of place.

And then because I’m thinking about buildings...maybe it’s influenced by our Shell building?

Maybe? Or not? Just saying you got a round thing with radial lines hovering over a trellis...the possibility is there that they were inspired but had to edit it down for animation? Eh, I’m reaching desperately for anything that looks like San Francisco at this point.

Anyways, the front door of this building is an elevator (????) and in a somewhat confusing set of cuts, out of this elevator comes the murderer herself.

And she’s dead.

SO HAPPY I didn’t have to watch that card game but like...c’mon. There’s no way Mai would lose to Raphael.

Maybe that’s why they couldn’t show it? Because she’s the only person on this show who uses a themed deck with cards that actually sync with eachother? (outside of Pegasus’ toon deck and Grandpa’s voltron deck ((sorry it’s name isn’t voltron, I’ve forgotten the name of the robot that you build out of other cards. Exodus? Exodysseus?

It’s Exodia isn't it? Wtv. 2020′s been a real long one, all y’all.)) )

(don’t ask where the smoke came from, we don’t know. Maybe Yami felt like making it to be more aesthetic. It is a fun visual tic to the show.)

So Yami goes into this elevator instead of anticipating that this is obviously a trap. Like most would just decide to take the stairs instead, but Yami loves falling for a good obvious trap every once and a while (or, in the case of this season--each and every single time a trap is placed in front of him) and so this takes him directly to the fightclub roof of yore.

Ah. We started this season on fightclub roof, in like...2010 or whenever I started this season. Feels like forever ago. How long has the year of 2020 been? 20 years of my life? 40 years of my life? Was I in fact never born before 2020 started? I honestly don’t remember anymore who I was before this year happened. Probably because I inhaled just a hell ton of wildfire smoke and now my brain is a bunch of jelly beans rattling around in a jar.

Anyway, Raphael just hands Yami (by hands I mean throws aggressively) Joey’s dragon card.

A little unsure why he’d do this since...this is the weapon to destroy Dartz. Why are you giving it back to the Pharaoh? But apparently, Raphael did that to prove that he is the murderer of Mai, who murdered Joey and...youknow...the stuff that we know but would be pretty difficult for the people in this show to follow.

Mai’s voice actor seeing “Mumbo-Jumbo” and being like “Well if I’m doing this, I’m going to commit.“

WE ARE NEVER DUELING DARTZ.

I refuse that a duel with Dartz, in fact, ever happens in this season.

Kind of surprised whenever I see there’s still people left. SF is basically abandoned in comparison.

Thing is...that’s just SF on a holiday weekend.

And then, because Tristan’s in the middle of the street, the rest of the party has to try and run him over.

It is really funny to me that Seto went out of his way to ditch these people so MANY times, but keeps ending up around them again and again, and each time in a wildly different vehicle, each and every time it’s when these guys need a lift...he’s very quickly turning into the group’s soccer mom. Should’ve gotten a minivan.

And then this happens?

I’ll just leave this here:

I’m sure that fanfic writers everywhere rejoiced when Seto reached out a hand to catch Joey’s face from hitting the pavement. In all this was a bizarre animation and now that I’ve figured out my blender settings for the new update, I can finally cap little segments again.

Just don’t you dare flag me, tumblr. Hopefully segments less than 10 seconds long are fine.

Like there was this part where they had to just drag around Joey’s corpse over this rail, and it was Mokuba and Tristan just prying him up there like he were a potato sack and like...

...Joey’s gonna wake up with so many rail-shaped bruises! They do not treat him gently!

Then back on fightclub roof, Raphael made me do a bit of a double take when he accidentally implied the existence of another bean within that Pharaoh bean.

And no, Bakura did not show up at this point.

I would LOVE IT if Pharaoh biffed it a second time and Bakura suddenly took the reigns and was like “Oi loves! that was bloody easy!” but I...have a feeling that this team didn’t actually watch the episodes where Bakura is just vibing in that puzzle piece.

If this never comes back to bite Pharaoh in the ass...

It might never come back guys...I don’t know. How do these writers have this much self control to ignore Bakura for like a full season. How do you do it? I can’t hold a plot twist in for even like 5 seconds. How....how do you do it?

Anyways, now that Seto has Tea who has a map, they walk up to the entrance (I honestly forgot if they drove or walked because knowing this show, Seto would absolutely ignore the car. Either way, the Ferrari isn’t necessary anymore. Written right out of the script. Cars are hard to draw. Get rid of it)

You know, Mokuba’s seen an awful lot of corpses for a kid! Like 20ish corpses if you count the 2 times the Big 5 biffed it. Really should have left him with Rebecca! Youknow, the other kid the same age as him!

But it’s fine, we gotta train Mokuba to suppress that trauma deep, deep down like a proper Kaiba.

Youknow when I started this series I was like “I don’t get why everyone talks about the Kaibas so much, these two seem kinda like whatever” but now I’m on like S4 and like...I’m SO concerned about the Kaibas. With Yugi...whatever...he’s gonna be fine, but the Kaibas? Oh boy. Either one of them could go completely evil and I’d buy it.

And probably root for them.

And I know they won’t go full tilt, I’m pretty sure--but like...they COULD. I can’t say that about the rest of the cast.

Everyone’s made it!

Even joey’s weird coma/dead body for some reason!

Lol also I love this random sci-fi tech water tower next to Tea. What is that?

My drought senses are screaming, is that a huge ass water tower the size of a 4 story building next to Tea? Chances are, it’s got a jet in it or something because this is Yugioh, but...man. At least it doesn’t look like one of those rusty New York rooftop water towers. This show just completely not getting what SF looks like.

Whatever, he can resurrect the leviathan, maybe Dartz can make water?

Youknow, all you have to do to make California worship you forever is make rain. Screw this lizard nonsense. The man can power water. What’s he doing with this stupid snake?

But youknow, Yugioh just never really figures out how to harness the weather. They CAN and they do it all the time. But, do they use it for their benefit? Like freakin never.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I went on a looong rant about SF but maybe I’m just sick of my own house? Been a lot of fire and quarantine over here. It’s been messing with my head a fair amount so thanks for bearing with me and my weird ass update schedule (remember when I used to be productive? Was that just a dream I once had?)

But if you just got here, here’s a link to read these recaps in order, from the beginning way back in S1.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

[recurring-polynya]

Fanfic Weekly Roundup 9/14/2020:

Okay, it’s been, like, 2 months since I did one of these, and I apologize for that, but also, August was like... really dry at the old fanfic well? And I’ve been working my ass off for the last three week (at... what, exactly, Polynya? It is hard to say) Anyway, here’s some fanfics that I liked. Hopefully, it won’t take another 2 months before we have another.

I think I missed this one when it first came out (otherwise, it would have made the last roundup... I write these by going back through my AO3 history), but The Bet, by @lethanwolf was really cute! It was by an author who doesn’t usually go for RenRuki, but wrote it for a friend, and I really respect stretching like that, and they did a great job!

I was here first by tasteoftheforbidden is a Byakuya/Soi Fon story and I cannot imagine why I clicked on it in the first place, but it was really cute??? Like, at first they are really grumpy, and then they are like, “ah, I respect what a grump you are” and then they eat snacks. It worked. I was delighted by it, perhaps you will be as well.

Here We Meet Again by @marlasinger93-blog is just getting started, but the first chapter is really, really cute! It’s a Rukia and Renji awkwardly reconnecting after the Soul Society Arc, which I will openly admit I have an endless appetite for. I helped translate it, and I hope there will be more eventually!

I feel like I mentioned Captivate, by before @kissedbynightshade, but I couldn’t find it, so I will mention it now! It’s a little bit high concept-- it’s a modern AU where Izuru has the power to jump back in time-- usually a few minutes-- to prevent tragedy from occurring. However, after Rangiku is killed, he jumps all the way back to his teenhood, where he has the possibility to prevent deaths of Renji, Momo, and Shuuhei. It’s not actually very hard to follow, and it is an amazing mood piece. Just really chewy, poetic, melancholy Izuru (who is trans in this story; it is just sort of slid in there very naturally and it works), with a heavy dose of mystery. It is, as they say, my jam.

