#Gail Simone really took on this series and went

[zahri-melitor]

So someone asked me to do Gail Simone and because I wanted to add the various Secret Sixes to the rankings but I haven’t, you know, actually read them THROUGH in over a decade (I just dipped in and out recently) so I opened Villains United and went…is this really as gay as I remember it being or did my brain exaggerate it.

(Villains United #2)

And then Thomas makes Floyd breakfast. While shirtless.

Nope. No it really IS the concentrated dose of shipper dopamine I remember it being straight to my hind brain.

So uh I’m going to do the Gail Simone review…AFTER I binge enough of this that my brain stops making squeaky noises at me.

(Villains United #3)

God I adore these two idiots being completely obsessed with each other while still utterly convinced that if they sleep with women occasionally they’re straight. (Yes I know Thomas isn’t straight. But that is the energy to his sexuality that he brings)

[soleminisanction]

What comic issue did the whole kon v steph showdown happen? In which he basically called her a poser? I’m wondering what the rest of the young justice teams reaction to her was. I think greta tried to kill her at one point? I don’t think she’s very well liked among that team, but it also makes me wonder if she’s very well liked in the wider hero community at all besides her small group of vigilantes she’s enmeshed herself with through getting involved w Tim and to a lesser extent Batman? What are your views?

Teen Titans (2003) issue #13:

That's it in its entirety. The bit with Tim and Conner is very much the story's B-plot, the A-plot is focused on Beast Boy and the rest of the Titans back in San Fran.

As for Steph and Greta -- it is true that Greta is the one member of YJ that Steph ever truly interacted with during that time period. I actually wrote up a whole thing here about the arc of those interactions, but it was kind of off-topic with your question and also long enough that it really deserves its own post, especially because lining it all up together without the multi-year gap between plot points gave me a revelation about how the story actually went.

I'm going to try to get that post up in the next day or so to prove my point but the summation here is: the first time they met, Greta explicitly didn't try to kill Steph -- but afterwards, Steph framed it as "she tried to kill me in a jealous rage" and people took Steph's side because part of Greta's story was that her "good people bad powers" thing made her kind of sus and that's what eventually drove her to join Darksied.

So while Steph did get mentioned in YJ, including getting brought in to help as part of the invasion of Zandia in issues 50-52, her only significant contribution there was a very brief stand-off with Greta and getting stuck in a bubble with a several other 90's characters who I'm pretty sure don't exist anymore.

The only other person I recognize here is Lagoon Boy. The pink filter doesn't help.

Other than that, the only interaction Steph's had with any member of Tim's friend group is the one issue of Teen Titans (2003), #66, where they're doing this membership drive thing and Steph (recently back from faking her death) tags along so they can pretend that maaaaybe she's going to join the team, but actually she's just there to have a very brief interaction with Traci 13 and Bombshell.

And an even briefer, awkward stare-down with Cassie that's only there because she and Tim's budding romance had been awkwardly cut short just so he could back to Steph the very instant she got back from faking her death no matter how little sense that made.

And then Steph wasn't even interested in joining the team anyway she was just there for quote, "moral support" as Tim told Cassie he needed to take a break for a while and focus on the pre-Final Crisis chaos going down in Gotham.

Stephanie has never spoken to Bart, Anita, Slobo, or Ray so far as I know. She's never even met Cissie because the Arrowette who went to Zandia turned out to be Bonnie in disguise.

Pre-Flashpoint, the only other people she'd met outside of Gotham are Supergirl (whom she met in World's Finest (2009)) and Squire, who's still technically a Bat even if she lives in England. Stargirl and Miss Martian show up alongside Bombshell and Supergirl towards the end of Steph's solo series but they come out of nowhere only because BQM had wanted to make them part of Steph's entourage at some point but didn't get the chance, so I don't really count them. Nor do I count her showing up in a group shot at the end of the Gail Simone Wonder Woman, since that was just a line-up of cameos from every female hero she could get at the time.

So with all that as the preamble, to answer your second question: no, I don't think Steph is very well-liked by the wider superhero community. I also don't think she's disliked. I think the vast majority of heroes and villains have no idea who she is.

If they know her at all, it's probably as, "That girl in the purple that Cass is always hanging out with" or "Robin's ex-girlfriend who faked her death that one time" or maybe even as, "There was a girl Robin at some point right? I feel like I heard that somewhere," particularly since there was a big media shake-up after War Games. Heck, they might even know her as, "Cluemaster's daughter; she runs with the Bats, yeah? Heh, sucks to be Arthur" since he's actually gotten around more than her just by virtue of being on the Suicide Squad.

But as Spoiler, as Batgirl, as a hero? Basically unknown outside of Gotham. She's always been too much of a supporting character to develop those kinds of connections.

[natsubeatsrock]

Did Mashima fridge Juvia?

Well, it was only a matter of time.

I knew I would have to talk about this some year on August 31st. It just happens that this is the year.

For those who don't know, today is a special day in this blog's history. Six years ago, I made a long post talking about Juvia. Most notably, I was fearful about the possibility that Juvia would die. A year later, I was reacting to chapter 499, where Juvia was presumed to have died. Since then, I've used this day to talk about Juvia dying in some way or another. 

Last year, I mentioned that I wasn't willing to open this can of worms. And yet, here we are. To be honest, I figured that this was a topic worth talking about, but not in that post. I was already planning to dive into that this year.

To start, let's talk about the term.

Flashback to 1994. In issue 54 of Green Lantern, the main character walks into his apartment. His girlfriend has been killed and stuffed into a refrigerator by one of his enemies.

Five years later, [insert descriptor here] comic book writer Gail Simone took this incident as the impetus to note a trend in writing female characters in comics. They die or face serious bodily harm to advance the arcs of fellow male characters. She teamed up with other writers to start a website called "Women in Refrigerators". It's a list of female comic characters who fit this trope, to some degree or another. It's still up today, and you can see some more recent inclusions.

My own thoughts on this trope are mixed. I think that there's something to be said about one character's development coming at the expense of another character. Especially if that trend is decidedly gendered. Though, this argument is used in ways that come across in ways that are infuriatingly stupid and short-sighted. I've even seen it argued that women being harmed in fiction is inherently misogynistic. (Please don't make me talk about this.)

In any case, the argument has far exceeded the scope of comic books. (I say as if I'm not talking about comics.) This has been brought up in talking about media of all sorts. Video games, movies, television, and more. If a female character is placed in harm's way, people will argue whether or not she was fridged.

So, with that in mind, let's talk about Juvia's death.

Or false death?

I mean, we thought she was dead, but it turned out to be a fake-out.

Actually, let's talk about that. That happens to be a great place to start.

Does it count as being fridged if the serious effects were reversed?

I know that probably sounds like I'm splitting hairs. After all, it's not as if chapter 499 is wiped out of existence because we also got chapter 500. Mashima ultimately decided to kill Juvia. That's what should matter most to our discussion. Honestly, I might be inclined to buy this argument under normal circumstances. However, there happens to be a group of people who argue otherwise. They've convinced me that this is worth talking about.

Who are these horrible misogynists who would discount this kind of suffering on Juvia's part?

The people behind Women in Refrigerators.

At least, sort of?

As you might imagine, people have argued against the idea of this trope. To many people, more men have been harmed in fiction. In many cases, men in pain are treated as nothing special. In fact, there are examples of men dying to further the character arcs of female characters.

As a response to this, the website has included an article entitled "Dead Men Defrosting." Essentially, it doesn't matter if men do go through similar pain. There is a difference between these situations. In many cases, men who get fridged are eventually restored to their initial state. They gain their powers, are healed, or even come back to life. Women don't often get that same opportunity in comics.

Let's stop and think about Juvia's situation for a second. She was dead for all of one week, as far as fans are concerned. In canon, it was even less time. If Gray decided to stay behind for a few minutes, he also would have been healed by Wendy. In fact, with the continental connection to Tenrou Island, the whole scenario is forfeit. In hindsight, Juvia's life was never in danger.

So, could it be said that Juvia was truly fridged if she ended up being "defrosted"?

No, technically speaking.

Then again, I've been very critical of the writing of this. I've made many posts explaining why I think this was bad. Would ending the discussion here be the right thing to do? More importantly, is that the kind of resolution you clicked on this post to find?

There is also an elephant in the room. For better or worse, Women in Refrigerators also includes women whose states were corrected. Now, does this contradict the point they made regarding male characters? It’s starting to feel as though I should make a post about this trope on its own.

In any case, let’s ignore the fact that this didn’t actually stick. For the sake of this, let's assume that this does fall under the definition of fridging. Or, at least, that it could.

Did Mashima fridge Juvia?

To say that it did would mean that the death was done to move Gray's character arc. And... well... I mean...

Look, Gray is pushed to the edge of his sanity because he believes Juvia has died. That much is obvious, given the context of his rematch with Invel. I'm not willing to argue that this wasn't the case.

But...

I can't say that Juvia's death was so big a reason for Gray to change. 

If we're talking about Gruvia, maybe it could be argued he decided to take Juvia's romantic feelings seriously after seeing her die. But that only works if you take his words in chapter 499 in the most literal sense possible. It's more likely that he already had feelings for Juvia and was ready to share them after the war ended.

Outside of that, because Juvia died, Gray fights Invel, who he blames for killing Juvia. When he beats the stuffing out of him, he finds out that Natsu was END and directs his fury towards him. They fight for a bit, but they're ultimately stopped. Once he finds out about the Natsu-Zeref death arrangement, he decides the best way to deal with the situation is to go through with Lost Iced Shell.

You could read this as Gray going through with Lost Iced Shell because of Juvia. If Juvia didn't die (but not really), Gray wouldn't think to go use the spell. However, this view discounts Gray's stated motivations for using Lost Iced Shell: guilt over fighting Natsu and wanting to protect him from dying. Gray obviously regrets how the situation with Juvia went if the final chapter means anything. But Lost Iced Shell doesn't seem to be done because of Juvia. (I may rant about a comment I got about this some other day.)

And now, I will defy conventional wisdom and make probably the most controversial argument possible about this moment. Juvia's sacrifice was for Juvia's character arc. Not Gray's.

It's worth remembering what Juvia's arc is. I know that fandom often questions what Juvia's arc is. However, I believe that her arc is best described as understanding love. When she first fights Gray, she says that she has no need for love. A few arcs later, she sacrifices herself because of her love for Fairy Tail.

The motivation for Juvia sacrificing herself for Gray is her love for Gray. No one questions Juvia's feelings for Gray. However, this moment shows that she's willing to sacrifice her own life for Gray. Do you think that Juvia would do this before Phantom Lord?

This isn't to say that I think Juvia's arc was well-written. It's easy to criticize Juvia's extravagant displays of love seem. Or how Juvia's love seems to center more around Gray than others. Or how there are ways to show that you love someone in non-romantic ways. And fans of the series have shared the problems they have with how Juvia's character was handled.

But we're not here to talk about those things. We're here to ask if Mashima "killed" Juvia for Gray's development. And, despite how bad I think the moment was, I can't say that Mashima did.

Consider I’m the one saying this. Like, it would be something if one of the bigger Gruvia blogs made this argument. (I feel as though a couple of them may have blocked me.) That’s something that could be expected. I’ve outright called this the worst moment in the series at one time. I’d love to tack on another reason not to like this moment.

But I can’t.

“That’s because you’re clearly against the idea of this trope existing, chauvanist pig!“

I’ll assume you missed the intro for the trope earlier in this post. I’m willing to admit that this does happen. In fact, I already talked about how I hate how Last Ages happened. Ultear got done way dirtier than Juvia did and didn’t have the effects reversed. Not to mention, it was ACTUALLY done to further Gray’s character.

In Conclusion:

I don’t think it’s a good idea to call what happened to Juvia “being fridged“. Even if Juvia were to have actually died.

[stillness-in-green]

Did you have any issues with IBO Season 2 ?

Not as much as many did, I'd say, but I’m not entirely without complaints.  I have a few quibbles--and mostly quibbles that are easily addressed, at that--and a small handful of more serious issues, though nothing that even comes close to breaking the show for me.  Under a cut, this one!

I wish Chad could have gotten more to do with his own branch to head.  But the severity of what happens to him contributes, I think, to how indebted Makanai is to them, and that owed favor is what saves their entire organization in the end.  Truly, Chad's good karma overfloweth.  

It would have been nice for Kudelia to have more to do.  But Kudelia doesn't get much to do because she outgrew Tekkadan, not the other way around.  She's simply playing a more grown-up ballgame than they are--than they insist on, in fact, because Orga and McGillis are, in some ways, cut from the same cloth, and Kudelia has more vision than either of them. 

I wish we could have gotten one solid scene on how McGillis and Isurugi crossed paths before the show tried to cram twenty episodes of retroactive characterization into one deathbed gasp about an underprivileged colonist backstory.  I mean, it worked for me--I love Isurugi!--but that's because his character type is so up my alley that he's practically breaking into my house.  It would have been nice if more people could have seen the appeal, is all.  

For more serious complaints, I'd say I really only have three--two a matter of characterization, one a plot issue.  

The shameful lack of anything for Almiria to do.  I've talked about this extensively here, so just go read that and know--yes, I'm still annoyed about it.  Easily my most major complaint about the show on the whole.

