#Gotham Season 3 Finale review

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Transformers More Than Meets the Eye Season 2 Retrospective: World Shut Your Mouth Parts 1-3 (Pateon Review for Brotoman.EXE)

Hello all you happy autobots and after nearly a fully year and a crossover.. welcome back. It's been a long road but it's finally time to get back on the lost light for TRANSFORMERS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE SEASON 2 BABY

For those just embarking, More Than Meets The Eye was a long running Transformers comic by James Roberts, a fun trek to the stars where a bunch of Autobots allegedly quest for the mythical cybertron while in actuality figuring themselves out, cracking jokes, getting traumatized and saving the unvierse. It's one of my faviorite comics ever and thanks to my good patreon brotoman.exe I finally got to cover it. I complied season 1 into two posts (thanks tumblr) you can find here to get up to speed

Over the break I started a look at Boom! Studio's power rangers that continues in feburary i'll be doing on and off, then a bunch of fun side quests including Transformers One which you can find my gushing review of here

But I missed these guys and i'm excited to get back to this series. In fact with my Giant Days retrospective starting up in january, that means i'll be covering two of my faviorite comics of all time simultaneously. Also that time the Government decided if they ignored gotham maybe it'd go away. Lots of fun plans for next year.

A big reason besides just the joy of this series is simple: Out of the three seasons Season 2 is my faviorite. I loved it the most reading the comic the first time. Season 1 is great.. but also makes a lot of assumptions in some places, assuming the reader didn't start with this comic and will just know what the dead universe is or who overlord is. It make sense for the time as Chaos was the last thing to happen chronologically and last stand of the wreckers was a hit: it's not a bold assumption that most transformers readers still on board know all this. But it is a bold assumption to not ease readers who might NOT have been there for the previous volume or noped out after it was bad and felt bad, or who are coming in fresh because "hey look hot rod! cool space adventures! queer robots! sign me up'. I'm in the latter category in case you were wondering.

Season 1 is good.. but Season 2 feels more accesible while continuing the great plotting, paying off a lot of season 1's setups, adding a few of it's own and generally being pretty damn awesome. It also adds some fresh faces to shake things up with Chromia being a faviorite of mine, Nightbeat being fun, and Getaway being one of the most intresting characters they've added for reasons I won't spoil but if you know your already booing him.

The biggest and best though and the one I feel helps pull the series together... is Megatron. The former leader of the decipticons, the big bad of most transformers media... joins the autobots and the lost light. It brings the series themes of war and it's cost into focus: Cyclonus is CONSIDERED a decepticon, but while he shares the philosphy he wasn't there killing our heroes friends. One of the things I feel the season 1 cast really lacks for it's post war themes is any deceipticons.. and putting the most infaomous one of all, a man with so much blood on his hands he could fill a swimming pool more than makes up for it. Megatron is TRYING to do better as we'll get into, geninely wants to do something.. but struggles both with being better and EVERYONE hating him. At least to start EVERYONE is understandably hostile to megatron, who dosen't help by being his usual standoffish self. It's a fun situation... and also great for comedy as he both makes a good straight man and pisses Rodimus off as he's not happy about his new "co-captain" and the duo's banter is pitch perfect.

IT also allows for megs to be thorughly explored: why did he do this, what does he regret. Dark Cybertron hinted at this, but now he's a full time cast memmber we relaly get into why Megatron is the way he is. He feels so critical to the series it's a shocker that he's there because Editorial wanted him in one of the books.. yet it works so perfectly. The lost lights established issues with seeing the cons as automatically evil, their war trauma nad moving on are tested by putting the biggest symbol of all thier issues and the reason many exist at the helm. It's an engaging , hearbtreaking thought provoking season and we can finally kick it off under the cut as we find out HOW Megatron got this sweet gig, how everyone's dealing with it and just how drunk trailbreaker can get.

We begin

And we're back, with Nautica, now mostly settled in hurrying up to talk to her new bestie Brainstorm. And right away the series already has a new charming character dynamic: Chromia finally provides someone genuinely intrested in Brainstorm's work when it isn't on fire and a foil as she finds his newest idea a tad questionable: COLOR CODED LASERS, so you can tell who the baddies are. Ahhh how I missed James Roberts addiction to taking goofy parts of the franchies and making them an actual thing. This one dosen't quite take off as Chromia points out just how bad it is while Brainstorm just says.. maybe change the color. It's also a nice little peak into his character through some wacky nonsense: depsite the war having passed.. he still sees it as the good guys and the baddies. Granted a good number of decepticons were pieces of shit, but as prowl has proven time and time again and will somehow be allowed to keep proving, just because your on the right side of history dosen't make you a good person. It's something Chromia fully grasps and adds some fresh perspective; she's TECHNICALLY an autobot, but her home planet wasn't in the war and it gives her a diffrent perspective.

The two notice a pile of people outside Rung's office as he has a very special patient.. and it's here it's revealed whose the captain now. I spoiled it a tad early out of necisity but it's still such a great panel

I just notice the little cubes of energon and the energon equilvent of a water jug for the first time. I love that Rung has refreshments. Such a good therapist.

So we flash back six months and get used to it as we'll be going back and forth to explain well, how did we get here? Rodimus is prepared to leave, understandably as he was just through some shit before the whole crossover.

Optimus however dosen't want ANYONE leaving till after the trial. And naturally Prowl dosen't want a trial but a public execution. He even says it twice, proving that Magnus should've just let Chromedome finish him. Optimus points out WHY they need one: the public needs to trust the autobots again so the trial needs to be transparent. Granted Optimus still makes some fumbles in setting it up: while he makes the wise decision to apoint magnus as the defense, as he knows even with every reservation Mags will do the right thing, he appoints PROWL to proscution. Prowl who the NAILS could easily point to as biased. Prowl who Optimus knows from the crossover as Rodimus damn well told him set up the whole overlord fiasco out of paranoia. Prowl who SHOULD STILL BE AT THE BOTTOM OF A CLIFF INSTEAD OF IN THIS PRIVATE COUNCIL. I get it's not asshole free, Starscream is also there, and Rodimus has some thoughts about that that sadly feel all too relevant

Just that feeling that you can't grasp WHY something very stupid and horrible happened... or why they elected it to office.

So the trial is set, and Rodimus reveals why he's so twitchy: the matrix. Granted Optimus once again comes off as a bit of a prick, and unlike the prowl thing where Roberts hands are tied by the sister book having Prime weirdly trust the guy, Optimus just.. seems grumpy at Rodimus breaking the matrix. Despite ya know DOING SO TO SAVE THOUSANDS OF SENTIENTS. I love this book, with all my heart.. but sometimes it forgets our heroes can and have actually done shit.

So Rodimus is going to thunderclash for help, which frankly is a hell I wish on no one. But he has a reason for being so twitchy besides "everyone is being a dick to him today and the planet is ruled by a smooth talking facisit now": Thunderclash hasn't responded which given who we're dealing with is not exactly good. Still Rodimus being present gives Optimus an idea to speed things up.

Back at therapy Megatron is annoyed Rung has made his fusion cannon a penis thing, a gag I love but Rung points out why: Megatron is being evasive

So Rung tries something diffrent... great encounters. Who he met that had the most impact on him. Megatron deflects by pointing out how they met, the incident at the Macaddams from Chaos Theory. it's a major reason why I wanted to cover it, the other we'll get to as we go. Megatron dosne't begrudge him from forgetting and tries to use his usual rhetoric and deflect.. but Rung's found an opening: See he brings up Megs biography.. and specifically that he found a rare first edition, the others all wiped.

It's a quote I deeply love and shockingly haven't had a use for till now. But it's not only once again precisent.. but also gets to the heart of things. Rung tried finding the change, found nothing.. and then spotted the deidcation and asks whose terminus. Before he can dig in on that, the lights go out. Megatron takes that as a sign to leave to go refuel and then get back on deck so Magnus doesn't get too comfy. He does point out why he edited it out though: Terminus was a friend. and taught hims omething important. Okay it's vauge as hell. Rung is curious though as we find out MEGATRON asked for the session. Also btb, Ravage, one of soundwaves cassets is lurking on board. It dosen't come up in this half of the story and I almost forgot to mention it but it will naturally be important later.

Back in the flashback we get a brief bit of levity as Swerve holds fake "Crewditions" to fuck with people. It gives us a look at the adorable nerd Nautica is and nightbeat eventually shuts it down. It's a fun bit and leads us into what Optimus was getting at: letting Chromedome extract testiomny. Probablem is.. Megatron has a deathly fear of mnemosurgery, reacts harshly and assumes their coming to take his brain instead of you know, trusting optimus. I mean I can't blame him for not wanting to take the needle. Rodimus.. takes the chance to mock him and say megatron will end up where he started: under rock deep under ground with nothing to show for it. And this.. will be a mistake. Not for the whole of cybertron as it leads to some good things, bu tfor Rodimus as it's going to be a pain in the ass in the short term as Megatron has Rodimus give Magnus a box.

Back on the ship Skids and Nightbeat are hanging out. Their buddies now. And Chromedome is.. not doing well just sitting in his cell replaying rewind's message having ALMOST recovered a little.. but then you know, he didn't get to kill prowl so back to depression he goes. Nightbeat is curious though.. the last number on Domey's hab suite is missing.. something... is up.

Speaking of.. I don't have a transition. Whirl is doing what he does best: pick a fight to mask his deep issues. In this case he sucker punches Megatron

It does not. Once again Whirl not only picked a fight with someone stronger, but someone who did not want one. And unlike Cyclonus who simply threatens to murder him some day, Megatron cuts to Whirl's core. Whirl brings up the fact he tried to murder Megatron in a prison celll... and Megatron reveals in gratittuude for setting him on his path, he ordered his men to never actually kill Whirl. I like the ambigiuity: Megatron is usaully straight forward.. but he's also smart and knows this kind of lie, or even worse truth, would damage whirl way more than a fight he did not want or ask for and lets the fight go while Whirl looses an arm in Megatron's insides as shockwaves use of him as a space bridge means his stomach's all kinds of freaky.

After this we flashback as Megatron explains the why of his therapy: he explains the editing that life is all edits, slowly piecing things out of your life, changing yourself for better and worse and sometimes the wordk you've done.. is unsalvagable. You need to start over. And that's what Megatron is doing here, why he threw his past away on Luna 2 where the trial took place. We'll find out what that means later for now the issue ends as the crew finds a mysteroius coffin with an autobrand in space.

We open our second issue with the return of Tailgate! I missed him.. I missed all of these guys granted but still I forget sometimes he was in a coma between seasons. But he's back and Cyclonus smiles upon seeing him coming. He's then massively confused as Tailgate tries to jam his finger in his head as his new signature move, but still it's clear he's happy for a change. Tailgate gets caught up to speed on just about everything.. only to see Megatron hauling a coffin and wearing the autobrand. They both have one as Tailgate got his as a present while in stasis , with Cyclonus feeling it dosen't fit either of them. We do get a cute moment though that after a drunk autobot you da man now dawg's tailgate, Cyclonus assures Tailgate he was missed.. by him. He says it about as directlya s he can without just saying "I missed you dawg now let's go have robo sex".

Back in the past, Rodimus is watching the trial with tons of victim testimony.. too many. In a nice bit to show his depth he does feel it's necessary, the bordedom comes from just how the same it is: so much trauma in a pile. So he's greatful for a break as Atomizer asks him. You remember him right? The red one? has a visor? Hasn't been plot relevant till now o clock?

Well now he is and he's suspiciously giving Rodimus a keypad with the names of every person that voted against him when he called for a vote on his captinancy. Rodimus does the right thing shrugs it off.. twice even.. but Atomizer knows his audience... he knows even at his lowest and most regretful.. rodimus still thrives on attention... and simply says he'll stop pushing.. if Rodimus says it one more time.

Back in the present everyone's at swerves and Swerves now has a bouncer, 10, one of the legislators left over and reporgrammed. He only says 10. While he deals with that and Swerve is grumpy over the new captain, though frankly should be greatful megatron let him keep his bar given what a stickler he is, Natuica, Skids and Riptide, a new crewmember whose less important than Nautica are watching Trailcutter slowly drink himself into a coma. His crippling self esteem issues and alcholishm have lead him down the darkest hole imaginable and it's sad to see, sadder this time around as having read his spotlight and seen just how shabbily he's treated by everyone but Whirl, whose busy patching up his pride, you can see why he's drunkely spiraled. And it only gets worse as Riptide mentoining Megatron drinks some kinda super fuel gives the poor shambles an idea.

Back to the past, and Starscream is being starscream, going on a long rant first describing how much he's acomplished and how much he loves his poeple and exactly what you'd expect till Magnus tells him to knock it off, then a long stew of lies painting Megatron as a mistaken blundering fool whose revolution got out of hand and whose been lead by others. This.. is what gets Megatron to activate his escape hatch to the suprise of no one. While part of it is genuinely good impulses as we've seen. he still has an ego. It's not as big as Starscream's as tha'ts just not physically possible, but it's enough to get him to say "fuck this time for plan b" after pleading guilty and intended to just.. give up.

Chromdome goes to visit Nightbeat. Turns out as he's been rewatching Rewinds's last words again.. and again and again, and again, and again and again and again and you get it, he's noticed a change...Rewind screaming. A change that's now gone and understandably Nightbeat think's it's just grief and Chromedome refuses to see the naunce in that and plans to storm off... till Nightbeat sees something... REWIND.

So it's back to trailwhatevers drunken escapades. Nautica leves as she's tired of water man and skids egging this stupidity on as Trailbreaker breaks into megatron's room.. well rather the door goes missing. This issue does a nice job of amping things up.. that something IS seriously wrong with the ship and the sign on chromedome's suite was just the start.

So he breaks into suplies, checks the energon and finds megatron.. and finds megs, magnus, ratchet, some white guy, guy with a visor and cool red guy with a visor starring him down. Trailbreaker responds by busting out his new move a "panic bubble" that lasts 90 minutes. While he huddles and his enablers have no idea we go back to the past.

Starscream is doing what he does best: celeberating prematurely that he's won, he's the true leader of the decipticons. er cybertron...

The Autobots also got an autobump. But the real meat is back in the present. Nightbeat has figured out what Rewind might be. A g-g-ghost! Specifically a data ghost. Information has a life of it's own, and Rewind was constnatly recording... and him stopping when his spark stopped. Sidenote I just realized transformers sparks are where their hearts are and i'ts a consitant thing in this comic. Like no matter the side the spark tends to be at the center... I know this because of all the impalings. So many impalings. I'm not haunted at night you are.

Point is Nightbeat is fun, on a tear if not exactly senstive as Chromdome is both depressed he didn't bring his partner back with the power of love and thinks it has ot be revenge since he hasn't been contining the quest for dominus ambus like he promised. They have bigger issues.. which i'm saying a lot this review but is true as the wall of nightbeat's habsuite is GONE. Somehow their not in the vacum of space. or something.l the art really isn't clear.

So back with Trailboy, he's coming down and is ready to go to prison or be sent home or whatever just as long as it isn't a beating. The bad news is he's still getting a beating as Megatron thunks him on the head. The good news is Megatron.. is a good leader now. He recognizes the problem and activated Trailbreakers fim chip. Basically he can drink he just can't get drunk. Disabling it is how robots get drunk in the first place. It's a violation of space.. but something necessary as this coudl've gone so much worse. It's also a job opportunity: Megatron admits this shoudln't of been even possible: even with the door going missing someone breaking in this easily and this drunkenly is impressively sloppy. He needs a new cheif of security since with all these extras and all this chaos.. no one.. no one thought to hire a new head of security since Red Alert's breakdown. Especailly given it was proven he was entirely sane and hearing a serial killer in their walls, but we'll get to his fate later. Point is Megatron sees this drunken breakdown for what it is: a very depressed man with a disase who badly needs a purpose and gives him the job. It shows already that while Megatron is still coarse and arrogant.. he's also a better man. In the past he probably woudl've just killed trails and does threaten to murder him.. but here he empathizes seeing that he's just a bot at the very end of his rope with no one actually supporting him but given the panic bubble with actual talent. Sending him home or locking him up helps no one. Giving him a job, a purpose and what he wanted most of all: recognition.. that ... that's a good thing Megatron did.

So Trailbreakers rock bottom did help though: it opened the casket and since no's eyes are leaking out of their skull, Megatron opens it to find RODIMUS BODY. Yup apparently he's been dead this whole time.