Is it time for the @kazeshini-s section of the roundup? We have two this time!:

Personal Questions features Orihime digging into those burning questions about how shinigami function that we all want the answer to.

Cut a Deal (We’re All Gonna Die Anyway) is Advance Team Arc fic about Orihime going to Soul Society to train with Rukia and I admit I requested it and I don’t care it was SO GOOD. Features both Orihime & Renji bonding AND Orihime & Rukia bonding, what more could you ask for???

These two are not on AO3, but do not sleep on this one where Chad Makes Renji a Burrito or this Karakura Kids Cuddle Puddle.

time in a bottle by atlntyda is a fairly short, Orihime introspection piece, but I really liked it!

Somebody to Someone by @jkrobertson Excuse me, did someone say lieutenant friendship fic? This is my love language.

Squad 4's Pregnancy Guide for the Unwed Shinigami  by manonlechat is a very silly fic where Gin is a gremlin and Matsumoto is like “well, this might as well happen.” I got a good laugh out of it.

In Between Days by @spyder-m Renji birthday fic! Renji birthday fic! Renji reflects on 40 years worth of birthdays, with and without Rukia.

the one to someone by @shamelessllamapeanutthing After the Soul Society Arc, Rukia chews over who she wants to be and who she wants to be with. Ugh, I loved this one. Great character work on Rukia, and very good and sexy banter with Renji. I am extremely bad at writing sexual tension, and I am jealous of the chemistry here. (I am very good at two-halves-of-one-idiot, and I am thankful for that, but every once in a while, it would be nice...sigh)

Icy Summits by Chaotic Dreamer was a very cute story about Renji and Rukia going on a mission as lieutenants together, shortly after they start dating. What I liked about this, is that the tension of the story is based on them both trying to do what they think is best, and they talk it out in a really healthy way, and that shit clears my pores and whitens my teeth.

Anchor and Vulnerable by squeaker_deaker. Renruki family drabbles. Real, actual-100-words drabbles. I could never. How.

We all know how I feel about ByaRen fic-- I don’t care for the pairing very extremely specific reasons, but I like both characters so much that I will occasionally read one if I think the characterization is gonna be real good (shippers be doin’ characterization, I said it). Anyway, I saw the tags “scenery porn” and “samurai do samurai things” on Heart Tangled by Grizmelder (there is a grizmelder on Tumblr who I think might be the same person, but I am afraid to tag them in case they aren’t although I just followed them because as I was scrolling thru their blog, I found both Brendan Frasier content and the LOTR Volvo meme, so obvs they are cool and I really hope they don’t click on my blog and say “who is this anime weirdo?”). Anyway, look, if you are a Period Drama Slut like me, you gotta read this. Friends, I shipped it.  It’s an AU, of course, and it somehow manages to circumvent all my canon ByaRen hangups and I don’t know who I am any more. It’s just... costumes and hair and archery and poetry and longing and sexiness. The latest chapter was epistolary. Oh, right, there is actual porn in it also, you have been warned. (also period-accurate homophobia and suicide refs, it’s a pretty serious and heart-wrenching story)

I know I am always on here, shilling The Thin Red Line. The last few chapters were absolute fire, and it was absolutely the high point of my week when a new one went up. The author, who is A_Fine_Piece on AO3 and Crimson Bttrfly on ff.net, recently announced she is discontinuing it after she got some harsh comments, and also deleted her Tumblr. I am absolutely devastated by this. She wasn’t someone I knew super-well, but we responded to each other’s comments and I really liked her. This was actually the second time this week I heard about someone getting negative fanfic comments, and all I’ll say about that is, if you’re reading a fanfic and you hate everything about it, why don’t you give yourself the gift of closing the tab and not saying anything at all? I can’t even imagine what someone could criticize about this fic, it is so well-crafted and beautifully written. I am so, so mad about this. Please leave a kind comment for an author you love this week, if you can. Writing fanfic is pretty thankless compared to the amount of effort that goes into it, we gotta protect and cherish our authors (and artists, too, for that matter!). My poor, weak heart cannot take any more of my faves quitting.

[dongiovannaswife]

Would it be overkill if I asked for all of them?

How about 1, 3 through 8, and 11, 12 and 13? Oh wait, is that too much? Sorry if that's too much! ( > w < ') (I just love you and GioGio together❤)

It’d be a shame if I answered them all right here right now, during my break *eyes emoji* *eyes emoji* *eyes emoji* 

Thank you so much for sending this in! ily friend. ♥♥♥ 

@star-birthmark said: Alright so I'm gonna pull a Lena and just ask for all the questions. Is that good? Great. Love ya

I was just thinking about you doing the same to me so HA I read your mind. ASAsask. Thank you so much <3 

Under the cut for those not interested :D i did not proofread bc my head hurts ;w; 

1.       Does your F/O have a birthmark? (or any type of freckles or beauty marks?)

Beside the glorious star birthmark (which I know I have a spicy hc about uwu) Gio has this super curious and small birthmark on his back, it’s not that noticeable unless you see him closely uwuwuwu.

2.       Is your F/O the type to volunteer to their community?

I mean, he’s,,, literally a mafia boss. His posture on Passione and his work is far from honest, but I feel like he’d actually would open shelters or donate to good causes, and since I hc him as a lawyer, perhaps he volunteers from time to time so he can help people with cases, obviously he doesn’t accept any money from them, as he knows what it’s like.

3.       Does your F/O the type to be giving or to take?

Younger Giorno (I’m not talking from a romantic aspect, calm down please), is the one to always give and get surprised when he gets something in return —the adult Gio from my ship knows how to give and receive equally.

What I’m trying to say is yes, but I don’t know where yet, haven’t thought a lot about that.

4.       Does your F/O have any battle scars?

Better yet —is GER able to regenerate cells fully? That would make him like a super cell, you know. No but seriously, say GER is able to do so, and Giorno wouldn’t have any scares from the events of VA; but what if his moral called for him to do so, to let his skin carry some of them. Say, a scar from Narancia’s last moments on his chest, unnoticeable now due to the tattoo on his chest.

5.       Does your F/O wear make up? (Do you think they would be open to wearing makeup if they don’t wear it daily?)

I feel like he’d wear the casual lipstick from time to time, but not really always. Unlesss someone *wink wink* convines him to do his makeup one day so he can try it.

6.       Has your F/O ever dye their hair or worn a wig?

Nah.

7.       What is your F/O fashion taste?

ignore the boob window and think about luke Hemmings or this. Exquisite, would give him kith.

8.       How tall is your F/O?

1.98 cm uwuwuwuwuw

10.   When if your F/O birthday?

9.       What is your F/O’s blood type?

AB.

April 16. ♥

11.   Does your F/O know how to cook? If so are they good at it?

He knows how to cook, yes, but he’s not that good —somehow I feel like his coffee would taste LIKE HEAVEN.

12.   What is your F/O favorite flavor?  (sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami (savory))

Sweet, definitely. When he’s a bit tired from it, though, he goes for bitter things.

13.   If your F/O could be a fan of any video game what do you think it would be?

Metal Gear Solid 4.

14.   What type of aesthetic does you F/O have?

The sense of freedom when you glance at the sunrise. If that makes sense of course.

15.   What color if your F/O eyes?

Turquoise! So pretty aaaaa uwu.

17.   If you could matching tattoos what would it be?

16.   Does your F/O have any tattoos? If not do they like or hate the concept of tattoos?

An owl on his chest, a vine on his index from his left hand and a sunflower on his ring finer; he’s thinking of getting something for the twins, but he’s not sure about what yet. 

A small Aloe Vera potted plant on our necks (based off an ask I remember getting a while ago —if that person is still around, your idea might come true buddy).

18.   Does your F/O have any piercings?

I die for the thought of him with a lip ring. But I don’t really think he has any of them, the lip ring is a matter of,,,, other impulses akdjslkd.

19.   Is your F/O a cake or pie person?

Both. Both is good. Has a leaning to pie, but loves both.

20.   Is your F/O a morning or night person?

Night person.

21.   Is your F/O a coffee or tea person?

Coffee, I don’t think he likes tea *that* much.

