jesncin

[jesncin]

Late to say this but I actually do not think adult Goldie would be Ma'al's type

Part of what make Nohj Enitnatsnoc appealing to Ma'al in the first place was him being a loser

asdfasf he'll never admit it openly but yes Ma'al is big into loser guys.

[jesncin]

MAWS has made me wonder if some people put too much emphasis on a creator's passion for their work being an indicator of its quality, and if past examples of people praising media for "heartfelt, earnest, and clearly indicative of the crew's passion" were glossing over the skill, talent, hard work, and other factors that made it work. You can not deny the creators of MAWS had genuine love for what they made, yet I personally feel like this is a case highlighting how that alone is rarely enough for telling a competent story. I feel like this perspective has been bolstered by past instances of executive meddling to the point of critical opinions often being negated as "not understanding what hurdles crews had to deal with", even with shows like MAWS that had a lot of free reign with their decisions.

oh you are right on the money. "Love for the material" alone is not a marker of a story or adaptation's quality. Undoubtedly, the MAWS crew clearly adore Superman to such a point that they keep having to reiterate that they will not be including Batman in their show- they want to focus on Supes (never mind the rogues they stole), but all that love didn't translate to well written conflict (or dialogue, pacing, character motivation, etc) or a single solid episode.

Meanwhile STAS is often aptly described as "a Superman show written by Bat-fanboys" (and it absolutely shows, the episodes jump in quality when Bruce is around)- the crew even admitted that they weren't motivated to make a Superman show, it was something mandated. STAS certainly doesn't hold a candle to BTAS by a long shot, and I agree with DCAU fans who say "there's probably only 10 great episodes in STAS". But that's the thing. That's 10 better episodes than all of MAWS. Even STAS' worst episodes are still better written than MAWS. And this is coming from a crew that don't care for Superman to the same level. It's still a better show on the mere merit that the BTAS crew assigned to it are competent storytellers. They still created iconic original characters like Livewire which even MAWS ended up adapting.

There are a ton of mindsets to approach an adaptation of a source material as massive as the DC mythos. One of the most common pitfalls is what I like to call being "Married to the Text"- it comes from loving the source material so much that the creative is unwilling to make changes. That's one of the many ways loving the source material too much can hold a creative back. MAWS is the other direction- a ton of crazy changes that miss the point and potential themes of Superman.

tldr, Love for the Source Material doth not make a competently written adaptation. So many other factors go into creative writing.

[jesncin]

kampung boy

[jesncin]

Coming soon, a self indulgent lil zine for your kitchens

[jesncin]

When death meets life💔🌧️

and moments become like a lifetime, we continue to live in tents under the threat of bombing, rain, and hunger. This nightmare continues for more than a year and two months, and under inhumane conditions, our children and our families face death daily, not only on the war fronts, but also in the silence of the harsh nature. Between the lack of security and the lack of hope, the tents of the displaced become a temporary shelter for endless pain, and a fragile refuge for hearts crushed by pain.🙏🏻😭

The heavy rains fall, turning the tents into swamps of mud and water, completely submerging them, and increasing the suffering of those living inside them. Children are born in unbearable conditions. They do not find anything to eat or anything to protect them from the harsh winter cold. Pregnant women face double danger, having no food to nourish them or warmth to protect their tired bodies. The streets are drowning in water, and children are playing in the mud innocently, but they do not know that this mud may be the last thing they touch in their lives.😫❌

Despite all these tragedies, the tents themselves remain the target of repeated attacks by the Israeli occupation. There is no mercy, no discrimination, the fighting does not stop, and no place in Gaza is immune from the shells of war. Every day that passes, innocent lives are falling, without even being allowed a chance at a decent life. There is no safe place for children to laugh, and no places worthy of human life for women and children.🙏🏻💔🥺

Please donate to help keep us warm and satisfied🙏🏻💔

@90-ghost

[jesncin]

Kal-El and Lois Liando on a nightly flight.

Redraw of a Jorge Jimenez illustration (under the cut)

I always loved Jorge Jimenez's art! And I've been itching to do a rendition of this Clois illustration. While I like the strong silhouette of Superman pulling Lois into the sky, I wanted a kind of waltzing in the sky vibe :> this was fun!