TO find out how we... should go back to the flashback. And we do but get no answers: Megatrons pleading not guilty now, while Rodimus did the thing we all expected and reads the data pad.

We being our final issue for now where we left off: on trial. Yeah this bit isn't BAD.. but feels like it woudl've been better as it's own issue in the middle or at the end of these three. A whole flashback to explain. It's how most comics do it and while that can get tedious I now see why: you can thread flashbacks with a story well, see the first arc of the most recent captaina merica run. JM Stranzki nicely synchs up Steve's past trying to stop american nazi's with the present. Here it synchs up a little but it feels like two diffrent stories that are important but keep interupting each other.

I do like the trail as it helps set megatron up: why he's here where his heads out etc and I like his prewrittne response he has magnus read out

Now the mentally violate part is fucking bullshit. That's.. entirely made up and not at all what happened and footage from the cell could easily prove that. That's just megs being a dick. But the rest.. isn't wrong. They didn't pull any witnesses from the decipticons, any of his loyalists left alive who might speak for his character, and while Magnus did his best he really didn't make an actual defense, his judge is his archenemy and his prosecuter is a known war criminal. It's very clear Megatron only let this go as far as it did because he planned to just sit and rot and was fully taking the kangaroo court.. but hot rod and starscream woke up his ego: his desire to not have the story end in shame.. but in doing SOMETHING right.

More on this soon. For now everyone has some drinks and kicks back, riptide studies a bit and we get back to the past where exactly who you'd expect are reacting exactly how you'd expect.

Look starscream isn't suprising.. but at least he's entertaining. Of course he's going to pout his evil plan isn't going the way he wanted. Prowl is also unsuprising.. but a giant fucking dick i'm still baffled john Barber couldn't see as a monster. Maybe it's roberts writing but you can't just..conviently ignore that one of your main cast commited war crimes in the other book or is saying shit like this. Or blame it on constructicons as he'll end up partially doing. Prowl is arguing they should basically have a show trial and trying to imply it's us or them and not "everyone even monsters deserve a fair trial. " Ratrap cuts through this very RID argument with a simple point: Ask megatron what he wants.

Back with the corpse First Aid is examining and has NOT been doing well. Ratchet primarily asked for his help because Ambulons' death hit the poor guy hard and he's been in his room barely engaging with anyone sense. Seems to be going around. Still calls need to be made.. and thus after a three issue absence, kinda... it's the return of the king

Yeah a rare full page here as everything about this is great, Rodimus clear grief... and it being interputed by a petty argument. I like that like Ultra Magnus Megatron just.. cuts through Hot Rod's bs.. that he's now tag teamed by two people who won't take his shit. And both have a point: They are co captains. Made up rank or not optimus judgment stands, but Rodimus was sulking for what was implied to be several months, kinda proving WHY maybe they needed a new captain.. co captain. Whatever. While Optimus taking the reigns from Rodimus is cruel as this is Roddy's quest, he acomplished little and let a serial killer on board on a dare. Megatron has done FAR WORSE.. but has far better motives than his own deep seated insecurity.

So back in prison Megatron is wondering about the people who tried to spring him. By the way some decpitcons tried to free him. It.. it sure did happen. I nearly forgot to mention it but in doing os realized just HOW superflous it ends up being. It shows Megatron isn't going to flee but like.. we got that.

And this proves it as Megatron explains why he' squesting and wants to change things to being judged by the knights of cybertron. He dosen't want his epitaph to be written by starscream. He wants to do something right

He's trying to atone for what he did. this isn't just an escape hatch: he had one ready, unsuprisingly, but his reasoning... is good. he just wants to make a better world after ruining this one.

Optimus agrees. While he could just throw megatron in the brig till Rodimus finishes the quest, He sees the genuine nature of this request and asks for two non negotiables first

Second we'll naturally get to later, as for now Rodimus is freaked out and thus calls for TEAM RODIMUS WHAT WHAT. Specifically nightbeat, nautica, chromedome, brainstorm and skids, all people who are smart and can deal with weird shit. He ignores Night beat about to tell him shit is weird and instead has chromedome once hack into a dead body

Yeah Rodimus is a bit of an ass this arc even by his standards. Nautica finds specteralist symbols, chromedome only finds curosy memories left and first aid confirms via enermost energon that it's him. Sometime in the near future he apparently dies after they reunite with drift again.

So Rodimus has a resonable adult reaction to his impending death: CUT OFF HIS ARM. After all if his corpse has two arms, he has one it can't happen. Perfect plan! Megatron points out the flaw and I just.. love how these two bounce off each other. We've never really had someone on the same level of rodimus point out his stuidlty. Others have but with those bellow the command trinity he can tell them to shut up and respect the captancy and magnus and drift were both weird in their own ways: drift was new agey by cybertronain standards and magnus would marry the rules if that wreen't against the rules. Megatron is megatron.. but he lacks the quirks whiel still being megatron enough to be funny. He's straight with roddy like magnus but unlike magnus has no clear issues he can push. Roddy can pull out the "your a monster card" and does frequently and will call megatron out on a lower moment next time, but it's not something that works when pointing out basic logical falicies and when the person isn't trying to be space hitler these days.

Thankfully rodimus mental breakdown is interuppted as a large portion of the ship disappears behind him. So Nightbeat's right while Brainstorm's latest invention has the right idea

Meanwhile our other new castmate finally reappears: Getaway. As Tailgate is hot doggin and grandstanding at the bar, Getaway comes up and starts flattering him, calling the little guy a hero and blatantly hitting on him in a way that's obvious to a grumpy cyclonus and anyone with eyes, but also comes off creepy... the way he just... butters Tailgate up it seems wrong. And it is but we're a long ways away from that. The alarm goes off and we go back to the flashback. Megatron denounces deciptconism and everything he stood for, a bit mopey.. but understnading

Speaking of MOpey rodimus shows Ratchet the pad.. and finds out Megatrons going to be assigned to his ship. And his pissy ness.. is entirley justified. Now his months long mope sesh isn't, he didn't act like an adult and unlike first aid and chromedome he's not dealing with severe trauma and depression: he's just sore his ship got taken away and if he wanted to prove he's still captain, fucking act like it. Be a leader.

That said it wasn't within Optimus' rights to fucking do this. It's not his ship, not his mission, not something he's been involved with apart from a brief team up. He has no authority over the lost light and should've had no authority to keep it here for the trial. He's not in charge of anything but the autobots. not cybertron, and frankly shoudln't of been judge. His intentoins are noble: keep megatron honest and in the public eye and watched and under fools energon so his strengths down, it's why the special diet. But his actions are simply selfish and not how a leader acts: While sometimes you HAVE to ignore the will of your team to do something right in fiction, to give someone a second chance even if they sucked before, this.. isn't his team. He was autobot commander but he RESIGNED. Bumblebee is dead. This decision is not his to make. He didn't set out on this mission. He changed an entire ships mood, put the crew with a leader they truly hate simply because he knew they'd listen to him and wouldn't contest it and that... that's not good leadership. That's not being superman tha'ts being a dick. It works out long term, but it's an example of the rest of the autobots dismissing the lost light crew's autonomy. They stopped being one united all together faction the second they split and while they'll be there when cybertron needs them, the autbots left on cybertron have to accept they aren't one big army anymore. He's not THE SUPREME COMMANDER. He deserves respect I get asking for favors but this is a unilateral decision tha thas horrific consequences.

Anyways Rodimus feels bad as he was considering generally using the pad as Atomizer suggested, to cull the herd.. but can't. Ratchet points out what a stupid thing this would be but lets its lide given bout the cirucmstances and the fact Rodimus agrees to destroy it. That said.. he also points out it's fake. his name isn't on the list.. and that clearly wounds Rodimus.

So we end act 1 of the story as everyone scrambles to exit the lost light. We get some great banter as Megatron gives a classic villanous unhand me.. and Rodimus points out good guys don't really do that and I love their bickering on the escape pod

Now kiss... but maybe later as the lost light is gone. And that ends part 1

While splitting it in half this was was just circumstance, and it's late release was just me having a massive cold the split fits as while I consider this is a 6 part arc and all of it's collected in the same volume, it really is two acts the first slowly building up to the big event and explaning "why megatron here" while part 2 leans more on the sci fi high concept now we're all caught up. It's why I wish we'd gotten a flashback issue. Maybe DO rodimus as a corpse then the flashback.. then reveal he's alive. I dunno. This stretch of issues is decent but the trial stuff makes it drag slightly. I'm not reading this book for a self righteous asshat to hold a trial for his arch enemy whil ea war criminal screeches to just kill him already.

Having to spend time with Prowl did not help, as .. it's Prowl. he sucks. And I admit a large part is how the series ends, with Prowl somehow surviving all this, yes, really, and getting to dismantle the lost light. I'll get to the context in a few years, but that knowledge just makes me hate him more. Every panel is him just being the smugest most uncomfortable dickweed and it really pisses me off he's allowed to be involved in this trial AT ALL. That he's not HAVING A TRIAL or in a cell. I mean I get doing megatron first but i'm shocked starscream didn't throw him in one as he has every reason just to piss optimus off. I get so tired of the heroes throwing their hands up at prowl being a dick, arguging with him but doing nothing, something that will lead to a whole ass crossover event. And yeah you could blame his current combiner status but it's clear from the flashbacks before his brainwashing or his time as bruticuis, he was a DICK. An authortarian asshat who thought the ends justified the means. He's the Transformers verison of amanda waller but without the comptence or style... so absolute power era amanda waller, but I digress. He's a bad person and while Rodimus actions involving overlord haunt him I notice somebody never gets tried fo rit, exiled or just... plain.. kicked out. Optimus should NOT have brought him to earth or even talked to him. He gives Rodimus so much shit, and the shit over his not resinging was deserved.. but he lets PROWL get a fucking free pass till it's too late only punching him after he's comitted more war crimes. The more I think about it the more prowl's presecnce just drags down this whole affair and I didn't think i'd be ranting about him AGAIN but here we are.

This first half is fine, as while season 2 is my faviorite it does have a bumpy intro with the flashbacks, everyone being a tad grumpy and the first arc really being everyone adjusting to a war criminal being made captain. The levity the series needs to ballance it's deep sads isn't there often and it's only when Rodimus returns the series equilbrium comes back, his man child nature perfectly setting up comedy again with Swerve in a grumpy mood and Trailcutter's breakdown being more sad than the shennigan the series tries to play it as partly. He's a constantly negelected and unseen person lashing out and doing a drunken stupid that only dosen't end in his death because Megatron is a shockingly cool guy. But once you get Rodimus and Megatron arguing and our cool star trek style high concept of the week going, things feel like the comic I feel in love with and thankfully the second half is way stronger for it.

Next Time: We find out where the lost light went, Megatron gets a cat, and a former member of the crew returns! Kinda! Multiverse theroy is a bitch! I'm pulling for ya we're all in this together

[androxys]

Androxys' 2024 Comics Wrapped

Tis the season for reflection and reminiscing and big lists, so I guess it’s time for me to review what my year of comic reading looked like! As always, this list is not guaranteed to be 100% perfect, as I’m only human, and keeping a big spreadsheet and LOCG sounds great until you mark one and forget the other.

Per my tally, I read 836 comics in 2024. If we assume each comic is 22 pages long, that’s 18,392 pages of comics. Of course, some issues are oversized, but some issues were also originally backups that were later collected, so I’m assuming it all comes out in the wash.

Top 10 Characters/Teams I read for…

The Legion of Super-Heroes: 116

Batman (Bruce Wayne): 77

Supergirl (Linda Danvers): 46

Wonder Woman: 42

Nightwing: 41

Amethyst: 39

The Dreaming: 32

Poison Ivy: 24

Batman (Dick Grayson): 20

JLA: 19

Top 5 Titles:

Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) - 50 issues

Supergirl (1996) - 46 issues

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (1949) - 35 issues

Detective Comics (2016) - 32 issues

Wonder Woman (2016) / Nightwing (1996) - 30 issues each

If you want to see my full 2024 reading, check below the cut.

Absolute Power: Origins (2024) #1-2 [2]

Action Comics (1938) #858-863 [6]

Alan Scott: Green Lantern (2023) #1-6 [6]

Amethyst (1983) #1-12 [12]

Amethyst (1985) #1-16 [16]

Amethyst (1987) #1-4 [4]

Amethyst (2020) #1-6 [6]

Amethyst Annual (1984) #1 [1]

Anarky (1997) #1-4 [4]

Anarky (1998) #1-8 [8]

Aquaman (1962) #40-48 [9]

Arkham City: Order of the World (2021) #1-6 [6]

Arkham Reborn (2009) #1-3 [3]

Batman + Arsenal (1997) #1 [1]

Arsenal Special (1996) #1 [1]

Batgirl (2024) #1 [1]

Batgirl Special (1988) #1 [1]

Batgirl: Girlfrenzy (1998) #1 [1]

Batman and Robin (2011) #1-8 [8]

Batman Incorporated (2022) #1-12 [12]

Batman: Batgirl (1997) #1 [1]

Birds of Prey (2023) #5-14 [10]

Birds of Prey: Batgirl/Catwoman (2003) #1 [1]

Birds of Prey: Catwoman/Oracle (2003) #1 [1]

Black Lightning Year One (2009) #1-6 [6]

Chase (1998) #1-9, #1,000,000 [10]

City Boy (2023) #1-6 [6]

DC Universe Legacies (2012) #1-10 [10]

Dead Boy Detectives (2014) #1-12 [12]

Dead Boy Detectives (2022) #1-6 [6]

Death of the New Gods (2007) #1-8 [8]

Detective Comics (1937) #644-653; #846-850 [14]

Detective Comics (2011) Special Edition #27 [1]

Detective Comics Annual (2021) #1 [1]

Detective Comics (2016) #1034-1065 [32]

Far Sector (2019) #1-12 [12]

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds (2008) #1-5 [5]

Fire & Ice: Welcome to Smallville (2023) #1-6 [6]

Batman/Catwoman: Follow the Money (2010) #1 [1]

Gotham Academy (2014) #1-18 [18]

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy (2016) #1-6 [6]

Gotham City Sirens (2024) #1-4 [4]

Hawk and Dove (1988) #1-5 [5]

Huntress Secret Files (2021) #1 [1]

Jay Garrick: The Flash (2023) #1-6 [6]

JLA: Incarnations (2001) #1-7 [7]

JLA Year One (1997) #1-12 [12]

John Constantine: Hellblazer (2019) #1-12 [12]

Justice League Elite (2004) #1-12 [12]

Kingdom Come (1996) #1-4 [4]

Batman: The Last Halloween (2024) #0-2 [3]

Lazarus Planet (2023) [7]

Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods (2023) #1-4 [4]

Legion of Super-Heroes (2004) #1-50 [50]

(Superboy &) The Legion of Super-Heroes (1946) #234-268 [35]

Legion of Super-Heroes in the Silver Age [24]

Man Bat (1996) #1-3 [3]

Man Bat (2006) #1-5 [5]

Midnighter (2015) #1-12 [12]

Midnighter & Apollo (2016) #1-6 [6]

Millennium (1987) #1-8 [8]

New Krypton (2008) [13]

Nightmare Country (2022) #1-6 [6]

Nightwing (1996) #71-100 [30]

Nightwing (2016) #110-119 [10]

Nightwing Annual 2024 #1 [1]

Our Worlds At War [9]

Poison Ivy (2023) #1-18 [18]

Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death (2016) #1-6 [6]

Prez (1973) #1-2 [2]

Ragman (1991) #1-8 [8]

Ragman: Cry of the Dead (1993) #1-6 [6]

Ragman: Suit of Souls (2010) #1 [1]

Resurrection Man (1997) #16-17 [2]

Robin Argent Double Shot (1998) #1 [1]

Robin Plus Impulse (1996) #1 [1]

Saved by the Belle Reve (2022) #1 [1]

Stargirl and the Lost Children (2022) #1-6 [6]

Stargirl Spring Break Special (2021) #1 [1]

Steelworks (2023) #1-6 [6]

Strange Adventures (1950) #205-213 [9]

Streets of Gotham (2009) #1-14; 16-21 [20]

Supergirl (1996) #1-43; #1,000,000 [44]

Supergirl (1996) Annuals #1-2 [2]

Swamp Thing: New Roots (2020) #1-9 [9]

The Brave and the Bold (2007) #1-6 [6]

The Cult (1988) #1-4 [4]

The Dreaming (2018) #1-20 [20]

The Dreaming: Waking Hours (2020) #1-12 [12]

The Hawk and The Dove (1968) #1-6 [6]

The Long Halloween (1996) #1-13 [13]

The Question: All Along The Watchtower (2024) #1 [1]

Titans (2008) #1-11 [11]

Titans East Special (2007) #1 [1]

Two Face: Year One (2008) #1-2 [2]

When In Rome (2004) #1-6 [6]

Wonder Woman (1987) #36-48 [12]

Wonder Woman (2016) #1-30 [30]

World's Finest (2009) #1-4 [4]

Young Justice (1998) #13-14 [2]

I also read a few of the DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults, which I’ll include here as relevant. As an overall series, I’ve gotten the impression (and been told) that the characterization and intention of the books can wildly vary–one book can be intended as a serious, main-continuity story of a character while they were a young adult, while others are AUs or what-ifs that take characters and change them or their surroundings. I found all of these to be enjoyable reads for what they are, recognizing that I am not their target demographic. (Bad Dream, I have to say, was probably my favorite) 

Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld (2021)

Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story (2024)

Barda (2024)

The Oracle Code (2020)

This Land is Our Land (2024)

[maizethecorn]

Harley Quinn season 4 review/spoilers and links/trivia for people

I finished season 4 of Harley Quinn which began in 2019 developed by Justin Halpern, Patrick Schumacker and Dean Lorey. The plot revolves around Harley voiced by Kaley Cuoco who has broken up with the Joker setting off to become the new queenpin in Gotham City. Eventually, Harley dates Poison Ivy voiced by Lake Bell. Harley also gains friends such as Clayface voiced by Tudyk, King Shark voiced by Ron Funches, Doctor Psycho voiced by Tony Hale and Sy Borgman voiced by Jason Alexander. So it took me two days to finish season 4 and watch the Valentines Day Special. Here's what I thought was good about season 4:

Harley and Ivy learned they needed to communicate better as a couple after their future daughter tells them they were bad parents who never listened to her.