I really think the series would have benefited from Rustal being given just a little more attention.  I remember the debates when the series ended about whether Rustal was ultimately a more-or-less well-intentioned man who was determined to take down a fascist threat to peace like McGillis even if it took using some unscrupulous methods to do it or whether he was a corrupt monster who skated out the end of the series in a Villains Win ending because the director had a truly ridiculous chip on his shoulder about the unacceptably besmirched morality of his (oppressed) (disenfranchised) (teenaged) (outnumbered) (maladjusted) (take your pick; they're child soldiers) main cast.  Did Rustal see the writing on the wall with Gjallarhorn and glided it into a controlled fall that he cannily arranged himself to be in charge of or did he actively sabotage it so he'd be the only person running it in the end?  I don't need a sob story or anything, and it wouldn't take much!  Frankly, I think his manly adult friendship with Galan Mossa and his speech to Gaelio (or Iok? whoever) about how McGillis uses the history of Gjallarhorn while trampling on the reality of the people who built that history is, like, two-thirds of the way to a fully coherent character.  Just one more concrete moment of him showing a sincere belief in something (even if that something is his own advancement) would have done it, and would have made him a figure better capable of crossing ideological blades with McGillis.  

I don't have any problems with the way Naze and Amida went out, not really.  They were astounding, foundational badasses and they got a send-off that reflected that.  They were adults who made their own calls, saved countless lives, built a (transport) empire that will live on after them, lived and loved with a passion and intensity that we should all aspire to. Lafter?  That one hurts a bit more.  I appreciate that she's such a huge badass that she had to be gunned down in public because no one was going to be able to take her in a mobile suit.  I really appreciate that she was given the space to come to a mature, adult decision about which she valued more: a prospective romance with a man she'd fallen for and who respected the hell out of her in turn, or safeguarding the family and work that Naze and Amida had given their lives for.  I love that she chose the latter.  I think the whole arc is consistent with the foreshadowing and the characterization of everyone involved.  But.  But.  But there's no getting around that Lafter is an explicit, unambiguous, dictionary-definition, Gail-Simone-blog-post FRIDGING.  And that one's always going to taste a little sour, no matter how much else I like about the Turbines and how the show handles them.  

[aion-rsa]

Who Is Taskmaster? Black Widow Movie Villain Explained

https://ift.tt/2YTRS7v

Marvel's Black Widow movie features Taskmaster as its main villain. Here's everything you need to know about him.

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With Marvel's MCU Phase 4 rapidly approaching, it’s almost surprising that it has taken this long for the Taskmaster to show his skull-covered face. Taskmaster has been taking on various Marvel heroes since 1980 and has gone on to star in two miniseries while getting the occasional supporting character role. He’s on that border where it was hard to tell whether he’d show up in the movies or get relegated to TV, showing up as a villain on Agents of SHIELD or something from the Defenders’ neck of the woods on Netflix. But now we know he'll be the villain of the Black Widow movie, and we got our first look at him in the trailer.

Taskmaster first appeared in Avengers #195, created by David Michelinie and George Perez, mainly as a cliffhanger villain to set up his showcase in the next issue. A fifth-rate villain by the name of Pernell Solomon had a rather inconsequential plot involving cloning himself that ended badly, mostly because it exposed the Avengers to the existence of the Taskmaster and his secret villain school. You see, Taskmaster has a special power called “photographic” reflexes. If he sees someone perform an action – as long as it is a human movement – he can do the same on command. He’s essentially a greatest hits mixtape of every great warrior in the Marvel Universe. That shot of him in the Black Widow trailer wielding a bow might tell us that he has encountered Hawkeye at some point, for example.

But seriously, he can’t do superhuman stuff. He once tried to copy the movements of living cartoon character Slapstick and Bane’d himself.

At first he was going to become a superhero, but he realized that being a villain is where the money’s at. Then he came up with an even better and safer plan: keep the mercenary part of the job minimal and instead make money by teaching goons how to fight. If you’re joining Hydra or AIM and you want to know how to fight, just pay the guy who knows exactly how Captain America throws his shield so well and can perform Daredevil’s exact flips. He’d be able to make all that money using his skills while refraining from taking on superheroes head-on.

In his first appearance, Taskmaster easily took down Scott Lang Ant-Man, Hank Pym, and Wasp. He was even able to take on Captain America and Iron Man at the same time. His downfall was when he got in a one-on-one with Jocasta, who had no human movement to play off of, plus she was straight-up out of his league in terms of power. The other Avengers caught up and Taskmaster barely escaped.

In the years that followed, he remained the renowned villain coach while taking the occasional job if the money was right. Taskmaster was driven by greed as he had no trouble working for Crossbones or the US government if they paid up. During the memorable storyline where Steve Rogers was stripped of his Captain America title, the government had Taskmaster train John Walker, the star-spangled replacement who would later go on to be US Agent.

Marvel was weird about Taskmaster’s identity. For the longest time, they never gave him a real name, but they also didn’t seem to mind showing him unmasked from time to time. Like one time the Punisher nearly killed him and Daredevil later visited him in the hospital. Other than some bandages on his head, Taskmaster looked like a completely average white dude, albeit with a history of plastic surgery. We would eventually get some answers on his backstory, but there would be some contradictions.

Taskmaster appeared in the second issue of Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness’ legendary Deadpool run where Taskmaster kidnapped Deadpool’s sidekick/abused best friend Weasel. The showdown was played for laughs as Taskmaster, boasting about how he can read anyone’s movements and can predict your attacks before you even think about it, was completely helpless against the unpredictable Deadpool. Initially, this was supposed to build towards Taskmaster as a major nemesis for Deadpool during the Kelly run where the plan was that he’d start gaining the ability to inherit strategies the same way he inherits movements. That subplot was cut early on.

Regardless, Taskmaster remained a major part of Deadpool’s corner of the Marvel Universe and would appear in countless runs. While at times Taskmaster would be targeting Deadpool, other times, he would be his long-suffering partner in crime. One of their more memorable meet-ups had Taskmaster one of many hired guns working for a mobster against Deadpool and Spider-Man. Taskmaster whispered to Deadpool that his heart wasn’t really in it and offered to throw the fight for old time’s sake.

It was through that Deadpool connection that we got the brief “UDON Taskmaster” phase in the early '00s. The art studio UDON was drawing the Gail Simone run of Deadpool while also taking care of Ken Siu-Chong’s Taskmaster miniseries. The connecting tissue of this was mainly Sandi Brandenberg, a love interest to Taskmaster and secretary to Deadpool. But also, Taskmaster changed up his appearance, going from “albino Skeletor” to “street-wise Skull Man.” He was more gun-based than sword and shield.

The miniseries went deeper into his abilities, showing that he can remember every moment of his life with 100% clarity. He can also amp up his powers by watching fight footage in fast-forward, which makes him move at super speed at the cost of his body breaking down if he does it for too long. There’s also a neat anecdote about the pitfalls of his powers, as when he was a kid, he watched someone perform a perfect dive, copied it, and then almost drowned because he didn’t know how to swim.

Also, they finally revealed that Taskmaster’s real name is Tony Masters. Of course it is.

The miniseries and the cancellation of Deadpool coned into a new series called Agent X, centered around a scarred-up amnesiac named Alex Hayden who had Deadpool’s powers and personality and appeared months after Deadpool’s supposed death. Taskmaster was a major part of the series, taking time to be annoyed by Hayden’s antics, pining for Sandi, and being an all-around badass.

read more: Agent X: The Strange History of the Other Deadpool

While the UDON Taskmaster look showed up here and there, he was back to his original appearance by the time he was going after Moon Knight. He ended up getting more play thanks in part to Civil War and its aftermath, going from a member of the government’s pro-registration force to training cadets in Avengers: The Initiative. It was there that he became friends with one of his students, Eric O’Grady, the Irredeemable Ant-Man.

Once Norman Osborn took over the superhero wing of the government, Taskmaster briefly joined Osborn’s inner-circle of top villains, otherwise known as the Cabal. Taskmaster ultimately hated being Osborn’s whipping boy and secretly worked against him, eventually escaping and laughing when Osborn’s empire came crumbling down.

In 2011, Fred Van Lente and Jefte Palo joined together to create another Taskmaster miniseries, which was not only fantastic, but it added a few twists and retcons to the character’s backstory. It showed that Taskmaster answers to a higher power called the Org that calls him and gives him orders. Also, Taskmaster has a mental problem where he can only retain so much knowledge, so his brain tends to dump information that isn’t based on physical survival. In other words, he can fight in countless ways, but he can’t remember who he is or really anything about his past. Just a nagging feeling of unforgiveable guilt.

In this story, he protected a diner waitress named Mercedes from all sorts of assassins, only to discover that not only is Mercedes his Org handler, but she’s also his wife. Taskmaster is in fact a SHIELD agent who took a special kind of Super Soldier Serum that gave him his powers, but forces him to constantly forget the woman he loves. Hence the endless guilt.

There's also the thing that he's been unwittingly working for SHIELD all these years.

While that take on Taskmaster was eventually forgotten about (how fitting), it did lead to Avengers Academy member Finesse. Finesse is an Audrey Hepburn lookalike with powers exactly like Taskmaster’s who may or may not be his illegitimate daughter. When she tracked him down and fought him, it was heartbreaking to Taskmaster, as she only fought with copied movesets and he’d never be able to remember her for being her.

Since then, Taskmaster has shown up here and there, usually working alongside Black Ant, who is a robot duplicate of the Eric O’Grady Ant-Man. He tends to pop up whenever Marvel needs a throwaway villain and they’re tired of calling in the Wrecking Crew.

Outside of main continuity, Taskmaster’s shown up in a handful of alternate universe stories. One thing I find amusing is how there’s a What If issue based on the whole “John Walker as Captain America” storyline that has Taskmaster explain his powers by claiming to be a mutant because back then, nobody at Marvel thought too hard about how he got his skills. Then there’s House of M: Avengers, where Taskmaster does the same for the sake of fitting in with the high-status mutant community.

read more: Marvel Movies Release Schedule: Complete MCU Timeline

Taskmaster only showed up in the Ultimate comics towards the end of its run, but there wasn’t much to him. The only thing memorable was that they made him black.

The series Deadpool MAX reimagined Taskmaster as a grizzled and horny woman assassin who turned Wade Wilson into a killing machine and groomed him in the sexual sense. It's probably better that they didn’t go with this version of the character for the movie.

Taskmaster has shown up on several cartoons and in some video games. One of the more memorable is the recent Spider-Man for PlayStation 4 where he acts as a bonus threat, serving a similar purpose as Riddler in the Batman Arkham games. In a look that merged his classic appearance with his UDON appearance, he stalked Spider-Man through the city and came off as more of a knockoff of Deathstroke.

No wonder he and Deadpool keep crossing paths.

Lastly, I can’t help but mention Taskmaster’s appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Not just because you get to play as him and pull off sweet moves stolen from Hawkeye, Captain America, and Black Knight. Not just for his charming Brooklyn accent. Instead, it's for his rad-as-hell theme song.

Hopefully we'll hear this when he goes into action in Black Widow. I’m pumped for anything after listening to that song.

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and feels that if Taskmaster was more realistic, he’d be doing way more breakdancing. Read Gavin’s other articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L

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Feature

Books

Gavin Jasper

Dec 3, 2019

Marvel

Black Widow

from Books https://ift.tt/32zDd3x

[autographedcat]

2017: A Year Of Reading In Review

Reading is something I used to do constantly.  And then somewhere, I stopped making the time for it, and have been determined in recent years to make an effort to make it my default habit again.  To that end, last year I decided to try and track the books I read, and periodically discuss them.

Unfortunately, after just one post, in January, I fell behind on writing about the books, and then in May I got very busy and ended up both not reading as much as I’d planned and also stopped tracking the books.  After which, I never picked up logging again.

So I’ve reconstructed what I can from my memory, but my memory being what it is, I can’t be sure what I’ve missed. So that puts my total at 48. That includes quite a few comic book collections. 1

The following highlights are taken from a series of prompts from my friend Jessica F. Hebert.2

 First book of 2017: “Winter’s Tale” by Mark Helpin This is my favourite novel, and an annual re-read. This would mark the 30th or so time I’ve read it, and it was magical as always. I was once asked, after listing it as my favourite novel, what it was about, and I summed it thusly:

“It’s a story about love. It’s a story about the love of passion, the love of seasons, the love of family, and the love of place. It’s a story about justice, and transcendence, and redemption. It’s a story about seeking, and wanting, and needing. It’s a story about what changes, and what never changes, and the bridge between the two. It’s a story about magic, and reality, and about the wall of clouds that separate one from the other and then weave them together as tightly as the threads in a tapestry.

But more than anything, it’s the story of a city, and the story of a girl, and the story of a man, and the story of a horse.”

Last book of 2017: “The Design Of Everyday Things” by Donald A Norman This is a classic text that dissects the elements of design that factor into every single thing we touch and interact with, and the psychology behind how that design works, or in many cases, entirely fails to work. I’ve heard of this book for years, but never got around to reading it, and when i came across a reference to it I ordered it on a whim. Terrific read.3

Book I couldn’t shut up about: “A Colony In A Nation” by Chris Hayes This is the book I’ve most recommended over the course of the year. It’s an examination of race relations in the US, and I think it’s very much worth the time to sit and digest it. Chris Hayes is one of the smarter people working in journalism right now, and I’ve been a big fan of his work since back when he was still writing for The Nation.

Most devastating book: “Crash Override” by Zoe Quinn In many ways, GamerGate was the canary in the coal mine of our national discourse that warned us all that something very ugly was not just brewing but bubbling over. Quinn’s account of her experience as the original target of the harassment campaign is chilling to read, and it made me angry all over again at the entire fiasco. It does include some constructive thoughts towards the end, where Quinn details the activism she’s been working on to help others who have been targeted, and some suggestions towards making the Internet a better, safer place for everyone.

Book my friends all liked that I finally read and…didn’t: No entry. The only book I read that I’d had hanging around my to-do list for ages was “Ready Player One”, by Earnest Cline, but I quite liked it. While it does have some problematic elements, it’s a popcorn book, and I consumed it as such.