[jesncin]

//dead in america issue 11 spoiler talk

didn't doubt Noah would be alive but man buzz off with that ending though?? Noah is cured of his disability like?? you can't just tout representation only to take it away at the end? I'll do an informal write up eventually about how sign and disability was handled with Noah but for the record:

Outside of 1 dream sequence, neither John or any able bodied person ever signed back to Noah. And now that he's "cured" no one ever will.

[jesncin]

It's a weird trend where everything from an existing franchise is just phoning it in. No real 'wow' factor and in many cases very little love shown for the characters.

They have loyal fanbases so why bother put effort in?

I think there is effort and some kind of love being put into these adaptations, but I feel like it's being put into the wrong places. Superhero movie fatigue is very much a thing and there's two roads these adaptations go to combat it:

A) move away from the Superhero formula and create something that stands out artistically (Battison, the Penguin and- even tho I thoroughly dislike it- The Joker movies) with the express goal of making a solid story accessible to all audiences

OR

B) just appeal to the fans already caught in the superhero web. Become an ouroboros of superhero media, where it's self-referential to either the comics or past films regardless of that making the story inaccessible to new viewers. Established fans already expect costumed men fighting crime as the norm, so we can skip out on even establishing character motivation (cough MAWS cough Caped Crusader).

Obviously I creatively prefer road A, but sometimes going down that road means innovating on source material to make something new and refreshing- which established fans hate because it's not comic accurate or whatever. I see why creatives go down road B, but I'm allowed to dislike it.

[jesncin]

I just learned about Goldie through your comics ! In which comics does Goldie features? And which ones do you recommen? :O

Glad to be spreading the John Constantine twin agenda! So it's actually really easy to read up on Goldie/Golden Boy's appearances in Hellblazer because he's a very minor character/arc. Baby Ghost Goldie is in Hellblazer #39, and Adult or Alternate Universe Goldie is in Hellblazer #40 and returns way later in #249 (feel free to skip to it, it's understandable out of context).

Even with my personal issues with how the Golden Boy character and story is told (as an identical twin I take issue with how survivor twin grief is pushed aside and how Goldie is more a vessel for an alternate universe Johnstantine instead of his own character as a brother), it's still a really fascinating story on the merits of Hellblazer being anti-genre to the superhero's evil twin character trope. Plus very cool imagery! There's an interesting character somewhere in Goldie, I wish he was revisited more.

[jesncin]

im excited to see the trailer!! LOOK UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jesncin]

As the winter holiday season approaches, please spare a thought for those in Gaza who are enduring freezing conditions, tent flooding, starvation, family separations, and more. 10 dollars won't bankrupt many of us, but even that small donation can be a lifeline for families facing such incredible hardship.

One such family is Haya's (@familyrantise2003). Haya was a nursing student in Gaza before last year, but she and her family were displaced, like most Gazans, by the IOF's bombs and evacuation orders. Now Haya, her mother, and her sister are struggling to make ends meet in Egypt, while the rest of their family is still under siege in Gaza.

Haya needs our help now to ensure her family's survival, and one day to reunite with them. They are struggling just to feed themselves, let alone to get expensive weatherproof supplies or to secure a future for themselves.

This campaign is severely underfunded, with only $300 raised in over a month. Please share & donate. Vetted here by @bilal-salah0

[jesncin]

The Golden Boy and the Other Thomas Constantine.

Fan comic exploring dead twins, survivor's guilt and Hellblazer characters dreaming of other realities.

[jesncin]

Watching the new Superman trailer… and I felt absolutely 0 emotions.

Same. My 3 feelings are: ambivalent, indifferent, and whelmed. I don't doubt James Gunn will do a solid job but there's nothing in the teaser that excited me- and I've been excited over a teaser plenty before. It's transparent nostalgia bait with comic references that made the whole thing feel disjointed for me.

[jesncin]

Hellblazer homework time! The fun thing about Hellblazer is that there's always so much rich visual motifs and interpretation to pull from. There's tons of references in this short comic, mostly from Hellblazer #40 and #100.