Seeing how Harley and Ivy attempted to balance their separate jobs as villains and heroes and make their romantic relationship work. Couples getting different jobs can affect an intimate relationship in real life.

The bat family not accepting Harley was good. Batgirl liked Harley due to hanging out with her but Nightwing and Damian didn't have much of a reason to like Harley.

Harley hanging out and training with Alfred was sweet.

King Shark having to be a new dad was comical. He thought being a single dad would be easy like what he had seen on television. For better or worse, Jim Gordon gives King Shark some advice such as giving the new shark babies liquor to calm down and allowing them to see violence on security cameras as a form of entertainment.

Nora Fries becoming Ivy's personal assistant was great. She is voiced by Rachel Dratch and has charm and wit. She's filling the spot that Ivy's talking plant Frank used to have.

Bane was wonderful as always. He's so sweet and I hope he can get back with Betty from the Valentines Day Special since Nora just seems to be using Bane was a lackey.

Lex Luther being the final villain for season 4 was well done. His obsession with Superman was his drive for blocking out the sun. There were little moments highlighting his Superman fetish such as when he demanded a man whom he was watching have intercourse put a Superman cape back on.

The final episode set Talia Al Ghul up to be the big villain for season 5. She brought Nightwing back to life in the Lazarus Pit who is now a creepy zombie of sorts out to get revenge on Harley.

Batgirl or Barbara Gordon getting shot by the Joker like in the comics. She's now exercising her computer skills and on her way to becoming the Oracle.

Things I didn't like about season 4:

Clayface didn't show up as much as I would have liked. He is in two episodes. He is now a celebrity and doesn't hang out with Harley and Ivy anymore.

Dr. Psycho-This was my favorite character and I was bummed about how he was demoted to being an extra after season two. I wanted to see him get a redemption arc but that doesn't happen. Still, his character does make appearances in season three and four which is nice.

Harley lying to Batgirl about Nightwing's death. She claims her potato clone killed Nightwing instead of admitting she was the one who killed Nightwing. Harley lying will no doubt lead to conflict between the two girls in season 5.

What was Batman doing in jail? I would have liked to have seen a whole episode focused on what he was doing but all we see is him being a DJ for two seconds.

The Joker's girlfriend Bethany and her kids turning evil. I didn't mind the Joker becoming evil again. I figured he would get tired of being mayor and go back to being a villain. Since Bethany was a nurse, I thought she would break up with the Joker after learning he was evil. Instead, she and her kids laugh, deciding to support the Joker in killing people. Season 3 showed Bethany and her kids to be good, decent civilians with no reason to become villains so the writing seemed a little weak with them in season 4.

I loved the Valentines Day Special. I was glad to see Bane find a special someone for him and for Harley/Ivy to enjoy their first Valentines Day together.

Extra Harley Quinn trivia if you go to the batman wiki link below :

Harley Quinn and Bruce Wayne got married in the White Knight comic series. The White Knight comics are about Joker becoming sane, adopting the name Jack Napier and protecting Gotham City, Jack marrying Harley Quinn and he becomes insane again unfortunately. Bruce reveals his identity as Batman to the public and has to adjust to life not being Batman. Joker dies eventually and Harley becomes a single mom to her two twins: a boy and a girl. Bruce helps support Harley and the two of them get married which you can read about in these links:

Batman/Harley in the White Knight comic universe is the only place this pairing has happened. Unfortunately, they don't look to be a happy couple. Harley grew attached to Bruce after the Joker died. She married Bruce so she wouldn't have to testify against him in court. Bruce tells Harley the main thing that has them bounded together is the trauma the Joker caused both of them. Upset, Harley insists there are mutual feelings between them which Bruce denies. Angry, Harley walks off and leaves Bruce to brood. I like this pairing but this comic series may not let Harley/Batman have a happy ending.

Harley is a wonderful character created in the DC universe. She needs to have someone who will treat her better than the Joker ever did. So far, she seems to be happiest with Poison Ivy from what I have seen in the Harley Quinn cartoon.

[walkonpooh]

Batman: Haunted Knight - Jeph Loeb Review

Writer Jeph Loeb and Artist Tim Sale collaborated on one of the most famous Batman stories of all time, The Long Halloween (which I plan on re-reading later for Halloween). Unfortunately, I had yet to read the prequel or sequel to that story before, so I thought I would rectify at least the former for this Halloween season and read Batman: Haunted Knight.

Batman is a perfect super hero to read for Halloween, his very creation was brought on by trauma and his primary goal in dressing like a bat is to instill fear into his enemies. Haunted Knight takes place over three separate Halloweens (I was confused by if they're supposed to be consecutive Halloweens) and is broken up into three stories.

In Fears, Batman is on the trail of the Scarecrow, who gets away just barely. This was probably my least favorite of the graphic novel, not because it wasn't good, it was, but some of it didn't quite land for me, but I liked the bit where Batman got poisoned in a thorn maze, but I do feel like more could have been done with that, the game Batman: Arkham Asylum does Batman vs. the Scarecrow *perfectly*

In Madness, Batman is going after the Mad Hatter. I have to confess, I haven't read a lot of stories with the Mad Hatter, but this specific one I actually really enjoyed, because it ties into Alice in Wonderland; not only through the Mad Hatter wanting to put on a tea party with children he is kidnapping around Gotham, but through Bruce and his connection to the story via his past, with his mother Martha (WHY'D YOU SAY THAT NAME!?).

Finally, Ghosts, which is just a take on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I was hoping this story would land a little better. Again, I enjoyed it, it just doesn't do anything particularly interesting or new with this story. Thomas Wayne in ghostly form shows up to tell Bruce three ghosts will be visiting him and they do; Ivy, Joker and a phantom figure (seeing as how this was 96, would have *loved* if the Phantasm from the animated series had been the one who did). Again, it was good, but it was partially good just because A Christmas Carol is so good. I don't think it reveals anything or gives us insight into Bruce/Batman the way it could have differentiating him from Scrooge and showing us more his specific character flaws.

Again, I actually enjoyed this while reading it. It just doesn't hit the highs of some of my favorite Batman stories, but if you're a fan of the character, especially for Halloween, it's a quick and easy read.

3/5

[gothamtvpodcast]

Gotham 503 Review "Penguin, Our Hero" – Gotham TV Podcast Episode 131

NEW #PODCAST our #Gotham Season 5 Episode 3 chat about #PenguinOurHero is out now including exclusive chat with @realdavidmazouz @GothamTVWriters killed it this week

A battle with Ecco and Gotham is forever changed once again and we chat all about it in our Gotham 503 Review of “Penguin, Our Hero”. We are again joined by David Mazouz (Bruce Wayne of Gotham) for some thoughts on this episode and his meeting with The Witch we also discuss our Top Five case notes in our Gotham 502 review. This is a spoiler filled discussion so as always make sure you’ve…

[batmannotes]

The Batman: The Complete Series Review

The fully-remastered The Batman: The Complete Series is now available on Blu-ray for the very first time. All 65-episode are included in this newly released box set.

The series premiered on September 11, 2004 on Kids’ WB before eventually shifting to Cartoon Network for subsequent seasons. The Batman: The Complete Series follows 20-something-year-old Bruce Wayne’s early adventures as he balances his daytime persona as a bachelor billionaire with his nighttime guise as a caped crimefighter.

At first I was a bit hesitant accepting this cartoon; after all it wasn't Batman: The Animated Series, which for me was the definitive Batman. I also wasn't sold on the new look of the villains. But after I let my cape down and gave the series a chance, it started to surprise me. The animation itself had an amazing color palette which was used exquisitely for scenery and backdrops. The stories themself were a little less serious than, Batman: TAS, but that played in its favor through the course of 5 seasons. It also gave us a look at some of Batman's rogues not used in Batman: TAS like Black Mask.

The first couple of seasons of the show were a bit of a departure from the traditional Caped Crusader, no Commissioner Gordon, Robin or Batgirl . Fast forward to season 4 and all of the perviously mentioned characters were in place, making it the strongest season thus far. At the start of season 4 was the episode titled, 'A Matter of Family', which guest starred Kevin Conroy voicing Dick Grayson's father, John. It was exceptional retelling of Robin's origin story.

The 5th and final season push limits of awesomeness even further, as THE BATMAN added guest Justice League appearances by Superman, Green Arrow, The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and Martian Manhunter. This season had a spectacular two part episode finale that seemed to set up a new Justice League series. Unfortunately we didn't get that or even a season six of THE BATMAN, as the series was cancelled.

The Batman: The Complete Series – Special Features

Blu-ray+Digital

The Dark Dynasty Continues (New Featurette) – Explore the relationship between The Batman and his allies as he evolves from mysterious vigilante to the World’s Greatest Detective.

Joining Forces: The Batman's Legendary Team-Ups (Featurette) – How the series’ producers adapted the DC “Team-Up-Tales” approach from the comic books to the screen.

The Batman Junior Detective Challenge (Quiz) – Alfred tests your detective skills with The Batman: The Complete Series challenge.

The Batman Junior Detective Exam: Level 2 (Quiz) – Pass The Batman test of knowledge with the level 2 exam.

Building Batman (Featurette) – Detective Ellen Yin investigates The Batman's true identity.

Gotham PD Case Files (Featurette) – Highly confidential profiles of The Batman's most dastardly foes.

New Look, New Direction, New Knight (Featurette) – Go behind the scenes to explore the development of The Batman television series.

The Batman: Season 3 Unmasked (Featurette) – Supervising Producer Duane Capizzi talks about the animated series.

The Batman: Season 4 Unmasked (Featurette) – A behind the scenes look into the making of Season 4.

VERDICT:

If you've never check the series out, you should definitely give it a chance, it's one of the hidden gems in the DC Universe. In my opinion THE BATMAN is far superior to most of the latest offerings from Warner Bros. Animation. The newly released HD transfer to Blu-ray makes the box set that much more appealing and with 65 episodes to enjoy, you can binge watch for quite a long time. There's a lot to love about this series once you get used to the irregular designs of Batman rogues. Seasons 4 and 5 are exceptional and left me with an appetite for more of this animated fun. It's a series that doesn't take itself overly serious, but that's one of its many alluring features.

Available now at Amazon. Direct link here.

Warner Bros. provided a copy of The Batman: The Complete Series for review which did not affect this reviewer's analysis of the product.

[longitudinalwaveme]

Longitudinalwaveme Reviews Some More Old Comics (and One New One), Part 3

 Batman #353, “Last Laugh”

The Joker walks into his hideout at the abandoned Tatch Hotel, where his goons are gambling. He promptly kills one of them by snakebite for disrespecting him. 

Batman scares a corrupt city council member into revealing that the doctored photos that “revealed” Batman as a crime boss came from real crime boss Rupert Thorne. Apparently, Thorne ensured that Reeves would lose the election...meaning that he wanted Hamilton Hill to be mayor for some reason. 

Also, Gordon is currently not the Commissioner---someone named Commissioner Pauling is, and Batman suspects both he and the new mayor are corrupt. 

The next day, as Bruce Wayne, he accompanies Vicki Vale to the destruction of Gotham Central Station. Apparently, Vicki was witness to an interaction between Rupert Thorne and Morton Monroe that culminated in the latter’s suicide. 

The computer being used to manage the explosions that will preserve the landmark while still clearing space for new development malfunctions has been stolen...by the Joker! 

Because Batman and the new police commissioner are on the outs, Batman hadn’t known about the Joker’s escape from Arkham, and he’s not happy about that. He does, however, quickly work out that the Joker has bought some land in the Palisades under the pseudonym of Mr. Harlan Quinn. (No...seriously!) 

Batman heads to the location in question...only to be caught off-guard by the Joker, who shoots a drugged arrow at him. When he wakes up, he’s tied to some rocks and surrounded by dynamite. 

Joker is upset that Gotham is constructing a statue for a Broadway star and not for him, so he’s going to use the dynamite and the computer he stole to create a monument of himself (and kill Batman). 

Batman manages to break free and jams the computer signal by way of a device he brought with him for that purpose. 

The story is then interrupted for a weird He-Man comic! Hi there, He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Battle Cat, Sorceress, Mer-man, Beast Man, and Skeletor! And, uh, Superman, too, I guess! Why not? 

I can honestly say I did not expect this Batman comic to contain a Superman/Masters of the Universe crossover where Superman fought Skeletor. 

And now back to Batman, who’s fighting Joker’s goons. While this is going on, the Joker shoots at Batman while his back is turned-only for the explosions to go off. It temporarily creates Joker’s memorial of himself, but it lasts for only a few seconds before collapsing. The issue ends with Joker frowning and Batman smiling in a really unsettling manner. 

The issue also has a backup story, starring Robin and Batman, the latter of whom is undercover as Matches Malone. They work together to defeat some con-men, and Dick uses an inflatable suit to dress up as Batman. It’s pretty amusing. 

Batman #355, “Never Scratch a Cat” 

Why does Catwoman own what appears to be a pet panther? 

Apparently, she’s not happy abut the fact that Vicky Vale is also romantically interested in Bruce Wayne. We then cut to the latter two on a date. 

Their date is suddenly interrupted when Catwoman uses her car to send their car off a cliff and into a river. She immediately regrets it and dives into the water after them to save them.

Bruce fights her off and makes it to the surface with Vicki himself. Two days later, she wakes up in the hospital. 

The police have been staking out Selina’s house, but so far, there hasn’t been any sign of her. 

That night, Batman leaves to track down Catwoman, telling Dick not to come with him as Robin. They have a fairly heartwarming conversation, and then Batman zooms off, leaving Dick and Alfred worried about how angry he seems. 

Batman breaks into Selina’s house...and is promptly attacked by her pet panther. They fight, and he defeats the panther. He then discovers that Selina hasn’t been home for at least 2 days. 

Batman looks through her bills and discovers that she’s rented an apartment somewhere. 

Ex-Commissioner Gordon talks politics with Mayor Hamilton Hill. There’s a petition to remove the latter from his position, since he’s connected to Thorne and Thorne was arrested for murdering his own appointee for police commissioner. Also, Hill makes him commissioner again. 

Batman tracks Catwoman to her new apartment and the two fight, verbally and physically. Eventually, though, they make up and hug each other. It’s kind of weird, but I guess it works.

Flash #324, “The Slayer and the Slain” 

The Reverse-Flash is dead! But the real horror of this issue isn’t that he’s dead or that he died attempting to murder Fiona Webb...it’s the fact that this issue will kick off the Trial of the Flash arc; otherwise known as the Arc That Never Ends! 