Book my friends didn’t like that I finally read and…did: “Aftermath” by Chuck Wendig The Aftermath trilogy was one of the first major Star Wars novels to come out after Disney announced they were rebranding the old Expanded Universe as “Legends” and that all future Star Wars novels and comics would be considered part of the “canon” of the Star Wars universe.4    And the response to them was largely negative, so I didn’t really drop everything I was doing to read them. But while on a cruise to Alaska this summer, I found a copy of the first book in the trilogy in the ships library, and lacking for something breezy and fun to read, I took it back to my room and started on it.   And quite honestly, I enjoyed them thoroughly.  The first book is a bit slow to start, and Wendig’s present-tense prose style takes some getting used to. 5  But the characters are wonderful, and there’s some terrific stories there filling out what was going on immediately after the destruction of the Second Death Star.

From here, I went on to read several more recent Star Wars novels, all of which I’ve enjoyed, and a couple of which6 were superb.

Most read author: Ryan North and Erica Henderson North and Henderson are  the writer and artist responsible for the Marvel comic “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl”, of which I read five volumes all in a row while spending a lovely weekend of isolation and natural splendor at Lake Crescent.  I am an unabashed fan of Squirrel Girl, who never fails to delight me.

Best surprise:  “Tove Jansson: Work and Love” by Tuula Karjalainen I’ve been a fan of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books since I was a child, and I first read “The Adventures of Moominpapa”.7  They are books I continually return to and reread, and the whimsy and magic of those stories are something I always want to make room for in my life.   But despite this, I really didn’t know a lot about Jansson herself, and when I saw a notice of this biography, I ordered it.  It was a tremendous read, and I learned a lot about an author I already greatly admired.

Works I’m Looking Forward to in 2018: I haven’t really looked ahead to see what’s on the horizon. On the comics front, I’m greatly looking forward to the first collection Gail Simone and Cat Stagg’s “Crosswind”, which is coming out in March. And I have the short story collection “Star Wars: From A Certain Point of View” sitting on the top of my to-read pile, waiting for me to finish what I’m currently reading, which is “Mad Men: Carousel”, which is a series of critical essays by Matt Zoller Seitz about the TV series “Mad Men” that I’ve been meaning to get around to since it came out.

In any event, I’m looking to keep better track this year, and to make more periodic updates like I planned to do last year.  Onward and upward.

I’m only including collected paperbacks of comics, because honestly that’s the only way I buy them anymore. ↩

Upon whose Facebook post this entry was originally a comment upon. ↩

I was reading “The Holy Or The Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of ‘Hallelujah'”, but I didn’t finish it until today, so it goes on the 2018 list. ↩

I have some extended thoughts on this subject that are the subject of a future essay I’m writing.  Watch this space. ↩

I admit I normally hate this particular technique, but honestly, by midway through the first book I’d stopped noticing it entirely. ↩

“Phasma” by Delilah S. Dawson and “Thrawn” by Timothy Zahn ↩

A few years ago, I recorded a substantial portion of an audiobook of this novel, as a gift to one of my girlfriends at the time, who was also a huge Jansson fan.  I never finished it, but I keep meaning to ↩

[timeagainreviews]

The Panopticon Conundrum

Hello friends! It’s been a full week for me. How about you? My wife had surgery and is still in hospital. (It’s a good thing though!) Last weekend was UK Pony Con in Nottingham. I went dressed as a Jodie Whittaker "Doctor Hooves." A few people got it. Most everyone else wanted to know where my tie was. I also did a Doctor Hooves art piece that sold at £80 for the RDA. It was a great weekend. My boyfriend is on the committee for the convention, so I go every year. There's a lot that goes into putting on a convention, oftentimes it's like a second job for him. Lots of time and effort is put into a successful event of such magnitude. It's really gone to help me appreciate other cons out there.

If you've been paying attention to Twitter, there's been a slightly trending hashtag “#boycottpanopticon.” It's not exactly blown up, but people like Gail Simone and Paul Cornell have both tweeted about it. For those of you not in the know, Panopticon is an old school Doctor Who convention that stopped running around the beginning of the 2005 series. However, they recently decided to reboot the convention. This past weekend was a sort of test run with "Panopticon Lite," which featured an impressive guest lineup of Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, and India Fisher. It was a regular Eighth Doctor affair and I'm sure went off without a hitch. So why the boycott?

Enter Panopticon's website. Hoo-boy is it a mess. It was a tweet about their stance on cosplay which piqued my interest. According to their website, cosplayers open themselves up to getting "a custard pie in the puss," or doused with water. I'm not joking. Or rather, they aren't. This has something to do with Comic Relief, as cosplayers are given the privilege of donating £20 for an immunity badge. One might feel like this is a clear way of saying "cosplayers aren't welcome," when the alternative is "pay up, or get assaulted." Their stance against cosplay is further solidified when further down the page they mention that some cosplays will have to clear the rights with the owners of their IPs. Specifically Daleks, Cybermen, K9 and other full-body costume monsters. I've never heard of a con doing this. This isn't like Disneyland, where costumers need to "Disneybound," to avoid association with the company.

Why so much hostility toward cosplay? A majority of Panopticon's newfound critics seem to agree that it's a hostility rooted deeper than cosplay. To many, this hostility is toward the new fandom, which scans when viewing the evidence. The website reads like a bunch of the old guard fandom griping about younger fans. It's very "Old Man Yells at Cloud." Let's start with the basic fact that the con stopped around 2005. That may seem insignificant, but to me, it sounds like sour grapes. You've been keeping that Doctor Who torch burning for years, and you stop just as it bears fruit? Not to put too fine a point on it, but that sounds gatekeepery. Feeling ostracised because a new generation didn't have to live through the wilderness years is a weird reaction to your favourite show coming back.

In comic book conventions, you see a lot of hostility toward cosplay from the old fans as well. Walt Flanagan from AMC's "Comic Book Men," went through the growing pains of cosplay acceptance throughout the run of the show. You saw him go from a guy who thought it took attention away from the creators, to a guy who dressed in cosplay several times. It's an expensive, arduous, and stressful process to put together a successful cosplay, I should know. It's a labour of love on par with organising a convention, running a fan club, or writing fan fiction. Furthermore, it's here to stay. You may as well be yelling at a cloud.

It goes even deeper than cosplay. I mentioned that it's difficult to run a convention. I've had lonely evenings watching TV while my boyfriend was stuck working on the rota for Pony Con. Panopticon's organisers are not unfamiliar with running a convention. They know how hard it can be. Why then do they hate their stewards so much? In their section about stewards, they go on to tell potential attendees not to expect the stewards to know much of anything other than where the bathrooms are. They don't expect them to even know what day of the week it is. Now I get it, sometimes volunteers are just in it for the free ticket. Some people are morons. Some people are just plain helpless. But one of the things I learned from one of my favourite Pony Con volunteers, Tom, is that some of them are incredibly hard workers. The fact that the organisers seem to have such disdain for their workers isn't just crass, it's downright cruel.

Those of you who know my blog know I can be a snarky bitch at times. It's me having a laugh. I can get behind a convention trying to come off as a little bit more personable by infusing some humour. But as Twitter user drwhofan_194 said "It's unprofessional to joke about stuff which makes your attendees feel unsafe or unwelcome." Which is absolutely true. You can't assume everyone who isn't laughing has no sense of humour. Because for some, being in a giant room full of strangers is hard enough without also having to worry about a custard pie to their face. It's your job to maintain a safe environment, and if you can't take that seriously, why should anyone entrust their safety with you?

I would love to say that the website stops at custard pies and decrying the help, but it doesn't. Of course, it doesn't. This immaculate train wreck is still careening off the side of a cliff. You can also count on a good old fashioned bit of sexism. In a now edited section about seating, there was a comment made about how everyone wants to good seats so they can bask in the glow of Tom Baker, or even sneak a peak up Katy Manning or Frazer Hines' skirts. Twitter users well versed in being deliberately obtuse were quick to point out that Frazer was a man, meaning it wasn't sexist, because equal opportunity. Now I get it's a joke. Katy is sexy and Frazer wears kilts, I get it. However, I also get what it feels like to be a female fan of Doctor Who. I know what it's like to cringe every time you hear a male fan slime on about the companions' bodies. To have to hear male fans call Jenna Coleman a stuck up cow because she doesn't want to be casually assaulted by fans. I know what it feels like to be worried that every male fan I meet will eventually come onto me, like so many have in the past. Comments about looking up Katy Manning's skirt aren't just childish, they're alienating to women.

One has to wonder if that's not slightly the point. Was the language used by the organisers meant to push certain groups away? On the homepage, they go on a bizarre rant about morality and common sense. The words "traditional values," are even used. There's a vagueness like a man having an argument with someone over the phone. You can somewhat piece together the conversation through context, but who he's yelling at is a mystery. It reads like a person who has gotten into one too many flamewars online. They seem to see themselves as white knights, here to put the fandom right. Which is funny because I wasn't aware it was broken. Furthermore, I'm always very suspicious of anyone who seems to attract so much drama to themselves. If you're getting into heated arguments about Doctor Who, you need to reevaluate some shit in your life.

I could go on about the website, but at this point, I'm curious to see Panopticon's reaction. Other than the minor edit here or there, they've been shockingly blase about the whole thing. Reportedly going as far as to say it was “a form of market research to see who had a sense of humour.”  This could be particularly damaging as I've already seen users saying that even with an apology, they "wouldn't let [their children] near this event in a hundred years." It's amazing that a convention that was well established as the go-to Doctor Who convention for years, can squander so much goodwill with such a stupid website. At best, it's a PR nightmare. At worst, it was done on purpose. The fact that someone had this much power to take the concept and run with it, suggests that whoever wrote this dribble is rather high up in the organisation. It's one of those "Who watches the Watchmen?" kind of scenarios.

If the organisers have nobody higher to answer to, perhaps the last bastion against their smug minded drudgery is Twitter user walsallmatt's proposed boycott. Has Panopticon killed itself mid-regeneration, or can they come back from this fiasco? They've already situated themselves as the kind of people who will decide the real fans from the fake ones. Would any kind of apology make that ever seem fun? Will they lose potential guests like McGann or Manning due to this bad press? I'm sure there will still be a devout following that will come regardless, but is it enough? Even a convention with a rich history like Panopticon cannot simply rest on its laurels. Doctor Who didn't justify its return by banking on nostalgia. It built upon what came before and moved with the times when it was necessary. At this point, it looks like the only way we'll see Panopticon return to its glory days is with a time machine.

[lastgeeksdying]

Gritty Reboots and how badly or well they can be done

For anyone who has not listened to my podcast, A Conversation with Feminist Nerds, I like DC comics but don't love it.  More often than not I take or leave a lot of it.  But just like with Marvel, my favorite era of their comics is the early to late 2000's(I refuse to say aughts).  It was during this time that a lot of the comics found their identities for me.  Wonder Woman was a political book with a dash of action and a side plate of Greek Myths.  Batman was the gritty detective book.   Superman was the bright, action hero.  His morals were challenged, but never broken.  People like Greg Rucka,Ed Brubaker, Gail Simone (*1), Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns, and Grant Morrison. It felt so clear that these writers understood the tone of these characters.   It wasn't just about writing a good story, but getting the feel of who these people were through the medium of the story.  Unfortunately, a few things would come to throw this nice balance off course.  Superman Returns, the Dark Knight, Geoff Johns, Zack Snyder.   The first problem was Superman Returns.  This was the first time someone tried to create a more gritty story than what had come before for Superman.  It wasn't entirely dark, but certainly much more tonally grim than the way Superman had always been.  This was the influence of Bryan Singer and what he had done with X-Men.  This was more faded pallet with the characters from the Richard Donner films.  This was a critical and financial failure.   In 2008 the juggernaut of all Super Hero films at the time came:  The Dark Knight.  It rocked the house for almost everyone at the time.  Super Problematic film, but it was part of this movement to make super heroes more mainstream.  Of "grounding" characters into the real world and striping the fantasy elements.   This would be an influencing factor in trying to make comics more adult.  The Grant Morrison mind bending Epic of Final Crisis would hit this year and not make the splash DC was expecting.  Marvel was repeatedly kicking their butts in the sales, and their films weren't as big yet, but had such a consistent audience thanks to Iron Man and Robert Downey Jr. that DC felt they needed to do something to define themselves.   In comes Geoff Johns.  A storyteller who is great when it comes to defining a character as his own, but less great at following the voice established by others.  He jumped back on a character he loved, Flash, after he wrote his big finale for Green Lantern, Blackest Night.  Little did the rest of us know that this was going to lead us to a much darker place.   The Flash had been a light hearted character, but when Geoff held Barry after years of using Wally, he wanted to do something different.  He wanted to push harder.   So he came up with Flashpoint.  The ending of Flashpoint, by the way, was an ending discussed for Final Crisis, but was decided to be too dramatic. With the ending of Flashpoint came a time of excitement for comics fans.   And for general audiences.  The New 52 was meant to showcase that comics weren't just for kids and that time could keep going.  That the path could keep going,  That Marvel could be beat.   The New 52 was the grittiness of all of DC spread to everyone.  There were no happy characters left.  Also they did some other stupid things but that's not a topic for now.   But for a while, the New 52 and it's gritty story telling worked.  It boosted sales.  Brought in new people into comics and a few single issues really sold crazy well in the secondary market.  But this wasn't just an Original change.  This was part of a sweeping change.  That spread in the multimedia layers.   Because this,  was just a precursor to Zack Snyder and his Murderverse.  Though it wouldn't be until 2016 that it was a Murderverse.  (*2).  The Murderverse has a fundamental misunderstanding of the main characters.   It also has the side effect of being influenced by Geoff Johns.  Johns would also bring that aesthetic to other properties.  Arrow became a Batman Begins clone.  DC would focus on a core event with the Villains becoming heroes.  DC spent so long focusing it's efforts on trying to stay tonally the same, that it lost most of it's identity as it went.   No longer did Superman feel like the best of us.  He no longer felt like one of us.  He seemed to be more Alien than ever.   This comes from applying the wrong tone to these characters.  It's still salvageable, but it will take some work to do so.  And the folks at the Murderverse should look to two places for inspiration.  The first was The Batgirl of Burnside.  This run on Batgirl helped inspire a series of tone changes for books.  Trying to be more true to their characters.   This wasn't a perfect experiment, but it gave DC the confidence to try some new things.  It also took the tie-in books of the event Convergence, which tapped into Nostalgia by bringing back characters in the old universes.  Not just the characters though, but the old creators as well.  And while the event itself was critically malligned, the sales showed these were ideas people were interested in.  This all lead to DC Repirth.  Rebirth for the last year has been bringing back everything the New 52 destroyed.   This is what the murderverse needs.  A reset.  An attempt to realign.  Justice League 2 should end with a time travel moment that stops Darkseid and re-writes the whole universe.  Suddenly murdery Trinity could be hopeful again.   It seems farfetched at this point.  Instead DCE is trying to make the movies jokey.  But since that is what killed Suicide Squad, it will continue to just be a mess.   I also want to take the time to Highlight Injustice.  (3.).  This game did similar things above.  It made the story grimdark, and changed some of the leads dramatically.  But the reason it works is two fold.  The first is that it is an alternative.  It isn't just redoing the Justice League animated series, but putting together a multiverse story that feels like it fits with that same feel as the timmverse Justice League cartoon.  The second thing is that they built these changes into the characters by carefully building a story that supports these changes.  It feels like it gets it right.  It is outright in the title, this isn't a justice league story.   I highly recommend the years of the Injustice Comic written by Tom Taylor.  There is one or two inconsistencies with the game, and possibly it's sequel, but it is consistent within the comic and it forms a really intense new story.   So my plea to the producers of the Murderverse is to use a story reason to wipe the slate clean.  Let your mistakes exist and instead fix them by building off them.  Use the great tropes of comics to make this story better.   (*1) The first time I wrote this sentence, I accidentally wrote Wonder Woman instead of Gail.  I clearly think highly of her.  But as I'll discuss at another time, that is only when she lives up to her own history.   (*2) Marvel movies regularly kill characters, but they don't completely lose the tone.  War and the military are established pretty early on.  To quickly explain why the murderverse doesn't make sense, is that Batman leaves his villains alive.  It is very important that he not kill some people but leave the Joker alive.  Zack has it set up so that if the Joker or other villains are left alive, he is knowingly complicit in the deaths they cause.   (3)  Injustice 2 comes out the day after this was written.