22.   Is your F/O half empty or half full type of person?

I’m not sure, tbh.

23.   Does your F/O have a pet? If not in canon what do you think they would have if given the chance?

Listen, a panther would make the best pet for him. But I think he’s a cat person. Not like he doesn’t like dogs, but a cat is probably something he enjoys most.

24.   Is your F/O the type to want to live in the city or live out in the country?

City.

25.   Does your F/O like to swim?

Yes.

26.   What harry potter house would your F/O be in? (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin)

Nah fam, I’m not really interested on HP, sorry.

27.   If your F/O was in “avatar: the last air bender” what type of bender would they be? (air, water, earth, and fire)

Some of you will kill me for this but I haven’t watched it, ever. :D

28.   Is your F/O LGBT+?

Nope, at least not for me. You are free to headcanon him as you wish. Pleadon’tstartdramathisisnotmeanttooffendanyone.

29.   Does your F/O have any artistic hobbies? (Knitting, drawing, painting, etc)

Drawing, but it’s most for stress relief.

30.   What’s a piece of clothing your F/O is never seen without? (glasses, a necklace, hat, etc)

The arrow he hangs around his neck or just carries around hidden.

31.   What type of scent does your F/O remind you of?

There’s this perfume I absolutely love and I can’t really describe it, but it’s WildCountry.

32.   What’s something you see often that has little to no relation to your F/O but always reminds you of them?

Flowers and vines :,)

33.   Do you have any silly nicknames or pet names for your F/O?

A LOT.

34.   What does your F/O house/apartment look like? (or what do you think it looks like)

If we talk about his years of “I live alone yeee” then pretty much no decoration, excepts for the plants or books he keeps —overall, what you could call monochromatic. Once we get married, we pick a style, with classical sculptures and roman like architecture

35.   What season reminds you of your F/O? (winter, spring, summer, fall)

Fall.

36.   Have you ever had a dream with your F/O in it?

Yes uwu.

37.   Does your F/O play any musical instruments?

No really.

38.   What’s a song that reminds you of your F/O when you hear?

Gold by Prince.

39.   What is your relationship like with your F/O?

We,,, in love,,,, yes.

40.   How long have you been with your F/O? (or at least been interested in them?)

Interested in him,,,,,, I’m not sure if one or two years?? But in the “”””storyline”””” seven years.

41.   Where is your F/O from? (as in born)

Japan.

42.   Is your F/O the type to read reviews, or just go with their gut

Better yet, contacts.

43.   What does your F/O’s Saturdays usually look like?

Some paperwork at home studio, comfy causal clothes (black jeans and white tee, barefoot).

44.   What is your F/O’s most valuable possession?

The arrow lmao.

45.   What’s a fad you can see your F/O taking part of?

Analyzing music together!! :D

46.   does your F/O prefer to work alone or with a team?

Team.

47.   How well does your F/O know tech? (such as computers, smart phones)

I feel like he knows a lot asdkad.

48.   What’s some advice your F/O would tell you?

“Stop thinking you are not enough, stop thinking no one loves you, stop thinking you are worthless; stop with all your self-destruction.”

49.   What animal reminds you of your F/O?

Lion!! :D

51.   What’s the most interesting fact you know about your F/O?

50.   What color reminds you of your F/O?

Gold AND turquoise

Canon or made by me?? The first would be his favorite musician, because OH I like that musician too, even before knowing him. The second it’s about his scars.

[wethepixies]

Welcome to part two of our interview series, pixies! Today, we’re presenting our interview with four of the flaptastic people who make this rewrite possible. They had a lot to say, so this post is rather long - keep reading to see the full interviews!

Our first two Game Creator interviews feature two of our beloved artists - Rachel and Ci.

How did you first find out about the WTP project, and what inspired you to start working as an artist?

Rachel: In a computer graphics class I took last semester, one of our projects reminded me and my friend of Pixie Hollow, so we were reminiscing about the game and I really wanted to see if there was a rewritten version of it. When I found WTP and saw they were accepting artist applications, I was super excited because I loved the game and was starting to get into animation at the time as well. I also just adore the process of game development in general, so I was thrilled to become a part of WTP.

Ci was introduced to the project by a friend who’s also a staff member!

What is your favorite part of your job as a WTP artist?

Rachel: My favorite part is being able to contribute my work to a bigger project. Seeing the art I worked on in the game is really exciting to me. Just knowing that the work you put in is helping to further the game is really cool. As for my favorite thing to work on, it’s really strange, but I enjoy creating the UI buttons and signs for different meadows or shops.They’re super small and no one really pays attention to them, but they’re also extremely necessary so I guess I just like to make them, haha. They don’t always take too long to make but I think they’re cute. Also, I’m especially excited for all the new meadows, as I really enjoy helping to restore the beautiful art for the meadows.

Check out this gorgeous sign that Rachel restored for one of our meadow teleporters!

Ci: My favorite piece of art that I’ve created for WTP was probably a background I restored for a general winter theme/season back when I first joined. It’s not being used right now, but it’s pretty and you’ll just have to take my word for it :’)

How long does it take for you to work on art for WTP, and how do you fit that in your schedule?

Rachel: The time it takes really depends on how much of the project we have completed already. Oftentimes we’ll be working collaboratively and finish what other people have started. So if we are working on something from scratch it can take quite a while, but sometimes it’s just a matter of adding finishing touches and compiling pieces together to create a finished product. And each task takes a different amount of time. For instance, resizing something small will take a few minutes, but creating an atlas for fairy clothing can take hours, especially when you need to restore an item from scratch. Either way, I think it’s still beneficial for us to take our time to create the best product we can. Personally, I don’t always get to work everyday, but when I do, I’ll spend hours because I like to finish tasks in one sitting if I can, although I can’t always haha.  I think that working in moderation is always a good idea as long as you’re getting your work done, and knowing we have so many fans really pushes me to get tasks done and do them well. As for fitting it into my schedule, because of quarantine, I definitely have a lot more time to work on WTP, but during the school semester I would have to plan out what I needed to get done and when I needed to do it in order make sure I could get all of my school projects and WTP work done on certain days in order to avoid as much stress as possible. 

Ci: I don’t have time to work on artwork daily, but I do try to stay on top of what other people are working on, so a small chunk of my day is dedicated to discord. Sometimes I’ll be busy for weeks and do a whole bunch of tasks afterwards in one go, and sometimes I try to take on smaller things (pre-corona I’d sometimes spend time between lectures because that’s often the only time I have!). Some tasks are 5 minute jobs, like UI, but others, like adding clothing, take a few hours. Backgrounds probably take me the longest. A couple hours for a few days, if I have time to work on them daily. They’re really fun when starting!! but after day 3 it’s quite the grind. I like to sleep on those, since there’s so much detail in the PH backgrounds that I’ll inevitably miss something.

Rachel, you mentioned atlases and spritesheets - can you explain what they are and how you use them?

Rachel: An atlas and spritesheet contains all of the different variations of a clothing item or anything you can change on the fairy. So for instance, the hair atlas has all of the different types of hair you can choose when creating your fairy packed into one single file. So in order to make one you have to create all the hair pieces, position them correctly on a fairy reference, export each hair image, and then combine them all onto the atlas file. Then a json file is also created to describe where each image is in the file in order to use it in the game. The spritesheet is similar and is basically a horizontal version of the atlas with all of the images that we use in CAF to scroll through whatever you’re changing.

Do you start the graphics by hand or via some digital web design program?

Rachel: I almost always use digital programs. Sometimes I’ll plan something out quickly on paper but most of the time I’ll use Photoshop. We also use DragonBones for animation.

Ci: All of the research we do is online, so it saves a couple of steps and retains image quality to just keep everything digital. I also don’t have a scanner :’)

And finally, what’s the most challenging piece of art that you’ve made for WTP?

Rachel: The most challenging piece that I’ve done for WTP was probably the hair atlas for when a player creates a fairy because it was the first project I was taking on. All the hair was made already, I just had to resize, reposition, and fix any pieces that were lower quality, and although it was daunting at first, once I started, I was able to get the hang of it (even if it took a few tries), and now I’m super happy I learned how to do it.