Some really weird nurse tells a baby the story of her favorite soap opera...only to lose her grip on the carriage, which goes hurtling towards a pane of glass! Kid Flash manages to save the baby, but not the glass. 

Kid Flash then rushes to what he believes will be the wedding of his uncle to Fiona Webb, changing into a tuxedo along the way. 

Unfortunately, when Wally arrives at the church, there’s no sign of Barry. Dexter Miles, Barry’s friend Mack Nathan, Mack’s son Troy, and Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man, are at the church, though, as are Barry’s parents and Fiona herself. 

Before Barry’s first name was Bartholomew, it was Barrence. No, seriously. 

Fiona is naturally very upset, believing Barry stood her up at the alter. Henry Allen is less than sympathetic. “Nora and I aren’t ready to give up on our boy just yet, Fiona. And if you really love him...you’re not about to either!” Way to guilt-trip her, Henry. No wonder Barry got along better with Roscoe-pretending-to-be-you than he did with you. 

Barry and the Reverse-Flash have a fight/race around the world, Eobard yelling about how mad he is about Barry trapping him at the end of time for four years. 

Officer Frye and Frank Curtis are also at the wedding. 

Apparently the Guardians of the Universe stopped Wally from helping Barry fight Eobard for some reason. Okay...

Eobard, being Eobard, makes a giant ice sculpture of Iris in the Himalayas just so he can troll Barry. Then they fight some more as all the wedding guests wonder where the bridegroom is. 

While the two are fighting/racing, Eobard creates a big wave at Miami Beach, which Barry has to stop to rescue some swimmers from. 

Captain Frye is starting to believe that Barry’s been murdered. 

Eobard and Barry end up in Cape Carneval and take a rocket into outer space. After they return to Earth, Eobard taunts Barry by writing “Guess who’s going to kill your wife again” in the sand. This naturally makes Barry very, very unhappy. 

Equally unhappy is Fiona, who is now completely convinced she’s been stood up and is leaving the church. 

The wedding photographer pops up over thirty-five minutes after the wedding is supposed to start; conveniently already filming with his camera.

Eobard runs towards Fiona, murder on his mind...only for Barry to grab him from behind by the neck as he shouts “NO! Not again!” 

Barry tries to comfort Fiona to no avail as Frye discovers that Eobard is dead. 

And on that grim note, the issue ends. 

Batman #362, “When Riddled By the Riddler...” 

Why was Riddler working at a winery? Is it just because one of the processes involved in making wine is called riddling it? Whatever the reason, the appearance of a film crew at the winery apparently gives Riddler an idea for his next crime spree.

Batman is summoned to police headquarters, where Harvey Bullock is arguing with Commissoner Gordon. Apparently, Bullock’s working with Mayor Hill, and the Riddler has been sending Gordon puzzle boxes.

This puzzle box prompts Bullock to ask about the Riddler, which in turn prompts Gordon to tell Bullock and the reader about the Riddler’s M.O. and backstory. 

When he finishes the story, Batman finally arrives and kicks Bullock out. He and Gordon proceed to try to solve Riddler’s latest riddle as Bullock eavesdrops on them both from outside the door. The riddle seems to point in the direction of the Mother Goose Amusement Park, but Batman tells Gordon to keep thinking of other possible meanings just in case. 

Bullock plans to outwit Gordon, Batman, and the Riddler, showing an impressive degree of self-confidence (or self-delusion). 

Batman goes to the park and is promptly ambushed by a machine-gun wielding Riddler. 

Then they fight, Riddler escapes, and Batman learns that the amusement park has been closed all season, so it would have no money around to steal. 

Gordon, Bullock, and Batman reconvene to do some Bat Deducting in order to figure out the Riddler’s real plan. Because Batman’s true superpower is his ability to understand the insane ways in which the Riddler uses riddles to plot his crimes. 

Apparently, Riddler is going to steal the loot of a game show being filmed in Paradise Theater. The show in question is called “Enigma”, which is a terrible name for a show filmed in Gotham. It’s beggining the Riddler to show up. 

The Riddler actually wears a suit in this issue! That’s unusual for Riddler at this point, and it looks really good. Of course, he immediately takes it off a few panels later, but still. 

Apparently, the game show consists of getting contestants to answer riddles and...seriously, who decided it was a good idea to film this in Gotham? 

Then the Riddler pops himself out of the riddle drum used in the game show. It’s hilarious. He steals the money and walks out the door, gloating. 

Batman then appears and starts chasing Riddler, who hijacks a bus. Batman follows him and uses gas to force the bus to stop. 

Then Batman literally kicks him off the bus and captures him. 

The issue ends with Bullock deciding to drop the charges he’s managed to get raised against Gordon (after Gordon uses a riddle to threaten him). Hill is not happy about this. 

Batman #373, “The Frequency of Fear” 

The issue opens with Jason Todd having a freaky nightmare about his parents’ deaths (since this is pre-Crisis, the deaths happened at the hands of Killer Croc). 

A really stupid psychologist wants to meet Jonathan Crane so that he can analyze the effects of fear on the human mind. Unfortunately for him, Crane has been released from Arkham, because everyone in Gotham is stupid. Even the stupid psychologist thinks so! 

Meanwhile, a couple of people at Gotham University wonder if they really did see the Scarecrow heading for the old Marston House where Crane once lived. 

Julia Pennyworth, Alfred’s daughter, asks Vicki Vale for a position at Picture News (is this different than the Picture News where Iris West-Allen works?) Vicki is opposed to the idea until Julia insists she’s not interested in Bruce Wayne. 

Apparently, in an earlier issue a number of Batman’s Rogues dragged Scarecrow around while he was mostly incapacitated by fear. He’s not happy about the fact that they did this and is plotting revenge against all of them. 

A guard at the courthouse demands to know why he’s there. In response, Scarecrow uses a skull to emit his fear frequency, and the guard predictably starts hallucinating. He then continues to use the frequency to get the location of the lock-up. He’s then lead the the solitary cell of the Joker.....and then Batman shows up. 

Scarecrow proceeds to use the fear frequency on both him and on Robin, when the latter shows up. Batman manages to fight off the worst of it, but when Jason chases the Scarecrow out of the building and onto the rope Scarecrow was using to escape, the frequency overcomes him, he loses his balance, and he starts falling. 

Batman manages to rescue him, though. 

On an unrelated note, Child Services are worried about the fact that Jason keeps falling asleep in class. 

Gordon and Bullock go out for dinner and have a little chat; Mayor Hill hires a hit out on Bullock.

Meanwhile, Batman tells Crane’s backstory to Robin, who suggests that Crane might be hanging out at his old house. Batman dismisses this, which is unfortunate, since Crane is, in fact, hanging out there. 

Crane is reading his psychology textbook to his little skull head. The man is really weird. I’ll also note that his textbook does actually contain a few words I’m not familiar with, which is impressive. 

Crane then determines that he’ll have to get rid of Batman first if he wants to kill off all the other villains, and goes out to do just that. 

Commissioner Gordon calls in Batman and Robin and tells them that the Scarecrow is attacking a zoo. Batman tells Robin to go home; he thinks the case is too dangerous for Jason. 

Batman goes to the zoo, and is increasingly affected by fear. When he reaches the crocodile pit, the fear is so overwhelming that he loses his balance and starts to fall in. 

Meanwhile, Jason has disobeyed orders and gone to Crane’s old house. The Scarecrow promptly attacks him as Batman falls into the crocodile exhibit....and the issue ends on a cliffhanger. Ooof. 

Flash 2021 Annual 

SPOILERS!

Man, Wally West makes the weirdest faces in this confessional. 

Barry, Ollie, and Mr. Terrific talk technobabble. 

Good news! It turns out Wally’s not a murderer anymore! HURRAH! 

Roy is alive again! YAY! 

Barry and Ollie are also making weird faces. 

Ollie really wants to save Roy from the speed force explosion that will kill everybody at Sanctuary, but Barry says there’s nothing they can do. Ollie doesn’t like this explanation.

Also, Barry’s powers suddenly start fading. 

Wally makes another weird face as he and Roy talk. 

Hey, Savitar’s back! And looking a lot more attractive than the last time I saw him. 

Turns out that he’s been causing all the weird problems with the Speed Force in this arc. It’s appropriate for him, I think. 

Roy and Wally team up to fight Savitar, who goes on a villainous monologue about how he’s going to eat the speed force so he can become it. 

There’s some more technobabble about the Speed Force. Apparently, if they don’t cause the explosion that kills everyone at Sanctuary, Savitar’s plan to eat the Speed Force will destroy the Omniverse. 

Roy ends up setting up the necessary explosion to save the Omniverse. Good work, Roy! 

Aww, Roy and all the heroes are dead again....:(

Oh, well. At least Wally still isn’t a murderer now. 

Wally and Savitar arrive in the present, Wally decides to continue being the Flash, he and Savitar have a fight/race, Wally wins, and Savitar disappears. 

After Wally takes a nap, he and Barry have a cute talk, and Barry gives poor Ollie, who’s been through a lot, a hug. 

Wally goes home and reunites with his family. HURRAH!!!!

Heat Wave’s going to be in the next arc. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. 

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (3/10/2021)?

cheerfullynihilistic said: Comics this week (03/10/21)??

adudewholikescomicsandotherstuff said: This week’s comics?

Anonymous said: Comics?

Anonymous said: 3/10 NCBD?

Non-Stop Spider-Man #1: The lead story was fun, the backup was dopey, I’ll give it another issue or two to see where it goes.

The Immortal Hulk #44: While it was too late for this week I’ve taken Hulk off my pull list, so the store won’t order any copies specifically for me and therefore my future purchase of the book won’t support Joe Bennett’s presence, just the store. This issue is typical of some of the books’ weaker installments of the last year or so - feels like well-done regular superhero comics instead of Immortal Hulk - but those last couple pages bring it back around.

Daredevil #28: Holy cow, those King In Black issues actually mattered. God this book is still so fuckin’ good in so many ways, everything every dumbass street-level superhero ‘deconstruction’ wants to be when it grows up.

Children of the Atom #1: Sucks real bad! This weird combo of ‘hip new young Marvel heroes!’ trappings and soulless X-Men lifer comics execution that feels certain to appeal to neither group.

Eternals #3: Of the listed Deviants I imagine I’d relate most to Annoyed Veug.

Commanders in Crisis #6: While I remain without the ability to weigh in on this objectively, this is the issue that to date most feels like it lives up to the promises of the series premiere.

The Wrong Earth: Night & Day #3: Little disappointed personally with the reveal of what the third world is - I assumed it was going to be more of a straight take ‘modern’ version to the other two’s flavors of throwbacks - but this series still rules. And that ending.

Home Sick Pilots #4: Okay, I think I can follow what’s happening at this point, still enjoying it.

Proctor Valley Road #1: I review these books in the order I present them to my dad since he likes DC/Marvel/Other to each be lumped together, but make no mistake: this is the last of the three Morrison books to read this week, because this is what comes next for them. A return to their roots - 70s kids way into music and dealing with the weird, girls adventure stories of the kind they apparently grew up reading - this feels like a refinement of their mid/late-00s Vertigo work in the same way they’ve been iterating on their superhero material for decades. The horror is sold excellently, whether by their own efforts or thanks to cowriter Alex Child this is their most fluid, ‘real’-sounding dialogue perhaps ever, and Franquiz with Bonvillain are instantly among their all-time best collaborators, perfectly capturing the shifting tone and character acting necessary to best put Morrison’s big ideas over in a way a number of their collaborators haven’t lived up to over the years (and speaking of the visuals, Jim Campbell does the lord’s work with that lettering trick near the end). Ritesh Babu and Sean Dillon have a lot more to say about the book and how it already acts as a darker, more honest take on your Stranger Things and the like as a commentary on its times, but I’m already loving to see this particular return down to Earth for Morrison and company and I’m glad to hear this is selling really well compared to their previous indie work.

Dead Dog’s Bite #1: This actually came out last week, but Ritesh recommended it so I figured it might be worth a look. A so far intensely low-key missing persons mystery with a touch of surreality around its edges, this already looks to be the best “look! A nine-panel grid! Fancy!” comic since Mister Miracle, really lived-in and emotional for as little happens in this debut. Very curious where it’s going.

Rorschach #6: I continue to like it.

Batman: Urban Legends #1: Glory be, a good Jason Todd comic - at last, you noble stubborn weirdoes living off of like six nonconsecutive panels all these years, you may lay down your burden. Not all you’d necessarily hope from Zdarsky tackling Gotham after what he’s been doing with Daredevil but rock-solid work regardless; the Harley story is fine, Outsiders is a letdown after Thomas’s shockingly good showing for them in Future State but it’s still fine, and the Grifter stuff is fun.

The Joker #1: I thought the advertised ‘a Joker story from Gordon’s POV’ angle was an interesting one even if I was concerned this book would in practice be pure editorial mandate, but in reality? Tynion has managed to pull the wool over DC’s eyes and do a full-on Jim Gordon book (one predicated with him being off the force to make it reasonably comfortable read in 2021) with Joker as the barest of pretexts to get it out the door and selling for as long as he wants to continue it. He even said in interviews that when the book was first pitched to him that his response was that a Joker solo book was a dumb unworkable idea until he had an idea for a ‘different way to approach it’, he knows exactly what he’s doing and I salute him. And it’s a darn good Gordon book even if the Punchline backup is predictably tepid, I’m in the tank for Gotham’s perpetual whipping boy dealing with weird noir international crime with Joker sort of hanging around in the background menacingly to justify the nominal premise.

Anonymous said: Hey, so I figure one random anon won’t change your mind, but like you I was disappointed by New Frontier’s immortal Wonder Woman, but I still got the new issue of Wonder Woman cause Wonder Woman at Valhalla still sounds great and I actually liked it! I think I’m gonna get at least the next issue, so there’s at least one recommendation for it

Wonder Woman #770: This combined with the store still putting it in my pile prompted me to give it a try after all, and whether because something here clicks better or if they’re simply not trying so hard without the pressure of doing a ‘final’ story for Diana, Cloonan and Conrad do in fact do substantially better on the main book than they did with Immortal Wonder Woman. Some fun, some fights, some mythology and intrigue, gorgeous landscapes and generous servings of beefcake from Travis Moore - this isn’t going to be sweeping the Eisners, but this is as enjoyable as a Wonder Woman comic has been in a good long time. My only concern is that the joyousness on display here might dissipate somewhat once Diana fully returns to herself, but in the meantime this was a very pleasant surprise (especially with the the Young Diana backup by Bellaire, Ganucheau, Goode, and Carey).

Superman #29: PKJ’s Superman thus far has been a story of overcoming initial worries of mine - in this case, my concern that he’d have a bad Scott Snyder-ey case of “if you’ve read the interviews you’ve pretty much already heard the dialogue of the comic verbatim”. In practice here most of what he’s had to say about these issues are distilled down really succinctly and poignantly in the midst of a fun little upper-atmosphere adventure portending something grimmer, and while I know it didn’t click with everyone I thought Phil Hester’s work here was a perfect accompaniment. The Tales of Metropolis backup wasn’t nearly as enjoyable, but hints at some interesting worldbuilding I’m hopeful will pay off in the main run.

The Green Lantern Season Two #12: The final Grant Morrison DC comic. One of two anyway, but if the next story I discuss is their broader final (non-Klaus, hopefully) statement on the superhero subgenre and a bridge to what they’re doing next, this is the one that’s about being The Final Grant Morrison DC Comic. A mélange of pretty much all their other DC finales into a shamelessly self-reflective meditation on the limits of what they can accomplish in shared universe storytelling where Green Lantern saves the universe through collective action and then fucks off to do his own thing elsewhere while the kids take over the ongoings. Weird and kinda perfect, and if nothing else this series took Liam Sharp from “really? This dude is drawing the last ever Morrison DC ongoing?” to “HOLY FUCKING SHIT LIAM SHARP”.

(The panel folks blew up over I think can be read multiple ways, but not in a ‘it’s open to interpretation!’ way so much as the storytelling/framing being unclear. I personally read it as ‘this is what neighbor versus neighbor looks like now’ rather than ‘calling someone a TERF or a Nazi is as bad as anything the other side does’, because oldster and out of touch though they may be I can’t see Morrison seriously saying that, especially after coming out.)