[westallen-world]

Season 4 of The Flash promises some releases of the series, especially at the beginning. With Barry caught in the Velo Force, Wally West is going to have to change your Kid Flash dress by the scarlet runner. The villain of this season will not be a scary sprinter, but the brain Thinker. But perhaps the most intriguing is the addition of Extended Man.

Created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, debuted in April-May 1960 in The Flash # 112 a few months after Kid Flash. Ralph Dibny just wanted to stretch his body like a contortionist who saw in the circus. To this end, he studied Gingold, the favorite drink of contortionists, and created a concentrated version that gave him the power of super elasticity. After several appearances on The Flash, Ralph had his own comics, where, since May 1964 solved crimes with the help of his true love, Sue Dibny Dearbon. Ralph joined the League of Justice in April-May 1973 at # 105 and appeared frequently in the Liga titles (including Detroit and Justice League Europe edition) from 1970 to 1990. After that, he became an occasional member support for Starman.

Elonganted Man has three main characteristics: he is flexible, is married and is a detective. Flexible nose narrows when "smells" a mystery. As one of the rare characters of DC in the silver age, he has a secret identity, usually appears as Ralph Dibny, the world famous Man Extended. All these combined elements make Ralph a beloved and enduring character. Today we will see how this character could be ported to television.

Barry out at the end of Season 3, was not the only hard time for the team. HR Wells took the fatal blow Savitar was trying to give Iris West. Caitlin Snow went on to continue his journey like Killer Frost, but perhaps without malice before. Physics Tracy Mark and Julian Albert colleague of Barry, joined the team (maybe temporarily) and Cisco Ramon released Jay Garrick from the Speed ​​Force.

This leaves the team composed of Wally, Cisco, Iris and Joe; And it is likely to include a version of Wells (we assume that Earth 2). Jay and Jesse have their own land to protect, but could stay in Earth 1 in Barry's absence. We're not sure what's going to happen with Tracy and Julian.

While the team members are accurate to confirm, we know who is trained by sprinters and scientists, and Iris and Joe offer a more neutral outlook. This suggests a small group in terms of skills; And this certainly involves Elongated Man. Plus, your approach can be a detective, who would keep Ralph faithful to comics as a flexible detective who knows science; Or maybe get a completely scientific background to help you put in the team. This would not necessarily be a bad thing, since Ronnie Raymond was an athlete in the intelligent comic strip a STAR Labs engineer on television. In addition, past Ralph with chemistry, he would help replace Caitlin and work on their detective skills.

Either way, expect to see Ralph's skills as a detective in Season 4, as the team will definitely deal with Thinker diets. Joe West can be a great detective, but in season three long worried about the safety of their children. Putting to work with Ralph would be good for both, to bring Ralph at a time and work deductive skills Joe. Joe could even be a mentor for Ralph.

Certainly, "The Flash" will take a certain budget to represent the powers of Ralph, but do not expect detective contractions. This is something that works well once or twice a month, but could become annoying to see it every week on the show. Although we got used to the HR drumsticks. We're not sure we could stand anything for long. But we want to see the nose of contractions, even once.

We also hope that "The Flash" give a simple outfit that matches their powers. We understand the practicalities in designing superhero costumes, but it is a question that both the actor and his costume should consider.

More importantly, we are eager to know the TV version of Sue Dearbon. We start from the premise that "The Flash" is going to show a rookie elongated Man, it makes sense to know his future wife during Season 4. As Barry and Iris have been consolidated as a lasting love story, Ralph and Sue must be inseparable . In the comic strip, Almighty man seems happy to do whatever he likes. Loves to solve the supervillain mysteries and struggle, he loves his friends and would really love Sue.S have the advantage of prior understanding of these adaptations. Specifically, we want to avoid what happened to Ralph and Sue in the comic book, starting with Identity Crisis 2004 (written by Brad Meltzer and artist Rags Morales and Michael Bair). Not only was Sue killed, also involving a secret that threatened to destroy the Justice League and gathered the villains against them. Also Infinite Crisis or Zombified Blackest Night set things up. The Dibnys ended up as "ghost detectives" in 2006-2007, and as revived black lanterns in Blackest Night 2009-2010. Although the new 52 offered a fresh reboot, it took some time for something to materialize; And who came in secret Six 2015-2016 written by Gail Simone and drawn by Dale Eaglesham, Ken Lashley and Tom Derenick. Although it has made a good place, the Dibnys have not appeared so far in the titles of Rebirth. We think the lesson is simple: Ralph and Sue are not part in the dark. Couple with detectives of romance have been cherished for decades, and Dibnys are no exception. Even their own leader, Ralph gives "The Flash," a character to replace HR, as an extra brain to form with the mystery of the week. (Not to mention that we look forward to the interaction between Ralph and Green Arrow, despite his new attitude). Since the last season of CW has explored the dark side of the Flash team, we are expecting the man back from the joy they had in season 1. If Season 3 focused on the imminent death of Iris And really took the darkness of lightning, might well come to see the faithful Ralph and Sue. The CW gave Ralph the description of someone "stupid and misunderstanding the meaning of the truth," suggesting a Wider characterization cartoon. A confident hero, but not very competent. We hope you do not make Ralph sassy who does not think before speaking, including saying something inappropriate to the flexibility of certain parts of the body. In cartoon, Ralph is not always elegant, but can be content before Batman and I onn onzz. Flash well choose its comic elements, and the humor of the series has been well thought out. Make Ralph a "Ryan Reynolds or Chris Pratt" would basically. Finally, we hope that the televised version of Ralph will lead us to see more in the comic. The adventures of Ralph alone are often commissioned (mainly because they are short stories), but his time with the JLA thus established as an important member. Considered as representative archetypes of a certain era, Ralph and Sue, comrades who occupy a solving mystery place very important in the superhero comic book. Do not see this as a boring wedding, just enjoy your mind full of banter. We can see flash carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, but Ralph with more modest powers can give you a good dose of self-knowledge. After all, Dibnys' true power is to be truly intelligent. We do not think Ralph is the only comic book character in Season 4 of the series. We only hope he (and probably Sue) can put the series on his way to his original tone, which was a boy who really enjoyed being a superhero. It is worth repeating: Ralph loves Sue, loves the mysteries to solve and likes to be a superhero. If this is done screen, we hope this leads to greater participation in comics.

[gokinjeespot]

off the rack #1168

Monday, June 26, 2017

 It's the last week of June, so Canada Day is soon. With the country celebrating its 150th anniversary, this year is a big deal. I was 10-years-old when we had our centennial in 1967 and I was part of a children's choir that sang at city hall as part of the year-long celebration back then. We're getting together with friends for Canada Day come Saturday and I wish you all a great week and weekend.

 Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #1 - Chip Zdarsky (writer) Adam Kubert (art) Jordie Bellaire (colours). Get ready to be assaulted by an explosion of Spider-Man stuff as we near the theatrical release of the movie "Spider-Man Homecoming" on July 7. I still remember picking up Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man #1 off the spinner rack in 1976, happy that there was another comic book starring my favourite super hero. I wasn't sure I wanted to read this new incarnation because I am not a big fan of Chip's writing. I was not impressed with his work on the new Howard the Duck and Jughead books. My problem is that he comes across as too frenetic and eager to please by writing way too much. The double page spread with Peter and Johnny Storm having lunch together is a great example. Look at all them word balloons. The rest of the book is no better. Almost every panel is jammed full of word balloons. And what's with Peter leaving his mask on during lunch? Johnny knows his secret identity already. Wouldn't it have been more comfortable to take his mask off? I know I'm being picky but it's these little details that annoy me. The other thing that annoyed me was that I had to Google two acronyms to get what was being said. I'm an old fogey so I didn't know what NBD and NPC meant. Maybe it was to balance out all the other words used that "no big deal" and "non player character" were shortened. My quibbles are not enough to keep me from reading the next issue however because Chip pulls something out of the asphalt at the end that makes me want to find out more about the surprise person that Johnny meets. Well played Chip Zdarsky, well played.

 Batwoman #4 - Marguerite Bennett & James Tynion IV (writers) Steve Epting (art) Jeromy Cox (colours) Deron Bennett (letters). The first story arc ends with Kate and company saving the day. I was satisfied with how the story ended and there is enough mystery to keep me wanting to read more. What is Plan B and who is the shadowy figure in the last panel? I want to find out.

 Shirtless Bear-Fighter #1 - Jody Leheup & Sebastian Girner (writers) Nil Vendrell (art) Mike Spicer (colours) Dave Lanphear (letters). This takes place in a land where Yogi Bear would fit right in. The well endowed Shirtless Bear-Fighter's origin story is part Mowgli from Jungle Book and part Superman and part Punisher. This issue was mildly humorous but I didn't chuckle or laugh out loud. Maybe I'm too old. Is this the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1? Or The Walking Dead #1? Do bears poop in the woods? Buy it, read it and you be the judge. I only read it because Ottawa's own Tom Fowler did one of the variant covers.

 W.M.D. Weapons of Mutant Destruction #1 - Greg Pak (writer) Mahmud Asrar (art) Nolan Woodard (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). I hope you've been reading the new Weapon X comic book with Old Man Logan, Sabretooth, et alia because this is a direct tie-in to what went on there. No worries if you haven't because Greg spells everything out very clearly. The good guys are fighting an evil anti-mutant organization that is creating mutant killers. The Totally Awesome Hulk is one of the good guys so look for part 2, 4 and 6 of the story in that book. Parts 3 and 5 are in Weapon X. I'm reading them all.

 Aquaman #25 - Dan Abnett (writer) Stjepan Sejic (art & colours) Steve Wands (letters). This title has gone "Game of Thrones" but that's not why I took this extra-sized anniversary issue off the racks to read. It was the cover and interior art by Stjepan Sejic that made me want to give this book another try. I sure am glad I did. The story of a new power mad King of Atlantis and the return of the usurped King isn’t anything new but the beautiful art makes it more exciting to me. Stjepan knows how to draw hot women and Mera and Dolphin gives him plenty of opportunity to show that off. Aquaman is going back on my "must read" list.

 Crosswind #5 - Gail Simone (writer) Cat Staggs (illustrator) Simon Bowland (letters). It's nice to see Gail back on the racks again. Here she does a grown up version of Freaky Friday where a housewife and a mob enforcer switch bodies. Juniper and Cason are introduced pre switcheroo, which happens at the end of this issue. I can't wait to see what happens next. Cat's art is nice and that made it easy to put this new book on my "must read" list.

 Plastic #3 - Doug Wagner (writer) Daniel Hillyard (art) Laura Martin (colours) Ed Dukeshire (letters). The "hero" of this story is a psychotic killer but I like him a lot. A damsel in distress who may suffer a fate worst than death (haven't heard that cliché in a while eh?) plays a big role in this issue. Punisher fans will like this series.

 Royal City #4 - Jeff Lemire (writer & illustrator) Steve Wands (letters). This is a really cool ghost story. Patrick's thoughts about aging hit close to home.

 Archie #21 - Mark Waid (writer) Pete Woods (art & colours) Jack Morelli (letters). OMG (I know what that means) they killed…! You have to read this issue to find out who.