Ci: We were missing a whole area of the CAF background (the part that shows up when you’re picking a name) that got passed around for one or two months, and eventually I got to work on it. It was the closest to a custom piece of art that I’ve made for WTP; the middle was a giant blur when I got to it. My motivation to complete it was honestly just being able to get it off the to-do list forever, when I was done I posted a before and after to the staff chat (which I try not to do bc it’s not really productive) because I was so excited about it :’))

__________________

We had so much fun learning more about our artists’ jobs! Next up, we decided to sit down with WTP game developer and administrator Teresa!

How did you first find out about the WTP project, and what inspired you to start working as a developer? 

Teresa: A friend I made in the Pixie Hollow community said that her favorite mini game was Bubble Bounce, so I decided to make it for her. I had started prototyping and showing it around, and someone from WTP saw my work and invited me to join the team.

As we know, WTP is a voluntary project. How do you fit working on WTP into your schedule?

Teresa: I’m actually quite good at time management, and I’ve decided to make WTP a priority. That means that I can’t always say ‘yes’ to other things I want to do, but that’s ok.

What are some of the main things you look for when adding staff members?

Teresa: You need to be able to take criticism well and communicate effectively. A certain level of quality needs to be maintained to build a good game, and criticism sheds light on any blind spots you may have. If you aren’t communicating clearly and frequently, then your value to the team is very low – everyone needs to be on the same page so that work doesn’t get redone and wasted, and to keep an accurate development schedule. Being willing to devote more than a couple of hours a week is also a major plus.

How do you decide which parts of the game you should work on first?

Teresa: There’s this concept called the Minimum Viable Product. Basically, you just strip the project down to what is necessary and work out the kinks. Then you can add new features that enhance the gameplay.

What’s the most challenging issue you’ve faced while creating the game?

Teresa: There was a problem with the animation plugin that I was hoping would be fixed by the maintainers before the demo release. It was a really big deal, the game would be entirely unplayable. At the last minute, I had to dig into the plugins source code and figure it out myself. In the end, it wasn’t actually so difficult – but boy was it stressful. Really I would say that the biggest problems have stemmed from not having enough artists on the team! There have been multiple times where we had to delay updates because we didn’t have all of the assets ready for me to use in the game.

How do you go about fixing a game bug?

Teresa: Gather all the info I can from users experiencing the bug, and try to reproduce it. Just observing the behavior is often enough to figure out the problem. When it’s not, check the logs or step through with the debugger.

Have you ever worked on or made a game before WTP?

Teresa: I’ve worked a bit on some 3D open source game projects, never worked on the multiplayer parts before, though. I also make mods for games.

Lastly, what are your favorite and most rewarding parts of being a game developer?

Teresa: Pushing the boundaries of my knowledge and comfort zone, definitely. As a developer, I’ve learned a lot of new technologies and some new domains specifically for WTP. I also find being able to fix things that I don’t like about games very rewarding. Being an administrator has benefitted me as well. As an admin, I’ve had to cultivate skills in team leadership and project management.

__________________

Finally, we interviewed Lavender Merryheart, our sound designer.

First off, how did you first find out about the WTP project?

Lavender: I found WTP from a Youtube video, and played the demo. I was excited to be able to re-visit PH and when I saw the audio designer application, I wanted to help out however I could!

Are you remaking the music from scratch based on any remaining audio from sources like youtube?

Lavender: Both! We salvage what we can, and re-create what’s needed if. In the future, there will be some new, original music too! When we need a sound effect or music, we first check to see if there’s a good quality clip preserved of the original. It needs to be clear and without extra background sounds. If we can’t find any, then I will dissect the sound or song and try to figure out how it was made, then recreate it.

You mentioned that you make new sounds if needed, how do you go about making them?

Lavender: New sound effects are made by piecing different recordings together, such as the audio you hear when you click the talent orbs, which was re-made from the sounds of a heavy book shutting and wind chimes. If we need to remake a song, I make a new track by re-recording each instrument’s part on a midi keyboard. Then it will be edited it in Logic Pro X, using instruments and synths from the Kontakt audio library.

What’s the part of being an audio designer that you’re most excited about?

Lavender: I’m most excited about getting to write new music for the game! I can’t reveal to you what it’s going to be used for yet, but in the process for the last WTP track I wrote, I thought about how to represent the area it will be used for and what instruments and mood would suit it the best. It was a lot of fun to try to both express my style and also give it that Pixie-Hollow-sound!

Finally, how do you fit working on WTP into your schedule?

Lavender: I keep a to-do list and project notes to help organize what needs to be done, and work on WTP between class assignments. To refrain from burning out, I try to spread out my different tasks and work on a variety of things.

__________________

After we learned about what goes on behind the scenes on WTP, we wanted to learn a little bit about some future plans and hopes the staff have for the game. 

Art wise, what sorts of things will be designed from scratch in the future?

Rachel: Although we still have a long way to go before creating our own work as we have to replicate what was in the original game first, I believe that new clothing and hair might be designed from scratch in the future.

Ci: Right now, we’re still committed to restoring the game in its original form–this means that we try not to design anything from scratch. We’ve discussed the possibility of custom content in the future (items + clothing, pets, meadows, maybe even minigames?), and when the time comes, all of that will be built from scratch. That said, pertaining to the look and feel of the original pixie hollow will be a priority for those updates too.

What game feature from Pixie Hollow are you most excited to have?

Teresa: Personally, I am excited for the skill system and wilderness! We have some new ideas to try out, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

Do you plan to have seasonal differences and events, as well as competitions and activities?

Teresa: Yep! Can’t wait! We are already featuring player’s outfits in the shop catalogue, so that’s sort of a mini fashion spotlight, but there’s definitely more exciting things to come. Fashion spotlight was one of the most beloved competitions/events in the original Pixie Hollow!

In the future, will the game be available for mobile and/or consoles?

Teresa: You can already play WTP on mobile! At some point we will have options that allow the game to run smoother on mobile devices. Console versions won’t be a thing, though.

Is there anything that was in the original Pixie Hollow that you’d like to change in WTP?

Lavender: I would change the whisper noise it made when you got a message, it got a bit annoying. And it would be really neat if you could choose from a few different songs to have played in your fairy’s home depending on your mood! I had the ice themed house and have heard the music a few too many times!

Teresa: There are things I want to tweak, and fully plan to! We have already added a couple of small new things, such as the second sitting pose and featuring real player’s outfits in the shop catalogue. I hope everyone enjoys them!

The last thing we wanted to talk about is the staff’s personal feelings about WTP and about their jobs, as well as ask them about their inspiration.

Is there anything new that working on WTP has teached you?

Rachel: As an artist here I am definitely learning new technical skills and developing as an artist in general. Some examples of art skills I’ve been able to develop include creating atlases and spritesheets for fairy clothing and hair, getting familiar with DragonBones as I’d never used it for animation, and just gaining more experience in Photoshop. And I basically just learned all these things by trying them out and asking questions if I needed help.

Lavender: Through WTP I’ve learned more about creating sound effects, because when remaking the old sounds for WTP, I really have to think about what each one is made out of (for example, the pouch sound was re-created using a paper bag rustling, leaves crunching, and a bell synth).

How do you feel about the community growing so much in a short amount of time?

Teresa: I really didn’t expect it, and it has been a bit stressful, but I hope we are handling it well. I would never have imagined that a TikTok would be the reason either! Having more eyes on us makes me feel restless. We had to adapt the discord server to keep it safe and make information more accessible to new members.

What do you remember about Pixie Hollow? And did it change your life in any way?

Lavender: I joined right at the beginning, and loved how it really felt like you were stepping into a different, magical world. My favorite thing to do was decorating and creating/collecting items for my house, as well as the minigames and item crafting/ baking, I’m most excited to see these features again! Also, a good memory from the game I have is going to the summer pool party in the ballroom, and playing games in the tearoom with friends! The music in Pixie Hollow was one of my earliest inspirations for pursuing a career in film/game scoring. Currently I am studying for a degree in film/game scoring! I’m obsessed with fantasy games, nature, fairy tales, magic, and mythology, and I write music to try and illustrate the stories and have the listener feel like they’re visiting the scene. You can hear some of my original music on Spotify under the name June Westfield!