Wonder Woman Earth One Volume 3: At long last, after a hideous misfire kicking the series off and a second installment best described as ‘well, at least it wasn’t the first one’, this while not without elements I want to see femme and nonbinary critics discuss critically lives up to what you want to see out of ‘Grant Morrison’s Wonder Woman’. Big utopian fiction breaking the typical boundaries of superhero stories with aplomb in implicit conversation with a ton of their previous work, a bridge from what they’ve done to what they’re doing next, it’s an imperfect (especially with Paquette’s art, which while gorgeous and majestic in the way this story demands really doesn’t living up to the ‘acting’ necessary here in a way thrown into sharp contrast by Franquiz in PVR) but shockingly passionate statement of intent - if the last two volumes felt like Morrison struggling to have something to say with Wonder Woman in the same way they did with Superman and Batman, this feels at the close like them at last finding in her a way to do everything left with the cape and tights crowd they wanted to but couldn’t manage anywhere else under the Big Two umbrella. Odd and lovely, a fine sendoff.

[romancemedia]

Underrated DC Shows

Ever since my childhood, I have always been a Major DC fan and my love for the franchise has continued to grow as I got older as I enjoy watching some of my favourite DC shows, wether its the from the DCAU or the live action shows we see today. However, there are some shows that aren’t always given the recognition they deserve and here are my top picks.

The Batman

The Batman was one of the many Batman television series created over the years and one of the most under appreciated ones of all time. The Batman focuses on Bruce Wayne’s early years as the Dark Knight, from when he was originally pursued by Gotham PD up until he is known as Gotham’s protector and guardian, mentor to Robin and Batgirl and a member of the Justice League. The Batman lasted for 5 seasons, making a total of 65 episodes and a television movie from 2004 to 2008. This show was absolutely amazing. Everything about the series was incredible from the character growths to the season story arcs. I enjoyed watching Batman grow into the hero and legend that he is, including his partnerships with Robin, Batgirl and James Gordon. It was also refreshing to see new characters never seen before such as Ethan Bennett and Ellen Yin. Although they were less present in the shows later years, they were great nonetheless.

Every season of the show had a character story arc while also showing the growth to Batman’s legacy. Season 1 was him being pursued by the police and encountering his rogue gallery for the first time. Season 2 shows his new secret partnership with Ellen Yin until he is finally recognised as Gotham’s Guardian. Season 3 was the debut of Batgirl, determined to prove herself to the Dark Knight and become his sidekick. Season 4 featured the debut of Robin and the official Batman team being formed and the final season featured Batman and Robin teaming up with members of the Justice League. It was incredible to watch how Batman’s legacy was formed over these five amazing seasons. Although the series was ultimately successful, it is still considered greatly underrated since no one seems to discuss its greatness compared to other DC animated series such as Justice League, Batman Beyond or the Teen Titans.

Green Lantern: The Animated Series

Green Lantern: The Animated Series focused on the adventures of Hal Jordan and his team as they traveled throughout space to stop the villainous Red Lanterns and later the Manhunters from taking over the universe. The series had everything for everyone, something we could all enjoy, action, humour, superheroes, mystery, suspense and romance. Green Lantern lasted from 2012-2013, making 26 episodes over the course of one year and is one of the very few CGI DC shows alongside Beware the Batman.

Hal Jordon is the team’s leader who was determined to protect the galaxy after learning of the threats of the Red Lanterns and later the Manhunters. Although many question his methods, he always manages to come out on top and again proves himself a true hero and leader. Kilowog is Hal’s former drill sergeant who trained him. Kilowog and Hal are greatly different as Kilowog is serious, gruff and by the book, but sees that despite Hal’s crazy plans or methods, he knows he what he’s doing. Aya is an artificial intelligence, serving as the nagivation computer to the Intercepter space ship, but as she spends time with the crew, she begins to grow and become her own person and wishes to become a Green Lantern herself. Finally, the last member is Razer, a reformed member of the Red Lanterns who joins Hal Jordon’s team after he is offered a second chance. Razer begins to grow, becoming a loyal and reliable teammate and along the way, allows love to enter his heart once again.

Green Lantern: The Animated Series was so underrated. It was so much fun and amazing to watch as I enjoyed watching the crews adventures and relationships growing, becoming true friends and family. One of the greatest things about the show was the love story between Razer and Aya, becoming one of DC most underrated couples. Unfortunately, although the series itself was popular the reason behind its cancellation was because of the poor toys sales and the negative reviews of the 2011 live-action Green Lantern movie.

Birds of Prey

Birds of Prey was a short lived live action DC show that consisted of 13 episodes and aired for only a year from 2002-2003. Birds of Prey focused on the trio of female heroines, Huntress, Oracle and the future Black Canary as they tasked themselves with protecting Gotham City following the disappearance of Batman. Huntress is Helena Kyle, the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle, who never knew her father and tragically lost her mother when she was a teenager after she was killed by the Joker. Oracle is Barbara Gordon who was formerly known as Batgirl until she was shot and paralysed by the Joker and now operates from their clock tower hideout as tech support and mentor. Dinah is a young metahuman teenager who harbours a variety of abilities and is learning to control and harness her growing powers with help from Barbara and Helena.

Birds of Prey was such an underrated series and it had such great potential. The series featured great action and the special effects weren’t so bad. I also enjoyed the romantic relationship between Helena Kyle and Jesse Reese, a detective with the Gotham PD. It’s a shame it only lasted for one season as I could see it had so much greatness within in it, but sadly it was one of the very rare shows that never had a chance to truly shine.

Constantine

Constantine was one of the many shows within the Arrowverse focusing on the adventures of John Constantine, a demon hunter who protects the world from supernatural threats while struggling with personal demons from his past. In his adventures, John gains help from his friends/team, Zed Martin, a psychic artist, Francis Chas, John’s oldest friend with survival magic and Manny, an angel assigned to watch over John. The series lasted for 13 episodes from 2014-2015. Although Constantine’s character has been revived in the Arrowverse, making a guest appearance on Arrow until becoming a main cast member on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, I still miss the old series and characters as John had a lot of great and mysterious adventures.

Overall, it’s a shame that a lot of these shows weren’t given proper recognition as they had were very special in their own unique ways.

[aion-rsa]

Legends of Tomorrow: Can Sara Lance Survive This Space Oddity?

https://ift.tt/3eMSTaK

This Legends of Tomorrow review contains spoilers.

Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 Episode 1

There’s a bit in the sixth season premiere of Legends of Tomorrow, “Ground Control to Sara Lance,” that made me furious. Gary, the comic relief sidekick who gets retconned this episode to have been an alien infiltrator, has explained his whole backstory to the abducted Sara Lance, who wakes up on an alien spaceship just in time to see it hyperdrive away from Earth from a rear window. Sara wants to get home, so she tells Gary, “Give me everything you know about this ship.” Gary’s response is to start to explain how she and Ava first started dating. 

When I heard this, I got so mad. It’s completely unfair that the cast and crew of Legends is so good that they can hand in a B+ episode for this show that contains within it the single best Muppets joke in over a decade.

Legends returns to airwaves with its first episode in almost a year, and it continues to amaze how this show just can’t miss. This cast is so obviously comfortable with each other, and the crew so in touch with what makes the characters so entertaining, that Legends’ floor is better than many shows at their best, and good episodes turn great because of those strengths. There’s a confidence and efficiency in the storytelling that lets the show dispense with a lot of setup and exposition quickly,to give the characters space to breathe and the jokes time to set. Case in point: “Ground Control to Sara Lance.”

At the end of last season, Sara was abducted by aliens, setting the stage for this season’s space and alien-themed adventures. The purpose of this episode was to reintroduce the characters and setting, and set up the conflict for the rest of the season. This was done mostly with two sequences: one that showed how deeply comic book-y this show can be, and one that showed how efficient it is. 

The reintroduction of the team was done largely through Ava’s eyes. She’s flushed awake by Mick after passing out drunk on the Waverider’s toilet, where she realizes Sara never brought her to bed the night before. So they head out to find everyone. Constantine and Zari just finished hooking up; Astra is card sharping an entire poker room dry; Behrad’s getting the munchies out of his system with a Buckingham Palace Guard; and Nate’s explaining his extremely convoluted love life to David Bowie. When Bowie shows the team that Sara was ready to propose to Ava before being abducted by aliens, Ava springs into action. I’m 85% certain she used time travel to clean up her hangover, and came back with a checklist for how to deal with the problem, one that had specific, character-by-character instructions on how each would respond and how to get them to serve the mission despite that.

This whole thing is extremely similar to how Bronze Age and earlier comic issues worked – each issue was treated like someone’s first, so the storytellers had to take the first 3 pages of the 22 page story to reintroduce and recap, but the effective, elegant ones would do it without you ever noticing. Ava’s checklist and hunt for her teammates performed the same function just as effectively.

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Incidentally, while this show is extremely comic book-y, it’s also straight up disrespectful to the concept of comic book shows in an utterly delightful way. Legends continues to interact with the rest of the Arrowverse – the DEO is referenced as destroyed here, in a nod to Supergirl’s fifth season – but this show feels like it’s taking the tics of comic book shows and poking fun at them. When you’ve spent years watching every show with an ear for potential easter eggs, your first instinct when you hear a character on a DC TV show say “he’s with Starman” is to clap and wonder if it’s Jack, Ted, Mikaal, or Prince Gavyn. Then and only then does a David Bowie cameo feel like a cop out. The same goes for Ava referencing Sara’s pre-her love life by saying “swing a dead cat…” I had to stop myself from looking up if Sara and Roy Harper hooked up.

The episode ended with that same efficiency that made the opening so effective. Sara battles the tentacly captain of the ship while Gary tries to open a wormhole home, and Sara wins the fight with a move straight out of Alien: she opens an airlock to throw him out. And when he doesn’t get all the way out the door, she releases pods of other kidnapees from their alcoves to knock him into the wormhole behind the ship. The captain, along with the aliens in the pods, fall into the Bleed and eventually travel through time, setting up the Legends to hunt them down last season, while Sara and Gary figure out how to get home. 

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Legends is a show that shouldn’t work. It’s ridiculous and earnest and geeky and could so easily slide into terminally cheesy and corny. But it never does, even for a minute, because the cast and crew are so joyful and confident and talented that they sell every bit of the emotional stakes. The only complaint I have is that this show is so consistently good that it almost demands being graded on a curve. “Ground Control to Sara Lance” would be a 9.5 or a 10 on any other TV show, but because Legends of Tomorrow routinely does so much bananapants shit, it’s only an 8. But praise Beebo, it’s a high 8.

The post Legends of Tomorrow: Can Sara Lance Survive This Space Oddity? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[irisbleufic]

Happy 2020! Can I tag you to do that 2019 Fic Year in Review thing?

Happy New Year to you, too!  Sure thing.  I can’t remember the last time I did one of these; since 2019 is the end of a decade, it feels fitting.  Here goes…

14 February 2019: After spending 14 of my 15 years (2020 marks the start of my 16th year) in Good Omens fandom working on it, I finally finished and posted the 75th and final installment of Crown of Thorns [The Walls, the Wainscot, and the Mouse] ’Verse.  LiveJournal was still the fandom’s primary posting hub when I posted the first-ever installment, A Better Place, on 1 October 2005.  The series didn’t get its second installment (The Walls, the Wainscot, and the Mouse) until 2010, but work on the series from that point forward was pretty much constant.  2012 saw a higher number of CoT updates than any year previous; that was also the year I transferred it to AO3.

25 February 2019: I finished and posted the last chapter of my third Good Omens collaborative fic ’verse with @procrastinatingbookworm, Turn In Your Arms.  We couldn’t believe there was no Good Omens fusion with Tam Lin, so we went for it.  Given our first collaboration in 2018 was a Good Omens fusion with Groundhog Day (Game Over, Insert Coin), that wasn’t a stretch.

27 February 2019: @aspiringjedi and I posted the first of our two Good Omens meta-essays, Making An Effort: Queer (Trans) Masculinity in the Ethereal & Occult Beings of Good Omens.  Yes, it’s 1,990 words due to the novel’s publication year.  When you’re just under 2,000 words anyway, why not?

28 February 2019: @procrastinatingbookworm and I followed up Turn In Your Arms with a brief sequel, Burn After Reading.  All of our collaborations to date have ended up as multi-story mini ’verses.

25 March - 20 April 2019: I went about as livid over Gotham’s Season 5 as I did over Season 3 and wrote Darkroom to address how dirty the show did Bruce and Jeremiah.  I had a stand-alone Season 4 fix-it story (focusing on Oswald and Edward, like most of my other Gotham work) called Triage from 2018 that had never quite felt like it was meant to be a stand-alone.  Triage and Darkroom became the first two installments of a series called Playing for Keeps, to which I added another 6 stories by April 20th.  Darkroom somehow got more traffic than any of my other Gotham pieces since When You Find It, Run over in DDO ’Verse (although those two stories are keystone pieces in much larger series, they can both be read as stand-alones).

4 April 2019: In the midst of working on the aforementioned, @aspiringjedi posted our second Good Omens meta-essay, Southern Pansies: Subversive (Trans) Masculinity in the Ethereal & Occult Beings of Good Omens.

8 May 2019: Brief blip back into Pacific Rim fic!  I posted a missing Anthology correspondence/inset ficlet called L’amour, c’est comme la guerre.  For anyone who ever wanted more of the email correspondence in Anthology’s final chapter, this fills in some gaps you didn’t know were there.

16 May 2019: Thanks to some behind-the-scenes persuasion from several really tenacious Gotham readers who didn’t want me to abandon it / shut down DDO ’Verse, I completed The Knights’ Tour after almost a year on hiatus from it.  This turned out to light a fresh fuse on DDO, because TTK didn’t end up being the final story in the series like I had once planned.

18 May 2019: The only His Dark Materials fic I’ve ever written, also a Gotham fusion, got a belated new final chapter.  Gold Dust is sort of an alternate take on DDO ’Verse, one in which Dust and daemons are present.

23 May 2019: I posted what I thought would be a stand-alone Gotham story called The Meaning of This City.  It manages to be a marginally less dark and complicated take on the Bruce-and-Jeremiah situation (than Darkroom over in PfK ’Verse, that is) without sacrificing some of the most difficult features of what they need to overcome.  More on why this didn’t remain a stand-alone in a bit.

6 June 2019: Good Omens requests came around, one of which led me to follow the Imagine Hastur Ficlets (which themselves exist thanks to the accidental prompts at @imaginehastur) interlude in CoT with The Imagine Hastur Epilogue.  This was a sort of neat in-narrative way to deal with having gradually come out about my biological (inter)sex and (nonbinary) gender identity over the 14 years I worked on CoT. 

15 June - 1 July 2019: I posted another Good Omens collaboration-set with @procrastinatingbookworm called Have Faith at the series-title level.  The two stories in it, You Bloody Snake and Enough of a Bastard, focus almost entirely on Hastur and Ligur.  Seeing Aziraphale and Crowley through different (and less favorable) eyes was a weird pleasure; seeing people indignantly realize they were enjoying fic about Hastur and Ligur was even more of one!

15 August 2019: @verumx persuaded me to watch Jamie Marks Is Dead with her and @one-eyed-bossman, and then implored me to fix it.  Using Our Words is the stand-alone that resulted, which is no shock given I can’t resist ghost stories.  It’s unique among this year’s stories in that it may be the only genuine stand-alone aside from the Gotham piece called Gold Dust.

17 August 2019: After an experimental in-character snail mail letter-writing exchange that lasted about 6 weeks, @verumx and I transcribed the letters and framed them in a piece of collaborative Gotham fic, We Were All Forgiven.  Since about late April, I had been getting progressively sicker and sicker (didn’t know yet that I had cancer).  Keeping busy as things got worse helped at least in the psychological sense, but by mid-August my exhaustion and difficulty eating were hitting their peak.  I was hiding it from everyone except my partner.

1 September 2019: Returning to two stories I’d written for Batman: Europa, I created a series umbrella called Once Is Not Enough and explicitly placed London (Letting Go) and Five Love Affairs under it as companion pieces.  Between Thursday Friday of this particular week, I experienced an increasingly more frightening set of symptoms that landed me in the ER and got a sequence of diagnostic tests finally rolling.

22 October 2019: After receiving a diagnosis of colon cancer on 10/1/19 and starting medical leave Monday of Halloween Week, I decided to complete the sequel to The Meaning of This City, which was a Gotham piece I’d left hanging mid-progress for weeks.  The Maze of Your Ingenuity was hard for me to complete due to constant blood tests, CT scans, and outpatient procedures in the lead-up to my Thanksgiving Week major inpatient surgery, but I did it.