 The Mighty Thor #20 - Jason Aaron (writer) Russell Dauterman & Valerio Schiti (art) Matthew Wilson & Veronica Gandini (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). Loved the Walt Simonson tribute cover by Patrick Brown. Speculator alert: it's the first appearance of a new Thor. You won't believe who it is. What motivates this guy to pick up the hammer is heart wrenching and the bad guys are going to get it. I can't wait to see him in action. There's a scene between Jane Foster and the Odinson that puts into question the fate of the Mighty Thor. I really hope she sticks around.

 Batman #25 - Tom King (writer) Mikel Janin (art) June Chung (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). What made last issue worth reading was the kaboom on the last page. This whole issue is worth it for the build up to "The War of Jokes and Riddles". It's Batman versus the Joker and the Riddler and it's super intense. Mikel's art is the cherry on top and it's yummy. Batman is getting really good again.

 Wildstorm #5 - Warren Ellis (writer) Jon Davis-Hunt (art) Steve Buccellato (colours) Simon Bowland (letters). You should read this. It's all coming together beautifully.

 Luke Cage #2 - David F. Walker (writer) Nelson Blake II (art) Marcio Menyz (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). This is an uh-oh issue as Luke investigates what the scientist that gave him his super powers was up to. Kind of reminded me of Orphan Black.

 Superman #25 - Patrick Gleason & Peter J. Tomasi (writers) Doug Mahnke & Patrick Gleason (pencils) Jaime Mendoza, Mick Gray, Joe Prado, Ray McCarthy, Scott Hanna & Matt Santorelli (inks) Wil Quintana & John Kalisz (colours) Dave Sharpe (letters). The conclusion to "Fade to Black" has guest stars galore and highlights the core of this title as the good guys prevail. I've enjoyed this book more because of the family values that Clark, Lois and Jonathan embody and the art is spectacular.

 Star Wars: Darth Vader #2 - Charles Soule (writer) Giuseppe Camuncoli (pencils) Cam Smith (inks) David Curiel (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). By the way Vader is mowing down storm troopers he must be really pissed at his boss. We find out who he's going to get his light sabre from in this issue. From the looks of the next issue teaser, it's going to be a scorcher.

 Nick Fury #3 - James Robinson (writer) Aco (pencils) Hugo Petrus (inks) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) Travis Lanham (letters). This is freaking awesome. All you fans out there not reading this are missing out on some excellent writing and art. This reminds me of how I felt when I first saw Jim Steranko's art on Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the sixties as a teenager. Aco and Hugo's art with Rachelle's colours is so pretty and pops off the page. Buy this book.

 Super Sons #5 - Peter J. Tomasi (writer) Alisson Borges (art) Hi-Fi (colours) Rob Leigh (letters). Few writers know how to make young adults sound genuine but Peter is one of them. This issue establishes Jon and Damian as the young dynamic duo. I can't wait to see what they get up to next.

 Invincible Iron Man #8 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Stefano Caselli (art) Marte Gracia (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). This sets up next issue's fight with Lady Von Bardas. We'll see how bardas she really is.

[spynotebook]

Salutations, my self-adhesive envelopes. Sorry “Postal Apocalypse” is a day late; I’d explain why, but I, uh... swore an oath to a wizard. Or something. Look, it’s been a long week. A long week that ends with answers: How Marvel could have connected its movies and TV series way better! Who’s worse at time travel than the Flash! And I’m forced to say something nice about The Phantom Menace!

A Poor Joke

Jim:

Dear Postman of the Apocalypse,

This last weekend a fellow comic book fan and I had a heated dispute over the Killing Joke. He proclaimed it as one of the best stories ever told and I criticized it for its deep flaws - most egregiously the dismal treatment of Barbara Gordon. As a long time fan of Oracle and the role she would later play in Birds of Prey and the greater DC universe I do not take issue with Barbara being paralyzed by the Joker but rather how it was done.

As I recall there was even an issue of Booster Gold where he went back in time over and over trying to prevent this tragedy only to be told that it was essentially time-locked.

Since DC has been so generous with rewriting large swaths of its continuity over the years - why has this one storyline never been altered?

It’s never officially been retconned because The Killing Joke is one of the most popular and continually best-selling DC graphic novels of all time. It is probably the best known in continuity DC story of all time, even more than Crisis on Infinite Earths. It is, arguably, just too big to be retconned without a huge group of people—bigger than your average group of irate comics fans—freaking out about delegitimizing a “masterpiece.”

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It can, however, be unofficially retconned, which is what happened when DC brought back Barbara Gordon as Batgirl in the New 52. Now she’s still been paralyzed (and brutalized) by the Joker, but she, uh, got better. The Killing Joke is mainly a Batman/Joker story, but nothing lasting happened in it… for them. Barbara was the only one changed (and purely as motivation to make Batman extra mad at Joker that one specific time, which is why it was so bad). The New 52 changed her back to Batgirl, meaning DC has effectively swept The Killing Joke under the rug for the character, while still selling thousands of copies of the comic.

There’s another problem with wiping The Killing Joke out of existence, although I’m not sure DC is self-aware enough to realize the issue: Doing so would wipe Oracle out of existence (as opposed to just leaving her in the past, as per the current status quo). Barbara’s time as Oracle was beloved, and rightly so; by returning to fight the hell out of crime despite her injuries, she reclaimed her life from the Joker’s attack, and became a powerful representation of surviving abuse, and seizing power and agency despite the horrible things she endured. Barbara never gave up, and because one of DC’s most effective and useful heroes regardless of her physical limitations. About 99 percent of superheroes can punch people. Oracle took care of just about anything else.

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Oracle was a hero in a unique, important way that resonated even more powerfully because of her origins as Batgirl. There’s a reason there was a fan outcry when the New 52 put Barbara back in the cowl. It’s not because people didn’t love the character, it’s because they loved her as Oracle. Making Barbara Batgirl probably made sense from a business and brand recognition aspect, but DC lost something very special in the process.

Which is why DC shouldn’t retcon it. The Killing Joke made a gross, horrible narrative decision (made in a less aware time), but various writers and artists—especially Kim Yale and John Ostrander, who created her Oracle persona, and later Gail Simone—used that trauma to do and make something very special. Retconning it so that Barbara was hit by a bus would ultimately take away from her struggle, journey, and triumph. This legacy is key. As for what instigated it, all DC needs to do is not celebrate The Killing Joke as if it didn’t have one of the most problematic scenes in comics. It’s really that simple.

Everyone Stop Calling It “The Incident”

Mr. Marvel CU Fan:

Dear Mr. Postman,

Let’s suppose someone at Marvel Studios used Dr. Doom’s time machine to bring you back to our present as an “independent nerd culture consultant.” Your remit is two-fold: 1. Offer fresh ideas on ways of telling super-hero origin stories to general audiences (e.g. Avoiding the “Dr. Strange” problem); 2. Offer advice on better tying together of the movies and TV series. What would be your advice?

1) If we can agree that Marvel had a pretty good run up through introducing the Guardians of the Galaxy—and I bet we can—then the two problem areas are Ant-Man and Doctor Strange. Without getting into the diversity issue, and focusing solely on doing their origin stories better and more interestingly, the answer is shockingly obvious—put them in other movies.

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Honestly, Spider-Man and Black Panther’s appearances in Captain America: Civil War were perfect. It introduced both of them into the MCU quickly and efficiently, and in Spidey’s case, it didn’t interfere with the larger story at all, while Black Panther’s introduction organically became part of the story. Adding new characters in this way gives them a boost from the bigger, more established characters, and putting them in other heroes’ stories keeps the origins trim and exciting.

I would introduce Ant-Man in an Iron Man movie—Pym technology is a gimme of a connection; Tony could buy it and Scott could still steal it—while Doctor Strange makes sense for Thor, given his need to protect to Earth from threats from other planes (Marvel gods more-or-less being aliens notwithstanding). And Captain Marvel can make her debut in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, because of the Kree connection. Boom. Done.

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2) Honestly, you can’t really connect the Marvel movies and TV series too much, because the people who watch the TV series are still only a fraction of the people who see the movies. Getting the TV shows into the movies is a lot tougher, although for Agents of SHIELD it isn’t so bad—having Fitz, Skye, Simmons, et al. being part of the Nick Fury’s SHIELD team who help evacuate Sokovia in Age of Ultron—unnamed and unheralded—would have worked fine. For the other way around, I would just use Marvel’s vast profits to get one of the Avengers to show up for an episode per season. That’s all it would take.

The Netflix shows are tougher, because the characters are more… obtrusive. Well, you could easily bring in Jessica Jones and/or Luke Cage for an episode or guest-arc, because you have the time and space to get the audience up to speed, but you can’t have Daredevil fighting aliens in the first Avengers movie without explaining who he is, why he has superpowers, and why the Avengers aren;t trying to recruit him. I think the best way to do it would be to introduce one of the Netflix characters in the movies and then give them a show, which would help tie all the Netflix shows to the movies.

You wouldn’t want to spend an entire movie watching one of Netflix’s lower-key, downer heroes hijack one of Marvel’s films, though, so I’d try to keep them to an opening act battle, sort of like the Avengers fighting Baron von Strucker in the beginning of Age of Ultron, or Cap fighting Crossbones in Civil War. You’ll note those are both villains. I’d have Spider-Man battle the Punisher in the opening act of his movie—a classic match-up—get distracted by the film’s main villain, web the Punisher and leave him to fight the main villain, and when it’s over discover the Punisher has somehow escaped. Note: This is not an especially good move for the movies, but hey, it’s the job I was hired and sent back in time for.

Fowl Stall

JV Garcia:

Hello Postman,

Do you have any news about the development of Artemis Fowl as a movie? I thoroughly enjoyed the series and have a few of the graphic novels so I I have good visuals on how great it would look like in live action, or even as an animated series, a la Marvel/DC.

Last I heard, Disney had the rights but is it all “Hell, we got Marvel and Star Wars, we don’t need another John Carter on our lineup”?

There’s been little word since 2015 when Disney announced Kenneth Branagh was going to direct it, but this past November author Eoin Colfer confirmed in a self-made video where he answered Q&As that included the movie. Colfer said he’s been told the movie is still coming from Branagh after he’s done with his remake of Murder on the Orient Express, which is due out this November. Chances are by this point his work on Orient Express is mostly done, and he’s doing pre-production on his next film, whatever it may be.

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But as far as has been announced, the only other upcoming movie that seems to currently be on Branagh’s docket is Artemis Fowl. Furthermore, to all appearances he has a good relationship with Disney, as Cinderella made a solid profit. And last but not least, unlike some directors—cough del Toro cough—Branagh’s track record on actually making the projects he’s signed on for is pretty solid.

Once Orient Express arrives, I would suspect we’ll start hearing something about the Artemis Fowl movie; however, if it turns out Branagh is working on or gets attached to another movie before we that, I think we can safely presume Artemis Fowl has been put on the shelf for the time being. Oh, also? Disney announced the movie in 2013... a year after John Carter bombed. Obviously it’s not worried that a teenage criminal who hangs out with fairies will have the same problem as a Civil War soldier trapped on a planet full of underdressed red and green people.

Time Enough for Flubs

Tired TV Time Traveler:

Dear Mr. Postman,

The recent season of “Legends of Tomorrow” concluded with dinosaurs in present-day Los Angeles. This was a result of the Legends screwing around with the timestream. Does this disastrous result mean it’s time to stop busting The Flash’s nuts for bringing about Flashpoint? Or should I get used to screaming “Don’t do it” at the TV screen every time a DC Berlanti-verse character talks about altering the timestream.

I’m shocked to be saying it, but the Legends of Tomorrow may actually be worse at time travel than Barry Allen, which is exacerbated by the fact that keeping the timeline safe is their only job. But I don’t think that we should let Barry off the hook. You don’t give a murderer a gold star just because he killed less people than a serial killer.

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Plus, Barry’s the one who rewrote the timeline and created Flashpoint just so he could spend some more time with his mom and dad, which may be understandable but is completely, totally selfish. White Canary and Atom and Vixen and the rest are trying to prevent the timeline from being altered. They are goddamn terrible at it, but at least their intentions are good.

This is where I remind you that at one point on this past season of Legends of Tomorrow, Heat Wave did the introduction for the show and literally said that yes, the Legends are indeed massively shitty at their jobs:

This show is good, you guys.

If He Says the F-Word Murder His Family

Chris D.:

Oh Postman, My Postman,

Upon watching the end of Iron Fist where Claire says “eff” as opposed to “fuck” a theory I had seems all but confirmed: Marvel Netflix isn’t allowed to say the f-word. Do you think this is the case and if so, why?

Between seeing Wilson Fisk literally break a man’s head to bits with a car door and most of the characters participating in the definition of the f-word, it seems a little awkward that the writers would have to tiptoe around the use of mature language. Jeph Loeb, now the head of Marvel TV, in his introduction to the first volume of Alias kicked it off with a couple paragraphs on using the word “fuck” and how the MAX titles could use it non-gluttonously but artfully and it’s funny to me that these same people haven’t taken a similar approach in regard to their MA-rated Netflix programming.

Marvel heads also must know that they share much of their audience with Fox, who have (even in some of their PG-13 films) been more liberal with their vocabulary so it’s not like this is untouched ground and while I don’t think this diminishes quality from these shows, I’m curious as to how and why such decisions are made. Could you please share some insight on the matter?

Because America is totally fine showing graphic, horrific violence, and yet is appalled by bad language and nudity. PG-13 movies have more gun violence than R movies, but is only allowed to say “fuck” once and never as a verb meaning sex—go back and watch those X-Men movies and you’ll see. Meanwhile, The Walking Dead can show the graphic death of anyone, including children, and say “shit,” but it can’t say “fuck” at all.