Rachel: I was so young that I have trouble remembering everything. I do remember sometimes getting on the phone with my friends and talking as we played together and explored meadows, which was really fun. I also really enjoyed completing tasks and playing the minigames. I have no idea why that was so fun to me, but I just liked getting achievements and beating my scores.  

Do you feel like some people may have unrealistic expectations for WTP? And do you think it can ever be as big as Pixie Hollow was?

Teresa: Yes, but I can’t blame them. So far I am the only developer to have actually worked on this game, so it’s a lot of pressure, but of course the players can’t know that. For some reason the things that everyone thinks will be the easiest to code are always the more difficult ones, funnily enough. For example, a flying mechanic like the original game is sort of complex, whereas adding new meadows is extremely simple. Do I think WTP will ever be as big as PH? Definitely not. Pixie Hollow had millions of players, Disney advertised it, and it had a full development team behind it. A lot of the original players will have moved on. I’m actually surprised that so many people have found us already!

Are there any artists that you look up to or are inspired by?

Rachel: I don’t have anyone specific in mind who I look up to, but I do watch a lot of cartoons and really admire animation and all of the work that goes into it. I get really inspired seeing different animated works and am super impressed by the entire process of it.

Ci: I used to actively make art outside of WTP and definitely had a whole list of people whose styles I looked up to, but now that I’ve moved away from that I mostly remember individual pieces. I had to dig some up for this question! loish, gawki, and Hethe Srodawa, are a few.

Lavender: Some composers that inspire me are Enya, Faun, Loreena McKennitt, and Secret Garden. They are all fantasy/new age genre artists that create enchanting music!

The WTP community is a great place to make friends! Is there a person in the staff that you’ve formed a strong friendship with?

Rachel: I’ve definitely become a lot closer with many of the staff members, whether it be looking up to certain people like our team leads, chatting with the other artists in DMs and helping each other out, or just having fun conversations with all the other staff members and sharing funny stories and pictures.

Teresa: Asteria is probably the best friend I’ve made at WTP, as we have talked the most. I have also met Kass in real life – she’s the sweetest! I love everyone on our team.

(Kass is one of our moderators - we’ll hear from her in the final interview post!)

And finally, What does working on a game that’s so loved by people mean to you?

Teresa:  It is so heartwarming to be a part of something that brings people joy and makes them nostalgic. Pixie Hollow’s fan base can make me a bit anxious at times. Sometimes a group of players will want one thing, and then another group wants the exact opposite and it can be hard to make a choice. There’s a lot of pressure in trying to stay true to the original game’s vision while also being fresh, but it drives me to deliver the best work I can. I put a lot of time into WTP, and have actually burnt out a few times already. Luckily, I love building things so much that it never lasts long.

________________

Next up in our interview series - our social media team and server moderators! Stay tuned to hear their answers to some of your questions.

[satoshi-mochida]

Publisher Activision and developer Toys for Bob have will release a Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time demo to uses who digitally pre-order the game for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One on September 16, the companies announced.

The demo will include two levels from Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, featuring Crash Bandicoot and Neo Cortex as playable characters. It will also let users experience some of the new Quantum Masks: “Kupuna-Wa” to control time and “Lani-Loi” to phase objects in and out of existence. The demo will be available to download until the game’s launch to all users who pre-order the game digitally, past or present.

Additionally, the PlayStation Blog has gone up with the first gameplay video and information on playable character Tawna Bandicoot. Here are the details:

In Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, our heroes Crash and Coco set off on an action-packed adventure across space and time where they encounter more than a few familiar faces from the classic N. Sane Trilogy. One character that we were really excited to shine the spotlight on in this new story was Tawna Bandicoot.

Appearing only in the first game of the trilogy as Crash’s girlfriend, Tawna was the damsel in distress archetype and we never got to really learn much about her. Early on in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Crash and Coco cross paths with a Tawna from what we at Toys For Bob have been calling the “Tawnaverse,” an alternate dimension where she is the hero in her own story. This gave us the opportunity to rethink Tawna and establish a clear new voice for her in Crash 4.

To make “Tawnaverse” Tawna a fully fleshed out character, we had to answer some core questions about her: How is this Tawna different from the one we already know? What happened to her that made her this way? What are her key personality traits? What does she sound like? If Tawna is the hero of her universe, how would she respond to different situations?

The answers to these questions, and many more, helped us to discover a strong, dynamic & multi-dimensional (literally) version of Tawna that’s fierce and aspirational. What’s even more exciting is that in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time you will actually be able to swing into action as this new Tawna! Joining Neo Cortex and Dingodile as a playable character, Tawna has her own unique playstyle and an exciting new look as well…

A Bold New Look

As an alternate universe character, we had a tremendous amount of creative freedom to re-envision Tawna. This Tawna is an experienced adventurer, a daring, driven, and confident hero. She needed to exude strength and dexterity, so we looked towards powerful athletic bodies as inspiration for her physique. She is a lone wolf who likes to think that she doesn’t need anyone’s help, and we wanted that to come across in all aspects of her look, from her outfit to her range of expressions.

We iterated on her design for quite a while with early concepts ranging from an Australian outback adventurer, to a tough as nails rock climbing daredevil, before finally finding our Tawna. The quirky mix of her spiked leather jacket, punky half shaved, blue-dyed hairstyle. and bright pink leg warmers shows a woman who walks to the beat of her own drum. Everyone on the art team, from concept artists, to character modelers, to the amazing riggers and animators did an amazing job bringing her to life!

High-Flying Fun

While we’re super excited about Tawna’s cool new look and the pivotal role that she plays in the story, we’ve also designed an awesome new playstyle and move set for her. Each of the three new playable characters in Crash 4 has a unique way to move about and interact with the world. Dingodile uses his vacuum to give himself an extra floaty jump, Neo Cortex has a speedy forward dash move, and Tawna is no exception.

Equipped with a versatile hook-shot ability that allows her to quickly traverse levels and attack enemies and break crates from afar, Tawna feels as powerful and exciting as she looks. She also has a devastating ground-pound attack, spin kicks, and can reach new heights with her acrobatic wall jump. Playing as Tawna feels fast, fluid, and fresh, while still retaining the precision and intensity that makes Crash Bandicoot such a unique platforming experience.

From the Heart

The new Tawna holds a special place in our hearts at Toys for Bob. As game developers, we’re passionate about telling stories and creating characters that delight and inspire. We seek to promote and expand upon the representation of female characters in games, and think that this new Tawna is a complex and aspirational hero that all players will fall in love with. We can’t wait for everyone to experience Tawna when she leaps into action in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time is due out for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 2. Read more about the game here, here, and here.

Watch the footage below. View a set of screenshots at the gallery.

[rpgmgames]

August’s Featured Game: Marinette

DEVELOPER(S): Teal Crown ENGINE: RPG Maker MV GENRE: Horror, Puzzle, Adventure WARNINGS: Sensitive Themes, Blood/Light Gore SUMMARY: A little girl named Marinette, in the wake of a splitting family and a change of homes, is having a birthday. But this, her eleventh birthday, will present a deadly opportunity to fulfill a special promise. On the night before her birthday, she is drawn into a strange realm; an unnatural dollhouse, populated with dolls who are not quite what they seem. A web of strings lying in wait, and threatening to ensnare the poor marionette; warping her perception, and twisting her every move. Will the strings attach, and force her to become an unwilling puppet, or will she escape this surreal web of strings? What will she have to do to avoid the dangers of the dollhouse, and set herself free?

Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *Mitty: "Hello, I'm Mitty! Thank you so much for the opportunity to participate in this interview. I'm the main developer of the game and I'm working with a team of friends to make this game a reality. I work mainly on the visuals and programming, and I'll be representing the team, alongside Third! I've been on the community for around two years, even though I tend to not be active very often." *Third: "Hoi, I’m Third! I appreciate you reaching out to interview us. I’m the main composer and writer of Marinette, and I work under Mitty to make the story and soundtrack what we want it to be. I’ve been in the community for little less than Mitt but am even less active in most of my developer discords."