23 September - 11 December 2019: My longest Gotham fic ’verse (Delicate, Dangerous, Obsessed, a.k.a. DDO), having refused to die even once The Knights’ Tour was complete, got an entirely new ending stretch of stories focusing on, of all people, Jerome Valeska and Five (514A).  They were the only two characters from canon who I had mentioned and/or shown briefly in passing earlier in DDO, but whose arcs from canon (and onward into my fic) I had done nothing to wrap up.  Challengers, Thicker Than Blood, Take This Waltz (It’s Yours Now), Finally Fair (In Love and War), and What We’re For (And What We Want) may, collectively, be the best writing I did during the entirety of 2019 (unless you count what I wrote in February to finish CoT).  The experience of terrifying, unexplained illness and harrowing treatment was entirely too timely to one of my two protagonists in this set of stories.  They were worth their weight not just in distraction, but also in catharsis.  Five survived, and so did I.

[inappropriatefangirlneeds]

Gotham s5ep11  “They Did What?” Personal Review & Rambling 

I DID IT .... I WATCHED THE GOTHAM FINALE 

“We need to make it a bomb again.” Absolutely no warning cause that’s all no spoiler anymore for a long time 

So I´m not sure if it´s good thing I´m watching this ages late, partly I guess I could be more emotional, partly not. It´s sweet to see how everyone and their aunt is teaming up for the city. “Well, this is gonna make one hell of a bedtime story some day.”   With Nyssa al Ghul holding the baby I briefly totally forgot the plot and wondered where did that child come from again? And my brain went back to the (godawful) “Ra´s present for Barbara is a child” theory, and then I remembered oh no it was Jim ..and I was like .. eh, magic baby would have been the better plot. So that´s how we started this but at least Jim and Barbara were quite sweet, even with the child (I usually just cringe and crumble in sheer terror of what kind of responsibility a child is whenever one of those appears but they made it sweet)  BARBARA KEAN & JIM GORDON were such a great team!  Also Barbara just looks so damn fine, they really did good with that. And just bless the FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHERS of the Show , handcuffed Barbara taking out the guy with her legs > Jim later handcuffing Nyssa to keep her close to not get shot at < Good Stuff!  * ~ 24:05 even up to the Steps of SELINA KYLE , Just the way she walked before fighting Bane was such a neat detail   ”My father made his name destroying empires.” NYSSA AL GHUL I guess with more time she´s got potential but rushed like that her character is just boring. 

“Can we really be so cavalier about the destruction of Gotham?” Oh OSWALD COBBLEPOT that´s part of why I fell in love with you. So he and EDWARD NYGMA go over the whole “listening to your heart never did you any good Oswald” spiel, and “I´ll miss you”, or “not so much”, Ed kind of is saying “don´t go” , but just not quite, the usual, you know, I can´t bring myself to care much but damn do I like watching their pretty selves talk through it.  * Edward later follows Oswald, claiming it´s about the city, says the submarine can only operated by two people, and actual people, dog didn´t work.  The usual. * Holy Shit, JIM GORDON ´s so gorgeous. It´s not like I had forgotten how pretty he is but damn that episode hit me hard again with Jim feels. Him over that map, going through their strategy. Daaaamn daaaaaaaaamn. * JIM GORDON & OSWALD COBBLEPOT in something that might as well be just fanfiction: “Oswald, come in.” / “Still have those eyes in the back of your head, Jim.” / “No. You just have a remarkably recognizable odor. Part dandy, part snake. After all these years, it hasn't changed. Drink?” / “No, thank you. Dulls the senses.” /  “That's what I was going for. Surprised you're still here. Figured you'd be long gone by now. That storm you've warned me about for so long, it's finally here.” /  “Sure, I could escape... with money, I might add... but then what? Stand on the shores of the mainland and watch the army burn it to the ground? Then watch tasteless industrialists and vapid politicians rebuild it? No. My life is etched on the walls of every alley and dirty warehouse here. My blood lives in its broken concrete. I'm staying to fight. For my legacy.” * LESLIE THOMPKINS caring about the people of the Narrows was great, I don´t know, if I like that she “abandoned” them in order to stand next to Jim but I can let it pass because of the way she did: She respected and trusted BARBARA KEAN to get them out. I can accept a plot that doesn´t pit those two women against each other (anymore). It was equally great that Lee just told Jim to “yes, go to your child”, and not to forget the scene where Barbara is thanking Lee for what she did, and “Barbara Lee Gordon”  * Lucius is full on providing gadgets for Bruce, including that Bat Beacon that slowed down Bane. Nice but eh.  Also they rehash Jeremiah´s plan to turn the city in a labyrinth to slow down the army. “We need to make it a bomb again.” Battery goes Bomb again, but eh, kind of fell flat for me

* HARVEY BULLOCK pointing out they are fighting SOLDIERS that are just following orders was a good touch. And it makes sense that JIM could brush that aside, he knows what they signed up for. That´s what you do, that´s what you accept. * Also I can stan a good  story that rejects and is a slap in the face of  the "NUREMBERG DEFENSE" so props to that! Just the execution fell so remarkably flat for me. I felt nothing then the people came back with Barbara, nothing when the soldiers pointed their guns at Bane.  BRUCE WAYNE & SELINA KYLE   Just Selina checking in with a “Bruce?” to make sure he actually wants to do that bomb thing was so precious. Also her recognizing that he is and accepting his choice. [Rant Below]  Them later sitting on the stairs and talking was sweet too, except for what they talked about.  SELINA KYLE MRs. & MR WAYNE So apparently they paralleled those in this episode 1.  Selina´s shadow is just right under the painting of Mrs & Mr Wayne and Bruce just plants the bomb right in the middle of her shadow ~19:40) 2.  Selina telling Bruce on the stairs she will be there whenever he needs her and Bruce replying that this is what his parents used to tell him.     Which is a good setup for the kind of conclusion Bruce draws out of all of this but also I´m gonna rant about it below but first:  3. Bruce says his parents would have and did sacrifice everything for the city. He´s making the same choice but apparently can´t see that Selina has as much a choice to do so as he and Mrs & Mr Wayne have .  So in the end I´m getting overly emotional, angry, hurt, let down to be precise:  How dare BRUCE WAYNE leave SELINA KYLE  behind like this?! Given the backstory that´s bound to be so much more painful than whatever Jeremiah or Bane ever could do. Selina has been through this after Jeremiah and she made a choice. She stayed, she thought and she was (not that that matters but let´s not forget it) damn good at it. I know Bruce thinks he´s making a “sacrifice” but how dare he take away this choice from her. How dare he hurt her like that.

* Most importantly though ALFRED PENNYWORTH in that COAT at the end looked so damn dashing. I´m in love. But I don´t like that they made a point of benching his character like that. He added plenty to the fight, he´s been in hospital before, he can add still contribute like he always did. Don´t let it end like this. Yeah I do need at least three seasons to magically happen before the 5th. OSWALY COBBLEPOT & EDWARD NYGMA Round #2  * Edward apologizes for freezing because of the grenade, Oswald understands. Edward gags when seeing Oswald´s hurt eye but claims it is just a scratch. * Back in a remarkable awesome looking place they lick their wounds: > Oswald feels not appreciated he wants “credit for our loyalty, our selfless bravery?” aka Love.  > Edward however feels better than everyone else. He used to be “Shy awkward, pathetic Ed”. Not anymore. He´s better! “I don't want their thanks. Or their respect. You know what I felt, standing shoulder to shoulder with those people out there? Nothing. I... feel... absolutely nothing for those drab... boring people.” Never again. I've shown this city who I truly am once before, and I will do it again. They will bow to the Riddler, and they won't get up until I permit them to.” >> The notion of the “Thankless Job” is there too with Ed but Ed get his kicks out of separating himself from the people, he´s different and above them he doesn´t care about their opinion and has no real stakes in their well being. Oswald however obviously still want´s the recognition of said people, and he wants the good and nice kind, so it´s important that they aren´t miserable.  However “Yes. You're right. Our accomplishments have been erased, our brilliant minds underrated. If they had let me run this city the way I wanted to, it would not be in ruins now. I had the men, the money, - the guns... “ 1. Oswald falls in line with Ed´s reasoning, appeals to his brilliance spleen but tweaks it for his need.  Edward says he has to rule and they have to bow to him.  Os says Ed is right, follows in line with Ed in reassuming a strife for leadership but adds his twist that this is necessary not so much because he (just as Ed thinks he is) is superior but because his leadership is “good” for the people. He´ll do good for them so they´ll like him.  >>> Oswald wants to rule to not have the city in ruins and get praised for that >>> Edward wants to rule because he´s better and deserves so regardless of other imbeciles thoughts or needs.  2. Divide et Imperare Edward is quick to make sure to point a finger to an enemy and separate Oswald from Jim “Gordon took them.”  Oswald just might as well try to go back to old methods and try build alliances with Jim and the law again, Edward recently saw Oswald and Jim kind of teaming up again and he just can´t have that. Just like Mr. Penn was in the way. Jim is a threat.  One to be undermined at all costs: “Gordon took them. Why? Because he still sees you as Fish Mooney's umbrella boy, and he always will.” 

3. One Ring to bind them. Edward starts with a selfish reason but is quick to put Oswald back into the plan. First there´s “I” suddenly he talks about a “We”:  “I only came back to help him save this city so that I could take it for myself. We would be stronger together. No one could stop us.”  4. Do they believe each other?! Apparently they don´t because the both go in the hug with a drawn knife but are relieved when they don´t feel one in their own back. Which was really nice and fitting imagery. I can live with that “conclusion” but I have so much open questions.  I really got to look for post that worked through all of this. > Oswald obviously must be weary of Edward because (I just have to believe) that he sees through the manipulating words of Edward. (as listed above) [[[ Especially the scene with Jim: They had a rather respectful, familiar interaction. I can´t quite believe that he follows Edward´s claim that JIM only thinks of him as that umbrella boy. I do think Oswald gets that Jim takes him serious, just well considers all his crime stuff to be wrong, and that´s quite a different thing than what Ed claims.]]]  > What is Edward´s angle there? Yeah he might not have been able to operate the submarine alone but granted his speech it sounded like he would think that he is capable of taking the city for and by himself. Why is he appealing to Oswald to form a “we”?  Just to get him in the hug situation and test him, asses a possible future threat to his claims?  The only other proper motivation for that would be …. he likes Oswald.  5. “Brothers” Hahahah * Okay, but Oswald´s face when Edward and his mirror self do their thing …Damn …. * 8:26 Are the “Captain Jim Gordon” letters on his door window colour ??! * Jankey Piss Whiskey, what is Jim drinking?  * Oh no, not the General

[dukereviewstv]

Duke Reviews TV: Batman: The Animated Series 1x02 Christmas With The Joker

Hello, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews TV, Where We Coninue Our Look At Batman: The Animated Series By Talking About Episode 2 Of Season 1, Christmas With The Joker...

The Episode Sees The Joker (Played By Mark Hamill) Escaping Arkham Asylum On Christmas Eve To Kidnap Commissioner Gordon, Summer Gleeson And Detective Bullock To Give Both Batman And Robin A Little Problem Over The Holidays...

Threatening To Kill Them At Midnight, The Joker Sets Up Various Disasters To Keep The Dynamic Duo Busy While He Has Some Holiday Fun...

Will Batman And Robin Save The Hostages And Stop The Joker Before Midnight?

Let's Find Out As We Watch Christmas With The Joker...

The Episode Starts At Arkham Asylum...

(Start At 0:16, End At 1:00)

Meanwhile At Wayne Manor, Batman And Robin Go Down To The Batcave, Despite Robin Feeling That There's No Need For Them To Go Out On Christmas But Batman Knows The Joker Is Out Of Arkham...

So, Robin Makes A Deal With Him That If Gorham Is Quiet With No Sign Of The Joker, They'll Come Back To Wayne Manor And Watch It's A Wonderful Life...

Yeah, I Agree, Batman, It's A Wonderful Life Is A Little Overrated...

Not Finding The Joker, Just Someone Helping An Old Lady That Dropped A Gift A Few Miles Back, Bruce And Dick Head Back To Wayne Manor To Have Dinner But When They Go To Watch It's A Wonderful Life, They Discover A Christmas Special On Instead...

(Start At 0:39, End At 2:07)

Working To Find The Joker's Location By Checking Power Surges Before Heading Out To Find Him, Joker Continues His Show To Revealing That He's Kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, Reporter Summer Gleeson, And Detective Bullock...

Who I Laugh At Every Time I See Him In That Baby Bonnet...

And That If Batman Doesn't Find Him And The Hostages By Midnight Then He'll Kill Them...

Coming Back On With His Own Christmas Elf, Laughy, Joker Explains That He'll Blow Up A Rail Bridge In Time For The 11:30 Train, Which Just So Happens To Have Summer Gleeson's Mom On It...

(Start At 1:40, End At 3:27)

Isolating The Joker's Broadcast Signal To Observatory On Top Of Mount Gotham, They Find A Jack In The Box Which The Joker Uses To Communicate With Batman And Robin Before Using The Telescope Which He Replaced With A Cannon Which Is Now Firing At Batman...

Don't Know He Could Have Done That In Such A Short Time But It's Superhero Stuff, I Guess...

But Despite Taking On Dozens Of Joker Statues With Guns For Fingers, Robin Blows Up The Cannon Using An Explosive Bola...

Hopping In The Batmobile, They Continue Watching Joker's Broadcast As He Gives Summer Gleeson A Betty Blooper Doll, Realizing That The Doll Came From The Laffco Toy Factory Which Has Been Closed For 14 Years..,

Considering It To Be Joker's Hideout, They Head There Only To Face Several Giant Toy Nutcrackers And Toy Airplanes While Music From The Nutcracker Plays...

Eventually Destroying Both, Joker Appears With His Hostages Over A Vat Of Molten Plastic And Telling Batman To Come Get His Christmas Present Or He'll Kill The Hostages...

(Start At 2:50, End At 4:12)

As Bruce And Dick Finally Watch It's A Wonderful Life, The Joker Spends The Rest Of Christmas In His Cell But In Good Spirits...

This Episode Is One Of My Favorite Christmas Episodes Ever...

While This Is Early Joker, The Story Is Pretty Good And Some Of The Scenes With Joker Are Pretty Good, Either Way I Say See It And Make It One Of Your Holiday Favorites Today..,

Till Next Time, This Is Duke, Signing Off...

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

what does this have to do with clownfish?

i know this was a mostly sad episode that ended on a rather disquieting note, but i was grinning from ear to ear by the end, you guys. I LOVE THIS SILLY SHOW SO MUCH, and i want to tell you why, so let’s talk about titans 2.04:

SPOILERS ahead

1. i get why we’re getting a flashback episode now--the titans’ ~sordid past~ with deathstroke has gotten a fair bit of build-up, and now that slade has jason, we need the history between him and the og team to contextualise the upcoming confrontation. still, i was really looking forward to having kory reunite with the team, goddamit! 

1.5. i like the convivial, almost collegiate vibe that the original titans have about them--the idea of them getting together both desperate to prove that they are more than what their origins and youth might suggest, and to dick around (pun not intended) and just... be, in a way that their individual circumstances wouldn’t allow them. costumes on, in mission-mode, they are trained and hyper-competent, but in their downtime they apparently like adorably warbling off-key at each other and re-enacting 90s/00s cheesy rom-coms. it’s great! i would’ve loved to see these kinds of flashbacks drip-fed to us right from the beginning of the season--putting it all in one episode, from aqualad’s introduction to demise all in forty minutes, not only screws up the pacing, but also robs us of more of garth’s genuinely warm chemistry with the rest of the team. 

1.67. besides, the immediate contrast between this and the way dick conducts the titans now would’ve been funny and quite impactful.

2. for all that dick seemed standoffish and genuinely frightened of himself in s1, the slightly less filtered look we get into his mind in this flashback--well before his existential crisis--is somehow even more disquieting?? the way he talks about batman and his relationship with dawn and even his friendship with donna smacks of an alarming emotional disconnect; a space where his sense of self has fallen and been replaced by a role that he has been trained to play. he smiles more in this episode than probably all eleven of s1 combined, but he’s far more reserved, afraid of vulnerability, and completely unwilling to express any emotion that would come in the way of him being who he Needs To Be.