Thomas' "fate ruled the game" line is directly from #40, when Goldie is musing about his backstory and it's revealed that in his universe, Thomas was a kindly father (and has both his arms).

crumpled loser. Haha, but I do like this idea that even though the ghost twins didn't get a chance to grow up, they have habits and tendencies that transcend their little existences. Johnny smells of smoke and crumples in on himself, Goldie hums and sings. I see some people interpret John curled up as a reflection of the abuse he faced growing up, (that he's still the hurt little boy after all this time) so there's an echo of that in other realities.

YEAH THAT'S RIGHT I INTEGRATED THE STING ROLEPLAY

The grave panel is a direct reference to when Goldie meets "The Sickly Boy" John. In canon, the Golden Boy rejects the ghost of John Constantine even though he felt "a sudden rush of pity urged me to embrace and comfort him". In our version, he did spend his youth caring for his ghost twin, because that makes it so much more tragic when he eventually pushes him away when he's older.

I also echoed my own comic in the narration :3c. I like the idea of these two reflecting each other across lifetimes.

The forehead kiss panel from Golden Boy's auto bio monologue. I don't know why I keep finding how I re-draw Dave McKean's out-of-the-box mix media edgy art into my own middle grade style so funny. Especially since I studied that guy's art for a long time back in school.

The nightmare sequence! These panels are all callbacks to Hellblazer #100, an issue where John meets his dad in Hell and we get a bunch of flashbacks to their relationship as they argue with each other. The final panel of Goldie's nightmare references the frankly iconic-ly horrifying imagery of Thomas Constantine being hung by the coat hangers he forced his wife to have an abortion with.

[this is not how the panels look like in the actual comic, I've spliced them together to save space]

And here's the fight John has with his dad! I wanted to keep Thomas shrouded through the comic, so he's rendered more impressionistically in this sequence. I combined a couple of panels for when Thomas is shouting up the stairs at John.

So this is more of a holistic premise reference. My approach to the Golden Boy is to tweak these tiny instances of characterization we get to something more human and less unknowable. I kept the part where he's described to be a very precocious child, but twisted the line where he's described as having "eyes that read you like a book and knew your secret crime."

In our take, Goldie is haunted by what he doesn't know and scared of a secret truth he might be uncovering about his dad. The original quote that he's "finding the paths between lies and truth where others feared to tread" makes for a cool sounding hero- but maybe it's okay for Goldie to have been scared at first growing up. Maybe he dismisses his visions as a manifestation of his survivor's guilt before figuring out what he's looking into. It makes him feel a bit more real to me.

More for the premise! This whole fan comic is inspired by the continued motif of characters dreaming of other realities in the original Golden Boy arc. We see Zed telling Errol she had a dream of something that happens in Golden Boy's reality. In one other instance, the Golden Boy wakes up (from being presumed dead) speaking in his brother's voice. Which is incredibly funny to me.

So that's what I'm exploring in this comic! In a time when multiverse stories are over-saturated, and how the idea of "multiverse with horror sequences" was wasted in things like Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness, I really wanted to zero in on how scary seeing other realities could be.

Final panel! Just a subtle allusion to the coat hangers again.

Also I put John Constantine back in the closet like a proper homophobe.

The Golden Boy and the Other Thomas Constantine.

Fan comic exploring dead twins, survivor's guilt and Hellblazer characters dreaming of other realities.

[jesncin]

The Third Sex

After months of research and painstakingly connecting the threads of transmisogyny theory, queer activism, and field-wide epistemic injustice, I would like to present "The Third Sex": my treatise on a third-world transfeminism.

[jesncin]

Please help me on children 😭📢📢

Why don't you donate to me? I am appealing to you for the sake of my children. 😭😭.. Donate if you can or share the post.. I live without my children, my heart is torn in their absence 💔 I hope to meet them one day thanks to you.. You are my hope in donating to collect and coordinate their exit from this war that has left nothing with a trace..

$30 out of $40,000 has been raised... Donate now to be a hope to save my four children... Diana, Walaa, Hamza and Salah... and I will be very grateful to you from the bottom of my heart every day...

[jesncin]

The Golden Boy and the Other Thomas Constantine.

Fan comic exploring dead twins, survivor's guilt and Hellblazer characters dreaming of other realities.