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *Mitty: "The game is essentially about a girl that gets trapped inside a dollhouse. A simple concept really can go far ahaha I've always loved themes related to creepy dolls so I wanted to create something related to that. What pushed me initially to start were obviously the inspiration of seeing other devs creating, seeing how far you could go with these engines and create amazing interactive stories, however the huge support from a friend was what made me actually start past the planning and dreaming!" *Third: "Marinette is a story about a little girl becoming entangled in the complicated family and supernatural landscape she finds herself in on her birthday. I enjoy writing short stories about this kind of thing so it’s fantastic to work on a larger project about one of my favorite subjects. My primary inspiration and introduction to this kind of game in general was Pocket Mirror, and I use it the most as a model for how to do certain things. However, I also draw a lot of inspiration from masterpieces like Aria’s Story, Ib, Witch’s House, and Alice Mare."

How long have you been working on your project? *Mitty: "The project has been in the works for around two years now! The first year was mostly planning and right now we are on the right track with the programming and asset creation for the demo, as well as music and sound design for later development. Planning isn't over yet though, especially for the final game." *Third: "I’ve been working on this for almost two years. The soundtrack possessed most of my earlier attention, but now it’s taken a backseat to writing, now that I’m actively writing the scripts for the game now. "

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Mitty: "Yes! The game has inspirations from plenty of sources, not only strictly RPG Maker Horror games, or games in general for that matter. If I were to mention those, of course games like Ib, The witch's house, Alice Mare, Pocket Mirror, Yume Nikki & .flow, Stray Cat Crossing, Mogeko's games...etc quickly come to mind. When it comes to the aesthetics and visuals, the inspirations come from several different places, including games like Alice Madness Returns, Dofus, Yomawari, The Legend of Mana, Little Nightmares...the list goes on; or other media, like Inu Curry's animation style or video creator nana825763, as well as some anime and music videos. Silent hill is also a huge inspiration for the atmosphere, and hopefully we can pull it off well!" *Third: "My primary inspiration, as I’ve said earlier, is Pocket Mirror, both for its masterful writing and soundtrack. The game’s soundtrack is the main reason I still play piano. Whenever I’m feeling musical, my fingers always hunt out the same kind of haunting, mysterious, and sometimes peaceful and playful melodies that Pocket Mirror is rife with. In the end, our soundtrack is probably going to sound like Pocket Mirror and Aria’s Story’s soundtracks were meshed together. Story wise, commonplace elements in this genre like demons, monsters, mean parents and puzzles that tell the story are commonplace for a reason, and certainly find their way into this one, in their own special way. Every other game I’ve mentioned involves them in some form or another. And young, curious protagonists are also a blast to write and do evil things to and put in difficult, dangerous situations. "

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *Mitty: "We surely have! Many of them in different areas ahaha Taking away bug hunting, I am primarily an artist, so programming for me is a secondary thing. Because of this it's easy to get carried away and hard to realise what can and can't be done. I don't want the game to be visually boring if I can make things move and seem alive! The way I'm handling it is programming like an artist: I think in my head what cool things I can do with my art by not having it completely still, and then it's a matter of executing it on the engine. However this comes with a downside. I tend to tweak things a lot, and that takes quite some time, but I honestly think it's worth it ahaha Also I find it hard to start writing, but when I do, I can't stop orz. Other challenges are also finding plot holes. This is fixed with a lot of studying the story, gathering inspiration and talking with the team. I also struggle a bit with communicating with the team, but thankfully they are all very nice and understanding." *Third: "Main challenge is overcoming the sheer weight of how much I have to learn about music and writing in order for this game to be what I want it to be. I’m a perfectionist, and when I care about something, I can’t tolerate it being worse than it could’ve been. Also, writing is getting more and more complicated and there’s more things and details to keep track of so as not to create inconsistencies or plot holes, especially as we try to revise it and make major changes to the story (Mitt will know what I’m talking about). "

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Mitty: "It changed a lot, not only in terms of the story and writing, but visually too. The basic concept is close to being the same, though. You can check out old posts in the blog where I consider different styles of mapping and such. Actually, don't, please. It's too old...and my writing...oh god." *Third: "The writing has come a long way, but now that we’ve fleshed out and written down much of the backstory, it’s a much more complicated story than what Mitt first showed me when I joined."

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Mitty: "Initially it was just me, occasionally having Mia to talk about the story and help develop it. Rindre joined as a voice actress very early on and also helped in other aspects of the game. Then I also talked about it with two friends I know in real life, one helped with organization and the other with some concept art, but they aren't that active anymore, even though I still count them as part of the team (Thank you guys btw if you're reading this). Eventually I met Third, an amazing composer and writer, and I asked him to join in! He brought along a friend who is also an amazing composer and writer, Code, and these two are complete madmen of music and writing and I'm super glad to be working with them, as they are super passionate and it makes me really happy ahaha. Bruno is also a really dedicated composer that is helping with a few tracks as well! Miku and Luccinia are two super talented and kind artists that have also been helping a ton with concept art, and their ideas have certainly improved the game as well. We are welcome to more concept artists, though! More heads, more ideas ahaha Recently we got the voice actresses for a few characters in the game, when we did the auditions, and hopefully soon another friend will jump aboard and help with organization and writing! We are a relatively small team, and sometimes progress goes a bit slowly since we can get busy, but we are all doing our best! I’m glad that I’m not alone. Links for their pages and such can be found on the team section on the blog, go support them if you can!"

What is the best part of developing a game? *Mitty: "For me, personally, I love seeing what my team mates come up with, whether it is music or concept art. I also enjoy the love and support we get, and it makes me excited in the development. As for the creation part, I like programming challenging cutscenes and doing cool things with the assets. Progress updates can also be fun to make when I have the time." *Third: "My favorite part is showing Mitt what I’ve written and composed. Making her happy and excited with my work is extremely fulfilling. "

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Mitty: "Oh, yes! Besides being a cool break from programming hell, it helps me make it less of a hell ahaha I like improvising, though, so I think I play RPG Maker games because I enjoy them for the most part." *Third: "Occasionally, not really. I don’t play many games and I’ve played the heck out of the ones I have."

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Mitty: "Ah I don't know, honestly. I think I can relate to every character in one way or another, and it's hard picking one, especially since the game isn't out yet and I'd like to keep most characters hidden until the demo. Marinette is definitely one of my favourites, though, I just love how innocent and cute she is. Her cheekiness can be made super interesting ahaha" *Third: "My favorite character is definitely Pierre. He’s a complete blast to write, and gives me lots of cool things to describe and say through him, from his magic tricks to his killer lines and quotes."

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Mitty: "Hm...Having organized things better in the beginning would have saved a lot of time now, but I don't think it's been that big of a deal anymore. I don't have any regrets that I'm aware of at the moment since everything until this point was necessary to learn and get to where we are now."

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Mitty: "I'm not sure yet, it depends on the reception and how willing I'll be to continue the story. Even though I would find it fun to make comics, another game or a different midia, realistically I can't tell how willing I'll be to continue developing content about it after the game is finished. Honestly, I hope I can develop more projects on Marinette, we do have content for that, and I absolutely love it with my heart! But it's also equally important to move on to another story. Only time will tell!" Third: "I hope to, but that day is very far away for me. I’ll be gone for quite some time after Marinette is finished, and I hope I’m not forgotten by the time I return. Perhaps I’ll entertain myself with additional short stories exploring the various aftermaths of the game."

What do you most look forward to upon/after the release of a project? *Mitty: "I honestly just want to get the story out there. I'm hoping people will enjoy it if they play the game, and will have a special place in their hearts to keep it on. This project means a lot to me, and having it making people feel things is what I'm looking forward to. I'd love to see other people playing it, definitely. I imagine I'll eventually be relieved to have finally completed it, it'll be a big moment for me to sigh be proud of creating. I'll be able to move on to work on other fun things while I see how this little child of a game is going to do out there in the wild, and that's always nice!" *Third: "Fan reaction, 100%. Having people ask me questions about my work and telling me how much they enjoyed it is my favorite part of writing."