2.45. this episode puts into sharp relief just how far dick has come to make peace with bruce in 2.01. here batman is a glowing symbol against the night sky; a shadowy figure promising justice is vengeance and not the other way around; a hulking figure that he can hate and love without reserve, that orders him to be better no matter how exhausted he is, even while standing between him and incomprehensible evil like a bulwark. at the heart of the titans tower--a skyscraper on the opposite side of the country from gotham--is another batcave, a sign that how no matter how far he goes, dick’s perception of himself and his relationships is still inextricably tied to batman and his ways. 

it’s the missing link between the angry, grieving boy we saw in flashbacks last season, and the man rapidly spiralling into crisis at the beginning of season 1. he’s internalised batman’s mission before he can decide for himself what he wants to be, and he’s been like this well into his adult years (unlike the comics). no wonder when the moment he goes Too Far finally comes, when he’s so burrowed into himself that vengeance becomes an end rather than a tool, it’s such a violent upheaval, and one that he hasn’t quite been able to put to rest in over a season.

2.65. honestly the matter of fact way he talks about being dawn’s rebound relationship after her breakup is haunting me?? dick grayson--robin, batman’s partner, the First Sidekick, leader of the titans, friend, brother, lover, a valuable asset with trackers in his arm and neck--is so utterly subsumed that his feelings, his self, automatically comes second to the role he’s playing. i wonder if he had found that he’d had a tracker installed in his body without his knowledge at this point, he’d have accepted the cold logic of it (of course batman needs to keep track of him), instead of the visceral reaction he has five years later, when he immediately picks up a knife and cuts it out of his skin.

2.95. (retrospectively it lends so much more meaning to the opening scene of 1.08??? where dick says he needs to go off on his own to get his bearings right instead of staying on to be the Leader after their traumatic time at the asylum and kory and the others are quietly accepting of it?? where’s that ‘that’s growth’ gif when you need it)

3. donna! it’s interesting that her role as a titan was always meant to be a pitstop before she moved on to Greater Things, and her struggle to reconcile that with her growing attachment to the team came across really well. jillian’s never really pressuring her to leave immediately--six months! two weeks! idk, forever! really, it’s your pick!--but donna tells dick she needs to leave that very night, either because she’s hoping that he’ll protest and ask her to stay, or that she’ll fall for garth and lose her wavering conviction to leave if she stayed any longer, or both. 

3.5. donna and garth’s relationship followed so many wonderfully cheesy conventions, with all of their attendant adorableness and Problems. the scions of two different royal families of two different races falling in Forbidden Love! garth clumsily flirting with donna even as she keeps turning him down! (not cool, garth!) bonding over reminiscing about quirky childhood memories! consulting a put-upon mutual best friend! the last minute reconciliation and confession of love at the airport! garth dying right after celebrating his birthday! (that cop was just a day away from retirement!) PERFECT

like. i have NO IDEA why people still insist on calling this show ‘dark’ and ‘edgy’. don’t let the weird lighting and occasional blood spatter distract you from the goofy, well-intentioned heart right at its centre, you guys!

(but man, dick and donna’s quiet heartbreak at the prospect of separation was harder to watch. for a moment, dick really let himself feel the burden, sinking onto his haunches, his head in his hand like he was about to cry. just a moment.)

4. the others’ reaction to garth’s death is very telling. donna is devastated; hank and dawn are upset, but in a distant way that suggests that they didn’t really know him very well or for very long; and dick... well dick is hard at work in his batcave, because that is how he knows to react to disaster. 

4.5. i know that i spend quite a bit of my reviews harping on and on about dick, but he is more than just the team leader, or the one with the most well-defined arc so far, or the connective tissue between the old and new teams: the titans is HIS, in ways both subtle and insubtle. batman is funding the whole thing; their resources, their tech? all wayne enterprises. by extension, this shindig is dick’s idea, dick’s operation, something he shaped after himself--serene, beautiful, somewhat impersonal on the surface and batman-the-symbol, batman-the-phantom, right at the centre. 

4.65. so when the burden of morality-bending vengeance falls squarely on dick’s shoulders, it seems natural. it also seems entirely natural that when dick does follow through on what the team wants from him, the fallout is also put square on him: he’s the one that’s gone completely off the rails, the one that would sacrifice anything for a mission (like hank implies in the previous episode), the one haunted by his own darkness. this, of course, is patently false, as trigon demonstrated earlier this season.

5. the opening scene of slade wilson doing the Thing He Does Best was so fun to watch. i love that this show is always trying to do interesting things with the camera. (tho i wonder, who hired him to take out donna troy in san fran? was that even his original objective? was it dr light? i am Confusion)

5.5. ... even tho the villain-confrontation scenes seemed hampered by low effects budgets and a lack of... kineticism. i can’t figure out how dr light works even after two episodes of seeing him do his thing. he can apparently implant light bombs in people but never seems to use this awesome ability again, when it can actually help him against the titans? 

6. the moment i saw joey wilson’s profile through the window of his home, i knew he was going to be my favourite character on this show. i love him and his enthusiasm and his cute shoes and his love for vintage records SO MUCH! i know it’s been hinted that he died, but i can’t bear the prospect for even a second. HE’S ALIVE AND WELL SOMEWHERE HAVING TEA AND LISTENING TO GREAT MUSIC WITH AMY ROHRBACH, I JUST KNOW IT

6.5. dick (and the others) wouldn’t be so horrified with themselves and think about shuttering the titans for good if they hadn’t felt some kind of attachment to jericho. dick especially i think is going to fall into an actual honest friendship with joey and is going to extremely disgusted with himself when it all ends in tragedy anyway. 

6.75. we’re probably not going to find out what actually happened to joey for a while, but here’s hoping the Unforgivable won’t happen.

7. on the brightside tho, KORY’S BACK NEXT EP! can’t wait. 

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Science Comics, FDA Greenlit & Critical Role

Finally, a way to read comics in class without your teacher complaining! Real life scientists are producing educational comics to teach cool science stuff. And they're FREE! Check them out, they have some pretty good explanations for a bunch of different topics.

The FDA has recognised the ability of video games to help with therapy and greenlit a game for treating ADHD suffers. I can't wait for a game to help you deal with idiots, but we'll get there one day.

Where did Matt Mercer's Vox Machina come from? Now you can read both of the first two seasons of the Critical Role prequels in a hardback omnibus. Wait, didn't we already do comics this week? Oops. Anyway, watch Critical Role. It's really good.

This week, Professor took to the skies in Sky Rogue and DJ set us up the bomb in Valorant.

Real Life Scientists making comics

- https://www.sciencenews.org/article/real-life-scientists-inspire-comic-book-superheroes-science-literacy

- https://www.jkxcomics.com/

- https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ab7c15e4fcb5c602a09465/t/5a08e052e2c483d6cb8cf769/1510531187492/JKXComics_EBV+and+the+Replication+Dance.pdf

A video game for kids with ADHD is greenlit by the FDA

- https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/15/fda-akili-adhd-endeavorrx/

Dark Horse to Release 'Critical Role' Hardcover Omnibus

- https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/dark-horse-release-critical-role-hardcover-omnibus-1296484

Games Played

Professor

– Sky Rogue - https://store.steampowered.com/app/381020/Sky_Rogue/

Rating: 3.5/5

DJ

– Valorant – https://playvalorant.com/en-us/

Rating: 3/5

Other topics discussed

The Last of Us Part 2 game review : Not as Good as It Thinks It Is

- https://www.thewrap.com/the-last-of-us-part-2-review-not-as-good-as-it-thinks-it-is-ellie-naughty-dog/

Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann calls out journalist Jason Schreier for Anne Frank joke

- https://www.ginx.tv/en/video-games/naughty-dog-s-neil-druckmann-calls-out-journalist-jason-schrier-for-anne-frank-joke

G.I. Joe - Give Him The Stick : Parody of G.I. Joe's Public Service Announcements created by Fensler films

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXFdPTaCtkc

Victoria's sudden spike in coronavirus cases could result in localised lockdowns

- https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/victorias-sudden-spike-in-coronavirus-cases-could-result-in-localised-lockdowns-c-1113679

Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) (formally called Human gammaherpesvirus 4, is one of the nine known human herpesvirus types in the herpes family, and is one of the most common viruses in humans.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus

Once Upon a Time….Life (French animated series which tells the story of the human body for children.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Life

Cells at Work! (Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akane Shimizu. It features the anthropomorphized cells of a human body, with the two main protagonists being a red blood cell and a white blood cell she frequently encounters.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cells_at_Work!

Cells at Work! CODE BLACK (spin-off written by Shigemitsu Harada, illustrated by Ikuta Hatsuya, and supervised by the author of the original, Akane Shimizu. Similar to the original, the series is set in a world of anthropomorphic cells working in a body. It follows a the life of a rookie Erythrocyte, AA2153, and a Neutrophil, U-1196, as they work in a poorly maintained, middle-aged body burdened by issues such as stress, smoking, drinking and the like, causing complications in the cells' work and living environment.)

- https://cellsatwork.fandom.com/wiki/Cells_at_Work!_CODE_BLACK

Inside Ralphie (Magic School Bus episode) (Third episode of Season 1 of the animated children's series The Magic School Bus. While Ralphie hosts a TV broadcast from his sickbed, his classmates seek to discover the cause of his illness.)

- https://magicschoolbus.fandom.com/wiki/Inside_Ralphie

For Lunch (Magic School Bus episode) (Second episode of season one of the animated children's series The Magic School Bus. Ms. Frizzle's students explore Arnold's digestive system after he accidentally swallows his miniaturized classmates.)

- https://magicschoolbus.fandom.com/wiki/For_Lunch

Food and Drug Administration ((FDA or USFDA) is a federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food safety, tobacco products, dietary supplements, prescription and over-the-counterpharmaceutical drugs (medications), vaccines,biopharmaceuticals,blood transfusions, medical devices, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices (ERED), cosmetics, animal foods & feed and veterinary products.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration

Ritalin (Methylphenidate, sold under the trade name Ritalin among others, is a stimulant medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy. It is a first line medication for ADHD. It may be taken by mouth or applied to the skin.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate

Tali Health (Tali Health creates game based programs to improve attention in children. TALi TRAIN is a clinically validated digital training and treatment program that addresses the world’s leading reported early childhood issue-attention difficulties, a key feature in conditions including ADHD and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).)

- https://talihealth.com.au/

Michele Assarasakorn (comic artist | colorist on ISOLA / Gotham Academy/ Critical Role)

Twitter : https://twitter.com/msassyk

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/msassyk/

Critical Role Wiki (A Place Documenting the Current History of Exandria)

- https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Critical_Role_Wiki

The World of RWBY: The Official Companion (RWBY lore book)

- https://www.amazon.com/World-RWBY-Official-Companion/dp/1974704386

Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins Library Edition: Series I & II Collection at Amazon

-https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Role-Machina-Origins-Collection/dp/1506721737

Ace Combat (Ace Combat is a hybrid arcade-style flight action video game franchise mainly developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Combat

LUFTRAUSERS (shoot 'em up video game developed by Netherlands-based indie developer studio Vlambeer and published by Devolver Digital for Microsoft Windows, OS X,Linux, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita.)

- https://store.steampowered.com/app/233150/LUFTRAUSERS/

Guns of Icarus (Guns of Icarus Online is the original PvP steampunk airship combat game that laid the groundwork for the expanded Guns of Icarus experience, Guns of Icarus Alliance.)

- https://store.steampowered.com/app/209080/Guns_of_Icarus_Online/

PS5 Reveal Event & Every Next Gen Game announced

- https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ps5-reveal-event-every-nextgen-game-announced-by-s/1100-6478266/

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was a fatal incident in the United States space program that occurred on Tuesday, January 28, 1986, when the Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-099) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The failure was caused by the failure of O-ring seals used in the joint that were not designed to handle the unusually cold conditions that existed at this launch.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster (The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was a fatal incident in the United States space program that occurred on February 1, 2003, when the Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102) disintegrated as it reentered the atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. During the launch of STS-107,Columbia's 28th mission, a piece of foam insulation broke off from the Space Shuttle external tank and struck the left wing of the orbiter.)

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster

The Slo Mo Guys - How a TV Works in Slow Motion

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJU2drrtCM

Winnie the Pooh could be banned from Shanghai Disneyland as a result of an ongoing meme used to criticize China's leader

-https://www.businessinsider.com/winnie-the-pooh-shanghai-disneyland-meme-2018-11?r=AU&IR=T

Obama & Xi Jinping as Tigger & Winnie The Pooh

- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsXrZ-6UwAUHGRx?format=jpg&name=900x900

Shout Outs

11 June 2020 – Playstation 5 reveal - https://deadline.com/2020/06/sony-playstation-5-revealed-videogames-1202957140/

Sony lifted the veil to reveal the PlayStation 5, the video game console it hopes will be a significant lure for consumers this holiday season. In a live-streamed video presentation lasting more than an hour, Sony Interactive Entertainment  revealed new details for the PS5, including its design and lineup of new games. Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto will be included for free, and there are two dozen other games heading to the platform. The unit’s two-tone design is a shift from previous versions and gives off distinct imperial stormtrooper vibes. PS5 will be available in both a standard model with an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive, and a digital model without a disc drive. One of the biggest series of all time, Grand Theft Auto, will be coming to PS5, with enhanced and expanded versions of Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online to launch on PS5 in the second half of 2021.

15 June 2020 – Rare stone ginger beer bottle from 1930s-era sells for record price - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-15/ginger-beer-bottle-sells-for-huge-price/12353574

A rare ginger beer bottle from the 1930s, made for a Warwick soft drink company, has sold for a record price in Toowoomba. It has collectors encouraging people to check their sheds and old farm dumps for possible 'buried treasure'. The hammer fell at $17,500 for the stoneware Doneley and Butler bottle. The little green lip at the top is what set it apart from bottles worth a fraction of that price."These bottles are extremely rare, there have only been two or three found in perfect condition," said auctioneer Graham Lancaster."That colour combination of glazes makes it unique worldwide."He said the Warwick bottle set a record price locally, and quite possible a world-record, for an antique crown-seal soft drink bottle of its type.

16 June 2020 – Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins turns 15 - https://comicbook.com/movies/news/batman-begins-anniversary-the-dark-knight-christopher-nolan-christian-bale/

As the '90s progressed, the image of Batman on the big screen began to descend into the realm of campiness previously seen in Adam West's take on the character back in the '60s TV series and movie, which started to sour audiences on the character entirely. After a variety of reports emerged about a new take on the character in the early '00s, fans were given Christopher Nolan's gritty and grounded origin story for the character in 2005, debuting Christian Bale as the Dark Knight. This new take on the character harkened back to some of the more grounded interpretations of the character, while adding just enough whimsy to remind audiences that this was still a comic book movie. Batman Begins went on to take in $371 million worldwide, a fraction of the figures that subsequent superhero movies would go on to earn, That film's success might not have been groundbreaking, but it set the stage for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, with some audiences considering those films to be the best comic book films of all time, both of which earned major box office hauls and the former earning Heath Ledger a posthumous Oscar for his performance as the Joker.

18 June 2020 – Dame Vera Lynn passes away at 103 - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53091856

The singer was best known for performing hits such as We'll Meet Again to troops on the front line in countries including India and Egypt. Six weeks ago, ahead of the 75th anniversary of VE Day and during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Dame Vera said simple acts of bravery and sacrifice still define our nation. A week later, she became the oldest artist to get a top 40 album in the UK, beating her own record when her greatest hits album re-entered the charts at number 30. Born in London's East Ham in 1917, Dame Vera's singing talent was discovered at a young age and by age 11 she had left school to pursue a full-time career as a dancer and singer. Lynn devoted much time and energy to charity work connected with ex-servicemen, disabled children and breast cancer. She was held in great affection by Second World War veterans and in 2000 was named the Briton who best exemplified the spirit of the 20th century. Paying tribute, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the singer's "charm and magical voice entranced and uplifted our country in some of our darkest hours". "Her voice will live on to lift the hearts of generations to come," he said. She died at the age of 103 in Ditchling,East Sussex.