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Even when there are no restrictions—Netflix could air graphic pornography if it wanted to, it’s an independent pay service (and to be fair the few sex scenes in the Marvel Netflix shows are may not include nudity but are not exactly subtle)—the general populace is also fine with graphic violence, but somehow scandalized by bad language or the sight of a female nipple. If too much of the first or a single one of the second appeared in a Marvel show? Starring a superhero? A thing children like, even if the shows themselves are clearly not intended for children and are plainly labeled as such? It would be the end of the world, and neither Marvel nor Netflix needs that.

It is, in a word, fucked. (This answer has been rated R, as I said fuck three times. Er, four.)

The Phantom Pain

Tony:

Having just gotten into an internet fight (and we know how well those turn out), I’m looking for an objective opinion here: Is The Phantom Menace all that bad?

Now, I’m not defending it as a misunderstood classic or anything. It is indeed the weakest of the original six and clearly has 16 years of directorial rust coming off the hull, but my contention is that the Internet Hive Mind hate has drowned out any strengths the movie has. For example, the soundtrack is solid, the costume and art direction is beautiful, the action is pretty good, and while he might have problems as a people director, I will defend Lucas to my grave as an outstanding visual storyteller.

As art is subjective - so turning to you, Postman of the Future, to justify my beliefs is folly - but am I wrong? Or is the truth somewhere in between?

If you enjoy it, more power to you. I think objectively we can say that Phantom Menace has some serious flaws, more than in the original trilogy, but I will concede it is not wholly without merit. The podrace remains genuinely exciting to watch, even if it would be improved by Anakin not being a 10-year-old moron who says “whee” unironically and doesn’t know what an angel is. And the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Darth Maul fight is still badass, especially with John Williams’ “Duel of the Fates” playing… even if Maul’s had virtually no screentime before it and Obi-Wan, like all padawans, is inexplicably forced to have a rat-tail.

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It has its good points. You are not wrong there. And, if you saw it at a young age, you have nostalgia goggles, which help keep that shine on something you loved as a youth, which affects all of us.

But I’m not going to say it also hasn’t earned its criticism, especially as one of the many Star Wars fans who watched The Phantom Menace repeated times trying desperately to convince myself I actually liked it. If nothing else, though, you may rest secure in the knowledge that it is at least marginally better than Attack of the Clones.

Have a question about a movie, TV show, comic, or their various industries? Want advice on how to deal with anything nerd-related? Have a “what if” scenario that needs settling? Email your friendly post-apocalyptic fake mailman here! 

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The End of a Wonder Woman Era

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G. Willow Wilson looks back at her time writing Wonder Woman.

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Wonder Woman has been inspiring readers and saving the world since 1941. Over the decades the Themysciran Princess has been a pillar of the DC Universe, her adventures and bravery a moral compass in an often bleak, grim, and gritty world. Like all of comics' longest running characters, Diana Prince has been helmed by many different creative teams, and most recently writer G. Willow Wilson took the reins of the character alongside an impressive roster of artists like Cary Nord, Tom Derenick, and more. As Wilson exits the title to head over to the world of Sandman and the Dreaming, Den of Geek sat down to talk to the co-creator of Ms. Marvel about her time writing the iconic hero and the lessons that it taught her. 

Den of Geek: Taking on a pillar character like Wonder Woman must have been a huge undertaking. What does that feel like now that your run has come to a close?

G. Willow Wilson: You know, it was quite daunting. It's a lot of pressure to try to continue a story that's meant so much to so many people over such a long period of time considering Wonder Woman is over 75 years old now. Different readers are attached to different aspects of her character and her story, so finding that right balance between the different parts of her history or the different aspects of her story--sometimes even different genres--is quite a tricky thing. It's very different from working on a younger, newer character who has less of a backstory.

What was your personal reading of Diana and who she needed to be during her time in your issues? 

I saw a lot of different takes on her character before I actually sat down to write any scripts. I read Greg Rucka's wonderful run, Gail Simone's, and several others to see how other contemporary writers had interpreted her character because with a character like Diana my temptation was to just kind of make her too perfect. I think that's a real trap that's easy to fall into when you're writing a character like this because you think, "Oh, she's beautiful, she's strong, she's intelligent, she has this deep seated sense of justice." So it's easy to kind of make her unflawed, and that's a mistake. 

read more: Justice League Keeps Building the Wider DC Universe

I think the real challenge for this character is to find a character arc that's meaningful to sort of show her more human side because, if nothing else, it has to be frustrating for somebody like her to exist in the imperfect world that we're living in. So you sort of find the parts of her character that an ordinary human being, your average reader, can connect to. That was really challenging to let her get angry, let her become frustrated, to let her have those human emotions that carry her story forward because the perfect is great in theory but how does that operate in an imperfect world? It really was a challenge.

Something that I think is one of the most difficult parts to get a handle on is how do you get that voice? Where you capture those different aspects of her personality? It's a tough thing. 

You've grappled with both the personal and political in your Wonder Woman arc. How did you balance those bigger picture messages and stories while still keeping Diana, her emotions, and her relationships at the core of the book? 

I think the fun of writing a single superhero book as opposed to a team book is that you see all of those different views filtered through the main character's point of view; you have that first person perspective on whatever's going on. So what I tried to do in the book was show Diana grappling with issues that exist in the world that have some sort of resonance with real things that are happening in the world today but have her particular unique perspective on it. She's obviously very old--I mean, she's kind of semi-immortal--so she's been around for a while. She's seen a lot of human conflicts that she has a very different perspective than someone who hasn't seen all of that human history. So I tried to sort of make those play out in a way that's unique to Diana's story because, of course, she didn't grow up here on Earth. She grew up on Themyscira in this very idyllic society, a matriarchal society that is very justice focused. I think that sets her apart in many ways from the rest of the characters in her series.

read more: New DC Universe Timeline Revealed

Look at Etta Candy, an old longtime friend and ally of hers, but whose job is very specific. She's a soldier, she sees things from an on the ground point of view. She's been in the military for a long time and Diana challenges her about certain things right up front because she's not truly from any one place. She has no dog in the fight of these big world powers clashing with each other so she's able to step back. I think she sees the inherent hypocrisy of some of the conflicts around her in a way that somebody from inside would not be able to do.

This is a bit inside baseball, but during your stint on the title you and your collaborators managed to put out the book on a regular bi-monthly schedule, which is quite a feat. What was that process like? 

Oh my goodness, it was like being thrown in a blender. This whole year has kind of been on fast forward for me. I took the Wonder Woman job and I knew that I was going to have to go on tour for The Bird King--my novel without pictures--in the middle of it. So I knew had to write a couple of issues way ahead of time to sort of make up that time in the schedule, for when I would be on the road. Then, also, last fall I had a hemorrhage and ended up in the hospital and needed emergency surgery. It was like life was just throwing every conceivable spanner into the works that it possibly could. So it was an extraordinarily hectic year.

read more - The Secret Origin of Green Lantern: Far Sector

I have a new respect for anybody who tries to put out a bi-monthly book. Whether from the writer side or the artist's one, you really cannot have anything go wrong and you cannot leave the desk. You know, it's quite a challenge. But I feel like I am now the most organized that I have ever been in my life because I really had to be. I had to become one of those people who sits down and makes a little chart and ticks things off on the chart and stays on task because there was really no room for error. It was a unique experience.

As you were crafting your story for Diana, was there anything that surprised you or took you in an unexpected direction? 

I sat down initially wanting to keep everything within the outline and having to outline very rigorously just to keep the book on schedule and so that everybody knew what was in the pipeline because there's not a whole lot of room for improvisation when you need to get multiple covers out per month. The cover artist needs a lot more intro time so they need to know what's going on in that issue before you've even written it most of the time. So there wasn't a ton of room to say, "You know what? Let's throw out the entire outline and work from scratch."

But having said that, I went into this wanting to kind of get Diana to a point where she could travel back and forth between her old homeworld because I thought that opened up a lot of interesting, dramatic possibilities. But I really found a new love and appreciation for her classic rogues gallery who are very much part of our world. So Giganta, Cheetah, and Veronica Kale, who's kind of like the Lex Luthor to her Superman if we're going to make that comparison. 

I ended up a lot more interested in those characters than I was expecting to be. That opened a lot of doors but also challenges because one thing I think that's unique about Wonder Woman that is less true of say Batman or Superman is that her story is kind of multi-genre. You have the high fantasy Greek gods element where you have mystical creatures and it's very much a high fantasy book. Then you have the more classic Golden Age kind of pulpy superhero stuff, these very archetypal superhero stories. And then you've also got her military connections--a lot of her supporting cast are soldiers or career diplomats, and career foreign service people--so there's a governmental aspect to her story. And those don't always mesh very comfortably. It's a really interesting thing to try to make one coherent narrative out of such disparate genre elements.

Your final issue created a new status quo for Diana. Was having her end up seperated from Steve Trevor always the plan? 

Not in so many words. I thought it would be interesting to introduce a tension between her and Steve into the story because they've been a couple for so long that I've got to believe that--although they have a wonderful rapport together--because she's obviously in a position of greater power than he is and, you know, he's kind of a macho guy, I've got to believe that it took some grilling for him to be able to be a partner to somebody like her. I really like their relationship and I'm sure it'll come back in the future, it's comics! I never really intended to leave them broken up. Yet because it's the Year of the Villain and the theme of this year right now kind of across books in the DC Universe is the bad guys are winning, I was like, "You know what would be interesting? To leave her on kind of a pyrrhic victory. She's won the battle, but at what cost to herself and what new status quo is going to be spun out of this?"

read more: The Secret Origin of Superman Smashes the Klan

That pathos, that dramatic tension, was kind of too good to pass up because I think for any superhero they're stronger than us. They're faster than us. They're smarter than us. And so to get to real drama you have to say what do they give up? What do they give up to be that strong? To be that fast? To be that superhuman? There are things you can't punch your way out of and this is one of them. So as we were talking about Year of the Villain and how we could make that work in the specific context of Diana's story, I was like, "Oh, what it would really do is leave her and Steve tacitly broken up," which was not something I planned to do. I thought they'd probably have a tough conversation that would change their relationship but not end it. So that situation was sort of spun out of Year of the villain.

This is a tough, sort of esoteric question, but do you feel like you've achieved what you wanted to during your time on Wonder Woman?

I have to tell you, I am very much Type A perfectionist. This has been one of the more challenging series that I've worked on for all the reasons that we've been talking about, and now that I'm done, I've been doing something that I don't usually do when I wrap up a project which is just going back and saying, "Oh, you know, I really love to do a story with this. I really would have loved to follow this storyline or lean into this dramatic point a little bit more to figure it out."

So yeah, I don't know if I'm 100% satisfied. As soon as this wrapped up I got these ideas for a standalone and a one shot. But I think with these O.G. superheroes who've been around for decades and decades there's always another story to tell. They're kind of like our contemporary pantheon, so I really think that we'll never run out of stories to tell about them. In that way I think it was inevitable that I get to the end of the run and think I wish I'd done this or change this or I wish I had five more issues.

Did you learn any lessons on this series that you'll take forward when you move on to the world of Sandman and the Dreaming? 

The main thing that I had to learn to with this character is how to keep multiple plates in the air in terms of meshing different storylines. I think that comes part and parcel with a series that's been around for a long time. There are different story threads that begin in the runs of different writer/artist teams, different secondary characters will come into the story and then out of it, and you have to decide, "Do we want to bring it back in and how?" It's really a unique experience play in a world that's the work of many hands, that's been created over sometimes decades by many people. And that's certainly true of the Sandman universe as well. This is a different pantheon, but one that has its own fan base, its own rules, its own pantheon of characters, and has been changed and altered and carried forward by multiple writer/artist teams and so on. It's a similar kind of challenge. You want to see something new and fresh, but also honor the work that those people have done.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Interview Rosie Knight

Nov 6, 2019

DC Entertainment

Wonder Woman

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Who Is Taskmaster? Potential Black Widow Movie Villain Explained

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The MCU might finally be introducing one of Marvel's coolest villains in Black Widow. Here's what he's about.

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With Marvel's MCU Phase 4 rapidly approaching, it’s almost surprising that it has taken this long for the Taskmaster to show his skull-covered face. Taskmaster has been taking on various Marvel heroes since 1980 and has gone on to star in two miniseries while getting the occasional supporting character role. He’s on that border where it was hard to tell whether he’d show up in the movies or get relegated to TV, showing up as a villain on Agents of SHIELD or something from the Defenders’ neck of the woods on Netflix. But now it appears that he'll be the villain of the Black Widow movie, which is coming in 2020.

Taskmaster first appeared in Avengers #195, created by David Michelinie and George Perez, mainly as a cliffhanger villain to set up his showcase in the next issue. A fifth-rate villain by the name of Pernell Solomon had a rather inconsequential plot involving cloning himself that ended badly, mostly because it exposed the Avengers to the existence of the Taskmaster and his secret villain school. You see, Taskmaster has a special power called “photographic” reflexes. If he sees someone perform an action – as long as it is a human movement – he can do the same on command. He’s essentially a greatest hits mixtape of every great warrior in the Marvel Universe.

But seriously, he can’t do superhuman stuff. He once tried to copy the movements of living cartoon character Slapstick and Bane’d himself.

At first he was going to become a superhero, but he realized that being a villain is where the money’s at. Then he came up with an even better and safer plan: keep the mercenary part of the job minimal and instead make money by teaching goons how to fight. If you’re joining Hydra or AIM and you want to know how to fight, just pay the guy who knows exactly how Captain America throws his shield so well and can perform Daredevil’s exact flips. He’d be able to make all that money using his skills while refraining from taking on superheroes head-on.