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *Mitty: "Yes, I don't want to feel empty with nothing to do when I finish the game. I know it will be great and all, but I've been working on it for so long that it's hard to imagine not working on it ahaha! It's a really fun hobby, but it's also engraved in my heart. I want it to be the best it can be, of course, so I'm scared of bugs, inconsistencies and overall it being clearly a bad game. I'm hoping that people will help with critiques on the demo, so I have a better outside perspective of where we are going. I don't want to drop the game, so I'm scared of having to take a long break from it during the development. I'm worried of being a terrible team leader as well." *Third: "I dread plot holes more than anything, and I dread a dull and overall unimpactful story. I want a tale that will punch the viewer in the gut, hard. I want to make them cry. I want to make them laugh. I want them to draw what I wrote, and explore it further in hopefully-not-too-sexual fanfiction."

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Mitty: "Don't be scared to start. You're going to suffer mid-way if it's a long term project, but keep pushing through, you'll learn a lot and it becomes easier with time. Take breaks and take it easy, step by step. LIST STUFF AND MAKE BACKUPS. Learn with short projects first. Ask for advice from people you admire, but never hold them on a pedestal. It’s always helpful to be a jack of all trades! Try to think from an outsider perspective if you're not sure of how it's going, and if you can, tell people you trust about the game and ask for opinions. Always take criticism well, but don't stress too much over harsher or even meaner comments. Have fun and never forget your starts, the people you meet and the reason you're doing the project for. If you're also an artist, writer, musician, remember this is a great opportunity to add something interesting to your portfolio. Cool visuals attract people, but they are not everything that will keep them hooked." *Third: "The best part of making a game is the people you make it with. The story is the most important ingredient of your game. Prioritize it first, and everything else will fall into place around it. Otherwise, everything will serve some other aspect of your game, and that’s rarely a good thing. Always speak your mind; do not every not say something just because it’ll hurt someone’s feelings. Obviously don’t be a tool, but if you ever have to choose between hurting the game and someone’s pride, pick someone’s pride. It’s much kinder in the long run."

Question from last month's featured dev Froach Club: Have you ever had a moment where you got completely stuck or became intensely frustrated while using RPG Maker? *Mitty: "Yes I have, I think everyone has QwQ Despite silly mistakes, I've gotten stuck several times, but honestly it's usually either us doing something stupidly hard that can be done another way, or we are just not skilled enough yet, and it's better to come back later. You can usually do most things you wanna do if you have the advantage of knowing the programming language your RPG Maker Engine uses I think. Google is your friend always, and sleeping about it also helps. I once dreamt of a whole sequence to fix a problem, and it worked! ahaha Always take it easy and don't give up, but know your limits and the limits of the engine!"

We mods would like to thank Teal Crown for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out Marinette if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[miximax-hell]

Happy Goku Day, everyone!!

I checked and, miraculously, I still have followers on this blog. In fact, I’ve gained some since the last time I posted, for some reason! I’m not going to question it, though. Just... bless. But, hey, long time no see! As usual!

This time, I’m going back to my roots. The first drawings I posted on this blog were meant to show my love towards original Raimon, and it’s never a bad time to remind you all that I still adore these kids. Especially now that my friend @dust-monsters-under-my-bed​ has reminded me of them. Go check her art, btw! She’s not very active on Tumblr, but you can find her art on Twitter right here: https://twitter.com/rachelmonart

Anyway, she’s watching Inazuma Eleven for the first time and she’s made me think again about how much love these kids deserve, BECAUSE THEY SURE GOT NONE FROM HINO. DAMN YOU, HINO. So, today, let’s talk about the one and only IE character whose feet are classified as mass destruction weapons, who decided to borrow power from someone who will make you all question me, my logic and my tastes: Yamhan (or, as he is known in the west, Tiencha), THE FUSION OF YAMCHA AND TENSHINHAN FROM DRAGON BALL.

Introducing ShoYamHan! More on him under the cut.

So, first of all, how have you all been? I suppose many of you, like myself, are being told to stay at home to fight this situation. I salute all of you who do your best to stay safe and not help spread anything. It’s a very necessary fight, even if it can be boring at times. Many of us have friends or relatives fighting on the frontline, though (unless you yourself are the doctor or nurse friend!), and we hopefully know that staying at home is a small price to pay.

As for me, I got a job in December and lost it last month, so... yeah. It’s not been great. Still, something I’ve been working hard on for a while should be released soon and that’s so exciting! MY NAME WILL FINALLY BE ON SOMETHING’S CREDITS AND I CAN’T WAIT FOR IT TO BE UP.

But, anyway, back to business!

Rachel suggested I talk about the reasons behind this particular miximax, and considering it makes for a perfect parallel with my first posts, where I talked about the reasons behind Max’s and Kageno’s miximaxes, I’m all up for it! But, this time, I will have to do something new: explain WHO THE HECK YAMHAN IS. So let’s start with a picture of this handsome devil.

As most of you hopefully know, this project is about miximaxing Inazuma characters with video game characters. No anime, movies or anything else. Only and exclusively video games. Dragon Ball has probably spawned all those things, but it started as a manga, so you’d be right to think it most definitely does not qualify for this project. And, indeed, Dragon Ball doesn't. What DOES qualify, however, are Dragon Ball characters exclusive, or first introduced, in a video game. And that’s exactly the case we’re dealing with here!

Growing up, I loved Dragon Ball games. Even before I watched the show properly, in fact! I would go to my friend’s house, who was a fan of the show, and we'd play the Dragon Ball Budokai games nonstop with absolutely zero regrets. Those were some great times. And once I came to know the source material, the game that blew my mind the most was Dragon Ball Budokai 2. Was it the best one? Not necessarily. Is it my favourite? Not by a long shot. Still, it was the most creative! Most games follow the story of DBZ, which, obviously, is always the same. But Budokai 2 wasn’t afraid to do new things. Its story mode resembled a tabletop game and it was more than happy to deviate from the source material in some really fun ways; most notably, with exclusive fusions.

Budokai 2 introduced us all to Yamhan, the fusion of Yamcha and Tenshinhan, two long forgotten characters in the series, as they (and especially poor Yamcha) didn’t do anything especially relevant past... well, past the original Dragon Ball. As a champion of the unloved, that blew my mind. There were other fun things in Budokai 2, but what fascinated me and stayed in my thoughts for years to come was Yamhan. It was just such a cool concept. Two underdogs who had fallen into obscurity fusing to create a much greater warrior!

Of course, Yamhan isn’t the only videogame exclusive characters in Dragon Ball. He isn’t the first, nor the last. Yamhan isn’t the strongest, nor the weakest. But I haven’t played FighterZ nor Fusions (yet), nor pretty much any game that wasn’t on PS2 or GBA. And even if I had, I doubt Android 21 or any of the HUNDREDS of combinations available in Fusions would captivate me and my imagination as much as Yamhan did back in the day. Yamhan was a fusion, which is something that has always fascinated me to begin with. I MEAN, THIS ENTIRE BLOG IS ABOUT FUSING CHARACTERS, SO I THINK IT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS LMAO But he wasn’t just one among hundreds. He was this very specific, never-seen-before, cool as heck and usable fusion. Like, wow. That was wild for me. Sign me up, man.

But, you know, I try not to let that sway me too much. Of course, I wouldn’t likely pick a character I hate for a miximax, but, still, my preferences aren’t everything. And choosing Yamhan begs a question that I have already alluded to: if Yamhan isn’t the strongest game-exclusive DB character out there, then, why him? Well, the answer to that is related to the biggest problem posed by the sheer concept of miximaxing with a Dragon Ball character:

Power escalation.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Goku is, pretty much, the strongest character that has ever played the lead in any manga, and one of the strongest fictional characters ever, period. By the end of the Dragon Ball Super anime, he has EXCEEDED THE POWER OF MANY LITERAL GODS AND IS (or has been) A CANDIDATE TO BECOME ONE. You may prefer One Piece, or Naruto, or anything else, but few things reach the astronomical, reality-bending scope of Dragon Ball. Not to say DB is the best series--I’m just saying that it’s so out of control at this point (and I love it). But, of course, the stronger Goku is, the stronger the villains need to be, and Goku ends up becoming EVEN stronger than said villains. Rinse and repeat dozens of times until you can make an entire universe disappear by raising your hand.