19 June 2020 – Sir Ian Holm passes away at 88 - https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/19/ian-holm-dies-alien-chariots-of-fire-bilbo-baggins

Sir Ian Holm, an acclaimed British actor whose long career included roles in Chariots of Fire and The Lord of the Rings has died. A star of stage and screen, Sir Ian won a Tony Award for best featured actor as Lenny in Harold Pinter's play The Homecoming in 1967. He won a British Academy Film Award and gained a supporting-actor Oscar nomination for portraying pioneering athletics coach Sam Mussabini in the hit 1982 film Chariots of Fire. His other well-known film roles include Ash in Alien, Father Vito Cornelius in The Fifth Element, Chef Skinner in Ratatouille, and Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series. Sir Ian was knighted in 1998 for his services to drama. He died from Parkinson’s disease in London.

Remembrances

16 June 1804 – Johann Adam Hiller - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Adam_Hiller

German composer,conductor and writer on music, regarded as the creator of the Singspiel, an early form of German opera. It is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera. It is characterized by spoken dialogue, which is alternated with ensembles,songs, ballads, and arias which were often strophic, or folk-like. Singspiel plots are generally comic or romantic in nature, and frequently include elements of magic, fantastical creatures, and comically exaggerated characterizations of good and evil. In many of these operas he collaborated with the poet Christian Felix Weiße. Furthermore, Hiller was a teacher who encouraged musical education for women, his pupils including Elisabeth Mara and Corona Schröter. He was Kapellmeister of Abel Seyler's theatrical company, and became the first Kapellmeister of Leipzig Gewandhaus. To Hiller has been given the credit of being the originator of the Singspiel, the beginning of German comedy opera as distinct from the French and Italian developments. The most important of his operas were: Lottchen am Hofe (Lottie at court, 1760),Der Teufel ist los (The devil is loose, 1768), and Poltis, oder Das gerettete Troja (Poltis, or Troy rescued, 1782). The lyrics of all his Singspiele were of considerable musical value, and were long popular. Among his sacred compositions are: A Passion Cantata, Funeral Music in Honor of Hasse, a setting of the one hundredth Psalm; and a few symphonies. He died at the age of 76 in Leipzig.

16 June 1858 – John Snow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Snow

English physician and a leader in the development of anaesthesia and medical hygiene. He is considered one of the founders of modern epidemiology, in part because of his work in tracing the source of a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, in 1854, which he curtailed by removing the handle of a water pump. Snow's findings inspired the adoption of anaesthesia as well as fundamental changes in the water and waste systems of London, which led to similar changes in other cities, and a significant improvement in general public health around the world. John Snow was one of the first physicians to study and calculate dosages for the use of ether and chloroform as surgical anaesthetics, allowing patients to undergo surgical and obstetric procedures without the distress and pain they would otherwise experience. He designed the apparatus to safely administer ether to the patients and also designed a mask to administer chloroform. He personally administered chloroform to Queen Victoria when she gave birth to the last two of her nine children, Leopold in 1853 and Beatrice in 1857 and was still not yet knighted, leading to wider public acceptance of obstetric anaesthesia. John Snow studied chloroform as much as he studied ether, which was introduced in 1847 by James Young Simpson, a Scottish obstetrician. He realised that chloroform was much more potent and required more attention and precision when administering it. Snow first realised this with Hannah Greener, a 15-year-old patient who died on 28 January 1848 after a surgical procedure that required the cutting of her toenail. She was administered chloroform by covering her face with a cloth dipped in the substance. However, she quickly lost pulse and died. After investigating her death and a couple of deaths that followed, he realized that chloroform had to be administered carefully and published his findings in a letter to The Lancet. Snow was a skeptic of the then-dominant miasma theory that stated that diseases such as cholera and bubonic plague were caused by pollution or a noxious form of "bad air". The germ theory of disease had not yet been developed, so Snow did not understand the mechanism by which the disease was transmitted. His observation of the evidence led him to discount the theory of foul air. He first published his theory in an 1849 essay, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, followed by a more detailed treatise in 1855 incorporating the results of his investigation of the role of the water supply in the Soho epidemic of 1854. By talking to local residents (with the help of Reverend Henry Whitehead), he identified the source of the outbreak as the public water pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Although Snow's chemical and microscope examination of a water sample from the Broad Street pump did not conclusively prove its danger, his studies of the pattern of the disease were convincing enough to persuade the local council to disable the well pump by removing its handle (force rod). Snow later used a dot map to illustrate the cluster of cholera cases around the pump. He also used statistics to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. He showed that homes supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company, which was taking water from sewage-polluted sections of the Thames, had a cholera rate fourteen times that of those supplied by Lambeth Waterworks Company, which obtained water from the upriver, cleaner Seething Wells. Snow's study was a major event in the history of public health and geography. It is regarded as the founding event of the science of epidemiology. He died from stroke at the age of 45 in London.

16 June 1869 – Charles Sturt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sturt

Charles Napier Sturt, British officer and explorer of Australia, and part of the European exploration of Australia. He led several expeditions into the interior of the continent, starting from Sydney and later from Adelaide. His expeditions traced several of the westward-flowing rivers, establishing that they all merged into the Murray River, which flows into the Southern Ocean. He was searching to prove his own passionately held belief that an "inland sea" was located at the centre of the continent. Sturt found the conditions and climate in New South Wales much better than he expected, and he developed a great interest in the country. Sturt received approval from Governor Darling on 4 November 1828 to explore the area of the Macquarie River in western New South Wales. The party faced the ordeal of rowing back upriver on the Murray and Murrumbidgee, against the current, in the heat of an Australian summer. Their supplies ran out and, when they reached the site of Narrandera in April, they were unable to go any further. Sturt sent two men overland in search of supplies and they returned in time to save the party from starvation. But Sturt went blind for some months and never fully recovered his health. By the time they reached Sydney again, they had rowed and sailed nearly 2,900 kilometres of the river system. Sturt believed that it was his destiny to discover a great salt water lake, known as 'the inland sea', in the middle of Australia. At very least, he wanted to be the first explorer to plant his foot in 'the centre' of Australia. In August 1844, he set out with a party of 15 men, 200 sheep, six drays, and a boat to explore north-western New South Wales and to advance into central Australia. They travelled along the Murray and Darling rivers before passing the future site of Broken Hill. They were stranded for months by the extreme summer conditions near the present site of Milparinka. When the rains eventually came, Sturt moved north and established a depot at Fort Grey (today this site is within Sturt National Park). With a small group of men, including explorer John McDouall Stuart as his draughtsman, Sturt pressed on across what is now known as Sturt's Stony Desert and into the Simpson Desert. Unable to go further, he turned back to the depot. Sturt made a second attempt to reach the centre of Australia, but he developed scurvy in the extreme conditions. His health broke down and he was forced to abandon the attempt. John Harris Browne, surgeon on the expedition, assisted Sturt, took over leadership of the party and, after travelling a total of 3,000 miles (4,800 km), brought it back to safety. He died from heart failure at the age of 74 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

16 June 1977 – Wernher von Braun - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun

German and later American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States. While in his twenties and early thirties, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and develop the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde during World War II. Though a member of the SS, following the war he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. He worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1. In 1960, his group was assimilated into NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center and as the chief architect of the Saturn V super heavy-lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. In 1967, von Braun was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1975, he received the National Medal of Science. He advocated a human mission to Mars. Von Braun also developed the idea of a Space Camp that would train children in fields of science and space technologies, as well as help their mental development much the same way sports camps aim at improving physical development. Von Braun took a very conservative approach to engineering, designing with ample safety factors and redundant structure. This became a point of contention with other engineers, who struggled to keep vehicle weight down so that payload could be maximized. As noted above, his excessive caution likely led to the U.S. losing the race to put a man into space with the Soviets. He died from pancreatic cancer at the age of 65 in Alexandria, Virginia.

Famous Birthdays

16 June 1801 – Julius Plücker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Pl%C3%BCcker

German mathematician and physicist. He made fundamental contributions to the field of analytical geometry and was a pioneer in the investigations of cathode rays that led eventually to the discovery of the electron. He also vastly extended the study of Lamé curves. In 1836, Plücker was made professor of physics at University of Bonn. In 1858, after a year of working with vacuum tubes of his Bonn colleague Heinrich Geißler, he published his first classical researches on the action of the magnet on the electric discharge in rarefied gases. He found that the discharge caused a fluorescent glow to form on the glass walls of the vacuum tube, and that the glow could be made to shift by applying an electromagnet to the tube, thus creating a magnetic field. It was later shown that the glow was produced by cathode rays. Plücker, first by himself and afterwards in conjunction with Johann Hittorf, made many important discoveries in the spectroscopy of gases. He was the first to use the vacuum tube with the capillary part now called a Geissler tube, by means of which the luminous intensity of feeble electric discharges was raised sufficiently to allow of spectroscopic investigation. He anticipated Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff in announcing that the lines of the spectrum were characteristic of the chemical substance which emitted them, and in indicating the value of this discovery in chemical analysis. According to Hittorf, he was the first who saw the three lines of the hydrogen spectrum, which a few months after his death, were recognized in the spectrum of the solar protuberances. In 1865, Plücker returned to the field of geometry and invented what was known as line geometry in the nineteenth century. In projective geometry, Plücker coordinates refer to a set of homogeneous co-ordinates introduced initially to embed the set of lines in three dimensions as a quadric in five dimensions. The construction uses 2×2 minor determinants, or equivalently the second exterior power of the underlying vector space of dimension 4. It is now part of the theory of Grassmannians, to which these co-ordinates apply in generality (k-dimensional subspaces of n-dimensional space). He was born in Elberfeld,Duchy of Berg,Holy Roman Empire.

16 June 1915 – John Tukey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tukey

John Wilder Tukey, American mathematician best known for development of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm and box plot. The Tukey range test, the Tukey lambda distribution, the Tukey test of additivity, and the Teichmüller–Tukey lemma all bear his name. He is also credited with coining the term 'bit'. Early in his career Tukey worked on developing statistical methods for computers at Bell Labs where he invented the term "bit" in 1947. n 1970, he contributed significantly to what is today known as the jackknife estimation—also termed Quenouille–Tukey jackknife. He introduced the box plot in his 1977 book, "Exploratory Data Analysis". He is also the creator of several little-known methods such as the trimean and median-median line, an easier alternative to linear regression. He also contributed to statistical practice and articulated the important distinction between exploratory data analysis and confirmatory data analysis, believing that much statistical methodology placed too great an emphasis on the latter. Though he believed in the utility of separating the two types of analysis, he pointed out that sometimes, especially in natural science, this was problematic and termed such situations uncomfortable science. Tukey coined many statistical terms that have become part of common usage, but the two most famous coinages attributed to him were related to computer science. While working with John von Neumann on early computer designs, Tukey introduced the word "bit" as a contraction of "binary digit" The term "bit" was first used in an article by Claude Shannon in 1948. In 2000, Fred Shapiro, a librarian at the Yale Law School, published a letter revealing that Tukey's 1958 paper "The Teaching of Concrete Mathematics" contained the earliest known usage of the term "software" found in a search of JSTOR's electronic archives, predating the OED's citation by two years. This led many to credit Tukey with coining the term, particularly in obituaries published that same year, although Tukey never claimed credit for any such coinage. In 1995, Paul Niquette claimed he had originally coined the term in October 1953, although he could not find any documents supporting his claim.The earliest known publication of the term "software" in an engineering context was in August 1953 by Richard R. Carhart, in a RAND Corporation research memorandum. He was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

16 June 1909 – Archie Carr - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Carr

Archie Fairly Carr, Jr., American herpetologist,ecologist and a pioneering conservationist. He was a Professor of Zoology at the University of Florida. In 1987 he was awarded the Eminent Ecologist Award by the Ecological Society of America. He made extraordinary contribution to sea turtle conservation by way of bringing attention to the world's declining turtle populations due to over-exploitation and loss of safe habitat. He started out as a high school science teacher before becoming a college professor. He published numerous books and articles, including Ulendo: Travels of a Naturalist in and out of Africa, High Jungles and Low, So Excellent a Fishe (about his green turtles), The Windward Road and several Time-Life books such as The Everglades and The Reptiles. He was also the author of the Handbook of Turtles, and with Coleman J. Goin, Guide to the Reptiles, Amphibians and Freshwater Fishes of Florida. While a serious scientific and nature writer, he also had a remarkable sense of humor, which led him to publish the parody of scientific taxonomic keys - his A Subjective Key to the Fishes of Alachua County, Florida, affectionately known as the "Carr Key". Carr was also known for his efforts in conservation, especially for sea turtles, helping convince Costa Rica to establish Tortuguero National Park in 1975. He was a co-founder of the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, which helps to save and monitor sea turtles in Tortuguero,Costa Rica. He was often joined in his conservation work by his wife Marjorie Carr, who was a major advocate for conservation in her own right. In 1952 Carr was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was born in Mobile, Alabama.

Events of Interest

16 June 1884 – The first purpose-built roller coaster, LaMarcus Adna Thompson's "Switchback Railway", opens in New York's Coney Island amusement park. - https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-roller-coaster-in-america-opens

Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. The new entertainment was an instant success and by the turn of the century there were hundreds of roller coasters around the country. For five cents, riders would climb a tower to board the large bench-like car and were pushed off to coast 600 ft (183 m) down the track to another tower. The car went just over 6 mph (9.7 km/h). At the top of the other tower the vehicle was switched to a return track or "switched back" (hence the name). The new entertainment was an instant success and by the turn of the century there were hundreds of roller coasters around the country.

16 June 1911 – IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York. - http://www.techgetz.com/history-of-ibm/

In 1911 the company that leased Unit record equipment, especially Hollerith punched cards and card readers to government bureaus and insurance agencies, became the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). Thomas J. Watson (1874-1956) took over in 1924, using the name “International Business Machines.” IBM expanded into electric typewriters and other office machines. Watson was a salesman and concentrated on building a highly motivated, very well paid sales force that could craft solutions for clients unfamiliar with the latest technology. His motto was “THINK”; customers were advised to not “fold, spindle or mutilate” the delicate cardboard cards.

16 June 2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission. - https://www.space.com/16110-secret-x37b-space-plane-landing.html

The unmanned X-37B spacecraft, also known as Orbital Test Vehicle-2 (OTV-2), glided back to Earth on autopilot, touching down at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5:48 a.m. PDT (8:48 a.m. EDT, 1248 GMT). The landing brought to an end the X-37B program's second-ever spaceflight, a mission that lasted more than 15 months with objectives that remain shrouded in secrecy. The X-37B stayed in orbit for 469 days this time, more than doubling the 225 days its sister ship, OTV-1, spent in space last year on the program's maiden flight. Officials at Vandenberg said the spacecraft conducted "on-orbit experiments" during its mission. Exactly what the spacecraft, which is built by Boeing, was doing up there for so long is a secret. The details of the X-37B's mission, which is overseen by the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office, are classified, as is its payload. This secrecy has led to some speculation, especially online and abroad, that the X-37B could be a space weapon of some sort — perhaps a sophisticated satellite-killer. Some experts also suspect that the vehicle may be an orbital spy platform. "This is a test vehicle to prove the materials and capabilities, to put experiments in space and bring them back and check out the technologies," Richard McKinney, the Air Force's deputy undersecretary for space programs.

16 June 2016 – Shanghai Disneyland Park, the first Disney Park in Mainland China, opens to the public - https://www.dw.com/en/distinctly-chinese-disneyland-opens-in-shanghai/a-19332984

Shanghai Disney Resort, the first Disney resort in Mainland China and the sixth worldwide, celebrated its historic Grand Opening today, culminating one of Disney's most ambitious projects ever. The wonder and imagination of Disney greeted the people of China in magical new ways as the gates opened to Shanghai Disneyland, a theme park like no other with the biggest, tallest castle in any Disney park, the first pirate-themed land and Disney's most technologically advanced park to date. Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang cut a red ribbon together, signaling the Communist Party's endorsement of the $5.5 billion (4.87 billion euro) resort - one of the largest foreign investments in China. The lavish ceremony featured a children's choir singing "When You Wish Upon a Star," as well as actors dressed as Sleeping Beauty, Donald Duck, and other Disney characters dancing on stage. The entrance of the park is called "Mickey Avenue" instead of "Main Street USA." Stores feature Minnie Mouse in traditional quipau dresses and the Wandering Moon Teahouse is modeled after a building in eastern China. Shanghai Disney Resort is filled with immersive Disney storytelling, thrilling attractions, spectacular live entertainment and memory-making experiences designed to inspire and delight Chinese guests. The world-class vacation destination includes a magical theme park with six themed lands, two imaginatively designed hotels, a Disneytown shopping and dining district, and Wishing Star Park recreational area.

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

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