In his first appearance, Taskmaster easily took down Scott Lang Ant-Man, Hank Pym, and Wasp. He was even able to take on Captain America and Iron Man at the same time. His downfall was when he got in a one-on-one with Jocasta, who had no human movement to play off of, plus she was straight-up out of his league in terms of power. The other Avengers caught up and Taskmaster barely escaped.

In the years that followed, he remained the renowned villain coach while taking the occasional job if the money was right. Taskmaster was driven by greed as he had no trouble working for Crossbones or the US government if they paid up. During the memorable storyline where Steve Rogers was stripped of his Captain America title, the government had Taskmaster train John Walker, the star-spangled replacement who would later go on to be US Agent.

Marvel was weird about Taskmaster’s identity. For the longest time, they never gave him a real name, but they also didn’t seem to mind showing him unmasked from time to time. Like one time the Punisher nearly killed him and Daredevil later visited him in the hospital. Other than some bandages on his head, Taskmaster looked like a completely average white dude, albeit with a history of plastic surgery. We would eventually get some answers on his backstory, but there would be some contradictions.

Taskmaster appeared in the second issue of Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness’ legendary Deadpool run where Taskmaster kidnapped Deadpool’s sidekick/abused best friend Weasel. The showdown was played for laughs as Taskmaster, boasting about how he can read anyone’s movements and can predict your attacks before you even think about it, was completely helpless against the unpredictable Deadpool. Initially, this was supposed to build towards Taskmaster as a major nemesis for Deadpool during the Kelly run where the plan was that he’d start gaining the ability to inherit strategies the same way he inherits movements. That subplot was cut early on.

Regardless, Taskmaster remained a major part of Deadpool’s corner of the Marvel Universe and would appear in countless runs. While at times Taskmaster would be targeting Deadpool, other times, he would be his long-suffering partner in crime. One of their more memorable meet-ups had Taskmaster one of many hired guns working for a mobster against Deadpool and Spider-Man. Taskmaster whispered to Deadpool that his heart wasn’t really in it and offered to throw the fight for old time’s sake.

It was through that Deadpool connection that we got the brief “UDON Taskmaster” phase in the early '00s. The art studio UDON was drawing the Gail Simone run of Deadpool while also taking care of Ken Siu-Chong’s Taskmaster miniseries. The connecting tissue of this was mainly Sandi Brandenberg, a love interest to Taskmaster and secretary to Deadpool. But also, Taskmaster changed up his appearance, going from “albino Skeletor” to “street-wise Skull Man.” He was more gun-based than sword and shield.

The miniseries went deeper into his abilities, showing that he can remember every moment of his life with 100% clarity. He can also amp up his powers by watching fight footage in fast-forward, which makes him move at super speed at the cost of his body breaking down if he does it for too long. There’s also a neat anecdote about the pitfalls of his powers, as when he was a kid, he watched someone perform a perfect dive, copied it, and then almost drowned because he didn’t know how to swim.

Also, they finally revealed that Taskmaster’s real name is Tony Masters. Of course it is.

The miniseries and the cancellation of Deadpool coned into a new series called Agent X, centered around a scarred-up amnesiac named Alex Hayden who had Deadpool’s powers and personality and appeared months after Deadpool’s supposed death. Taskmaster was a major part of the series, taking time to be annoyed by Hayden’s antics, pining for Sandi, and being an all-around badass.

read more: Agent X: The Strange History of the Other Deadpool

While the UDON Taskmaster look showed up here and there, he was back to his original appearance by the time he was going after Moon Knight. He ended up getting more play thanks in part to Civil War and its aftermath, going from a member of the government’s pro-registration force to training cadets in Avengers: The Initiative. It was there that he became friends with one of his students, Eric O’Grady, the Irredeemable Ant-Man.

Once Norman Osborn took over the superhero wing of the government, Taskmaster briefly joined Osborn’s inner-circle of top villains, otherwise known as the Cabal. Taskmaster ultimately hated being Osborn’s whipping boy and secretly worked against him, eventually escaping and laughing when Osborn’s empire came crumbling down.

In 2011, Fred Van Lente and Jefte Palo joined together to create another Taskmaster miniseries, which was not only fantastic, but it added a few twists and retcons to the character’s backstory. It showed that Taskmaster answers to a higher power called the Org that calls him and gives him orders. Also, Taskmaster has a mental problem where he can only retain so much knowledge, so his brain tends to dump information that isn’t based on physical survival. In other words, he can fight in countless ways, but he can’t remember who he is or really anything about his past. Just a nagging feeling of unforgiveable guilt.

In this story, he protected a diner waitress named Mercedes from all sorts of assassins, only to discover that not only is Mercedes his Org handler, but she’s also his wife. Taskmaster is in fact a SHIELD agent who took a special kind of Super Soldier Serum that gave him his powers, but forces him to constantly forget the woman he loves. Hence the endless guilt.

There's also the thing that he's been unwittingly working for SHIELD all these years.

While that take on Taskmaster was eventually forgotten about (how fitting), it did lead to Avengers Academy member Finesse. Finesse is an Audrey Hepburn lookalike with powers exactly like Taskmaster’s who may or may not be his illegitimate daughter. When she tracked him down and fought him, it was heartbreaking to Taskmaster, as she only fought with copied movesets and he’d never be able to remember her for being her.

Since then, Taskmaster has shown up here and there, usually working alongside Black Ant, who is a robot duplicate of the Eric O’Grady Ant-Man. He tends to pop up whenever Marvel needs a throwaway villain and they’re tired of calling in the Wrecking Crew.

Outside of main continuity, Taskmaster’s shown up in a handful of alternate universe stories. One thing I find amusing is how there’s a What If issue based on the whole “John Walker as Captain America” storyline that has Taskmaster explain his powers by claiming to be a mutant because back then, nobody at Marvel thought too hard about how he got his skills. Then there’s House of M: Avengers, where Taskmaster does the same for the sake of fitting in with the high-status mutant community.

read more: Marvel Movies Release Schedule: Complete MCU Timeline

Taskmaster only showed up in the Ultimate comics towards the end of its run, but there wasn’t much to him. The only thing memorable was that they made him black.

The series Deadpool MAX reimagined Taskmaster as a grizzled and horny woman assassin who turned Wade Wilson into a killing machine and groomed him in the sexual sense. It's probably better that they didn’t go with this version of the character for the movie.

Taskmaster has shown up on several cartoons and in some video games. One of the more memorable is the recent Spider-Man for PlayStation 4 where he acts as a bonus threat, serving a similar purpose as Riddler in the Batman Arkham games. In a look that merged his classic appearance with his UDON appearance, he stalked Spider-Man through the city and came off as more of a knockoff of Deathstroke.

No wonder he and Deadpool keep crossing paths.

He's appeared in the trailer for Marvel's Avengers, which is pretty perfect, considering it will come out right around Black Widow, when the mainstream will presumably care about the skull-faced merc.

Lastly, I can’t help but mention Taskmaster’s appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Not just because you get to play as him and pull off sweet moves stolen from Hawkeye, Captain America, and Black Knight. Not just for his charming Brooklyn accent. Instead, it's for his rad-as-hell theme song.

Hopefully we'll hear this when he goes into action in Black Widow. I’m pumped for anything after listening to that song.

Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

Gavin Jasper writes for Den of Geek and feels that if Taskmaster was more realistic, he’d be doing way more breakdancing. Read Gavin’s other articles here and follow him on Twitter @Gavin4L

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Gavin Jasper

Jul 18, 2019

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Survive & Thrive: Celebrating 50 Years Of Barbara Gordon and Batgirl

January 1967’s “Detective Comics” issue #359 introduced readers to Barbara Gordon, a character who would have a profound impact on its superhero comics — although certainly not in the way her creators originally intended. Described therein as a Gotham City librarian with both a Ph.D. and a brown belt in judo (not to mention a certain police-commissioner dad), Barbara’s homemade bat-costume came in handy when she tried to rescue Bruce Wayne from Killer Moth and his Mothmen. The encounter made her miss the Policeman’s Masquerade Ball, but it set “Batgirl” on the path of a decades-long crimefighting career.

RELATED: Robin & Batgirl Leap Into Action On LEGO Batman IMAX Poster

Indeed, whether clobbering crooks in a Batsuit or outwitting evildoers as Oracle, Barbara Gordon has taken the worst superhero comics have to offer and come out better than ever. Today we’re looking back on fifty years’ worth of resilience and adaptability.

THE NEW LOOK

Batgirl vs. Catwoman from the cover of “Batman” #197, by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson

When editor Julius Schwartz took over “Batman” and “Detective Comics” in 1964, his “New Look” included some significant changes. The familiar stylized work of artist Dick Sprang gave way to the more naturalistic approach of Carmine Infantino, who had designed the Silver Age Flash for Schwartz back in 1956. Likewise, writers John Broome and Gardner Fox (who had also worked for Schwartz on the revamped “Flash” and “Green Lantern”) refocused the Dynamic Duo on street-level crime and villainy, instead of the wild sci-fi and fantasy which had come to typify their adventures. Those otherworldly stories were meant to attract readers from the more popular Superman books, and so were a handful of other characters like Ace the Bat-Hound (shades of Krypto) and Bat-Mite (a counterpart, and sometimes foe, of Mr. Mxyzptlk).

When the stories shifted, those characters went away, along with female counterparts Batwoman and Bat-Girl. (Note the hyphen.) Batwoman — secretly heiress and ex-acrobat Kathy Kane — had been a regular member of the supporting cast since her introduction in July 1956’s “Detective” issue #233, appearing 38 times in just under eight years. Her final appearance was in March 1964’s “Detective” issue #325, two issues before the New Look began.

Bat-Girl (Betty Kane, Kathy’s niece) wasn’t as prolific. From her debut in April 1961’s “Batman” issue #139 until her last pre-New Look story in November 1963’s “Detective” issue #322, she had only six appearances in two-and-a-half years. (However, both Kathy and Betty resurfaced in the mid-’70s — Kathy in “Batman Family” and “Detective” and Betty in “Teen Titans” — and more recently, sort of, in the “Batwoman” feature and Grant Morrison’s Bat-work.)

Accordingly, while there were comics precedents for Bat-women, Batgirl’s story probably starts when “Batman” TV producer William Dozier thought a female crimefighter would help the show’s declining second-season ratings. Nevertheless, the no-hyphen Batgirl would show up first in the comics. Infantino designed her costume and Fox and Schwartz co-plotted “The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl!” (written by Fox and drawn by Infantino and Sid Greene) for the aforementioned “‘Tec” issue #359. Played by Yvonne Craig, Batgirl made her first television appearance almost a year later, when ABC’s “Batman” started its third and final season on September 14, 1967.

By that time the comics’ Batgirl had proven to be pretty popular, with subsequent appearances in both Bat-books and a Supergirl team-up in September 1967’s “World’s Finest Comics” issue #169. She guest-starred in “Justice League of America” issue #60 (February 1968) and notched a couple more “World’s Finest” stories and another Supergirl team-up in “Adventure Comics” #381 (June 1969) before landing a semi-regular backup feature in “Detective” (starting with October 1969’s issue #392). Although the “Batman” TV series aired its final episode on March 14, 1968, Batgirl was still going strong in print.

THE BRONZE AGE

Batgirl tells Robin she knows his secrets, from “Detective” #526 by Gerry Conway, Don Newton and Dave Hunt

Nevertheless, just as Batwoman and Bat-Girl were too cartoonish for the New Look, Batgirl might have suffered similarly from her association with the “Batman” TV show. As Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams headed up the watershed “Darknight Detective” makeover of the early ’70s — and Batman started working solo — both Batgirl and Robin were relegated to backup features (although Robin still had “Teen Titans”).

When the “Detective” backups ended in July 1972’s issue #424, Batgirl dropped out of sight for a few years, except (oddly enough) for appearances in “Superman” issues #268 and #279 (October 1973 and September 1974) and “Superman Family” issue #171 (June-July 1975). Part of the reason for this was Barbara’s election to Congress in “Detective” #424, in the prematurely-titled “Batgirl’s Last Case” (written by Frank Robbins and drawn by Don Heck).

Fortunately, the “Batman Family” anthology kicked off in September-October 1975, with Batgirl and Robin the main attractions. Batgirl appeared in almost all of its 20 bimonthly issues, and when “BatFam” bit the dust in October-November 1978, Batgirl moved back to a regular “Detective” spot. Off and on, Batgirl was in “Detective” from December 1978-January 1979’s issue #481 to October 1982’s issue #519 — along the way, losing her Congressional seat in “Detective” issue #488 (February-March 1980). Readers also got to see her long-lost brother Tony (introduced ‘way back in August-September 1951’s “World’s Finest Comics” issue #53), but only briefly, prior to his untimely death (February-March 1979’s “Detective” #482). After this latest round of “‘Tec” backups ended, Batgirl was an occasional part of the Batman supporting cast (including the storyline which introduced Jason “Robin” Todd) through January 1985’s “Detective” issue #546.

For a character not normally associated with cosmic cataclysms, “Crisis On Infinite Earths” had a profound effect on Batgirl. Under “Crisis” creators Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, she compared herself unfavorably to BFF Supergirl, and ended up delivering the Maid of Might’s eulogy in “Crisis” issue #7. In real-world terms, “Crisis'” housecleaning apparently forced DC to choose which counterparts would survive: Supergirl or Power Girl, and Batgirl or the Huntress. Because Huntress was the daughter of Earth-Two’s deceased Batman and Catwoman, that choice seemed pretty clear; and Batgirl and Power Girl were spared.