Now, imagine applying that out-of-this-world power escalation to a context where the power balance isn’t so outrageous. For example, Inazuma Eleven.

Goku wriggling in his sleep is more powerful than Zeus, and an accidental sneeze would smash all of Ixal Fleet to smithereens. Do you see what this would do to the balance? It would ruin it completely, as anyone who miximaxed with Goku would be immediately a one-person army able to defeat ANY opponent--and if the opponent were to be EVEN GREATER than Goku, well, the rest simply wouldn’t stand a chance. Ever. Remember: the point of this project isn’t to create perfect and unbeatable players, and I’m not trying to prioritize anyone or make them noticeably stronger than anyone else just because I happen to like X more than Y. That completely ruins the tension and the fun (and my attempts to create justice in this unfair universe). The point is to come up with a balanced team full of players with strong points, but with flaws, too, that complement each other when they play together against stronger enemies.

So, if we go with Dragon Ball, and I love Dragon Ball WAY too much to not include it in this project in some way, we have to be careful and avoid overdoing it. Balance is key. And now that you know why I didn’t just choose the fusion between Beerus and Whis or something crazy like that, I’ll move on to explain what makes Yamhan a very interesting option. I SWEAR THERE ARE SOME ACTUAL REASONS.

First of all, the very concept. You know, Yamcha and Tenshinhan fused to created Yamhan, and now, Shourin is fusing with a fusion. That’s just... hecking cool. I won’t lie--my preferences towards Yamhan didn’t tip the scales towards making this happen, but my preferences towards FUSIONCEPTION totally did. XD But there’s more, thankfully.

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted a fighting game character to miximax with Shourin because it fits his theme best. I’m not big on fighting games, though, so it was quite tough. Especially because just any fighting game wouldn’t do it. Shourin is a martial artist. As I mentioned at the very beginning of this post, his feet are his weapons. His entire body is a weapon, really. If I were to suddenly miximax him with some character who wields a sword or an axe, for example, it would be a complete disservice to Shourin. Original Raimon members don’t have much going on for themselves, and I’m going to cut or ignore the ONE thing that makes one of them special? Not in a zillion years. Shourin needs to fight with his body. That, of course, cuts many characters already: pretty much the entire roster of Soul Calibur, many members of Mortal Kombat, many from games like Skullgirls (which I still want to try to represent here in the future, because @lumaga worked on it and it makes me happy just because of that), etc. For a very long time, I considered someone like Ryu, from Street Fighter, but then it hit me: I have never played Street Fighter and I don’t want to include him just because I know what a Hadouken is. It’d be... cheap. And fake. Thankfully, as I also mentioned earlier, I played LOTS of Budokai back in the day and I am an actual fan, so I don’t have to pretend to know what the heck I’m talking about. XD And, thankfully, most of the characters in DB games fight with their bare fists and legs, so they perfectly fit my needs. Yamhan is, of course, no exception.

Now comes my favourite reason to choose Yamhan and not, well, literally any other DB game-exclusive character. And that reason is style.

Remember that power escalation thing I mentioned earlier? Well, it’s epic, but it comes with a big disadvantage: power ends up becoming much more important than skill. Early Dragon Ball was very focused on fighting styles. There was an ongoing feud between the Turtle School and the Crane School, who taught different martial arts to fight in different ways, and there was a big plot involving which one was superior. It wasn’t just about who was strongest, but about who fought better. With time, that disappeared, though. Even though battles became flashier, aerial and more spectacular, they were much more indistinct. Sure, there were gimmicks like “heh, I have a tail and I will sometimes hit you with it,” or “I will try to hit your face with the palm of my hand instead of my fist for some unspecified reason,” but that isn’t... much. You just see very fast people avoiding equally as fast punches to the face. And Goku, the main character, only shows some style when he adopts a fighting pose BEFORE fighting. Once the punches start flying, it’s all a race to see who can hit the other the hardest in the gut to make them spit blood. Cool nonetheless, but still.

Ironically, though, it’s two of the least relevant characters who never really lost those styles that made them unique when they were first introduced to the series. And those are, of course, Yamcha and Tenshinhan.

Yamcha joins the Turtle School and learns techniques as classic as the Kamehameha, but he had his own style way before that, based on attacking and tearing enemies apart like a wolf would. This is best represented by his signature move, the Rougafuufuuken or Wolf Fang Fist. He never drops this style, but instead builds up on it through his training to make it even fiercer.

Tenshinhan has different things going for himself. First of all, he is a hybrid between a human being and a civilization known as the Three-Eyed People, which grants him powers such as growing extra arms from his back or dividing in 4. Not just moving so fast that it looks like there’s four of him, but ACTUALLY dividing into 4 separate bodies. In terms of skills, he was a Crane School student, but when he realised the wrong of his master’s doings, he decided to start training and developing on his own. Basically, a path that mirrors Yamcha’s, but both lead to unique fighting styles unlike anyone else’s in this universe. And, most importantly, none of them depend on appendixes that are always there, like the aforementioned tail, so they totally work for us here!

Shourin is a proper martial artist. He wouldn’t want to make himself crazy strong as much as he would like to refine his technique and learn new moves and tricks. Martial arts are about discipline, self-control, skill and protection. He would take a cool-ass combo based on a wolf’s moves over earth-shattering strength any day of the week, hence why the fact that these two have so many techniques to offer is so appealing.

Finally, and probably least, is the design idea that immediately came to my mind when I thought of a miximax between Shourin and Yamhan. Historically, I have had to work with characters like Fudou, who are usually mostly bald and they miximax with someone with hair, thus making for some very... difficult things to figure out. But the idea of miximaxing Shourin, who is mostly bald, with Yamhan, who is ALSO mostly bald, was just golden and too good to ignore. And the fact that Yamhan has three eyes GIVES ME AN EXCUSE TO ADD A THIRD CROSS-SHAPED EYE ON SHOURIN’S FOREHEAD. IF A MIXIMAX BETWEEN BALD PEOPLE WAS GOLDEN, THIS IS OUTRIGHT PLATINUM.

Shourin would've probably looked a lot less like a joke if he had had hair covering his entire head or if I had at least given him proper eyes... but that would no longer be the Shourin I love. Not to mention that it’s very likely that Shourin willingly shaves his head to begin with (even if the ponytail ain’t doing him any favours--but that’s just Inazuma logic, so let’s not look too much into it), just like Tenshinhan or Krillin do, so he would probably be happier to keep that, uh, advantage. Relative advantage, but still.

As a side note, though, we can’t forget the balance. When Yamcha and Tenshinhan fuse, they undoubtedly become the strongest human being in the DB universe, overcoming the one who is usually strongest: Krillin. A fusion is always greater than its parts individually, and Yamcha and Tenshinhan aren’t so far away from Krillin to begin with, so that’s not even a question. Regardless, they still don’t have that overwhelming and surreal strength from other characters, so we still don’t get into absolutely OP territory. Yamhan is strong enough to provide Shourin with a power that can make a real difference without completely putting him above everyone else.

Sadly, Yamhan doesn’t really have a backstory, as he’s a game-exclusive character that, honestly, was probably only there for a laugh. That means there is no deep connection between them. We can, however, make obvious connections between Shourin, an aspiring martial artist whose dream, as stated in IE2, was to study at Manyuuji (Kogure’s school) for their focus on martial arts, and is now trying to become stronger to protect what he loves, and two skilled warriors who have been training nonstop under different masters and on their own for basically their entire lives to keep becoming stronger and more skilled in order to defend what’s precious to them and, simply, to be the best version of themselves they can be. Upon seeing such dedicated warriors and artists, Shourin would undoubtedly want to learn from them and, if necessary, borrow their strength too.

Or he might just fanboy and ask for their autographs, honestly. I sure as heck want Yamcha’s. And his baseball card.