Batgirl’s eulogy for Supergirl, from “Crisis On Infinite Earths” #7 by Marv Wolfman, George Perez and Jerry Ordway

Still, it wasn’t exactly a boon to Batgirl. When Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli revised Batman’s origin in “Batman: Year One” (“Batman” issues #404-07, February-May 1987), a subplot established that James Gordon and his wife Barbara Kean didn’t have a daughter old enough to be the future Batgirl (or, for that matter, a son old enough to be brother Tony). This forced DC to explain that Batgirl was really Jim’s niece, raised by him after her parents died — i.e., after “Year One” — and the two considered each other father and daughter from that point forward.

Moreover, Supergirl’s funeral might well have been Batgirl’s last major in-universe public appearance, because DC officially retired the character with 1988’s “Batgirl Special” (written by Barbara Randall and drawn by Barry Kitson and Bruce Patterson). Very shortly after the “Batgirl Special” hit the shelves, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s “The Killing Joke” followed.

ORACLE

Norm Breyfogle’s Oracle on the cover of “Suicide Squad” #49

Whatever one thinks about Barbara’s role in “The Killing Joke,” becoming the world’s greatest computer expert re-framed her character irrevocably. Seen originally as the anonymous “Oracle” (starting in January 1989’s “Suicide Squad” issue #23) and then behind the pseudonym “Amy Beddoes,” Barbara soon earned the reputation of being one of the smartest, best-connected crimefighters in DC’s shared universe. “Squad” co-writer Kim Yale simply refused to let “Killing Joke” be the last word on Barbara Gordon, so she and her husband (co-writer John Ostrander) transformed Babs into the kind of super-sleuth Batgirl never was. Paralyzed from the waist down but blessed with an eidetic memory, a librarian’s training, and virtually unlimited resources, Oracle used her incredible computer skills in “Suicide Squad,” the then-current “Manhunter” series (another Ostrander/Yale-written title) and “Hawk and Dove” (written by Barbara Kesel, neé Randall) before forming her own loose-knit group of operatives.

The first “Black Canary/Oracle: Birds Of Prey” special appeared in 1996, courtesy of writer Chuck Dixon — who, along with “Sword of Azrael” writer Denny O’Neil, had been using Oracle in the Bat-books since “Suicide Squad” folded in 1992 — and artist Gary Frank. A four-issue miniseries and a handful of one-shots followed (all written by Dixon and drawn by various artists), until “Birds of Prey” became an ongoing series in late 1998 (issue #1 was cover-dated January 1999). By then Oracle had graduated to Justice League membership (as of March 1998’s “JLA” issue #16), which, if nothing else, cemented her spot at the heart of DC’s superhero community.

Under Dixon and his artistic collaborators (starting with Greg Land), “BOP” was a reliably-entertaining mashup of espionage and superheroics, with a wide-ranging array of guest stars including Nightwing, Blue Beetle, a Guy Gardner clone and Power Girl. When writer Gail Simone and artist Ed Benes took over (starting in August 2003’s issue #56), the series found a whole other gear. Simone and Benes made the volatile Huntress — in the post-“Crisis” world, schoolteacher Helena Bertinelli — a regular castmember, and from the very first storyline demonstrated just how tough these characters were. Dixon wrote Oracle and Black Canary as seasoned professionals, and Simone built on that, diving deep into the pair’s relationship and expanding the cast to highlight other character interactions.

For the character of Barbara Gordon specifically, though, “Birds of Prey” meant about 15 years’ worth of being written either by Chuck Dixon or Gail Simone, with occasional stints from the likes of Terry Moore, Gilbert Hernandez — yes, that Gilbert Hernandez — and Tony Bedard. Those are pretty good caretakers. Oracle was always more than an exposition generator, but “BOP” showed how smart, devoted, stubborn and fearless she had become. From the identity’s “Suicide Squad” beginnings it was a rebuke not just to the Joker’s assault, but to those inside DC itself who considered her disposable.

BATGIRL RETURNS

Cameron Stewart’s “Batgirl of Burnside”

While Oracle was changing the way DC’s super-folk processed information, DC was trying to figure out what to do about Batgirl. In 1994’s “Zero Hour” event, Oracle came face-to-face with a time-anomaly Batgirl who might have foreshadowed Barbara’s relatively-speedy return to the role. Later, sometime around 1999 (according to an interview lost in the mists of Internet history), artist Alex Ross and writer Paul Dini wanted to heal Barbara Gordon with a Lazarus Pit. Ross’s redesigned Batgirl costume would have been very similar to the classic Infantino look, except with red highlights instead of yellow to symbolize her being “compromised” by the Pit. Bat-editor Denny O’Neil passed on Ross and Dini’s pitch, citing Oracle’s popularity.

Instead, 1999’s year-long Bat-event “No Man’s Land” featured two new Batgirls, the moonlighting Huntress and the assassin’s daughter Cassandra Cain. Cassandra emerged from the event with her own series (73 issues, 2000-06) but her story had a somewhat downbeat (although non-fatal) end. In the wake of Bruce Wayne’s apparent death, Cass passed the Batgirl mantle along to ex-Spoiler and ex-Robin Stephanie Brown, whose solo series lasted 24 issues (2009-11). However, once again DC had considered having Barbara (instead of Stephanie) return as Batgirl.

Of course, Barbara was healed and back in her Batgirl costume when the New 52 relaunch kicked off in September 2011. (At that time her 23-year Oracle career was longer than her original Batgirl stint.) Initially, Gail Simone wrote that volume of “Batgirl” and — as you might expect from someone who wrote Oracle for several years — was careful not to downplay Barbara’s past trauma or the lingering effects of her recovery. Simone left after three years on “Batgirl,” and the creative team of Brenden Fletcher, Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr remade Barbara into the so-called “Batgirl of Burnside,” brightening the book’s tone and emphasizing the character’s youth and optimism.

In a move which fans welcomed, Fletcher, Stewart and Tarr also hinted strongly that for this version of Barbara, “The Killing Joke” was merely a bad memory, implanted malevolently by a supervillain seeking to undermine Batgirl. However, the subsequent “Batgirl and the Birds of Prey” series (written by Julie and Shawna Benson) has kept “Killing Joke” in continuity. Despite that, and the departure of Fletcher, Stewart and Tarr, the current “Batgirl” creative team of writer Hope Larson and artist Rafael Albuquerque have maintained the character’s can-do spirit.

MULTIMEDIA MAVEN

TV’s Robin (Burt Ward), Batgirl (Yvonne Craig) and Batman (Adam West)

Since Barbara Gordon was born at least partially out of a TV producer’s necessity, she may be the highest-profile DC character with such a mixed-media pedigree. (She’s at least neck-and-neck with Jimmy Olsen, ported to the comics from the “Superman” radio show.) While the “Batman” TV series only ran for a little over two years, its success in syndication gave Yvonne Craig’s Batgirl at least a couple of decades’ worth of new viewers. Barbara Gordon (played by Dina Meyer) returned to live-action as Oracle (and, in flashbacks, Batgirl) for 2002’s short-lived “Birds of Prey” series on The WB. A few years prior in 1997, Alicia Silverstone had played Alfred Pennyworth’s niece Barbara Wilson, who ended up becoming Batgirl in the Joel Schumacher-directed “Batman and Robin” movie; but the jury’s probably out as to whether it was a proper Babs Gordon adaptation. By the way, we’re now curious to see whether Babs will make it into Margot Robbie’s “Gotham City Sirens” movie.

Starting in 1968 with the “Adventures of Batman” cartoon, Barbara and Batgirl have also appeared on just about every long-running Batman animated series (not including the team-oriented “Super Friends” or “Justice League” shows). She was a prominent part of 1977’s “New Adventures of Batman” and made several appearances on “Batman: The Animated Series” (voiced by Melissa Gilbert) and its successor shows (where she was voiced by Mary Kay Bregman and Tara Strong). In the second-generation future of “Batman Beyond,” Barbara (voiced by Stockard Channing and then Angie Harmon) had become Police Commissioner; and Batgirl and Oracle both appeared on the 2004-08 “The Batman” cartoon, voiced at various points by Danielle Judovits, Kellie Martin and Ellen Yin. Mae Whitman voiced Batgirl on the 2008-11 “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” series and in the current “DC Super Hero Girls”; and Alyson Stoner played her on “Young Justice.”

Batgirl also appeared in a number of standalone and short-form animated DC projects, from the Animated Series spinoff “Gotham Girls” and Lauren Faust’s “Super Best Friends Forever” to adaptations of comics storylines like “Under the Red Hood” and “Bad Blood.” Rosario Dawson will voice the character in the upcoming “LEGO Batman Movie.” (SPOILERS — she’s not in the “Batman ’66” animated homage “Return of the Caped Crusaders,” although she could have come in handy especially in its third act.)

Most recently, of course, Tara Strong returned to voice Barbara/Batgirl in July 2016’s animated “Killing Joke” (which also featured Animated Series vets Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill). This adaptation tried to mitigate the graphic novel’s treatment of Barbara by showing her in action as Batgirl, but its efforts were hamstrung by giving her and Batman an ill-advised sexual relationship.

THE SELF-MADE (AND REMADE) HEROINE

Robin guilts Batgirl into forgetting his secret identity, from “Detective” #489 by Jack C. Harris, Don Heck and Vince Colletta

This latest “Killing Joke” controversy followed 2015’s solicitation of a now-infamous variant cover for Fletcher, Stewart and Tarr’s “Batgirl” issue #41. Drawn by Rafael Albuquerque, who (as mentioned above) went on to draw the Rebirthed “Batgirl” series, the cover depicted a tearful Batgirl in her “Burnside”-style costume and Joker-esque lipstick, held hostage at gunpoint by the villain. When fans who objected to the variant cover were harassed and threatened over social media, upon Albuquerque’s request DC canceled the variant.

Regardless, the “Killing Joke”-related controversies are just some of the ways DC has both supported and undermined Barbara over the years. The 2011 “Batgirl” relaunch managed to do both, by giving Simone one of her “dream jobs” and “the reason [she] fell in love” with both comics and superheroes. Nevertheless, DC fired Simone abruptly (and somewhat mysteriously) towards the end of 2012, only to reinstate her less than two weeks later. Although Simone’s “Batgirl” work tended to be very dark, especially where long-lost sociopathic brother James Jr. was concerned, it struck more blows for diversity, including a crossover with Simone’s super-activist team book “The Movement.” However, ending Barbara’s Oracle career also made the DC Universe a little less diverse, and fans took note of that as well. Still, when Simone left “Batgirl” for good, fans worried that her successors wouldn’t keep transgender supporting character Alysia Yeoh, whom GLAAD described as “the first major transgender character written in a contemporary context in a mainstream comic book.” Alysia stuck around; but in 2013 Fletcher, Stewart and Tarr faced their own trans-related controversy, thanks to Batgirl’s horrified reaction to the villain Dagger Type.

This sort of back-and-forth was nothing new. In the 1970s, after the costumed Yvonne Craig starred in a public service announcement about equal pay and the comics’ Barbara Gordon fought for prison reform in Congress, Batgirl forgot Batman and Robin’s secret identities. It happened via a total mind-wipe in 1979’s “Detective” #489 (written by Jack C. Harris, pencilled by Don Heck and inked by Vince Colletta); and when Robin helped restore Babs’ memories, she chose not to restore everything, even though they still knew her secrets. A few years later, Batgirl revealed in “Detective” #526 that she’d re-learned their identities — “I’m not stupid, and I am a detective,” she reminded Robin — and wisely, the comics have spoken no more of it.

Similarly, after Barbara was spared a 1985 “Crisis” death only to be written out of 1987’s “Batman: Year One” and retired in 1988’s “The Killing Joke,” in 1989 DC revived the character “Crisis” sacrificed for her sake. Helena Bertinelli’s “Huntress” ongoing series (19 issues in 1989-90) was short-lived, but she went on to work frequently with the Bat-clan, and eventually joined the Justice League (twice) in addition to the Birds of Prey.

Despite all of this, and regardless of method or heroic identity, Barbara Gordon has never really gone away. If she was considered an artifact of the ’60s Batmania fad, she proved her staying power in the ’70s. In the wake of “The Killing Joke,” she was remade as an even stronger, and arguably more important, character. When other women took up the Batgirl mantle, she evaluated and mentored them. When she returned as Batgirl herself, she learned from her traumatic experiences and helped others do the same.

As it happens, long before Tim Drake and his two living parents entered the picture, Barbara Gordon was the most prominent Bat-character without a tragic background. Although the Silver Age was silent on what happened to Jim Gordon’s wife (apparently she died sometime after Tony and Barbara were born), Barbara fights crime simply because it is a chance to do good. From the moment in “Detective” #359 when she sees Killer Moth’s goons abducting Bruce Wayne, she springs into action without a second thought; and as the narration describes, “Babs Gordon is having the time of her life — fully alive to this new excitement and danger — and loving it!”

That sums up Barbara’s appeal pretty well. Like Bruce Wayne, she’s a self-made crimefighter; but unlike him and many of his associates, she didn’t always have exotic training or limitless resources. She became Batgirl virtually without anyone’s help, and she reinvented herself as Oracle when her old life had been ripped away. Even the “Batgirl of Burnside” modus operandi has a very DIY (or dare we say “artisanal?”) feel. Maybe Tim Drake should have sought her out — but wait, he couldn’t have, because clearly Oracle hid her real identity better than Batman and Nightwing did!

As Batgirl said at Supergirl’s funeral, “[a] hero is not measured by what her power may be, but by the courage she shows in living, and the warmth she holds in her heart.” Over the course of fifty years, Barbara Gordon has inspired fans of all kinds with her own courage and warmth. We salute her on her anniversary, and look forward to many more.

How are you celebrating Barbara Gordon’s 50th? Let us know in the comments!

The post Survive & Thrive: Celebrating 50 Years Of Barbara Gordon and Batgirl appeared first on CBR.com.

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